PM Modi reaches Jammu to participate in Panchayati Raj Day event

• He said that Palli is on its way to becoming India''s first carbon-neutral panchayat.
• On the occasion, the Prime Minister also inaugurated and laid the foundation stones of several development projects worth over 20,000 crore rupees in Jammu and Kashmir.
• he Prime Minister laid the foundation stone of the Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Expressway and inaugurated the 500KW Solar Power Plant at Palli village along with 108 Jan Aushadhi Kendras, in Samba district.
• He also inaugurated the Banihal-Qazigund Road Tunnel, built at a cost of over 3100 crore rupees. The 8.45 Km long tunnel will reduce the road distance between Banihal and Qazigund by 16 km, and reduce journey time by around one and a half hours.
• He laid the foundation stones for the 850 MW Ratle Hydroelectric Project and 540 MW Kwar Hydroelectric Project to be constructed on the Chenab river in Kishtwar District.
• He also launched the Amrit Sarovar initiative aimed at developing and rejuvenating 75 water bodies in each district of the country.

Panchayati Raj

• Ministry of Panchayati Raj commemorates 24th April of every year as the National Panchayati Raj Day (NPRD), as the 73rd Constitutional Amendment came into force on this date.
• 24th April, 1993 marks a defining moment in the history of decentralization of power to the grassroots, with the institutionalization of Panchayati Raj, through the Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act, 1992 which came into force with effect from that day.

All-India Household Consumer Expenditure Survey

• Typically, the Survey is conducted between July and June and this year’s exercise is expected to be completed by June 2023.
• Estimates of household monthly per capita consumer expenditure (MPCE) and the distribution of households and persons over different MPCE classes, based on the Survey, may only become available about a year after the field work is completed.
• The results will include separate data sets for rural and urban parts, and also splice spending patterns for each State and Union Territory, as well as different socio-economic groups.
• Fresh one-off surveys on consumer expenditure and employment and unemployment were commissioned over 2011-12 after the usually scheduled Surveys conducted in 2009-10 had coincided with a worldwide slowdown following the 2008 global financial crisis and a drought year in India.
• India has not had any official estimates on per capita household spending, used to arrive at estimates of poverty levels in different parts of the country and to review economic indicators such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), since 2011-12.
• The government had junked the findings of the last Survey, conducted in 2017-18, citing “data quality” issues.
• The Survey could not be launched in the past two years due to the pandemic.

Understanding the Olga Tellis judgment

• The Olga Tellis vs Bombay Municipal Corporation judgment in 1985 ruled that eviction of pavement dwellers using unreasonable force, without giving them a chance to explain is unconstitutional. It is a violation of their right to livelihood.
• The judgment agrees that pavement dwellers do occupy public spaces unauthorised. However, they should be given a chance to be heard and a reasonable opportunity to depart “before force is used to expel them.
• The case started in 1981 when the State of Maharashtra and the Bombay Municipal Corporation decided that pavement and slum dwellers in Bombay city should be evicted and “deported to their respective places of origin or places outside the city of Bombay.”
• Pavement dwellers, too, have a right to life and dignity. The right to life included the right to livelihood. They earn a meagre livelihood by living and working on the footpaths.

Towards a resolution of the Arunachal-Assam border dispute

• The issue started with a 1951 report which transferred 3,648 sq. km of the “plain” area of Balipara and Sadiya foothills to the Darrang and Lakhimpur districts of Assam.
• Arunachal Pradesh claims the transfer was done without consulting its tribes who had customary rights over these lands.
• The two States have decided to form 12 committees involving the districts sharing the boundary in order to come up with a solution.
• Assam has had boundary disputes with all the north-eastern States that were carved out of it.
• While Nagaland became a State in 1963, Meghalaya first became an Autonomous State in 1970 and a full-fledged State in 1972.
• Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram were separated from Assam as Union Territories in 1972 and as States in 1987.

