Daily CURRENT AFFAIRS

Daily Current Affair - UPSC/KAS Exams - 28th Feb 2022

NEWS

Nirbhaya Kendra for distressed women, kids opened in Bengaluru

DETAILS

BY –

• Department of Women and Child Development
• Joint initiative of the central and state governments
• Nirbhaya Fund used

AIM

• Provide counselling, medical check-ups, legal advice
• Provide necessary assistance to women and children facing any kind of violence

FEATURES –

• Video conferencing room to take distressed women’s statements for their court appearance
• Medical assistance room
• Resting room
• Kitchen and dining and administrative rooms

NEWS

Karnataka launched Pulse Polio - 2022 campaign, as part of a nationwide drive

PULSE POLIO PROGRAMME

•  India launched the Pulse Polio immunisation programme in 1995
• Resolution for a global initiative of polio eradication was adopted by the World Health Assembly (WHA) in 1988
• Children in the age group of 0-5 years are administered polio drops during national and sub-national immunisation rounds (in high-risk areas) every year

POLIO

• Highly infectious viral disease
• Mainly affects young children
• Virus is transmitted by person-to-person, spread mainly through the faecal-oral route or, less frequently, by a common vehicle (e.g. contaminated water or food)
• Multiplies in the intestine, from where it can invade the nervous system and can cause paralysis.
• There is no cure for polio, it can only be prevented by immunization.

STATUS OF POLIO IN INDIA

• Last polio case in the country was reported from Howrah district of West Bengal in January 2011
• The WHO on February 24, 2012, removed India from the list of countries with active endemic wild polio virus transmission
• South-East Asia Region of the WHO, of which India is a part, was certified as polio-free

NEWS

350th anniversary of the coronation day of Keladi Rani Chennamma celebrated

KELADI CHENNAMMA

•  Queen of Keladi Kingdom in Karnataka
• Born in the region of Kundapur
• Married King Somashekara Nayaka in 1667 CE
• After Somashekhara Nayaka's death in 1677, Chennamma efficiently handled the administration of the Keladi Nayaka dynasty
• Reigned for 25 years
• Repelled the advance of the Mughal Army led by Aurangzeb from her military base in the kingdom of Keladi located in Sagara, Karnataka, India
• Adopted Basavappa Nayaka, one of her close relatives who succeeded as Hiriya Basappa Nayaka
• Rendered a trade agreement with the Portuguese involving commodities like pepper and rice
• Channagiri is named after her.
• Permitted Portuguese to establish churches at Mirjan, Honnavara, Chandravara and Kalyanpura
• provided shelter to Rajaram Chhatrapati, son of Shivaji who was fleeing from the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb

NEWS

The Government of India has approved the continuation of the Immigration Visa Foreigners Registration Tracking (IVFRT) Scheme for a period of five years to 2026

IVFRT

• Objective is modernization and up-gradation of Immigration and Visa services.
• Under Ministry of Home Affairs
• Provide a secure and integrated service delivery framework that facilitates legitimate travelers while strengthening national security
• Has a global outreach and seeks to interlink and optimize functions relating to immigration, visa issuance, registration of foreigners and tracking of their movements in India by covering 192 Indian Missions across the globe, 108 Immigration Check Posts (ICPs) in India and more than 700 Foreigners Registration Officers (FROs) across the country

 NEWS

The U.S., Europe and several other western nations are moving to exclude Russia from SWIFT

SWIFT

WHAT

• Messaging network
• Used by banks and financial institutions globally
• Quick and faultless exchange of information pertaining to financial transactions
• Headquartered in Belgium
• Connects more than 11,000 banking and securities organisations in over 200 countries and territories
• Merely a platform that sends messages and does not hold any securities or money
• Provides standardised and reliable communication to facilitate the transaction
• First used in 1973
• Went live in 1977 with 518 institutions from 22 countries, its website states

