1.ADVERTISING STANDARDS COUNCIL OF INDIA (ASCI):
·
A self-regulatory voluntary organization of
the advertising industry in India, founded in 1985.
·
The three main constituents of the industry viz.
advertisers, advertising agencies and media came together to form this independent NGO.
·
The aim of ASCI is to maintain and enhance the
public's confidence in advertising. Their mandate is that all advertising
material must be truthful, legal and honest, decent and not objectify women,
safe for consumers especially children and fair to their competitors.
·
It deliberates upon individual complaints against
any advertisements for its compliance with ASCI code and other laws.
·
ASCI and Food Safety and Standards Authority of
India (FSSAI) have signed a MoU to check misleading advertisements in the food
and beverages sector.
2.NATIONAL ELECTORAL ROLL PURIFICATION 2016 (NERP 2016) :
·
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has launched the National
Electoral Roll Purification (NERP)
programme across the country to correct errors in electoral rolls and enrolment
of all eligible citizens, among other things.
·
It will ensure single electoral register entry for every eligible elector with
unique Elector Photo Identity Card (EPIC) number, removal of all absent,
shifted or dead electors’ entries and repeat entries.
·
Geographic Information System (GIS) would be used to standardise sections, polling
station boundaries and locations.
·
Provision has been made to provide
the information electronically on
National Voters Service Portal (NVSP).
·
The NERP-2016 strives to improve the
fidelity of the rolls through effective use of technology and SVEEP (Systematic Voters' Education and
Electoral Participation) strategies.
·
Information Technology is being
extensively used in information collection, processing, sharing and efficient
decision making.
·
Comprehensive training for Booth
Level Officer has been done on NERP and the orientation of the members of Booth Awareness Groups (BAGs) will be
done to conduct an effective SVEEP
campaign.
3.MADHYA PRADESH BECOMES FIRST STATE TO HAVE ‘HAPPINESS
DEPARTMENT’ IN MADHYA PRADESH:
·
Madhya Pradesh recently became the
first State in the country to set up a ‘Happiness Department’, on the lines of
the neighbouring country Bhutan.
·
A panel of experts will be formed in
the newly-constituted department which will give suggestions to ensure happiness
in the lives of the people.
4.GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS OF BHUTAN:
·
The Gross National Happiness (GNH)
index was proposed by Bhutan in 1971 to champion a novel approach to measure
prosperity by measuring spiritual, physical, social and environmental
well-being of its citizens and environment.
5.‘SOLAR MAMAS’:
·
‘Solar
Mamas’, a group of rural women solar
engineers from Africa who have been trained under Government of
India-supported programmes to fabricate, install, use, repair and maintain
solar lanterns and household solar lighting systems in their villages.
6.INDUS WATER TREATY - 1960:
·
The Indus Waters Treaty is a
water-distribution treaty between India and Pakistan, brokered by the World
Bank (then the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development).
·
The treaty was signed in Karachi on
September 19, 1960 by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and President of
Pakistan Ayub Khan.
·
According to this agreement, control
over the three "eastern" rivers — the Beas, Ravi and Sutlej — was
given to India and the three "western" rivers — the Indus, Chenab and
Jhelum — to Pakistan.
·
Permanent
Indus Commission: The Treaty provides for exchange of
data and co-operation in matters related to its provisions. For this, it
establishes a Permanent Indus Commission (PIC) with each country having one
commissioner in it.
7.INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION FOR MIGRATION (IMO):
·
The
UN General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution approving an agreement to
make the International Organisation for Migration part of the UN
as a related organization.
·
IOM, which assisted an estimated 20 million
migrants in 2015, is an intergovernmental organisation with more than 9,500
staff and 450 offices worldwide.
·
Founded
in the wake of the World War II to resettle refugees from Europe.
·
IOM was granted Permanent Observer status to the
UN General Assembly in 1992, and a cooperation agreement between IOM and the UN
was signed in 1996.
8.OPERATION SANKAT MOCHAN:
·
The Union Government has started the operation
‘Sankat Mochan’ to evacuate Indian citizens stranded in South Sudan’s capital Juba. .
