EDITORIALS & ARTICLES
1st April 2021
Global Gender Gap Report 2021
Recently, the World Economic Forum has released the Global Gender Gap Report 2021.
- Iceland continued to top the index in 2021, followed by Finland and Norway, while Afghanistan was at the last position of 156.
- The report highlighted that South Asia incidentally is one of the worst performing regions, followed only by the Middle East and northern Africa.
- In South Asia, Bangladesh was the top performer on the gender gap index with a global ranking of 65, followed by Nepal at 106, Sri Lanka at 116, and Bhutan at 130.
- Apart from Afghanistan, Pakistan was the only country behind India on the index with a global ranking of 153.
- The report states that many countries have fared worse in this year’s rankings compared to last year’s, on account of economic performance.
- Globally, the average distance completed to parity is at 68 per cent which is a step back compared to 2020 (-0.6 percentage points).
- The report points out that it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide on its current trajectory.
- The report estimates that it will take South Asia 195.4 years to close the gender gap, while Western Europe will take 52.1 years.
- The gender gap in political empowerment remains the largest with women represents only 26.1 per cent of some 35,500 parliament seats and just 22.6 per cent of over 3,400 ministers worldwide.
- The report found out that Bangladesh is the only country where more women have held head-of-state positions than men in the past 50 years.
- The countries with the largest gender gaps in economic participation include Iran, India, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
- The report states that China and India together account for about 90 to 95 per cent of the estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million missing female births annually worldwide due to gender-biased prenatal sex selective practices.
India’s performance in Global Gender Gap Report 2021
- India has fallen 28 places in the 2021 edition of the Global Gender Gap Report.
- India is now one of the worst performers in South Asia, trailing behind neighbours Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.
- India is ranked 140 among 156 countries in Global Gender Gap Report 2021.
- India has declined on the political empowerment index by 13.5 percentage points.
- India witnessed a decrease in women's labour force participation rate, which fell from 24.8 per cent to 22.3 per cent.
- India is ranked 51st in women’s participation in politics.
- India witnessed a decline in the number of women ministers i.e. from 23.1 per cent in 2019 to 9.1 per cent in 2021.
- India has been ranked at 114 in the index of education attainment.
- The two indices where India has fared the worst are “Health and Survival”, which includes the sex ratio, and economic participation of women.
- The second-largest gender gap among the four components of the index is for the Economic Participation and Opportunity sub index.
- The report notes that the economic participation gender gap has widened in India by 3 percent this year.
- The share of women in professional and technical roles declined further to 29.2 per cent.
- The share of women in senior and managerial positions also is at 14.6 per cent and only 8.9 per cent firms in the country have top female managers.
- The estimated earned income of women in India is only one-fifth of men’s, which puts the country among the bottom 10 globally on this indicator.
- The report points to a skewed sex ratio as a major factor for the worst performance of India in the Health and Survival index.
- India is ranked 155 in the Health and Survival Index, the only country to have fared worse than India is China.
Global Gender Gap Report
- It was first published in 2006 by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
- The Index benchmarks the evolution of gender-based gaps among four key dimensions i.e. economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
- It examines the drivers of gender gaps and outlines the policies and practicesneeded for a gender-inclusive recovery.
- It presents information and data that were compiled and/or collected by the World Economic Forum.
World Happiness Report 2020
Recently, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network released the World Happiness Report 2020.
- Finland is the happiest country in the world followed by Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand and Austria.
- Luxembourg entered for the first time in the top 10 happiest countries.
- India’s ranking dropped from 140 to 144, well below Nepal (92nd), Pakistan (66th), Bangladesh (107th) and Sri Lanka (130th).
- India ranks last among the BRICS countries with Brazil (32nd), Russia (73rd), China (94th) and South Africa (109th).
- Zimbabwe, South Sudan, and Afghanistan were the least happy countries.
- For the first time it ranks cities around the world by their subjective well-being and digs more deeply into how the social, urban and natural environments combine to affect our happiness.
World Happiness Report
- The first report was published in 2012 which is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.
- It is a publication of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).
Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN)
- It was set up in 2012 under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General.
- It mobilizes global scientific and technological expertise to promote practical solutions for sustainable development, including the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement.
- It works closely with United Nations agencies, multilateral financing institutions, the private sector, and civil society.
Forest Fire in Bandhavgarh National Park
Recently, a wildfire that had spread across several zones in Bandhavgarh National Parkhas been brought under control.
- It is located in the Vindhya Hills of the Umaria district in Madhya Pradesh.
- It is known for the Royal Bengal Tigers.
