Daily CURRENT AFFAIRS

Daily Current Affair - UPSC/KAS Exams - 9th March 2022

CONTEXT

• In December, 2016, the Ministry of External Affairs liberalised its rules for the issuance of passports and took a number of steps
• Similarly, in 2018, the Central Board of Direct Taxes amended Income Tax Rules, so that the father’s name was not mandatory when a mother was a single parent.
• Under the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, the natural guardian of a Hindu minor is the father, and after him, the mother.
• In the Githa Hariharan v. Reserve Bank of India the HMGA was challenged for violating the guarantee of equality of sexes under the Constitution.
• Recently a PIL in Madras High Court sought that all documents must also require the mother’s name to be mentioned along with the father’s.

WHAT DO THE GUARDIANSHIP LAWS IN THE COUNTRY SAY?

• Indian laws accord superiority to the father in case of guardianship of a minor
• Under the religious law of Hindus, or the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, (HMGA) 1956, the natural guardian of a Hindu minor in respect of the minor’s person or property “is the father, and after him, the mother: provided the custody of a minor who has not completed the age of five years shall ordinarily be with the mother.”
• The Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937 says that the Shariat or the religious law will apply in case of guardianship according to which the father is the natural guardian, but custody vests with the mother until the son reaches the age of seven and the daughter reaches puberty though the father’s right to general supervision and control exists
• The concept of Hizanat in Muslim law states that the welfare of the child is above all else. This is the reason why Muslim law gives preference to the mother over father in the matter of custody of children in their tender years.
• Experts say that though courts may tend to grant custody of a child following marital dispute to the mother, guardianship rests primarily with the father in the law and this contradiction highlights that mothers are perceived as caregivers, but not as decision makers for children.
• The Supreme Court’s landmark judgment in Githa Hariharan v. Reserve Bank of India in 1999 provides partial relief. In this case, the HMGA was challenged for violating the guarantee of equality of sexes under Article 14 of the Constitution of India and the court held that the term “after” should not be taken to mean “after the lifetime of the father “, but rather “in the absence of the father”.
• But the judgment failed to recognise both parents as equal guardians, subordinating a mother’s role to that of the father. Though the judgment sets a precedent for courts, it has not led to an amendment to the HMGA.
• The Law Commission of India in its 257th report on “Reforms in Guardianship and Custody Laws in India” in May 2015 recommended that the “superiority of one parent over the other should be removed and that both the mother and the father should be regarded, simultaneously, as the natural guardians of a minor.”

NEWS

Union ministry of women and children launched Kanya Shiksha Pravesh Utsav campaign

DETAILS

AIM -

• Increase the enrolment and retention of the number of adolescent girls (girls aged 11 to 14) in school
• Builds on existing schemes for girls such as BetiBachaoBetiPadhao (BBBP), National Education Policy (NEP), Scheme For Adolescent Girls (SAG), etc

WHEN WAS IT LAUNCHED – Women’s day 2022

WHO LAUNCHED

• Ministry of Women and Child Development
• In collaboration with the Ministry of Education and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

HOW IS IT IMPLEMENTED –

• As part of the Ministry of Women and Child Development’s Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP) project
• Government aims to fund 400 districts across all states under the BBBP Scheme to sensitize families to enroll adolescent girls in schools
• Funds under Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan will also be utilized for the campaign

NEWS

Camel Protection and Development Policy was announced by state government of Rajasthan in its budget 2022-23

DETAILS

WHY WAS THIS POLICY ANNOUNCED - Continuously declining camel

 WHAT IS IN THE POLICY

• A budget of Rs 10 crore has also been proposed
• The amount will be used for protecting, rearing and developing the animals

WHY DID CAMEL REARING IN THE STATE DECLINE?

