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Journalism of Courage
Essential key terms from last week’s news are categorised as per the relevance of the UPSC-CSE syllabus.
– Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday praised India’s startup ecosystem as he highlighted that the country has reached a landmark figure of 100 unicorns with a valuation of more than $300 billion.
– Unicorns are privately held, venture-capital-backed startups that have reached a value of $1 billion. The valuation of unicorns is not expressly linked to their current financial performance but is largely based on their growth potential as perceived by investors and venture capitalists who have taken part in various funding rounds. The term was first coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee in 2013.
– During his recent ‘Mann Ki Baat’ radio address, PM Modi said that a record 44 unicorns were established in India last year during the pandemic. “Not only that, 14 more unicorns were formed anew in three-four months this year. This means that even in this phase of the global pandemic, our startups have been creating wealth and value,” he added.
– According to Invest India, the government’s national investment promotion and facilitation agency, “The years 2021, 2020, and 2019 saw the birth of the maximum number of Indian unicorns with 44, 11, and 7 unicorns coming each year, respectively.”
– It adds that between 2015 and 2021, the country’s startup ecosystem has seen a nine-time increase in the number of investors and a seven-time increase in the total funding of startups.
– Launched by the Ministry of Labour and Employment launched, it is a national database of unorganised workers.
– It aims to register 38 crore unorganised workers such as construction labourers, migrant workforce, street vendors, and domestic workers, among others. The portal aims to boost the last mile delivery of the welfare schemes for the unorganised workers.
– The workers are issued an e-Shram card containing a 12-digit unique number.
– If a worker is registered on the e-SHRAM portal and meets with an accident, he will be eligible for Rs 2 lakh on death or permanent disability and Rs 1 lakh on partial disability.
– The formation of the e-Shram portal came after the Supreme Court directed the government to complete the registration process of unorganised workers so that they can avail the welfare benefits given under various government schemes.
– Government in States/UTs will conduct registration of unorganized workers across the country.
– As on 14.03.2022, more than 26.69 crore unorganised workers have registered themselves on eSHRAM portal and received eSHRAM cards.
(source: pib.gov.in)
– The Swedish satire Triangle of Sadness, directed by Ruben Östlund, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday. It was the director’s second Palme d’Or, after his 2017 film The Square, a satire on the contemporary art world.
– The Palme d’Or is considered one of the most prestigious awards in the film industry.
– Cannes is one of the “big five” international film festivals — the other four being the Venice Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival.
– Palme d’Or translates to ‘The Golden Palm’. It was earlier called Grand Prix du Festival International du Film.
– Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar (1946) is the only Indian film to win the award, itself never released in India.
– The Kerala health department is on alert after the death of a 47-year-old from Thrissur due to the West Nile Virus. Earlier in 2019, a six-year-old boy in Malappuram district had died of the same infection. The virus was first reported in the Alappuzha district of the state in 2006 and then in Ernakulam in 2011.
-The West Nile Virus is a mosquito-borne, single-stranded RNA virus. According to the WHO, it is “a member of the flavivirus genus and belongs to the Japanese Encephalitis antigenic complex of the family Flaviviridae”. It is a flavivirus related to the viruses that cause St. Louis encephalitis, Japanese encephalitis, and yellow fever.
– Culex species of mosquitoes act as the principal vectors for transmission. It is transmitted by infected mosquitoes between and among humans and animals, including birds, which are the reservoir host of the virus.
-According to WHO, mosquitoes become infected when they feed on infected birds, and circulate the virus in their blood for a few days. The virus eventually gets into the mosquito’s salivary glands. During later blood meals (when mosquitoes bite), the virus may be injected into humans and animals, where it can multiply and possibly cause illness.
-It can also spread through blood transfusion, from an infected mother to her child, or through exposure to the virus in the laboratory.
-WNV is not known to spread by contact with infected humans or animals.
-According to the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it does not spread “through eating infected animals, including birds. Always follow instructions for fully cooking meat”.
