ART AND CULTURE                                                                           

Deepotsav gets state fair status in U.P.                                             

POLITY AND GOVERNANCE                                                             

1. 25 years of Pulse Polio Programme in India                                       

2. Liver transplant registry off to a good start                                        

ECONOMY                                                                                             

1. Govt launches BHIM 2.0 with new functionalities, additional language support                                                                                            

ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY                                                      

1. 2019 ozone hole is the smallest on record: NASA                              

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY                                                          

1. IAF Successfully Test Fires Brahmos Surface-to-Surface Missile        

SECURITY                                                                                             

1. India’s crime report - 2017 : NCRB                                                    

ART AND CULTURE

Deepotsav gets state fair status in U.P.

GS PAPER - 01 ART AND CULTURE - Indian culture will cover the salient aspects of Art Forms, Literature and Architecture from ancient to modern times.

Context :

• The Uttar Pradesh government has granted the status of State fair to the Deepotsav Mela to be held in Ayodhya during Deepavali.

More in the news:

• Over 5.5 lakh lamps will be lit during the celebrations.

• The mela that was earlier organised by the Tourism Department will now be planned by the District Magistrate of Ayodhya.

• Last year, the festival showcased the Korean connection to the town, and South Korea’s first lady Kim Jung-sook was the chief guest at the event.

                                                                                                                             Source :- The Hindu

POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

25 years of Pulse Polio Programme in India

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE -  Issues related to Health.

Context :

• 25 years of Pulse Polio Programme to be celebrated in October 2019.

Pulse Polio Programme :

• The Pulse Polio Campaign was first started in 1994 in Delhi after the success of the first large-scale supplementary immunization campaign with OPV (oral polio vaccine).

  • The campaign was inaugurated with the tagline ‘Do Boond Zindagi Ki’.

  • The campaign in Delhi reached nearly one million children up to the age of three years with two doses of OPV being administered on 02 October and 04 December through exclusive booth-based strategy.

• This strategy was later adopted and implemented by the Government of India all over the country as Pulse Polio Campaigns.

• India’s attainment of polio-free status in 2014 was coined by the World Health Organization as “one of the most significant achievements in public health,” and marked not just India but the entire South East Asia Region being declared polio-free.

• The last case of polio in the country was in 2011.

• The global initiative of eradicating polio was started by the WHO in 1988.

• Around 17.4 crore children of less than five years across the country are given polio drops as part of the drive of the Government of India to sustain polio eradication from the country.

• The Pulse Polio Initiative was started with an objective of achieving a hundred per cent coverage under Oral Polio Vaccine. It aimed to immunize children through improved social mobilization, plan mop-up operations in areas where poliovirus has almost disappeared and maintain a high level of morale among the public.

                                                                                                                                    Source  :- PIB

Liver transplant registry off to a good start

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE - Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

Context :

• India’s first voluntary liver transplant registry has been started by the Liver Transplantation Society of India.

Liver Transplant registry :

• The registry aims to collate national data of the procedures and their outcomes.

• Need :

  • Nearly 2,000 liver transplants are carried out in the country annually, the highest in the world, yet there is no India-specific data.

  • In the Western countries, organ transplants are highly regulated and permissions are given to hospitals and doctors based on the outcomes, rate of mortality, morbidity, etc.

  • India has a 90% survival rate in liver transplants, but it may vary from hospital to hospital and doctor to doctor.

                                                                                                                         Source :- The Hindu

ECONOMY

Govt launches BHIM 2.0 with new functionalities, additional language support

GS PAPER - 03 ECONOMY - Important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability, e-governance- applications, models, successes, limitations, and potential

Context :

• Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY) has launched BHIM 2.0 with additional features.

BHIM :

• Bharat Interface for Money(BHIM) is Unified Payments Interface(UPI) based payment interface application that allows real time fund transfer

• The app has been launched in 2016.

• It was developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

Added  features :

• The BHIM 2.0 supports three additional languages- Konkani, Haryanvi and Bhojpuri, over and above existing 13.

• The existing cap of Rs. 20,000 has also been increased to Rs. 1,00,000, from verified merchants.

• linking multiple bank accounts

• offers from merchants and

• gifting money among others.