- It was declared as a national park in 1968.
- The name Bandhavgarh has been derived from the most prominent hillock of the area of Umaria.
- It consists of mixed vegetation ranging from tall grasslands to thick Sal forest.
- It resides on the extreme north eastern border of Madhya Pradesh and the northern edges of the Satpura mountain ranges.
AIM-PRIME (Program for Researchers on Innovations, Market-Readiness & Entrepreneurship)
Recently, the NITI Aayog has launched the ‘AIM-PRIME’ (Program for Researchers on Innovations, Market-Readiness & Entrepreneurship).
- It is an initiative of the NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) in partnership with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).
- It is a nationwide program which will be implemented by Venture Center (a non-profit technology business incubator).
- The first cohort of the program is open to technology developers (early-stage deep tech start-ups, and scientists/ engineers/ clinicians).
- The program is also open to CEOs and senior incubation managers of AIM Funded Atal Incubation Centers that are supporting deep tech entrepreneurs.
- It is catalyzed by the office of the Principal Scientific Advisor and the Pune Knowledge Cluster.
Significance of AIM-PRIME
- It is an initiative to promote and support science-based deep-tech startups & venturesacross India.
- It aims to provide a major push towards deep technology and driving the country to become a digitally transformed nation.
- It is aimed at addressing specific issues through training and guidance over a period of 12 months.
- The candidates selected for the program will get access to in-depth learning via a comprehensive lecture series, live team projects, exercises, and project-specific mentoring.
- They will also have access to a deep tech startup playbook, curated video library, and plenty of peer-to-peer learning opportunities.
- It is specifically tailored for the rapid scaling up of deep-tech science ventures in India, providing not just the necessary intellect and support but also the exposure they rightly deserve.
- It will enable translation of science-based deep tech research to innovation that enables market ready entrepreneurship drawing from national and global best practices.
- Its hallmark shall be hands-on practical insights and mentoring from experts and mentors who have been nurturing science-based deep-tech startups in global innovation hotspots as well as in India.
Eligibility under AIM-PRIME
- Startup Leadership Team: The technology developers and translators from early stage deep tech startups:-
- Scientists/ Engineers/ Clinicians with advanced degrees
- Having a formal and full-time employment engagement with a startup
- Applicant should be advancing a science-based technology (at any TRL level)
- The proposed technology should have significant knowledge intensity or novelty
- Faculty Entrepreneurs: Applied researchers/ technology developers from academic/ R&D Labs with firmed up technology commercialization/entrepreneurship plans:-
- Scientists/ Engineers/ Clinicians with advanced degrees
- Having a formal and full-time employment engagement with an academic/ R&D institution
- Applicant should have identified a science-based technology (at any TRL level) suitable for developing a new enterprise
- The proposed technology should have significant knowledge intensity or novelty
- Incubation Managers: The CEOs/ Senior Managers of AIM funded AICs:-
- Undergraduate degree in any scientific discipline
- Having a formal and full-time employment engagement with an AIM funded AICs
- Applicants AIC should have at least one pre-incubatee that is a science-based deep tech startup whose technology should have significant knowledge intensity or novelty.
- All program participants shall be:
- Applicant shall be a startup or an incubator
- Each applicant will nominate preferably 2 participants
- All participants shall be Indian citizens.
Novel technique for tracking solar eruptions
Recently, the scientists have developed a new technique for tracking solar eruptions that disrupt space weather to be used in India’s first solar mission ‘Aditya L-1’.
- A software named Computer Aided CME Tracking Software (CACTus) based on a computer vision algorithm was used to detect and characterise such eruptions automatically in the outer corona.
- It could not be applied to the inner corona observations due to the vast acceleration experienced by these eruptions.
- It limited the capability to track the eruptions as CMEs accelerate in the lower corona.
- It is a new technique to track the huge bubbles of gas threaded with magnetic field lines that are ejected from the Sun.
- The huge bubbles disrupt the space weather and causing geomagnetic storms, satellite failures, and power outages.
- The ejections from the Sun are technically called as Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).
CMEs Identification in Inner Solar Corona (CIISCO)
- It is an algorithm developed by Aryabhatta Research Institute of observational sciences (ARIES) along with their collaborators from Royal Observatory of Belgium.
- It aims to detect and track the accelerating solar eruption in the lower corona.
- It has been successfully tested on several eruptions observed by space observatories, including Solar Dynamics Observatory and Solar-Terrestrial Relations Observatory.
- The parameters determined by CIISCO are useful to characterise the eruption in the lower corona.
