Daily CURRENT AFFAIRS

Daily Current Affair - UPSC/KAS Exams - 28th September 2021

What is in news : The Karnataka legislature has passed a Bill to amend the Karnataka Police Act, 1963 in order to ban all forms of gambling in the state, including online gambling.

Aim : Strengthen the Karnataka Police Act to make gambling a cognizable and non-bailable offence and "curb menace of gaming through the Internet, mobile apps"

Application :

• Covers all forms of wagering or betting in connection with any game of chance (with the exception of horse races and lotteries)
• Any act of risking money or otherwise on the unknown result of an event including on a game of skill is an offence.

Punishments

• Law enhances maximum punishment for owners of gambling centres
• One year to three years of imprisonment
• Fines from Rs 1000 to Rs 1 lakh
• Minimum punishment proposed is six months instead of the current one month and a fine of Rs 10,000 instead of Rs 500
• For aiding or abetting gambling, the punishment has been enhanced to six months imprisonment and a Rs 10,000 fine.

POLITY & GOVERNANCE

What does it say :

• Right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions.
• If an institution is under the management of a minority, whether based on religion or language, grant of aid to that educational institution cannot be discriminated against, if other educational institutions are entitled to receive aid

What is in news : The right of an institution, whether run by a majority or minority community, to get government aid is not a fundamental right. Both have to equally follow the rules and conditions of the aid, the Supreme Court held in a judgment.

Supreme Court Verdicts on ARTICLE 30

Sidhraj Bhai's Case:

• SC held that under Article 30(1) fundamental right declared is in term absolute and is not subject to reasonable restrictions.
• It is intended to be a real right for the protection of minorities in the matter of setting up of educational institutions of their choice.
• The right is intended to be effective and not to be whittled down by so-called regulatory measures conceived in the interest not of the minority educational institution, but of the public or the nation as a whole.

A. V. College Jullundur v State of Punjab:

• The Court held that a linguistic minority for the purpose of Article 30(1) is one which has separate spoken language.
• It is not necessary that language should also have separate script.
• India has number of languages which do not have script of its own but nonetheless, people speaking such a language will constitute a linguistic minority to claim protection of Article 30(1).

Ahmedabad St. Xavier’s College v State of Gujarat:

• Well, the Supreme Court has pointed out that the spirit behind the Article 30(1) is the conscience of the nation that the minorities, religious as well as the linguistic, are not prohibited from the establishment and the administrating educational institutions of their choice for the purpose of giving their children the best general education to make them a complete men and women of the country. the action of Article 30(1)

T.M.A Pai Foundation v State of Karnataka:

• SC overruled the proposition that no regulation can be cast in the interest of the nation if it does not serve the interest of minority as well.
• The Justice Kirpal C. J. had ruled, that any of the regulation which is framed in the national interest must necessarily apply to all the educational institutions, whether run by majority or by a minority. Moreover, such a limitation must necessarily be read into Article 30.
• The right under Article 30(1) cannot be such as to override the national interest or to prevent the Government from framing regulations in that behalf.
• The court was of the view that no right can be absolute. Whether a minority or a nonminority, no community can claim its interest to be above national interest.

SOCIAL ISSUES

What is in news :The Union Minister of Power, New and Renewable Energy recently reviewed the progress of the PM-KUSUM scheme and reaffirmed the government’s commitment to accelerating solar pump adoption

About PM KUSUM

• Full Form - Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan
• Implemented by - The New and Renewable Energy Ministry.
• The approved scheme comprises of three components:
  • setting up of 10,000 MW of decentralised ground / stilt-mounted grid-connected solar or other renewable energy based power plants
  • installation of 17.5 lakh standalone solar agriculture pumps
  • solarisation of 10 lakh grid-connected solar agriculture pumps
• Benefits: It would provide extra income to farmers, by giving them an option to sell additional power to the grid through solar power projects set up on their barren lands. It would help in de-dieselising the sector as also the DISCOMS.
• Significance: Expected positive outcomes of the scheme include promotion of decentralised solar power production, reduction of transmission losses as well as providing support to the financial health of DISCOMs by reducing the subsidy burden to the agriculture sector. The scheme would also promote energy efficiency and water conservation and provide water security to farmers.

CHALLENGES & WAY FORWARD

• Extend the scheme’s timelines. Most Indian discoms have a surplus of contracted generation capacity and are wary of procuring more power in the short term. Extending PM-KUSUM’s timelines beyond 2022 would allow discoms to align the scheme with their power purchase planning.
• Create a level playing field for distributed solar plants. Selling surplus power to discoms is one of the main attractions of grid-connected models. Yet, discoms often find utility-scale solar cheaper than distributed solar (under the scheme) due to the latter’s higher costs and the loss of locational advantage due to waived inter-State transmission system (ISTS) charges. To tackle the bias against distributed solar, we need to address counter-party risks and grid-unavailability risks at distribution substations, standardise tariff determination to reflect the higher costs of distributed power plants, and do away with the waiver of ISTS charges for solar plants.
• Streamline land regulations through inter-departmental coordination. Doing so will help reduce delays in leasing or converting agricultural lands for non-agricultural purposes such as solar power generation.
• Support innovative solutions for financing farmers’ contributions. Many farmers struggle to pay 30-40% of upfront costs in compliance with scheme requirements. Further, they cannot access bank loans without collateral. We need out-of-the-box solutions like Karnataka’s pilot of a farmer-developer special-purpose vehicle to help farmers install solar power plants on their farms.
• Extensively pilot grid-connected solar pumps. Current obstacles to their adoption include concerns about their economic viability in the presence of high farm subsidies and farmers’ potential unwillingness to feed in surplus power when selling water or irrigating extra land are more attractive prospects. Further, the grid-connected model requires pumps to be metered and billed for accounting purposes but suffers from a lack of trust between farmers and discoms. Adopting solutions like smart meters and smart transformers and engaging with farmers can build trust. But piloting the model under different agro-economic contexts will be critical to developing a strategy to scale it up.The scheme, if implemented successfully, can generate thousands of jobs, reduce the carbon footprint of agriculture, and result in oil import savings.