-The incubation period for WNV disease is typically two to six days, but can range from two to fourteen days, and can be several weeks in immunocompromised people.
– The disease is asymptomatic in 80 per cent of the infected people. The rest develop what is called the West Nile fever or severe West Nile disease. In these 20 per cent cases, the symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, body aches, nausea, rash, and swollen glands.
– Severe infection can lead to neuro-invasive diseases such as West Nile encephalitis or meningitis or West Nile poliomyelitis or acute flaccid paralysis.
– WNV-associated Guillain-Barré syndrome and radiculopathy have also been reported. It usually turns fatal in persons with co-morbidities and immuno-compromised persons (such as transplant patients).
– The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology withdrew an advisory issued by the Aadhaar agency, which cautioned people to not share a photocopy of the document with entities such as hotels and cinema halls owing to the possibility of “misuse”. A ministry statement said the advisory was withdrawn because it could be “misinterpreted”. This advisory was issued earlier by the regional office of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in Bengaluru.
-The UIDAI is a statutory authority established on 12th July 2016 by the Government of India under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, following the provisions of the Aadhaar Act 2016.
-It was initially set up in January 2009, as an attached office under the aegis of the Planning Commission. The UIDAI assigns 12-digit unique identification (UID) number (Aadhaar) to all the residents of India.
– While a regular user cannot control data breaches of Aadhaar, there are some steps to ensure that one’s Aadhaar card number is not used by anyone else. Some of these steps include using a two-factor authentication on the Aadhaar card, turning on the biometric lock, and using Virtual Identity or VID for authentication.
– Prime Minister Narendra Modi has released benefits under the PM CARES for Children scheme for children who were orphaned by the pandemic.
– The scheme was launched on 29th May, 2021. Aim of the scheme was to support children who lost both or surviving parent(s), legal guardian/adoptive parents or single adoptive parent to Covid-19.
– Some of the objectives of PM CARES for children are-
1) to ensure comprehensive care and protection of children in a sustained manner
2) to enable their wellbeing through health insurance
3) to empower them through education and equip them for self-sufficient existence with financial support on reaching 23 years of age.
– The scheme offers a corpus of Rs. 10 lakh to each of these children from the PM CARES fund.
– This corpus will be used to give a monthly stipend from 18 years of their age, for the next five years and on reaching the age of 23 years, he or she will get the corpus amount as one lump sum for personal and professional use.
-The education expenses of younger children are supported by way of admission to Kendriya Vidyalayas and private schools up to higher secondary level.
– These children are also supported during their higher education through either a scholarship equivalent to the tuition fees or educational loans where the interest on the loan will be paid by the PM-CARES fund.
– All children will be enrolled as a beneficiary under Ayushman Bharat Scheme with a health insurance cover of Rs. 5 lakh.
– PM-CARES fund: The government has set up the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM-CARES Fund) to deal with any kind of emergency or distress situation like posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Fund is a public charitable trust with the Prime Minister as its Chairman. Other Members include Defence Minister, Home Minister and Finance Minister. The Fund enables micro-donations as a result of which a large number of people will be able to contribute with the smallest of denominations. It will strengthen disaster management capacities and encourage research on protecting citizens. Contribution to PM – CARES Fund Qualifies as CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) Expenditure.
(Source: pib.gov.in)
– Both the terms are in news due to ED raids, arrests and summons of the high profile personalities.
– Money laundering is the illegal process of making large amounts of money. This money is generated by a criminal activity but may appear to come from a legitimate source. Criminal activities include drug trafficking, terrorist funding, illegal arms sales, smuggling, prostitution rings, insider trading, bribery, and computer fraud schemes that produce large profits.
– Generally, money laundering is a three-stage process :
1) Placement: The crime money is injected into the formal financial system.
2) Layering: Money injected into the system is layered and spread over various transactions and book-keeping tricks to hide the source of origin.
3) Integration: Laundered money is withdrawn from the legitimate account to be used for criminal purposes. Now, money enters the financial system in such a way that the original association with the crime is disassociated. The money now can be used by the offender as legitimate money.