·
Operation Sankat Mochan was the first big
evacuation effort in a year after Operation
Rahat evacuated hundreds of citizens of India and other countries in July
2015 from Yemen.
9.FEED THE FUTURE INITIATIVE:
·
The main objectives of the initiative are the
advancement of global agricultural development, increased food production and
food security, and improved nutrition particularly for vulnerable populations
such as women and children.
·
It was launched in 2010 by the United States
government to address global hunger and food insecurity
·
It
is coordinated primarily by the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID).
·
The Union Agriculture Ministry and the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the second phase of the
“Feed the Future” India triangular training programme, in a bid to bring
specialised agriculture training to 1,500 agricultural professionals across
Africa and Asia.
·
The
first phase trained more than 200 professionals from Kenya, Liberia and Malawi.
10.PRADHAN MANTRI KAUSHAL VIKAS YOJANA:
·
Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) is the flagship scheme of the
Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE).
·
The objective of this Skill Certification Scheme
is to enable a large number of Indian youth to take up industry-relevant skill
training that will help them in securing a better livelihood.
·
Skill training would be done based on the National
Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF) and industry led standards.
·
Under the scheme, a monetary reward is
given to trainees on assessment and certification by third party assessment
bodies.
·
The average monetary reward would be around Rs.8000
per trainee.
·
In line with the scheme objectives, the scheme is
applicable to any candidate of Indian nationality who: Undergoes a skill development
training in an eligible sector by an eligible training provider.
·
The scheme would be implemented through NSDC
training partners.
·
Currently NSDC has 187 training partners that
have over 2300 centres.
·
Focus under the PMKVY would be on improved
curricula, better pedagogy and better trained instructors.
·
Training would include soft skills, personal
grooming, behavioural change for cleanliness, good work ethics.
·
Skill Development Management System (SDMS) would
be put in place to verify and record details of all training centres a certain
quality of training locations and courses.
·
Biometric system and video recording of the
training process would be put in place where feasible.
11.THE NATIONAL APPRENTICESHIP PROMOTION SCHEME:
·
Union Government will directly share,
25% of the total stipend payable and 50% of total expenditure for providing
basic training-to an apprentice, with employers.
·
It will be implemented by Director
General of Training (DGT) under the aegis of Union Ministry of Skill
Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE).
·
For MSME sector: This scheme will
encourage third-party agencies to provide basic training when in-house training
infrastructure is not available.
12.UNIFIED
PAYMENT INTERFACE:
·
The indigenous payment system via
smartphone will go live soon giving a boost to the efforts of the RBI in moving
towards a ‘less-cash’ India.
·
It is a common platform through which
a person can transfer money from his bank account to any other bank account in
the country instantly using nothing but his/her UPI ID.
·
It is developed by the National
Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) under the guidelines of the RBI.
·
The interface will be based
on the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) platform.
·
A customer can transfer money to
another person through a unique virtual address, or mobile number, or Aadhaar
number. Therefore, customers do not need to know the payee's IFSC code, bank
account details, etc. and this will make the process simpler.
·
A customer can have multiple virtual
addresses for multiple accounts in various banks. There is no account number mapper
anywhere other than the customer's own bank. This allows the customer to freely
share the financial address with others.
13.NEW DEVELOPMENT BANK (NDB) ISSUES FIRST GREEN BONDS:
·
The New Development Bank (NDB), established by
the BRICS emerging nations last year, has completed the sale of its first
worldwide bond in China’s interbank bond market.
·
It was also the first yuan-denominated green
bond sold in mainland China by a multinational financial institution.
·
It raised three billion yuan ($450m) to support
clean energy projects in developing countries. The green bonds will be issued
with a 5-year tenor.
·
Further, the bank will also issue bonds in
other member currencies in order to mitigate the foreign currency risk of
funded infrastructure projects and help develop local currency fund- raising
markets.
· Bond proceeds will be used to finance
green projects in BRICS countries.
· A green bond is like any other
regular bond but with one key difference, the money raised by the issuer are
earmarked towards financing `green' projects.
14.FINANCIAL STABILITY AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL (FSDC):
·
It was setup as apex level forum in 2010 to strengthen and
institutionalize the mechanism for maintaining financial stability and
enhancing inter-regulatory coordination.