• option of applying in IPO

• high value transactions

                                                                                                                                                           Source :- Livemint

ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY

2019 ozone hole is the smallest on record: NASA

GS PAPER - 03 ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY -  Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment

Context :

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA have announced that the Antarctic ozone hole hit its smallest annual peak on record since tracking began in 1982.

More in the news:

• The annual ozone hole – which consists of an area of heavily depleted ozone high in the stratosphere above Antarctica, between 7 and 25 miles (11 and 40 kilometres) above the surface – reached its peak extent of 6.3 million square miles and then shrank to less than 3.9 million square miles.

• There have been several efforts globally to cut down on the use of ozone-depleting chemicals.

• However, scientists attribute the relatively tiny ozone hole to unusually mild temperatures in that layer of the atmosphere.

  • This is the third time in 40 years that weather systems have caused warm stratospheric temperatures that put the brakes on ozone loss.

  • Similar weather patterns led to unusually small ozone holes in 1988 and 2002.

• However, the researchers at NASA and The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cautioned that this is due to warmer stratospheric temperatures and not a sign that atmospheric ozone is suddenly on a fast track to recovery.

                                                                                                                        Source :- Business Standard ; The Hindu

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

IAF Successfully Test Fires Brahmos Surface-to-Surface Missile

GS PAPER - 03 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY -  Achievement of Indians in science & technology; indigenization of technology and developing new technology.

Context :

• The Indian Air Force (IAF) has carried out successful firing of BrahMos surface-to-surface missiles from a mobile platform at Trak Island in Andaman Nicobar islands.

More in the news :

• A surface-to-surface missile (SSM) or ground-to-ground missile (GGM) is a missile designed to be launched from the ground or the sea and strike targets on land or at sea.

• They may be fired from hand-held or vehicle-mounted devices, from fixed installations, or from a ship.

                                                                                                                                                           Source :- The Hindu

SECURITY

India’s crime report - 2017 : NCRB

GS PAPER - 03 SECURITY - Challenges to internal security through communication networks, role of media and social networking sites

Context :

• The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has recently released its annual ‘Crime in India’ report for the year 2017.

Key Highlights of the Data :

• Crime Registration and Rate:

  • In 2017,there was an increase of 3.6% in registration of cases over 2016.

  • The 2017 report shows that the States in the northeast and others in the rest of the country with a significant tribal population (Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha) have relatively higher murder rates and is a cause of worry.

•  Offences against the State:

  • Delhi witnessed the highest crime rate in the country with 1,050 Indian Penal Code (IPC) crime incidents per lakh of the city’s population.

  • This was over four times the national average of 238.

  • There has been a 30% rise in incidents of offences against the state as compared to 2016.

  • This category includes offences such as sedition, waging war against the country and damage to public property among others.

  • The maximum number of such offences were reported from Haryana followed by UP. The act of damage to public property was the leading reason.

  • Maximum offences were committed by the Left Wing Extremist (LWE) operatives, followed by North East insurgents and Terrorists (Jihadi and other elements).

•  Crime Against Women:

  • The number of crimes against women has been increased by 6% in the country.Uttar Pradesh topped the list with most number of cases followed by Maharashtra and West Bengal.

  •  In 2017, as many as 33,885 women were reported to have been raped across the country.

  • The report has also introduced the categories of sexual harassment at the workplace and in public transport.

    • As many as 479 and 599 cases were reported in 2017 under these categories respectively.

•  Cyber Crimes:

  • The number of cyber crimes increased dramatically in 2017 as compared to 2016, and nearly every fifth cyber crime in 2017 was committed against a woman

  • An  increase of 77% over the previous year’s number, says the NCRB report, Crime in India 2017.

  • During 2017, 56 per cent of cyber crime cases registered were for the motive of fraud followed by sexual exploitation with 6.7 per cent and causing disrepute with 4.6 per cent.

  • UP, the most populous state, registered the largest number of cyber crimes (4,971), followed by Maharashtra (3,604), and Karnataka (3,174).

  • Among the Union Territories, the most cyber crimes in 2017 were registered in Delhi (162).

•  Crime Against SC/STs:

  • The incidents registered under the Scheduled Caste Prevention of Atrocities Act saw an increase from 5,082 incidents reported in 2016 to 5,775 in 2017.

  • Incidents of crime related to Scheduled Tribes dipped from 844 in 2016 to 720 in 2017.

                                                                                                                                    Source :- The Hindu

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