VISION

Friday, November 27, 2020

Daily Current Affairs, 26th November 2020

1) Indian Constitution Day: 26 November

•In India, 26 November is celebrated as Constitution Day or Samvidhan Diwas. On this day in 1949, the constitution was adopted which came into force on January 26, 1950, marking the beginning of a new era in the history of India.

•On 19th November 2015, during the year-long celebration of the 125th birth anniversary of Dr B R Ambedkar, Government of India declared November 26th as the Constitution Day. Previously this day was celebrated as Law Day. 26 November was chosen to spread the importance of the constitution and to spread thoughts and ideas of Ambedkar.

2) National Milk Day: 26 November

3) IPPB launches PM Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana

•India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) has launched a low-cost insurance scheme ‘Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY)’ for its customers to bring large sections of the underserved and unserved population into the financial mainstream. IPPB has collaborated with PNB MetLife India Insurance Company for this product.

Features of PMJJBY:

•To provide protection and financial security to the poor and underprivileged, especially in unbanked and remote areas of India, in the unforeseen and unfortunate event of the loss of a family member who is primarily the breadwinner.

•Anyone who has a savings account with IPPB.

•Minimum age 18 years and a maximum age 50 years.

•The maximum coverage of Rs 2,00,000 per life irrespective of multiple accounts/multiple certificates of insurance held under the PMJJBY scheme.

•Premium Rs 330 to be paid annually.

•Completion of 55 years (Age near Birthday).

4) 10th edition of National Science Film Festival begins virtually

•The 10th edition of prestigious National science film festival kicked off on 24th November 2020 in a virtual mode. The four-day long film festival has been jointly organized by Vigyan Prasar, an autonomous agency under the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India and the Tripura State Council of Science and Technology, Govt. of Tripura from 24 to 27 November 2020. The science film festival offers a unique platform to showcase the science films made by professionals, amateur and student filmmakers under various themes, to promote science films in India.

•A total of 372 films in different languages were received for participation, of which 115 films have been shortlisted by the ten-member jury to be screened during the festival. These films are in Hindi, English, Urdu, Malayalam, Kashmiri, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi and Tamil languages.

5) DRDO flags off first ‘Varunastra’ Heavy Weight Torpedo

•The Defence Research and Development (DRDO) Chairman G Satheesh Reddy has flagged off the first Production unit of Heavy Weight Torpedo (HWT), Varunastra. The Varunastra has been designed and developed by Naval Science & Technological Laboratory (NSTL) of DRDO while Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), Vishakhapatnam has manufactured the torpedo for the Indian Navy.

6) PM Modi releases book on the Life of Sri Guru Nanak Dev ji

•Prime Minister Narendra Modi has released a book on the life and ideals of Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism and first of its ten gurus. The book has been penned by Kirpal Singh Ji. Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi was also present during the book release.

7) New Zealand’s Greg Barclay elected new ICC Chairman

•Auckland-based commercial lawyer and director of New Zealand Cricket (NZC) since 2012, Greg Barclay has been elected as the new chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC), after the second round of voting.

•Barclay succeeds India’s Shashank Manohar who stepped down in July 2020 and will replace Imran Khwaja, who is currently the interim chairman. He was serving as NZC’s representative on the board of the International Cricket Council and had also served as the director of ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2015.

The HINDU Notes – 27th November 2020

the hindu notes

vision cse 17:43

📰 $20-bn potential in renewable sector: PM

Modi invites investors and businesses to join India’s ‘unparalleled’ journey

•India’s renewable energy deployment plans for the coming decade are likely to generate business opportunities worth $20 billion a year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday.

•Inviting global investors to join what he termed India’s unparalleled journey towards expanding power generation capacity so that each citizen got access to electricity, he said the country’s renewable energy capacity was now the fourth largest in the world.

Surging capacity

•“In the last six years, we increased our installed renewable energy capacity by two- and-a-half times… it is growing at the fastest speed among all major countries. Even when it was not affordable, we invested in renewable energy [and] now our investment and scale is bringing costs down,” Mr. Modi said at the inaugural session of the Global Renewable Energy Investment Meeting and Expo.