HOW IT WORKS

• Each participant on the platform is assigned a unique eight-digit SWIFT code or a bank identification code (BIC)
• If a person, say, in New York with a Citibank account, wants to send money to someone with an HSBC account in London, the payee would have to submit to his bank, the London-based beneficiary’s account number along with the eight-digit SWIFT code of the latter's bank
• Citi would then send a SWIFT message to HSBC. Once that is received and approved, the money would be credited to the required account

WHAT HAPPENS IF ONE IS EXCLUDED FROM SWIFT

• If a country is excluded from the most participatory financial facilitating platform, its foreign funding would take a hit, making it entirely reliant on domestic investors
• This is particularly troublesome when institutional investors are constantly seeking new markets in newer territories.
• An alternative system would be cumbersome to build and even more difficult to integrate with an already expansive system

HOW IS THE ORGANISATION GOVERNED?

• Claims to be neutral
• Shareholders, consisting of 3,500 firms across the globe, elect the 25-member board, which is responsible for oversight and management of the company
• Regulated by G-10 central banks of Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, Switzerland, and Sweden, alongside the European Central Bank
• Lead overseer is the National Bank of Belgium.
• Oversight forum was established in 2012.
• The G-10 participants were joined by the central banks of India, Australia, Russia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, the Republic of Turkey, and the People’s Republic of China.
• In 2021, the SWIFT financial messaging platform had recorded an average of 42 million FIN messages per day, as per the data on its website.
• The full-year figure was an 11.4% growth on a year-over-year basis.
• Europe, West Asia, and Africa, combined sent approximately 4.66 billion messages.
• The Americas and the United Kingdom stood second with 4.42 billion interactions, with the Asia Pacific on third with an approximate 1.50 billion messages.

NEWS

Goa celebrates its annual ‘Carnaval’ or carnival, the colourful festival, a vestige of the state’s erstwhile Portuguese rulers

WHAT IS GOA’S ‘CARNAVAL’?

• Four-day celebration
• Marks the days before the month of Lent, observed by Catholics as a season of abstinence and prayer
• According to the Goa Department of Tourism, in the pre-Christian era, Carnival marked the end of winter and the beginning of spring
• A legacy of the Portuguese, carnival celebrations in the state attract several tourists as much as it has locals eager to view float parades flocking to various parts of the state

HOW IS IT CELEBRATED

• While carnival celebrations are held across the state by the Goa Department of Tourism, in Panaji, the centre of the soiree, the Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) plays a major part in organising the celebration
• Panaji is the centre of action during the carnival
• Like in other parts of the world, the celebration kicks off with an opening ceremony and has parades of floats in the streets. The best float is judged based on originality of concept, costume, performance, music and the visual effect of “displaying the carnival spirit”
• The streets are decorated with striking masks, colourful streamers, lights on its tree-lined streets
• According to the Goa Department of Tourism, King Momo, or the king of Chaos, is a character derived from the Greek god Momus, the god of satire. Like in the many Latino Carnivals, the Goa Carnival also crowns a King Momo, usually “a large gentleman” who leads the carnival parade.

NEWS

National Science Day is celebrated every year on 28 February to mark the discovery of the ‘Raman Effect’ by Sir C.V. Raman on 28 February 1928