·
The Chairman of the FSDC is the Finance Minister of India and its members include
·
The heads of the financial sector regulatory
authorities (i.e, SEBI, IRDA, RBI, PFRDA).
·
Finance Secretary and/or Secretary, Department of
Economic Affairs (Ministry of Finance).
·
Secretary, Department of Financial Services.and
·
Chief Economic Adviser.
15.INDIA’S 13TH MAJOR PORT
·
The Union Cabinet has given its in-principle
approval for setting up a Major port at Enayam near Colachel in Tamil
Nadu. On completion the port will become country’s 13th major port.
·
Presently, India has 12 major and 187 non-major
ports.
·
Currently, around 78% of the marine traffic from
the east coast ports of India is trans-shipped to Colombo, Singapore and Klang
(Malaysia), as most of the Indian ports don’t have a draught to match global
cargo handling efficiencies and function as a trans-shipment hub.
16.ENAYAM
PORT:
·
Aimed to make India a destination on the global
east-west trade route.
·
To act as a major gateway container port for
Indian cargo that is presently trans-shipped outside the country.
17.WORLD BANK'S LOGISTICS PERFORMANCE INDEX:
·
The World Bank Group recently
launched its bi-annual report ‘Connecting to Compete 2016: Trade Logistics
in the Global Economy’.
·
LPI is a measure that captures
the relative ease and efficiency with which products can be moved into and
within a country.
·
India has improved its ranking,
jumping 19 places from 54th in 2014 to 35th in 2016.
18.NETWORK READINESS INDEX:
·
India was placed at 91st position in the
recently released 2016 Networked Readiness Index (NRI) by the Geneva-based
World Economic Forum (WEF).
·
It measures countries’ success in creating the
necessary conditions for a transition to a digitised economy and society.
19.PATTISEEMA LIFT IRRIGATION PROJECT:
·
Pattiseema lift irrigation project interlinking
rivers Godavari & Krishna, in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh has
been commissioned recently.
·
It
is South India’s first River Integration Project.
20.NATRIP PROJECT:
·
The project is required to fulfill India’s
obligations as a signatory to UN Regulation on Harmonisation of Vehicle Specifications under WP-29 of 1998.
·
It aims to make Indian vehicles comply with
global standards of safety in line with UN
Brasilia resolution by reducing the high number of causalities and road
accidents (i.e. 1.46 and 5.01 lakhs, respectively in the year 2015)
·
It also aims to help MSMEs for development and
certification of auto-components.
·
It represents a unique joint initiative between
the Government of India, a number of State Governments and Indian Automotive
Industry to create a state of the art Testing, Validation and R&D
infrastructure in the country.
·
It is also needed to support Automotive Mission
Plan 2016-26 which sets the Indian automotive and component manufacturers for
to scale up exports to the extent of 35-40 per cent of its overall output over
the next 10 years.
21.FAT TAX:
·
Kerala
has introduced a ‘fat tax’ of 14.5% on the consumption of junk food items like
pizzas and burgers sold through branded restaurants.
22.LUCA:
·
A team of scientists led by William Martin from
Heinrich Heine University, Dusseldorf have discovered the ancestor of all
things on earth and its name is LUCA.
·
LUCA stands for Last Universal Common Ancestor.
·
It is the most recent organism from which all organisms
now living on Earth have a common descent. Thus, it is the most recent common
ancestor (MRCA) of all current life on Earth.
·
As such,
it should not be assumed to be the first living organism.
·
Two of three major life domains: Bacteria and
Archae share common genetic features with LUCA.
·
Scientists
went through 6.1 million protein encoded genes and identified 355
genes that trace to the last ancestor by phylogenetic criteria.
·
LUCA is no less that 4 billion
years old and was a single cell organism.
·
The study suggests that LUCA lived in
a “geochemically active environment”. i.e. it did not necessarily need oxygen
and can feed off hydrogen, carbon dioxide and iron.
·
The study also suggests autotrophic
or self-nourishing origin of life.
·
It also proves Charles Darwin propose
theory of universal common descent through an evolutionary process.
23.INSPIRE AWARDS (MANAK):
·
The Inspire Awards have been renamed as MANAK
(Million Minds National Aspirations and Knowledge). The Inspire Awards is
part of the larger Inspire programme.
