October 14th, 2020 PIB:- Download PDF Here

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
2. MoU between India and Australia
3. Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM)
4. STARS Project
5. Air Quality Early Warning System
6. Gov Tech - Thon 2020
7. Operation Greens
8. Thalassemia Bal Sewa Yojna
9. International Solar Alliance (ISA)

1. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Context:

PM to release commemorative coin of Rs 75 denomination to mark the 75^th anniversary of FAO.

Details:

• 16^th October 2020 marks the 75^th anniversary of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

India and FAO:

• Indian Civil Service Officer Dr. Binay Ranjan Sen was the Director-General of FAO from 1956-1967.
• India’s proposals for the International Year of Pulses in 2016 and the International Year of Millets 2023 have also been endorsed by FAO.

Know more about FAO in the linked article.

Additional information:

• Recently, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) developed 17 biofortified varieties of eight crops.
• This will have up to a three-fold increase in nutritional value.
• The details of the fortified crops are:
  • Rice varieties: CR Dhan 315 has high zinc.
  • Wheat varieties: HI 1633 is rich in protein, iron and zinc; HD 3298 is rich in protein and iron; DBW 303 and DDW 48 are rich in proteins.
  • Ladhowal Quality Protein Maize Hybrid 1, 2 and 3 are rich in lysine and tryptophan.
  • Millets: CFMV1 and 2 of finger millet are rich in calcium, iron and zinc; CLMV1 of little millet is rich in iron and zinc.
  • Pusa Mustard 32 has low erucic acid.
  • Groundnut: Girnar 4 and 5 are fortified with enhanced oleic acid.
  • Yam varieties: Sri Neelima and DA 340 are enhanced zinc, iron and anthocyanin content.
• These varieties, along with other food ingredients, will transform the normal Indian thali into nutri-thali.
• These varieties have been developed by utilizing the local landraces and farmer’s varieties.
• The high zinc rice has been developed from landraces of Assam rice collected from the Garo hills and those of finger millets from Gujarat collections of Dang district.
• The production of biofortified crop varieties will be upscaled and linked with government programmes like the mid-day meal, Anganwadi, etc. to reduce malnutrition and make India Kuposhan Mukta (malnutrition-free) through naturally enriched food ingredients.
• This will also usher in higher incomes for farmers and will open new avenues of entrepreneurship development.

ICAR’s NARI:

• ICAR has started Nutri-Sensitive Agricultural Resources and Innovations (NARI) programme for promoting family farming linking agriculture to nutrition, nutri-smart villages for enhancing nutritional security.
• Under this, location-specific nutrition garden models are being developed and promoted by Krishi Vigyan Kendras to ensure access to locally available, healthy and diversified diet with adequate macro and micronutrients.
• ICAR is an autonomous organisation under the Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India.
• Established in 1929, it is the apex body for co-ordinating, guiding and managing research and education in agriculture including horticulture, fisheries and animal sciences in the entire country.
• With 101 ICAR institutes and 71 agricultural universities spread across the country, it is one of the largest national agricultural systems in the world.
• It is headquartered in New Delhi.

2. MoU between India and Australia

Context:

Cabinet approves MoU between India and Australia.

Details:

• The MoU signed between the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga rejuvenation, India and Managing Aquifer Recharge and Sustaining Groundwater use through village-level intervention (MARVI) PARTNERS, Australia in October 2019.
• The MoU has been signed to promote cooperation in surface and groundwater training, education and research to achieve water security for agricultural, urban, industrial and environmental purposes.

3. Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM)

Context:

Cabinet approves a special package for Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh under DAY-NRLM.

Read more on the DAY-NRLM in the linked article.

4. STARS Project

Context:

Cabinet approves the implementation of the STARS project.

About STARS Project:

• The Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States (STARS) program would be under the National Education Policy 2020.
• The central idea of the initiative is to enhance the learning outcomes in schools and revolutionise school learning process.
• The project is partly funded by the World Bank.
• It would be implemented as a new Centrally Sponsored Scheme under the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education (MOE).
• The scheme will facilitate enhanced classroom layouts, developmentally appropriate teaching-learning material, academic support systems, parental engagement strategies, and administrative & academic monitoring for early education.
• A National Assessment Centre – PARAKH will be established for continuous tracking of learning, conceptual assessments, and data-driven decision making leading to examination reforms.
• The STARS program will also focus on the training module of teachers, by “bolstering need-based teacher training, peer learning, revamp in-service professional development, & institute effective, transparent systems for performance management.” The program will also include career counselling and in-school vocational education along with internships with market relevance.
• Keeping in mind the goal of NEP 2020, STARS program will also train students in soft skills and STEM/STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math) related skills.
• The project covers 6 States namely Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Odisha.
  • The identified States will be supported tor various interventions for improving the quality of education.
• Besides this project, it is also envisaged to implement a similar ADB funded project in 5 states namely Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Assam.
• All states will partner with one other state for sharing their experiences and best practices.
• The STARS project seeks to support the states in developing, implementing, evaluating and improving interventions with direct linkages to improved education outcomes and school to work transition strategies for improved labour market outcomes.
• The Project envisions improving the overall monitoring and measurement activities in the Indian School Education System through interventions.

