Latest News
8th July 2021
Indian migrant worker's traditional martial arts moves win him top prize in Singapore
Recently, a migrant worker who choreographed and performed a sequence of Silambam had won the top prize at a talent competition.
Silambam Martial Art
Recently, the Chhattisgarh government is facing objections from its own legislators, including a minister, to its plan to further decrease the area of the proposed Lemru Elephant Reserve.
INS Tabar
- It is considered as the best form of self-defense technique and is often practiced as a sport.
- It is an ancient weapon-based martial art that emerged in Tamilakam, which is now Tamil Nadu region of India.
- The term Silambam contains a meaning which itself reveals about the sport, silam stands for a ‘mountain’ and bam stands for bamboo which is the main weapon used in this form of martial arts.
- The bamboo staff is the main weapon and the length of the bamboo staff depends on the height of the practitioner.
- Besides this, there are more weapons used in Silambam which are as listed below:
- Maru- thrusting weapon which is made from horns of deer.
- Aruva- sickle
- Savuku- a whip
- Vaal- curved sword
- Kuttu Katai- spiked knuckleduster
- Katti- knife
- Sedikuchi- cudgel or short stick
- It is believed to be originated somewhere around 1000 BCE.
- It was brought by the sage Agastya Munivar.
- Sillappadikkaram and many other works of Sangam literature mentions about the practice and it dates back to 2nd century BC whereas oral folk tales traces it back even further around 7000 years
- The cooperative movement was developed in pre-Independence India in response to agricultural distress and indebtedness.
- According to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, the formal launch of the cooperative movement in India occurred with the introduction of the Cooperative Societies Act in 1904.
- In 1912, another Cooperative Societies Act was passed to rectify some of the drawbacks of the earlier law.
- The term ‘cooperation’ was included as a state subject in 1919.
- The cooperatives are geared towards benefiting the chunk of Indian peoplee. about 65 per cent of the country’s population.
- According to the Co-operative Societies Act, 1912, at least 10 persons aged above 18 years with common economic objectives, like farming, weaving, consuming, etc. can form a cooperative society.
- The various kinds of cooperatives in India include consumers’ cooperative societies, which seek to protect the interest of general consumers by making goods available at reasonable rates.
- The producers’ cooperative societies protect the interest of small producers by enabling access to raw materials, tools and equipment, machinery, etc.
- The 97th Constitutional Amendment Act of 2011 gave a constitutional status and protection to co-operative societies.
- It made the following three changes in the constitution:
- It made the right to form co-operative societies a fundamental right (Article 191).
- It included a new Directive Principle of State Policy on promotion of cooperative societies (Article 43-B2).
- It added a new Part IX-B in the Constitution which is entitled “The Cooperative Societies” (Articles 243-ZH to 243-ZT).
- The Part IX-B of the constitution contains the following provisions with respect to the co-operative societies:
- Incorporation of Co-operative Societies: The state legislature may make provisions for the incorporation, regulation and winding-up of co-operative societies.
- Number and Term of Members of Board and its Office Bearers: The board shall consist of such number of directors as may be provided by the state legislature.
- The state legislature shall provide for the reservation of one seat for the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes and two seats for women on the board of every co-operative society having members from such a category of persons.
- The term of office of elected members of the board and its office bearers shall be five years from the date of election.
- Election of Members of Board: The election of a board shall be conducted before the expiry of the term of the board so as to ensure that the newly elected members assume office immediately.
- Supersession and Suspension of Board and Interim Management: No board shall be superseded or kept under suspension for a period exceeding six months.
- Audit of Accounts of Co-operative Societies: The state legislature may make provisions for the maintenance of accounts by the co-operative societies and the auditing of such accounts at least once in each financial year.
- Offences and Penalties: The state legislature may make provisions for the offences relating to the co-operative societies and penalties for such offences.
- Such a law shall include the commission or omission of the following acts as offences:
- A co-operative society willfully makes a false return or furnishes false information
- Any person willfully disobeys any summon, requisition or order issued under the State Act
- Any employer who, without sufficient cause, fails to pay to a co-operative society the amount deducted from its employee within a period of fourteen days
- Any officer who willfully fails to handover custody of books, accounts, documents, records, cash, security and other property belonging to a cooperative society to an authorised person
- Any person who adopts corrupt practices before, during or after the election of members of the board or office bearers
- Such a law shall include the commission or omission of the following acts as offences:
- It will help realise the vision of “Sahkar se Samriddhi”, which roughly translates as “Prosperity through Cooperation”.