• Camels was declared as the state animal of Rajasthan in 2014
• Government came out with the Rajasthan Camel (Prohibition of Slaughter and Prohibition of Temporary Migration or Export Regulations) Act in 2015 to prohibit its temporary migration out of Rajasthan and stop its slaughter
• Due to this law camel rearing in the state was reduced, thus, there was a decline in their population

CAMELS

• Even-toed ungulate in the genus Camelus
• Bears distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back
• Have long been domesticated and, as livestock, they provide food (milk and meat) and textiles (fiber and felt from hair)
• Working animals especially suited to their desert habitat
• Vital means of transport for passengers and cargo
• There are three surviving species
• One-humped dromedary makes up 94% of the world's camel population, and the two-humped Bactrian camel makes up 6%. The Wild Bactrian camel is a separate species and is now critically endangered
• One of the most important livestock for food security under climatic calamities
• Is a sustainable livestock with lowest ecological footprints and produce one of the unique food, the camel milk
• Camel milk is considered as the natural pharmacy

NEWS

The National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) has now deployed “PARAM Ganga”, a supercomputer at IIT Roorkee, with a supercomputing capacity of 1.66 Petaflops

PARAM GANGA

• Designed and commissioned by C-DAC under Phase 2 of the build approach of the NSM
• Based on a heterogeneous and hybrid configuration of Intel Xeon Cascade lake processors, and NVIDIA Tesla V100
• Cluster consists of compute nodes connected with the Mellanox (HDR) InfiniBand interconnect network

NATIONAL SUPERCOMPUTING MISSION (NSM)

• Plan by Government to create a cluster of seventy supercomputers connecting various academic and research institutions across India
• Approved in April 2015
• Set up to provide the country with supercomputing infrastructure to meet the increasing computational demands of academia, researchers, MSMEs, and startups by creating the capability design, manufacturing, of supercomputers indigenously in India

NEWS

New data from Chandra’s Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2 (CHACE-2) mass spectrometer on Chandrayaan-2 show the distribution of Argon-40 gas in the lunar ‘exosphere’, beyond the areas this was known to exist

CHANDRAYAAN-2 MISSION

• It is India’s second mission to the moon.
• It aims to explore the Moon’s south polar region.
• The mission is an important step in India’s plans for planetary exploration, a program known as Planetary Science and Exploration (PLANEX).
• There are three components of the mission, an orbiter, a lander and a rover.
• The mission payloads include — Terrain Mapping Camera which will generate a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the entire moon, Chandrayaan 2 Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer which will test the elemental composition of the Moon’s surface Solar X-Ray Monitor which will provide solar X-ray spectrum inputs for CLASS.
• The orbiter will be deployed at an altitude of 100 kilometers above the surface of the Moon. The lander will then separate from the orbiter, and execute a soft landing on the surface of the Moon, unlike the previous mission which crash landed near the lunar south pole.
• The lander, rover and orbiter will perform mineralogical and elemental studies of the lunar surface.
• The rover is named Pragyan.
• The mission’s lander is named Vikram after Dr Vikram A Sarabhai, the Father of the Indian Space Programme.
• PAYLOADS

• Of the four, two — RAMBHA-LM (Radio Anatomy of Moon Bound Hypersensitive Ionosphere and Atmosphere-Langmuir Probe) and ChaSTE (Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment) — are on the lander, which is believed to have crash-landed during soft-landing mission on the lunar south pole.
• RAMBHA, which is expected to provide valuable information on the lunar ionosphere, is made up of two components; one aboard the lander and the other, on the orbiter.
• SPL’s payload on the orbiter, CHACE-2 (short for Chandra’s Altitudinal Composition Explorer) is functioning perfectly.
• CHACE-2 is designed to measure the composition of the lunar exosphere and is an improvement on CHACE, which flew aboard the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) on the 2008 Chandrayaan-1 mission.
• The second SPL payload, the RAMBHA-Dual Frequency Radio Science experiment (RAMBHA-DFRS), will study altitude variations of electron density in the moon’s ionosphere.
• The hardware for this payload was developed by the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network, Bengaluru.

