Daily CURRENT AFFAIRS

Daily Current Affair - UPSC/KAS Exams - 26th Feb 2022

NEWS

Karnataka govt gives nod for Mahadayi hydro power project

MAHADAYI RIVER

• West-flowing river
• Originates in Bhimgad Wildlife Sanctuary (Western Ghats), Belagavi district of Karnataka
• Rain-fed river
• Called Mandovi in Goa
• Travels 35 km in Karnataka; 82 km in Goa before joining the Arabian Sea

KALASA-BANDURI NALA PROJECT

• Undertaken by the Government of Karnataka
• Improve drinking water supply to the three districts of Belagavi, Dharwad, and Gadag.
• Building across Kalasa and Banduri, two tributaries of the Mahadayi river to divert water to the Malaprabha river.
• Malaprabha river supplies the drinking water to Dharwad, Belgaum, and Gadag districts.
• Kalasa-Banduri project was planned in 1989; Goa raised an objection to it.
• The Mahadayi Water Disputes Tribunal was set up in 2010. Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra are parties to the tribunal.

NEWS

Government of India launched National Policy Guidelines on Bio-Medical Innovation and Entrepreneurship recently

DETAILS

AIM - Develop an entrepreneurial environment in India that will be innovation-driven with the ultimate goal of improving human health and well-being

HOW IT WORKS

• Incentivize, motivate, and give a boost to all the stakeholders in this sector
• Promoting initiatives like Make-in-India, Start-Up-India, and Atmanirbhar Bharat
• Ensure multidisciplinary collaboration and the promotion of start-up culture to establish an innovation-led ecosystem at medical institutes across the country
• Connect technical institutions with the industry to promote commercial translation of innovations in the health sector

BENEFITS

• Medical professionals and doctors of the nation will be encouraged to pursue entrepreneurial enterprises, taking up roles such as scientific advisors
• Doctors will also be able to work on industry and inter-institutional projects on their own or through enterprises, license technology to businesses, and revenue generation for social benefit and self-sufficiency

NEWS

Ombudsman App for MGNREGA was recently released for smooth categorization and reporting of grievances

MNREGA

• Launched in 2006
• First time provided a legal guarantee for wage employment
• Considered as one of the biggest social welfare programme in the world
• Legal guarantee for 100 days of wage employment to every household in the rural areas of the country each year

FEATURES

• All rural households in rural areas, whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work eligible
• Job card under the Act is the right of every rural household willing to work on NREGA and applies for it
• Choice of works done through village level plans and 50% or more of work to be executed by panchayati raj institutions
• Work focuses on areas like water conservation, land development, provision of irrigation facility on private land of people below the poverty line, rural connectivity etc.
• Contractors are totally banned in NREGA works
• Unemployment allowance to be paid if Government unable to provide jobs within 15 days of application. Social audit made mandatory

NEWS

Aviation and defence colossus Boeing delivered India’s 12th maritime surveillance and anti-submarine warfare P-8I aircraft

P-8I AIRCRAFT

• Designed for long-range anti-submarine warfare (ASW), anti-surface warfare (ASuW), and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions
• “Multi-mission aircraft” with “state of the art sensors, proven weapons systems, and a globally recognised platform
• First aircraft produced by Boeing flew in 2009
• First of these aircraft was inducted in 2013, and it made India the first country outside the United States to get one.
• Now, apart from India and the US, it has been chosen by six other militaries in the world.
• Variants — the P-8I, which is manufactured for the Indian Navy, and the P-8A Poseidon, which is flown by the US Navy, the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, and the Royal Norwegian Air Force.
• P-8I have replaced the ageing Soviet/Russian Tupolev Tu-142s and it is capable of anti-submarine; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); patrolling, coastline defence, and other operations.
• The P-8I can fly as high as 41,000 feet, and has a short transit time.
• It is also used for low altitude, humanitarian, and search and rescue missions.
• The aircraft has two engines, and is about 40 meters long, with a wingspan of 37.64 metres.
• It requires a crew of nine, and has a range of 1,200+ nautical miles, with 4 hours on station, which means about 2,222 km.
• The aircraft comes with one of the most advanced weapon systems in the world, and has a life of around 25 years, or 25,000 hours in the harshest maritime flight regimes, including extended operations in icing environments.

NEWS

International Intellectual Property Index published by US Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center

WHAT IT SAYS

• Top 5 Countries  - United States of America, United Kingdom , Germany, Sweden , France
• Analyzed data of the last 10 years and revealed that the global IP environment has consistently improved over time, even in the last two years of turmoil due to the pandemic
• Overall score of India has increased from 38.40 percent (19.20 out of 50) in the ninth edition of this report to 38.64 percent (19.32 out of 50)

NEWS

Birth anniversary of the Dayanand Saraswati recently celebrated

DETAILS

• Indian philosopher, social leader
• Founder of the Arya Samaj
• First to call for Swaraj as "India for Indians" (1876)
• Worked to revive Vedic ideologies while denouncing idolatry and ritualistic worship.
• Influencers
• Believed in the Vedas' infallible authority.
• Proponent of the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation.
• Believed that Hinduism had been corrupted by deviation from the founding principles of the Vedas and that the priesthood had misled Hindus for the priests' own self-aggrandizement.

Contributions

• Advocacy for equal rights for women, such as the right to education and the reading of Indian scriptures, and his commentary on the Vedas in Sanskrit and Hindi.
• Translated the Vedas and published three books: Satyartha Prakash in Hindi, Veda Bhasya Bhumika, an introduction to his Vedic commentary, and Veda Bhasya, a Sanskrit Vedic commentary on the Yajurveda and the major part of the Rig-Veda.

• Indian and Japanese armies to start their annual Dharma Guardian at the Foreign Training Node in Belgaum, Karnataka
• The Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), Pune, has discovered a new frog species which are growing in the freshwater regions along all the states spanning the Western Ghats. It is named Euphlyctis jaladhara
• Odisha ex-CM Hemananda Biswal dead
• The Reserve Bank of India has amended the Payments and Settlement Systems Regulations. This system allows the companies who are seeking to run payment businesses to apply for licenses from the regulator
• Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), the premier Telecom R&D centre of the Government of India has bagged three awards at 12th Annual Aegis Graham Bell Awards for its indigenously designed & developed innovative Telecom solutions in various categories.
• HAL’s AMCA and IMRH programmes to be implemented under SPV model . AMCA is programme to get indigenous fighter Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) with  geometric stealth and IMRH is to get Indian Multi-Role Helicopter (IMRH) as a replacement for the MI-17 helicopters in service
• The Intracortical Visual Prosthesis (ICVP) is a type of implant that bypasses the optic nerves and the retina to link directly to the brain’s visual cortex. At Rush University Medical Center, this was successfully placed surgically in the study’s first participant.