- It is mandated to provide a separate administrative, legal and policy framework for strengthening the cooperative movement with a focus to help deepen cooperatives as a true people-based movement.
- It will streamline processes for ‘ease of doing business’ for cooperatives and enable development of multi-state cooperatives.
- The Constitution does not contain any specific procedure for the selection and appointment of the Chief Minister.
- Article 164 only says that the Chief Minister shall be appointed by the governor.
- It does not imply that the governor is free to appoint any one as the Chief Minister.
- The governor has to appoint the leader of the majority party in the state legislative assembly as the Chief Minister.
- The Constitution does not require that a person must prove his majority in the legislative assembly before he is appointed as the Chief Minister.
- A person who is not a member of the state legislature can be appointed as Chief Minister for six months, within which time, he should be elected to the state legislature, failing which he ceases to be the Chief Minister.
- The Constitution provides that the Chief Minister may be a member of any of the two Houses of a state legislature.
- The term of the Chief Minister is not fixed and he holds office during the pleasure of the governor.
- The Chief Minister cannot be dismissed by the governor as long as he enjoys the majority support in the legislative assembly.
- Article 163: There shall be a council of ministers with the Chief Minister as the head to aid and advise the governor on the exercise of his functions.
- Article 164: The Chief Minister shall be appointed by the governor and other ministers shall be appointed by the governor on the advise of the Chief Minister;
- The ministers shall hold office during the pleasure of the governor; and
- The council of ministers shall be collectively responsible to the legislative assembly of the state.
- Article 167: It shall be the duty of the Chief Minister:
- To communicate to the governor of the state all decisions of the council of ministers relating to the administration of the affairs of the state and proposals for legislation;
- To furnish such information relating to the administration of the affairs of the state and proposals for legislation as the governor may call for; and
- If the governor so requires, to submit for the consideration of the council of ministers any matter on which a decision has been taken by a minister but which has not been considered by the council.
- For Afghanistan: An emboldened Taliban insurgency is making battlefield gains, and prospective peace talks are stalled.
- It is feared that once foreign forces are gone, Afghanistan will dive deeper into civil war.
- For the United States and its coalition partners: All combat troops and 20 years of accumulated war materiel will soon be gone.
- The head of US Central Command will have authority until September 2021 to defend Afghan forces against the Taliban.
- For India: The prospects are largely uncertain as its relationship with the alternate regime is precarious, if not in complete tatters.
- New Delhi, which has tacitly been supporting a West-installed democratic government against the Taliban rule is suddenly on unchartered plains.
- India is the largest regional donor in Afghanistan, with pledges of around $3 billion and the Taliban often attacks these foreign-backed projects such as power plants, highways and other such installations.
- The US troops will no longer be there to train or advise Afghan forces inside Afghanistan.
- An unusually large US security contingent of 650 troops, based at the US Embassy compound, will protect American diplomats and potentially help secure the Kabul international airport.
- Turkey is expected to continue its current mission of providing airport security but the head of US Central Command will have authority until September 2021 to defend Afghan forces against the Taliban.
- It is also possible that the US military may be asked to assist any large-scale evacuation of Afghans seeking Special Immigrant Visas.
- The White House is concerned that Afghans who helped the US war effort and are thereby vulnerable to Taliban retribution, not be left behind.
- The nation which appears to have the maximum gain from the ensuing political and security instability is neighbourly Pakistan.
- Pakistan senses that it will be able to exercise a hold on Afghanistan’s internal affairswith a pliant regime in power in Kabul.
- It hopes that its traditional strategy of keeping India out of any reckoning in Afghan affairs will bear fruition.
- The ISI would already be planning for out-of-work terrorists from Afghanistan to be redeployed for terrorist acts inside Jammu and Kashmir.
- India’s soft-power forays in Afghanistan have been widely appreciated except by Pakistan.
- India followed a consistent policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan and having generously provided humanitarian aid, infrastructural development in many fields, educational, medical, and power generation assistance.