•“We are showing to the world that sound environmental policies can also be sound economics,” he said, urging global investors to consider tapping the recently approved production-linked incentive scheme for manufacturing high-efficiency solar power modules in the country.

•“There are huge renewable energy deployment plans for the next decade. These are likely to generate business prospects of the order of around 20 billion dollars per year. I invite investors, developers and businesses to join India’s renewable energy journey,” he concluded.

📰 NCB probes terror angle in huge heroin haul at sea

The HINDU Notes – 26th November 2020

the hindu notes

vision cse 17:20

📰 Nutrition portal to monitor services at anganwadis down for nearly three months

Snag comes amid rising levels of hunger and poverty. Some States have developed their own software modules

•A massive nutrition portal developed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), which is used by the Centre as well as most States, and touted as the world’s biggest nutrition system, to record and monitor delivery of services to children and mothers across nearly seven lakh anganwadis has been down for nearly three months, several State governments have confirmed.

•The snag comes as a setback at a time there is a call for the need to intensify efforts to identify mothers and children in need of nutritional interventions due to rising levels of hunger and poverty. The software was developed under the Poshan Abhiyaan approved by the Cabinet in 2017 with a three-year budget of ₹9,000 crore, half of which was for ICT-based real-time monitoring system. While 50% of the amount is funded by the government budgetary support, the remaining 50% is a loan from the World Bank.

•“The ICDS-CAS server is down and we have written to the Central government to rectify it. It has been down for almost two months and we have requested for it to be rectified. But we continue to deliver dry rations to the beneficiaries,” Kavitha Ramu, ICDS chief for Tamil Nadu told The Hindu.

•POSHAN Abhiyaan’s Integrated Child Development Services Common Application Software (ICDS-CAS) is an innovative web and mobile-phone based application to improve service delivery and programme management. The application facilitates anganwadi workers (AWWs) in their daily tasks, helps supervisors to assess and provide feedback to the workers and helps other programme officials to track service delivery and take informed decisions. The ICDS-CAS has three components — a mobile-based application for AWWs, a mobile-based application for supervisors and a web-based dashboard for other programme officials.

•It is reliably learnt that the server issue surfaced after the government insisted that the BMGF and its collaborator, US based Dimagi, host India's public data with an Indian service provider leading to issues in managing capacity to anchor such a vast data. India has total 14 lakh anganwadis and nearly 10 crore ICDS beneficiaries. A query sent to the BMGF remained unanswered till the time of going to print.

•“The server issue has hampered real time monitoring of services,” said an official of Gujarat. How were then they tracking activities? The official replied that the State has developed its own software modules. The source also said there were also difficulties in accessing data from the portal much before the server problem, because of which they have developed their own tools. Sources also say lack of convergence between Health Ministry’s and ICDS CAS has led to many States being less enthusiastic in the latter.

•On the ground, in Rajasthan’s Churu, at the Child Development Project Office, block co-ordinator Manju Kumar explains what this means for their activities. “No monitoring activity is possible through the CAS now. We have shifted to WhatsApp. If CAS was used to upload photos of anganwadis worker opening the centre, or while serving food to the children, we now use WhatsApp to keep an eye on these activities and share photos.”

•The software also helps in calculating incentives given to workers for each tasks, but in its absence these have been pending since September despite the responsibilities of anganwadi workers increasing manifold due to the pandemic. They now go house to house spreading awareness about symptoms and precautions, identifying COVID-19 positive cases and even ensuring safety at events like panchayat elections.

•“Children are already extremely vulnerable with respect to their health and nutrition due to the impact of disruptions in services. Now, if the news is correct about the ICDS-CAS being down for three months, it is a further avoidable disaster. Poshan Abhiyan is exerting a strong centralisation as well as push for technology-driven, data centric interventions. But this is precisely what the risks are with centralised approaches,” Dr. Vandana Prasad, Joint Convenor of People’s Health Movement India and a member of the Steering Committee of the Right to Food Campaign.

📰 MHA issues new Covid guidelines