– Some of the national efforts to combat money laundering :The Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators (Forfeiture of Property) Act, 1976, Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985, and Prevention of Money-Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA), PMLA (Amendment) Act, 2012.
– Other than these efforts two important agencies/ units involved are-
Financial Intelligence Unit-IND: It is an independent body reporting directly to the Economic Intelligence Council (EIC) headed by the Finance Minister.
Enforcement Directorate (ED): It is a law enforcement agency and economic intelligence agency responsible for enforcing economic laws and fighting economic crime in India. The main function of ED is to Investigate offenses of money laundering under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002(PMLA).
Note: India is a full-fledged member of the FATF and follows its guidelines.
– Some of the global efforts are- The Vienna Convention, The 1990 Council of Europe Convention, The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), The Financial Action Task Force (It has been set up by the governments of the G-7 countries), IMF, The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
— India, Pakistan discussed river water issues at Permanent Indus Commission meeting. The last edition of talks was held in Islamabad on March 1-3, 2022, in which Pakistan had assured India of “all necessary actions” to ensure the free flow of Fazilka drain into the Sutlej river.
— Permanent Indus Commission is a bilateral commission of officials from India and Pakistan, created to implement and manage the goals of the Indus Waters Treaty, of 1960. According to the treaty, it shall meet regularly at least once a year, alternately in India and Pakistan.
— The functions of the Commission include: studying and reporting to the two Governments on any problem relating to the development of the waters of the rivers, solving disputes arising over water sharing, arranging technical visits to projects’ sites and critical river head works, undertaking, once in every five years, a general tour of inspection of the Rivers for ascertaining the facts, take necessary steps for the implementation of the provisions of the treaty.
— Indus Water Treaty, 1960 is a treaty brokered by the World Bank and signed by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistan’s President Ayub Khan which administers how the waters of the Indus and its tributaries that flow in both the countries will be utilised. According to the treaty, waters of the eastern rivers — Sutlej, Beas and Ravi— had been allocated to India, while the western rivers — the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab — to Pakistan.
— Under the treaty, India has been given the right to generate hydroelectricity through a run of the river projects on the western rivers subject to specific criteria for design and operation. India has cleared several hydropower projects in Ladakh: Darbuk Shyok (19 MW), Shankoo (18.5 MW), Nimu Chilling (24 MW), Rongdo (12 MW), Ratan Nag (10.5 MW) for Leh; and Mangdum Sangra (19 MW), Kargil Hunderman (25 MW) and Tamasha (12 MW) for Kargil.
— It also gives Pakistan the right to raise concerns on the design of Indian hydroelectric projects on western rivers. The treaty also provides an arbitration mechanism to solve disputes amicably.
— There have been disagreements and differences between India and Pakistan over dams. For eg. In 2010, Pakistan instituted international arbitration proceedings over India’s 330-megawatt hydropower project on a small Indus tributary, the Kishenganga (known as Neelum in Pakistan).
Puri Temple and Puri Heritage Corridor
– Supreme Court rejects pleas against excavation around Puri temple.
— The case in the Supreme Court comes at a time when the Orissa High Court is already hearing a plea against construction by the state government along the 800-year-old Puri Jagannath temple. Puri residents had moved the High Court alleging that the structural safety of the temple could be in jeopardy if land around the temple were dug up. The District Court in Puri is also hearing cases seeking to stop the construction.
— Conceived in 2016, the ambitious Puri Heritage Corridor Project has become the centre of a political slugfest between the BJP and the BJD-ruled state government. It involves redevelopment of Puri into a heritage site at a cost of Rs 3,200 crore. The construction has been taken up by the Odisha Bridge and Construction Corporation (OBCC) under the state’s Works Department, while Tata Projects is running it on the ground.
— The project includes 22 schemes redeveloping major portions of the temple town. The first phase of work, the cost of which is estimated at Rs 800 crore, began in February 2020. Following this, the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) approved the architectural design plan of the project.