- India has made it clear that any resolution of Afghanistan must be “Afghan-led, Afghan-ruled, and Afghan-controlled”.
- India must open up channels of communication with moderate elements in the Taliban with the likely changing power equations in Kabul.
- India should follow not only a policy which furthers its national interests but must also have moralistic and human overtones to it.
- India should strongly strive for a UN peacekeeping force to be stationed in Afghanistan which ensures the prevention of a civil war from breaking out there.
- India must also endeavour to get Russia, Iran, and the US on the same page to conceive and implement a suitable regional policy for the strife-torn Afghanistan.
- India must continue with its all-encompassing humanitarian assistance to the Kabul government.
Recently, the Chhattisgarh government is facing objections from its own legislators, including a minister, to its plan to further decrease the area of the proposed Lemru Elephant Reserve.
- The government has proposed to decrease the area to 450 sq km as against the previous plan to stretch it to 3,287 sq km from the current 1,995 sq km.
- The proposed Lemru elephant reserve is a natural elephant habitat with very few human habitations and has been an elephant bearing area from ancient times.
- The final area proposed for the reserve is 1,995.48 sq km, significantly higher than the 450 sq km proposed earlier.
- The reserve is in a coal-bearing area with an estimated value of Rs 100,000 crore.
- The identified reserve area has very good availability of elephant food and has approximately 27 perennial rivulets of water present inside the forest for the elephants.
- The people dwelling in the forests of Surguja, Korba, Jashpur and Raigarh districts in Northern Chhattisgarh have been witnessing the migration of elephants into their forests.
- The rampant open cast mining in Jharkhand had destroyed elephant habitats, which ultimately pushing the pachyderms to the rich forest regions in North Chhattisgarh.
- The mining has driven the elephants in search of new forest territories, which takes them through human-dominated habitats, aggravating incidents of human-elephant interactions that end in injury or death.
- The human-elephant conflict is a symptom of inappropriate land-use practices such as diversion of forest for development and mining activities.
- It leads to loss or fragmentation of elephant habitats and traditional routes which leads to loss of food and water for the elephants in the forest.
- The issue of human-elephant conflict was part of the election discourse in at least the areas that are severely impacted by the human-elephant interaction.
- It is important to restore elephant corridors from the pressure of mining activities in the forest and to mitigate human-elephant interactions in the state.
- It is recommended to adopt an integrated land use planning and emphasis of the state governments should be to take appropriate steps to secure and restore corridors.
- It is a browsable online database of GENomic Variants of Oral Cancer and is a free resource.
- It is a comprehensive, flexible database framework, developed with an aim to allow potential users to access, query, browse and download clinically relevant somatic and germline variation data from Indian oral cancer patients.
- It contains:
- 24 million somatic and germline variants derived from whole exome sequences of 100 Indian oral cancer patients and whole genome sequences of 5 oral cancer patients from India;
- Somatic variation data from 220 patient samples drawn from the USA and analyzed by TCGA-HNSCC project; and
- Manually curated variation data of 118 patients from recently published peer-reviewed publications
- It has a built-in powerful search engine alongwith a catalogue of genomic variants.
- It is first of its kind database in the world.
- It also allows a reasonable extent of statistical and bioinformatic analysis to be carried out online, including identifying variants in associated altered pathways in oral cancer.
- It will be updated annually with variation data from new oral cancer patients from different regions of India and Southeast Asia.
- It will store variant calls from various studies that uses massively parallel sequencing to generate genome-scale data.
- It has the potential to support advances in oral cancer research.
- It will be a major step in moving forward from simply cataloguing variants to gain insight into their significance.
- It ranked top countries in the world (excluding India) where All India Radio Live-streams on News On Air App are most popular.
- United States continues to occupy the top spot in the ranking.
- Fiji has jumped from 5th position to 2nd, while Saudi Arabia has made a comeback in top 10.
- Kuwait and Germany are new entrants, while France and New Zealand are no more in top 10.
- The All India Radio’s Telugu and Tamil live-stream services are popular in United States, while AIR Punjabi service is popular in United Kingdom.
- The AIR News 24*7has moved one position up from Rank 7 to 6, while AIR Tamil has slipped from spot 6 to 10.