- The Lower Corona is a region where the properties of such eruptions are less known.
- The implementation of CIISCO on the Aditya-L1 data will provide new insight into the CME properties in this less explored region.
Aditya L-1 Mission
- It is the first Indian mission to study the Sun.
- It was conceived as a 400kg class satellite carrying one payload, the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) and was planned to launch in an 800 km low earth orbit.
- The Aditya-1 mission has now been revised to “Aditya-L1 mission” and will be inserted in a halo orbit around the L1, which is 1.5 million km from the Earth.
- Aditya-1 was meant to observe only the solar corona.
- The outer layers of the Sun, extending to thousands of km above the disc (photosphere) is termed as the corona.
- Aditya-L1 with additional experiments can now provide observations of Sun's Corona (soft and hard X-ray, Emission lines in the visible and NIR), Chromosphere (UV) and photosphere (broadband filters).
- The particle payloads will study the particle flux emanating from the Sun and reaching the L1 orbit, and the magnetometer payload will measure the variation in magnetic field strength at the halo orbit around L1.
- The complete list of payloads, their science objective and lead institute for developing the payload is provided below:
- Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC): To study the diagnostic parameters of solar corona and dynamics and origin of Coronal Mass Ejections (3 visible and 1 Infra-Red channels); magnetic field measurement of solar corona down to tens of Gauss.
- Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT): To image the spatially resolved Solar Photosphere and Chromosphere in near Ultraviolet (200-400 nm) and measure solar irradiance variations.
- Aditya Solar wind Particle Experiment (ASPEX): To study the variation of solar wind properties as well as its distribution and spectral characteristics.
- Plasma Analyser Package for Aditya (PAPA): To understand the composition of solar wind and its energy distribution.
- Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer (SoLEXS): To monitor the X-ray flares for studying the heating mechanism of the solar corona.
- High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer (HEL1OS): To observe the dynamic events in the solar corona and provide an estimate of the energy used to accelerate the particles during the eruptive events.
- Magnetometer: To measure the magnitude and nature of the Interplanetary Magnetic Field.
Lagrangian points
- Lagrangian points are the locations in space where the combined gravitational pull of two large masses roughly balance each other.
- Any small mass placed at that location will remain at constant distances relative to the large masses.
- There are five such points in Sun-Earth system and they are denoted as L1, L2, L3, L4 and L5.
- A halo orbit is a periodic three-dimensional orbit near the L1, L2 or L3.
Treasury Bill
Recently, the Government of India, in consultation with Reserve Bank of India, has decided to notify the amounts for the issuance of Treasury Bills for the quarter ending June 2021.
- The treasury bills are money market instruments issued by the Government of India as a promissory note with guaranteed repayment at a later date.
- They are primarily short-term borrowing tools, having a maximum tenure of 364 days.
- They are available at zero coupons (interest) rate.
- They are issued at a discount to the published nominal value of government security (G-sec).
Benefits of Treasury bill
- The funds collected through Treasury bill are typically used to meet short term requirements of the government.
- They can be procured by individuals at a discount to the face value of the security and are redeemed at their nominal value, thereby allowing investors to pocket the difference.
- It helps the government raise funds to meet its current obligations, which are in excess of its annual revenue generation.
- It is aimed at reducing total fiscal deficit in an economy, and also in regulating the total currency in circulation at any given point of time.
Who notifies Treasury bill?
- Treasury bills were first issued in India in 1917.
- They are issued via auctions conducted by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) at regular intervals.
- Individuals, trusts, institutions and banks can purchase T-Bills.
Features of Treasury bill
- Minimum investment: As per the regulations put forward by the RBI, a minimum of Rs. 25,000 has to be invested by individuals willing to procure a short term treasury bill.
- Zero-coupon securities: G-Sec treasury bills don’t yield any interest on total deposits.
- Upon redemption, the entire par value of this bond is paid to investors, thereby allowing them to realise substantial profits on total investment.
- Form: They can be issued in a physical form as a promissory note or dematerialized form by crediting to SGL account (Subsidiary General Ledger Account).
Types of Treasury bill
- 14-day Treasury bill: They complete their maturity on 14 days from the date of issue and the minimum amount to invest is Rs.1 lakh.
- 91-day Treasury bill: They complete their maturity on 91 days from the date of issue and the minimum amount to invest is also Rs.25000.
- 182-day Treasury bill: They complete their maturity on 182 days from the date of issue and the minimum amount to invest is also Rs.25000.
- 364-day Treasury bill: They complete their maturity on 364 days from the date of issue and the minimum amount to invest is also Rs.25000.
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