What is in news : Prime Minister launched Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission

Benefit :

• Connect the digital health solutions of hospitals across the country with each other.
• Every citizen would now get a digital health ID and their health records would be digitally protected.

About Aysuhman Bharath

• Launched as recommended by the National Health Policy 2017
• Vision - Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
• Designed on the lines as to meet SDG and its underlining commitment, which is “leave no one behind”.
• Aim: to undertake path breaking interventions to holistically address health (covering prevention, promotion and ambulatory care), at primary, secondary and tertiary level.
• Includes the on-going centrally sponsored schemes – Senior Citizen Health Insurance Scheme (SCHIS) and Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY)
• Ayushman Bharat adopts a continuum of care approach, comprising of two inter-related components, which are:
  • Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs).
  • Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY).
• Key Features of PM-JAY:
  • It provides cover of 5 lakhs per family per year, for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization across public and private empaneled hospitals in India.
  • Provides cashless access to health care services for the beneficiary at the point of service.

SCIENCE  & TECHNOLOGY

What is in news : The Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) has developed the country’s first-ever non-GM (genetically modified) herbicide-tolerant rice varieties

Names : Pusa Basmati 1979 and Pusa Basmati 1985

Benefit :

• Can be directly seeded and significantly save water and labour compared to conventional transplanting
• Simply replace water with Imazethapyr and there’s no need for nursery, puddling, transplanting and flooding of fields

Technology used:

• Contain a mutated acetolactate synthase (ALS) gene
• Imazethapyr, effective against a range of broadleaf, grassy and sedge weeds, can’t be used on normal paddy, as the chemical does not distinguish between the crop and the invasive plants.
• The ALS gene in rice codes for an enzyme (protein) that synthesises amino acids for crop growth and development. The herbicide sprayed on normal rice plants binds itself to the ALS enzymes, inhibiting their production of amino acids.
• The new basmati varieties contain an ALS gene whose DNA sequence has been altered using ethyl methanesulfonate, a chemical mutant. As a result, the ALS enzymes no longer have binding sites for Imazethapyr and amino acid synthesis isn’t inhibited. The plants can also now “tolerate” application of the herbicide, and hence it kills only the weeds.

XENON1T

What :

• World’s most sensitive dark matter experiment
• Operated deep underground at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy

What is in news : With advanced technologies and newer experiments, and researchers of  XENON1T have made the first putative direct detection of dark energy.

How did they make the detection :

• There will be Some background noise and the electrons in XENON1T will on average move a bit on their own even with no dark matter or dark energy around simply by virtue of "kicks" due to this background
• At energies around ~2 keV there are way more events than one expects simply due to noise and this could be due to dark energy

What if the signal was caused by some other force :

• The team constructed a physical model, which used a screening mechanism known as chameleon screening, to show that dark energy particles produced in the Sun’s strong magnetic fields could explain the signal seen in XENON1T.
• There are four fundamental forces in our universe, and speculative theories have proposed a fifth force - something that can’t be explained by the four forces. To hide or screen this fifth force, many models for dark energy use special mechanisms.

DARK ENERGY

• Dark Energy is a hypothetical form of energy that exerts a negative, repulsive pressure, behaving like the opposite of gravity.
• It is causing the rate of expansion of our universe to accelerate over time, rather than to slow down. That’s contrary to what one might expect from a universe that began in a Big Bang.
• It makes up about 68% of the universe.

DEFENCE

What is in news :The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) successfully tested a new version of the Akash surface-to-air missile Akash Prime from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur, Odisha.

About Akash Prime : Akash Prime is equipped with an indigenous active Radio Frequency (RF) seeker for improved accuracy. Other improvements also ensure more reliable performance under low temperature environment at higher altitudes

MAHITI FOR PRELIMS – AKASH

• First indigenously produced medium range Surface to Air missile
• Can engage multiple targets from multiple directions at a speed 2.5 times more than the speed of sound
• Can detect and destroy targets flying at low, medium and high altitudes.
• Part of India’s 30-year-old integrated guided-missile development programme
• Nuclear-capable
• Can fly at a speed of up to Mach 2.5 at a maximum height of 18 km.
• Can be launched from mobile platforms like battle tanks or wheeled trucks
• Supported by the indigenously developed radar called 'Rajendra' that can handle highly-manoeuvring
• Multiple targets from multiple directions in group or autonomous mode.
• Designed and developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)

• The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, has awarded the Professor Peraiah Foundation Award for 2021 to Dr Shravan Hanasoge of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai for his work on deciphering the internal structure of the sun, stars and the earth
• In order to facilitate early detection of crime and expedite investigation, the State government will set up Forensic Science Laboratories (FSL) in six cities in Karnataka, including Hubballi-Dharwad, Kalaburagi, and Mysuru.

EXPLAINED

• Seismology is the science of making quantitative inferences of the hidden interior structure of an object using measurements of its surface motions.
• High-quality observations of the Sun, which have been taken nearly continuously for many decades, and sensitive space-based measurements of the scintillations of distant stars make detailed and careful studies of solar and stellar interiors possible.