·
The Inspire Awards is an outreach
programme of Department
of Science and Technology that was started in
·
2010 to encourage children to develop interest in
science and research
through innovation.
·
Every year 2 lakh students between the ages of
10-15 years are
identified for the Inspire Awards. Each Inspire Award envisions
an investment of Rs. 5000/- per child. Since its inception, it has funded 13.85
lakh students.
24.AQUILA:
·
Facebook successfully
completed its first test flight of its solar powered internet drone Aquila.
·
Also, the company hopes to develop a fleet of
Aquilas that can fly for at least three months at a height of 60,000 feet and
communicate with each other to provide internet access.
·
Aquila project is part of the Facebook’s
Connectivity Lab, a department which is creating new technologies including
aircrafts, satellites and wireless communication systems.
·
Facebook is trying to bring internet access to
areas where internet connectivity is bad or non-existent.
·
One of the other initiatives that the company has
taken to achieve this goal is by providing pared down version of the internet
in poor areas. It is called Free Basics or internet.org.
·
Similarly, Google’s parent company Alphabet
Inc. has also invested to provide internet access to under-served areas
through Project Loon.
·
The project aims to use high-altitude balloons to
create an aerial wireless network.
25.NEW HORIZON’S MISSION:
·
Following its historic first-ever flyby of Pluto,
NASA’s New Horizons mission will now fly onward to an object deeper in the
Kuiper Belt, known as 2014 MU69.
·
2014
MU69 is considered one of the early building blocks of the solar system.
26.KUIPER BELT:
·
Kuiper belt is flat ring of icy small bodies that
revolve around the Sun beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune.
·
It comprises hundreds of millions of
objects-presumed to be leftovers from the formation of the outer planets-whose
orbits lie close to the plane of the solar system.
·
The Kuiper belt is thought to be the source of
most of the observed short-period comets, particularly those that orbit the Sun
in less than 20 years.
27.SOLAR POWER TREE:
·
Union Minister for Science & Technology and
Earth Sciences recently launched the ‘Solar
Power Tree’.
·
It has been developed by the Central Mechanical
Engineering Research Institute (CMERI),
a constituent laboratory of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
·
It is an innovative way to generate electricity
using solar power in a limited space.
·
It has a structure like a tree with branches made
of steel to hold the photovoltaic panels.
·
It takes less land of only 4 sq ft for a 5 kW
solar power tree as compared to 400 sq ft of land required in case of the
conventional solar photovoltaic layout.
·
It holds the panels at a higher height - thus
gets more sun (by 1 hour) in a day in comparison to that of conventional layout
on ground.
·
This could also be rotated so that the
photovoltaic panels get more sunlight. Thus, it is possible to harness 10-15
per cent more power.
·
It has a water sprinkler at the top for
self-cleaning of panels.
28.COMPREHENSIVE CONVENTION ON INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM:
·
Comprehensive Convention on International
Terrorism (CCIT) is a draft proposed by India in 1996 that has yet to
adapted by the UN general assembly.
·
The original draft that was tabled in 1996 and
discussed until April 2013 includes amongst key objectives:
·
To have a universal definition of terrorism that
all 193-members of the UNGA will adopt into their own criminal law. No good
terrorist or bad terrorist.
·
To ban all terror groups and
shut down terror camps regardless of their stated objectives,
·
To prosecute all terrorists under
special laws, and
·
To make cross-border terrorism an extraditable
offence worldwide.
29.DEFENCE COMMUNICATION NETWORK:
·
India's first integrated defence communication
network was today launched here enabling the army, air force, navy and the
Special Forces Command to share situational awareness for a faster
decision-making process.
·
It is a strategic, highly secure and scalable
system with a pan-India reach including Andaman and Nicobar islands and Ladakh.
·
It will have high quality voice, video and data
services and is capable of working on terrestrial as well as satellite mode of
communication and has also been fixed onboard different military vehicles.
·
It is made by HCL and is a proof of strength of
the Indian industry and has reaffirmed the emphasis of the government on Make
in India program.
For more details : Vetrii IAS Academy Chennai
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