— The 12th-century temple is a centrally protected monument, with the ASI as its custodian. As per the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (Amendment and Validation) Act, the National Monuments Authority (NMA) grants approval for construction and mandates that a heritage impact assessment study must be carried out before developmental work around any monument of archaeological importance with a built-up area over 5,000 square metres. The Jagannath temple is spread over 43,301.36 square meters.
— The NMA, which functions under the Union Ministry of Culture, was set up for the protection and preservation of monuments and sites through management of the prohibited and regulated area around the centrally protected monuments.
— The Puri Heritage Corridor Project was unveiled in December 2019 to transform the holy town of Puri into an international place of heritage. The project includes redeveloping major portions of the holy town and in the vicinity of the Jagannath temple for visitors and tourists.
— Jagannath Temple is believed to have been constructed in the 12th century by King Anatavarman Chodaganga Deva of the Eastern Ganga Dynast. Jagannath Puri temple is called ‘Yamanika Tirtha’ where, according to the Hindu beliefs, the power of ‘Yama’, the god of death, has been nullified due to the presence of Lord Jagannath. This temple was called the “White Pagoda” and is a part of Char Dham pilgrimages (Badrinath, Dwaraka, Puri, Rameswaram). There are four gates to the temple- Eastern ‘Singhdwara’ which is the main gate with two crouching lions, Southern ‘Ashwadwara’, Western ‘Vyaghra Dwara’ and Northern ‘Hastidwara’. There is a carving of each form at each gate. In front of the entrance stands the Aruna stambha or sun pillar, which was originally at the Sun Temple in Konark. The World famous Rath Yatra (Car Festival) & Bahuda Yatra are two important attractions.
– A cryptocurrency is a form of digital or virtual currency based on a network that is distributed across a large number of computers. It is nearly impossible to counterfeit or double-spend. Many cryptocurrencies are decentralized networks based on blockchain technology.
– Cryptocurrencies are generally not issued by any central authority. Therefore, it makes them theoretically immune to government interference or manipulation.
– Advantages of cryptocurrencies-They include cheaper and faster money transfers. They are decentralized systems that do not collapse at a single point of failure. They enable secure online payments without the use of third-party intermediaries.
– Disadvantages of cryptocurrencies – They include price volatility. They include high energy consumption for mining activities. They can be used in criminal activities. It is believed that cryptocurrency will disrupt many industries, including finance and law.
(source: investopedia.com)
– The Indian government placed order for first indigenous BVR missile. A Defence Ministry statement said Astra Mk1 has been designed and developed “based on the staff requirements issued by the Indian Air Force catering for beyond visual range as well as close combat engagement, reducing the dependency on foreign sources”.
-Astra and its variants: The missile has been designed and developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for deployment on fighter jets such as Sukhoi-30 MKI and Tejas of the IAF and the Mig-29K of the Navy.
– BVM missiles are capable of engaging beyond the range of 20 nautical miles or 37 kilometers. AAMs are fired from an airborne asset to destroy an airborne target. DRDO officials told The Indian Express that the Astra project was officially launched in the early 2000s with defined parameters and proposed future variants. Around 2017, the development phase of Mk-1 version was complete.
-Several successful tests have been conducted since 2017 from Sukhoi-30 MKIs. While the range for Astra Mk-1 is around 110 km, the Mk-2 with a range over 150 km is under development and Mk-3 version with a longer range is being envisaged. One more version of Astra, with a range smaller than Mk-1 is also under development.
-Strategic significance: The missile has been designed based on requirements specified by the IAF for BVR as well as close-combat engagement, reducing the dependency on foreign sources. AAMs with BVR capability provides large stand-off ranges to own fighter aircraft which can neutralize adversary airborne assets without exposing themselves to adversary air defense measures. Stand-off range means the missile is launched at a distance sufficient to allow the attacking side to evade defensive fire from the target.