CV RAMAN

•  Born on 7 November 1888 in Tiruchirapalli in modern Tamil Nadu
• Joined the Presidency College at Chennai in 1902 aged just 13 for his graduation. He passed out in 1904 with a Gold Medal in Physics
• Completed his post-graduation from the University of Madras in 1907 with distinction
• Joined the Indian Finance Department as Assistance Accountant General in Calcutta
• Continued to do research at the Indian Association for Cultivation of Sciences in Calcutta (IACS) whenever he got time
• Published papers in leading international journals such as ‘Nature’ and ‘Physics Review’
• In 1917, he was offered the Palit Chair of Physics at Calcutta University
• Continued his research at the IACS at this time. His research was on acoustics and optics. It was at IACS that Raman along with his collaborators discovered what is now called the ‘Raman Effect’.
• This discovery on the scattering of light was made on February 28, 1928. This effect proved the quantum nature of light and had huge value at that time. The Raman Spectroscopy was based on this phenomenon. Consequently, February 28 is celebrated as National Science Day in India since 1987 annually in honour of this discovery.
• For this discovery, Raman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in the year 1930. The Nobel Committee stated that the award was given “for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him”.
• He was the first Indian, Asian and non-white person to win a Nobel Prize for the sciences.
• In 1933, he became the first Indian Director of the Indian Institute of Science (IISC) in Bangalore. He was the institute’s director till 1937 and the Head of the Physics Department till 1948.
• In 1948, he founded the Raman Research Institute (RRI) in Bangalore for conducting experiments in Physics. He continued to do research at RRI till his death in 1970.
• Raman died of natural causes on 21 November 1970 aged 82 in Bangalore

 NEWS

Sixth Prime Minister of India, Morarji Desai was born on 29th February 1896 in Gujarat

MORARJI DESAI

• Born in Bulsar, District (now known as Valsad) in Gujarat
• After graduating from Wilson College, Bombay (now Mumbai),  he served as the Deputy collector of Godhra. He resigned from the post in 1930
• After that, he became part of the Indian freedom struggle and joined the Civil Disobedience Movement against British rule
• Imprisoned thrice during the freedom struggle
• First Indian Prime Minister who did not belong to the Indian National Congress
• World’s oldest person to become the Prime Minister (aged 81), a record which he holds till date

 NEWS

Death anniversary of Veer Savarkar observed

VD SAVARKAR

• Indian independence activist, politician, lawyer and writer
• Born on 28th May, 1883 in Bhagur, a village near Nashik in Maharashtra
• Formed a youth organization- Mitra Mela (national and revolutionary ideas)
• Propagated the idea of Swadeshi
• Championed atheism and rationality and also disapproved orthodox Hindu belief
• President of Hindu Mahasabha from 1937 to 1943
• When congress ministries offered resignation on 22nd oct 1939, Hindu mahaasabha under his leadership cooperated with Muslim league to form government in provinces like Sindh, Bengal and NWFP
• Founded the “Abhinav Bharat Society”
• Joined Tilak’s Swaraj Party
• Founded the Free India Society
• Believed and advocated the use of arms to free India from the British and created a network of Indians in England, equipped with weapons
• Wrote a book titled ‘The History of the War of Indian Independence’ in which he wrote about the guerilla warfare tricks used in 1857 Sepoy Mutiny.
• Arrested in 1909 on charges of plotting an armed revolt against the Morley-Minto reform (Indian Councils Act 1909)

• Prime Minister praised Tanzanian social media stars, the brother-sister duo of Kili and Neema Paul, for lip-syncing to the Indian national anthem on Republic Day, and paying tribute to Lata Mangeshkar
• India’s first e-waste eco-park to come up at Delhi
• Anoop Kumar Mendiratt became the first Union Law Secretary to be appointed as a High Court judge
• PM congratulates Sadia Tariq on winning Gold medal at Moscow Wushu Stars Championship
• Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is organising “Devayatanam Conference”. Devayatanam conference is a two-day international conference. ‘Devayatanam is an odyssey of Indian temple architecture. Conference is being at Hampi, Karnataka.
• The Indo-Oman exercise, Eastern Bridge-VI (2022) was successfully conducted at Air Force Station Jodhpur
• A 1.7-megawatt solar photovoltaic plant has been commissioned by Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. (BHEL) at Bina, Madhya Pradesh for the Indian Railways. It is Indian Railway’s First Solar Power Plant
• Cyclone Emnati wreaked havoc on Madagascar
• Global banking group Standard Chartered announced its partnership with International Air Transport Association (IATA) to launch a payment platform for airline industry in India.