Strontium: A Cyber-Espionage Group

• Strontium is also known as Fancy Bear, Tsar Team, Pawn Storm, Sofacy, Sednit or Advanced Persistent Threat 28 (APT28) group.
• It is a highly active and prolific cyber-espionage group. It is one of the most active APT groups and has been operating since at least the mid-2000s
• The group is said to be connected to the GRU, the Russian Armed Forces’ main military intelligence wing.
• The group deploys diverse malware and malicious tools to breach networks. In the past, it has used X-Tunnel, SPLM (or CHOPSTICK and X-Agent), GAMEFISH and Zebrocy to attack targets.
• APT28 uses spear-phishing (targeted campaigns to gain access to an individual’s account) and zero-day exploits (taking advantage of unknown computer-software vulnerabilities) to target specific individuals and organisations.

Carbon Tax

• Pennsylvania becomes the first major fossil fuel-producing state in the US to adopt a carbon pricing policy to address climate change.
• It joins 11 states where coal, oil and natural gas power plants must buy credits for every ton of carbon dioxide they emit.
• President Joe Biden is attempting a less direct approach — known as the social cost of carbon — that calculates future climate damages to justify tougher restrictions on polluting industries.
• Governments elsewhere have moved more aggressively. Canada, for example, imposes fuel charges on individuals and also makes big polluters pay for emissions. It’s one of 27 nations with some kind of carbon tax, according to The World Bank.

Social cost of carbon vs carbon pricing

• The social cost of carbon attempts to capture the value of all climate damage, centuries into the future.
• Carbon pricing reflects how much companies are willing to pay today for a limited amount of emission credits offered at auction.
• In other words, the social cost of carbon guides policy, while carbon pricing represents policy in practice.

European Union ground rules for Web Digital Services Act

• The Act, which is yet to become law, was proposed by the EU Commission (anti-trust) in December 2020. The DSA will tightly regulate the way intermediaries, especially large platforms such as Google, Facebook, and YouTube, function when it comes to moderating user content.
• The DSA is “a set of common rules on intermediaries’ obligations and accountability across the single market”, and ensures higher protection to all EU users, irrespective of their country.
• It will be a landmark legislation to force big Internet companies to act against disinformation and illegal and harmful content, and to “provide better protection for Internet users and their fundamental rights”.
• The proposed Act will work in conjunction with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which was approved last month.
• The DSA is likely to be adopted by the EU Parliament in the next few months. Once adopted, “it will apply from fifteen months or from January 1, 2024, whichever is later”.

Cochin Shipyard Ltd set to build two 62T bollard pull tugs

• The vessels will be built at Tebma Shipyards facility at Malpe in Karnataka.
• The vessels will have a length of 33 metres and a breadth of 11.9 metres. The tugs can reach a speed of 12.5 knots and a Bollard pull capacity of 62 tonnes.
• Ocean Sparkle Ltd, is a leading service provider in the Comprehensive Port Operations and Management Sector in the country.
• Cochin Shipyard Limited recently took over Tebma Shipyards Ltd for the dedicated construction of tugs, specialised vessels such as dredgers, ferries and coastal vessels to cater to the market needs.
• Bollard Pull is a measure of the pulling power of a vessel, comparable to the horsepower rating of conventional vehicle engines.
• It can be defined as the thrust that is developed by the propulsion systems of any vessel when it has a zero speed in the forward direction.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the seventh edition of Raisina Dialogue

• President of the European Union Ursula Von Der Leyen is the chief guest at the Dialogue.
• The three-day Dialogue is based on the theme - Terranova, impassioned, impatient, imperiled.
• There are six broad thematic pillars of the Dialogue including Rethinking Democracy, End of Multilateralism, Water Caucuses, and Achieving Green Transitions.
• Raisina Dialogue will have around 100 sessions with over 210 speakers from 90 countries.
• The Raisina Dialogue is a multilateral conference committed to addressing the most challenging issues facing the global community.
• Every year, global leaders in policy, business, media, and civil society are hosted in New Delhi to discuss cooperation on a wide range of pertinent international policy matters.
• The conference is hosted by the Observer Research Foundation in collaboration with the Ministry of External Affairs.