– The MoD has said that Astra is technologically and economically superior to many such imported missile systems. The missile can travel at speeds more than four times that of sound and can reach a maximum altitude of 20 km, making it extremely flexible for air combat.
– The missile is fully integrated on the Sukhoi 30 MKI I and will be integrated with other fighter aircraft in a phased manner, including the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas. The Indian Navy will integrate the missile on the MiG-29K fighter aircraft which are deployed on the Navy’s aircraft carriers, thus adding to the lethality of India’s Aircraft carriers.
— The Leadership Group for Industry Transition (LeadIT) gathers countries and companies that are committed to action to achieve the Paris Agreement. It was launched by the governments of Sweden and India at the UN Climate Action Summit in September 2019 and is supported by the World Economic Forum.
– LeadIT members subscribe to the notion that energy-intensive industries can and must progress on low-carbon pathways, aiming to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The Management Board is made up of representatives from Sweden, India, and the World Economic Forum. The Secretariat is responsible for managing the work of the Leadership Group and is hosted by Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI).
– Stockholm+50 is being held in Stockholm, Sweden which will commemorate the 50 years since the 1972 United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment (also known as the Stockholm Conference). The UN General Assembly will be convening this international meeting.
– Agendas include – the world is facing a triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution and waste, nature and biodiversity loss, as well as other planetary issues. This even after 50 years of the Stockholm Declaration. This is threatening the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Also, a sustainable recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic is also one of the agendas.
– Stockholm Conference, 1972: The idea of the Stockholm Conference was first proposed by Sweden. That’s why it’s also termed the “Swedish Initiative”. The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm was held from 5th –16th June, 1972. It was the first global convergence on the planetary environment. The theme was ‘Only One Earth’.
– Aim of the Conference: Creating a common governance framework for the planetary environment and natural resources.
– Stockholm Declaration: 70 out of 122 participant countries which were developing and poor countries adopted the Stockholm Declaration. The Stockholm Declaration contained 26 principles that marked the beginning of a dialogue between developed and developing countries. This built the “interconnections between development, poverty and the environment”.
– The Action Plan contained three main categories that were further broken down into 109 recommendations: Global Environmental Assessment Programme, environmental management activities and international measures to support assessment and management activities carried out at the national and international levels.
– Three Dimension of the Stockholm Conference: Countries agreed to not harm each other’s environment or the areas beyond national jurisdiction, an action plan to study the threat to Earth’s environment and establishment of an international body called the UN Environment programme (UNEP) to bring in cooperation among countries.
(source: stockholm50.global)
– IFFCO launched the World’s first Nano liquid urea during its 50th annual general body meeting.
– It is essentially urea in the form of a nanoparticle. Urea is a chemical nitrogen fertiliser, white in colour, which artificially provides nitrogen, a major nutrient required by plants.
-The product has been developed at IFFCO’s Nano Biotechnology Research Centre (NBRC) at Kalol.
-Apart from reducing the country’s subsidy bill, it is aimed at reducing the unbalanced and indiscriminate use of conventional urea along with increasing crop productivity, and reducing soil, water, and air pollution.
-Liquid nano urea has a shelf life of a year, and farmers need not be worried about “caking” when it comes in contact with moisture.
– Conventional urea has an efficiency of about 25 per cent, the efficiency of liquid nano urea can be as high as 85-90 per cent. Conventional urea fails to have the desired impact on crops as it is often applied incorrectly, and the nitrogen in it is vaporised or lost as a gas. A lot of nitrogen is also washed away during irrigation.
– A new book has predicted that by the third quarter of this century, parents will have the choice of having digital offspring. Which means that if you are in your teens now, you may look forward to playing with a grandchild who will exist only in the immersive digital world of the metaverse.
– This will be the ‘Tamagotchi Generation’, says British behavioural psychologist and user experience (UX) professional Catriona Campbell, author of ‘AI By Design: A Plan for Living With Artificial Intelligence’ (CRC Press, 2022).