HISTORY – ART – CULTURE

NEWS

On Monday, March 7, the Gujarat government marked 100 years of the Pal-Dadhvav killings

 DETAILS

• Took place on March 7, 1922, in the Pal-Chitariya and Dadhvaav villages of Sabarkantha district, then part of Idar state.
• The day was Amalki Ekadashi, which falls just before Holi, a major festival for tribals.
• Villagers from Pal, Dadhvav, and Chitariya had gathered on the banks of river Heir as part of the ‘Eki movement’, led by one Motilal Tejawat. The movement was to protest against the land revenue tax (lagaan) imposed on the peasants by the British and feudal lords.
• Tejawat, who belonged to Koliyari village in the Mewad region of Rajasthan, had also mobilised Bhils from Kotda Chhavni, Sirohi, and Danta to participate.
• Tejawat had been outlawed by the Udaipur state, which had announced a Rs-500 reward on his head.
• The Mewad Bhil Corps (MBC), a paramilitary force raised by the British that was on the lookout for Tejawat, heard of this gathering and reached the spot.
• On a command from Tejawat, nearly 2000 Bhils raised their bows and arrows and shouted in unison- ‘We will not pay the tax’
• The MBC commanding officer, HG Sutton, ordered his men to fire upon them. Bullets rained on them but where could they go? There was a stampede.”
• Nearly 1,000 tribals (Bhils) fell to bullets
• Tejawat was shot at twice, but was taken to safety by the villagers on a camel. He later “returned to the spot to christen it ‘Veerbhumi’.”
• While the British claimed some 22 people were killed, the Bhils believe 1,200-1,500 of them died.
• In the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of April 13, 1919, 500-1,000 people are said to have been killed after General Reginald Edward Dyer’s forces opened fire on peaceful protesters.

NEWS

EU Member States on March 3 made the unprecedented decision to activate the European Union’s Council Directive known as the Temporary Protection Directive

DETAILS

WHAT IS TEMPORARY PROTECTION - The European Commission describes “temporary protection” under the TPD as an “exceptional measure to provide immediate and temporary protection to displaced persons from non-EU countries and those unable to return to their country of origin”

WHY ESTABLISH STANDARDS

• Reduces disparities between the policies of EU States on the reception and treatment of displaced persons in a situation of mass influx
• Promotes solidarity and burden-sharing among EU States with respect to receiving large numbers of potential refugees at one time
• Establish minimum standards for giving temporary protection to displaced persons as well as to “promote a balance of effort between Member States in receiving and bearing the consequences of receiving such persons”

WHAT OBLIGATIONS DOES THE TPD PLACE UPON EU STATES?

• a residence permit for the duration of the protection (which can last from 1-3 years),
• appropriate information on temporary protection,
• access to employment,
• access to accommodation or housing,
• access to social welfare or means of subsistence,
• access to medical treatment,
• access to education for minors,
• opportunities for families to reunite in certain circumstances, and
• guarantees for access to the normal asylum procedure.

• The virtual International Election Visitors Programme (IEVP) 2022 was hosted by the Election Commission of India (ECI) for Election Management Bodies (EMBs) from nearly 32 countries and four international organisations to visit polling stations and observe electoral processes. It is hosted since 2012
• Sri Lanka is mourning the death a much-loved Indian elephant that made the island nation its home for nearly half a century, and was named a “national treasure”
• Acetabularia jalakanyakae is the new marine algae species discovered in Andaman island, which is similar to another green algal species called Acetabularia crenulata found in Florida
• NOTE - Climateprenurship is a form of social entrepreneurship to fight climate change
• An e-Book regarding the journey of the National Career Service (NCS) was recently launched. NCS is a Mission Mode Project launched by Prime Minister Modi in 2015. It is being implemented by the Directorate General of Employment, Ministry of Labor & Employment
• The National Museum, New Delhi celebrated International Women’s Day 2022 by organising a special Exhibition titled “Power, Patronage, and Piety – Celebrating Womanhood”
• Culture Ministry celebrates International Women’s Day 2022 with the theme #BreakTheBias and #SharingIsCaring
• Argentina federal police will now effectively use technique of Yoga for stress management of its personnel. 
• The Philippines  raised its age of sexual consent from 12 years to 16 years, with amendment to the Special Protection of Children against Abuse, Exploitation, and Discrimination Act.