- The News On Air Global Top 10 streams are Vividh Bharati National, FM Gold Delhi, FM Rainbow Delhi, AIR Malayalam, AIR Chennai Rainbow, News 24x7, AIR Punjabi, AIR Kodaikanal, Asmita Mumbai and AIR Tamil.
- The News On Air Top Countries (Rest of world) are United States, Fiji, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Germany.
- In the latest Rankings of top cities in India, Bhopal is the new entry in the ranking whereas Lucknow has missed out in top 10 rankings.
- Chennai has displaced Hyderabad to take the third spot and Hyderabad slides to number 4.
- Pune and Bengaluru have retained their first and second positions respectively.
- In major changes in rankings of top AIR Streams in India, AIR Pune has moved 3 positions up from rank 7 to rank 4.
- FM Rainbow Delhi has slipped from 5th to 9th position.
- FM Rainbow Kochi is the new entrant, while FM Rainbow Mumbai is no more in the top 10.
- The News On Air Top 10 Indian Cities are Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Ernakulam, Bhopal, Jaipur and Patna.
- It is a part of the ongoing deployment to the Mediterranean Sea of INS Tabar.
- The exercise was held between INS Tabar of India and ITS Antonio Marceglia of Italy.
- The exercise was held at Tyrrhenian Sea.
- It covered a wide range of naval operations including air defence procedures, replenishment at sea, communication drills and cross deck helo operations by day and night.
- It was mutually beneficial in enhancing interoperability and towards consolidating combined operations against maritime threats.
- It is aimed at enhancing interoperability and facilitating exchange of best practiceswith partner navies in the maritime domain.
INS Tabar
- It is a Talwar-class stealth Frigat
- e built for the Indian Navy in Russia.
- It is equipped with a versatile range of weapons and sensors.
- It is a part of the Indian Navy's Western Fleet which is based in Mumbai under Western Naval Command.
- It was commissioned in 2004 in Kaliningrad, Russia.
- It is located along the western shoreline of Italy and is considered part of the larger Mediterranean Sea.
- It covers an area of approximately 106,000 square miles.
- It is situated over the boundary between the Eurasian and African tectonic plates.
- It is bordered by Italy to the east, Islands of Corsica, which is a French territory, and Sardinia, which is an Italian territory to the
- The Ligurian Sea meets the Tyrrhenian Sea along its northwest corner.
- The southeastern border is defined by the island of Sicily and the "toe" area of Italy's boot.
- The southwestern edge of the sea runs into the Mediterranean Sea.
- It derives its name from the Tyrrhenian people, a non-Greek people largely considered Sea People.
- It is a Geographical Indication (GI) certified variety of wheat.
- It received the Geographical Indication (GI) status in 2011.
- It is grown mostly across Bhal region of Gujarat which includes districts of Ahmadabad, Anand, Kheda, Bhavanagar, Surendranagar and
- It has high protein content and is sweet in taste.
- Its unique characteristic is that it is grown in the rainfed condition without irrigationand cultivated in around two lakh hectares of agricultural land in Gujarat.
- In 2020-21, the wheat exports from India witnessed a significant growth of 808 % to Rs 4034 crore from Rs 444 crore reported in the previous fiscal.
- In US dollar terms, the wheat exports rose by 778% to $ 549 million in 2020-21.
- India exported substantial quantity of grain to seven new countries i.e. Yemen, Indonesia, Bhutan, Philippines, Iran, Cambodia and Myanmar during 2020-21.
- It is a sign used on products that have a specific geographical origin and possess qualities or a reputation that are due to that origin.
- A sign must identify a product as originating in a given place in order to function as a GI.
- The TRIPS prescribes minimum standards of protection of GIs and additional protection for wines and spirits.
- India has taken legislative measures by enacting the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999.
- It defines Geographical Indications as an indication which identifies such goods as agricultural goods, natural goods or manufactured goods as originating, or manufactured in the territory of a country, or a region or locality in that territory.
- An application for the registration of a GI is to be made to the Registrar of Geographical Indications in the form prescribed under the Gi Act, 1999.
- A Geographical Indication is registered for a period of 10 years and the registration may be renewed from time to time for a period of 10 years at a time
POSTED ON 08-07-2021 BY ADMIN
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