-“Virtual children may seem like a giant leap from where we are now, but within 50 years technology will have advanced to such an extent that babies which exist in the metaverse are indistinct from those in the real world,” Campbell writes. “As the metaverse evolves, I can see virtual children becoming an accepted and fully embraced part of society in much of the developed world.”
– The name comes from the digital pet created by the Japanese toy manufacturer Bandai, which was a global rage in the 1990s and early years of this century. As of last year, more than 80 million Tamagotchi toys had been sold worldwide.
– The toy is an egg-shaped video game the size of a keychain, which has a screen and buttons. Once the pet is activated, an egg appears on the screen, and hatches into a pet for the player to raise. The pets feel hungry, happy, sick, and want to go to the toilet etc., and the player can care as much or as little for the pet as they desire. What the pet grows up to be depends on how it has been trained and raised by the
– Researchers have identified a new colorful species of leopard geckos named Eublepharis pictus, also known as the Painted Leopard Gecko.
– Earlier it was thought to belong to a known species. The new species differs from all members of the genus Eublepharis except for E hardwickii. Eublepharis is a genus of terrestrial geckos native to eastern and southwestern Asia.
– It lives in dry evergreen forests mixed with scrub and meadows. It is strictly nocturnal, actively foraging along trails in the forest after dusk. Researchers had initially identified the specimen as an East Indian Leopard Gecko (Eublepharis hardwickii). This new species appears to be common in the forests of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. It is important to note that geographically the two species appear to be separated by the Brahmani River.
– Based on IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) the researchers have suggested it to list as Near Threatened (NT).
– Geckos are reptiles and are found on all continents except Antarctica. These colorful lizards have adapted to habitats from rainforests, to deserts, to cold mountain slopes. Most geckos are nocturnal, which means they are active at night, but day geckos are active during the day and depend on insects, fruits, and flower nectar.
The ribbon weed or Posidonia australis
-The world’s largest plant has recently been discovered off the West Coast of Australia: a seagrass 180 km in length.
-The ribbon weed, or Posidonia australis, has been discovered in Shark Bay by a group of researchers from Flinders University and The University of Western Australia. These researchers have also found that the plant is 4,500 years old, is sterile, has double the number of chromosomes than other similar plants, and has managed to survive the volatile atmosphere of the shallow Shark Bay.
-The ribbon weed covers an area of 20,000 hectares. The next on the podium, the second-largest plant, is the clonal colony of a quaking Aspen tree in Utah, which covers 43.6 hectares. The largest tree in India, the Great Banyan in Howrah’s Botanical Garden, covers 1.41 hectares.
-Sometime in the Harappan era, a plant took root in the Shark Bay. Then it kept spreading through its rhizomes, overcoming everything in its way, and here we are today. The researchers found that the ribbon weed cannot spread its seeds, something that helps plants overcome environmental threats. Also, Shark Bay sees fluctuations in temperature and salinity and gets a lot of light, conditions challenging for any plant. Yet the ribbon weed has managed to survive, and a part of the reason may be that it is a polyploid – instead of taking half-half genome from both parents, it took 100 per cent, something not unheard of in plants. Therefore, this ribbon weed has twice the number of chromosomes other plants of the same variety have.
– “Polyploid plants often reside in places with extreme environmental conditions, are often sterile, but can continue to grow if left undisturbed, and this giant seagrass has done just that,” the University of Western Australia quoted Dr Elizabeth Sinclair, a senior author of the study, as saying.
– Because seagrass performs a vital role in the environment, and if some of it is hardy, it is good news for everyone in a world threatened by climate change. In India, seagrass is found in many coastal areas, most notably in Gulf of Mannar and Palk Strait. Apart from being home to a variety of small organisms, seagrass trap sediments and prevent water from getting muddy, absorb carbon from the atmosphere, and prevent coastal erosion.
– The Shark Bay ribbon, thus, has served as sinkhole, hospitable city, and firewall for centuries. And it has done all this without mating, so maybe it has one more distinction – being one of the oldest champions of sologamy.