Two components of the STARS Project:

1. At the national level, the project envisages the following interventions:
   • To strengthen MOE’s national data systems to capture robust and authentic data on retention, transition and completion rates of students.
   • To support MOE in improving states’ PGI scores by incentivizing their governance reform agenda through SIG (State Incentive Grants).
   • To support the strengthening of learning assessment systems.
   • To support MOE’s efforts to establish a National Assessment Centre (PARAKH).
   • To have a Contingency Emergency Response Component (CERC) which would enable it to be more responsive to any natural, man-made and health disasters.
2. At the State level, the project envisages:
   • Strengthening Early Childhood Education and Foundational Learning
   • Improving Learning Assessment Systems
   • Strengthening classroom instruction and remediation through teacher development and school leadership
   • Governance and Decentralized Management for Improved Service Delivery
   • Strengthening Vocational education in schools through mainstreaming, career guidance and counselling, internships and coverage of out of school children

5. Air Quality Early Warning System

Context:

IMD operationalises Advanced high-resolution Air Quality Early Warning System for Delhi and India.

Details:

• The new model that has been made operational for Delhi is called ENFUSER (ENvironmental information FUsion SERvice).
• It will identify air pollution hotspots and pollution up to street level.
• It is a high-resolution city scale model.
• The specialty of the ENFUSER is the high utilization of measurement data such as air quality observations, a detailed description of the road network, buildings, land-use information, high-resolution satellite images, ground elevation and population data.
• The ENFUSER natively taps into the operative IMD’s regional SILAM access point.
  • System for Integrated modelling of Atmospheric composition (SILAM) is another air quality forecast model of the IMD that has been extensively validated against observations over the Indian region.
• The ENFUSER results are being evaluated with the satellite measurements and observations, and the model is found to capture the hotspots over Delhi very well.
• SILAM and ENFUSER have been developed in technical collaboration with the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI).

6. Gov Tech – Thon 2020

Context:

National Informatics Centre (NIC), IEEE Computer Society and Oracle to organise Gov Tech- Thon 2020 from 30 Oct 2020 to 1 Nov 2020 under the aegis of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

Details:

• Gov Tech-Thon 2020 is a pan India 36 hours virtual Hackathon.
• The virtual hackathon is open to students, working professionals, start-ups, freelance technologists, faculty, and other IT service firms in India.
• During the hackathon, participants will receive mentorship and advice from technical experts from NIC, IEEE and Oracle, as well as senior domain experts from the Ministries of Agriculture, Education and Transport Departments, Government of India.
• Participating teams will have access to the latest tools from Oracle, Oracle Autonomous Database, built-in and easy-to-use cloud security, and compute – to help them develop prototypes that are practical and scalable.
• Additionally, they will be able to leverage open source technologies that bring benefits of high performance, reliability and data security.

About the National Informatics Centre (NIC):

• NIC, established in 1976, is an attached office of the MeitY.
• It provides ICT and e-Governance support to the Government.
• NIC spearheaded “Informatics-Led-Development” by implementing ICT applications in social and public administration and facilitates electronic delivery of services to the government (G2G), business (G2B), citizen (G2C) and government employee (G2E).
• NIC, through its ICT Network, “NICNET”, has institutional linkages with all the Ministries/Departments of the Central Government, 37 State Governments/Union Territories, and about 720+ District Administrations of India.

7. Operation Greens

Context:

50% subsidy provided under the Operation Greens scheme.

Know more about Operation Greens in the linked article.

8. Thalassemia Bal Sewa Yojna

Context:

Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare launched the second phase of “Thalassemia Bal Sewa Yojna” for the underprivileged Thalassemic patients.

About Thalassemia Bal Sewa Yojna:

• Launched in 2017, this scheme is a Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation (HSCT) program that aims to provide a one-time cure opportunity for Haemoglobinopathies like Thalassaemia and Sickle Cell Disease for patients who have a matched family donor.
• It is funded by Coal India CSR.
• The CSR initiative was targeted to provide financial assistance to a total of 200 patients by providing a package cost not exceeding Rs. 10 lakhs per HSCT.

Thalassemia:

• Thalassemia is the name for a group of inherited conditions that affect haemoglobin in the blood.
• People with thalassemia produce either no or too little haemoglobin, which is used by red blood cells to carry oxygen around the body.
• This can make them very anaemic (tired, short of breath and pale).
• The patient cannot make enough RBCs and needs to be supplemented with RBC transfusions every 2-3 weeks to stay healthy and to survive.
• It mainly affects people of Mediterranean, South Asian, Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern origin.
• There are different types of thalassemia, which can be divided into alpha and beta thalassemia. Beta thalassemia major is the most severe type.
• Other types include beta thalassemia intermedia, alpha thalassemia major and haemoglobin H disease.
• Symptoms:
  • Anaemia – severe tiredness, weakness, shortness of breath, pounding, fluttering or irregular heartbeats (palpitations) and pale skin caused by the lack of haemoglobin.
  • Too much iron in the body – this is caused by the regular blood transfusions used to treat anaemia and can cause problems with the heart, liver and hormone levels if untreated.
  • Some people may also have delayed growth, weak and fragile bones (osteoporosis), and reduced fertility.
• Thalassemia is caused by faulty genes that affect the production of haemoglobin.
  • A child can only be born with thalassemia if they inherit these faulty genes from both parents.
• The main treatments for thalassemia are blood transfusions and chelation therapy (treatment with medicine to remove the excess iron from the body).
• The only possible cure for thalassemia is a stem cell or bone marrow transplant, but this is not done very often because of the risks involved.

Thalassemia in India:

• In India, every year 10,000 children are being born with thalassemia which approximately accounts for 10% of the total world incidence of thalassemia-affected children and one in eight of thalassemia carriers live in India.

9. International Solar Alliance (ISA)

Context:

India and France re-elected as President and Co-President of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) at its third assembly.

Know more about the International Solar Alliance in the linked article.

Read previous PIB here.

October 14th, 2020, PIB:- Download PDF Here