28 September 2018: UPSC Exam PIB Summary & Analysis

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Twenty Embryo Transfer Technology (ETT) centres

• Twenty Embryo Transfer Technology Centres are being established in the country and a proposal of 19 centres has been approved so far.
• This was stated by the Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shri Radha Mohan Singh at the foundation laying ceremony of Embryo transfer Technology ceremony of Embryo Transfer Technology (ETT) centre in the Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (BALF), Uruilikanchan, Pune.
• 3000 high genetic merit bulls of indigenous bovine breeds are being produced from these centres. Two of these centres are to be set up in Nagpur and Pune in Maharashtra.
• The Minister observed that agriculture and dairy business complement each other for the social and economic upliftment of cattle farmers.
• To achieve this objective, it is essential to have good quality livestock breed in order to increase production. Under the Rashtriya Gokul Mission, 10 semen centres have been identified for the production of Sex Sorted Semen for the production of more female animals.
• INDUSCHIP has been developed for genomic selection of indigenous breeds and 6000 dairy animals have been genetically evaluated using INDUSCHIP.
• Under the Pashu Sanjivni component of the scheme, 9 crore milch animals are being identified using UID (Unique Identification Device).

Indo-Uzbek Business Meet

• The Minister of Commerce & Industry and Civil Aviation, Suresh Prabhu, said that India is committed for a strong economic partnership with Uzbekistan.
• The services sector has huge potential for boosting economic growth and employment generation and will play an important role in Indo-Uzbekistan partnership.
• Trade relations between India and Uzbekistan are governed by the Agreement on Trade and Economic Cooperation signed in May 1993. This agreement provides for mutual MFN treatment, promotion of economic, industrial, scientific and technical cooperation, including active participation of small and medium-sized enterprises in bilateral economic cooperation.
• India and Uzbekistan signed an Agreement on Avoidance of Double Taxation in 1993, and for Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection in May 1999. The Inter-Governmental Commission (IGC) on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technological Cooperation has met ten times.
• India’s exports to Uzbekistan includes pharmaceutical products, mechanical equipment, vehicles and optical instruments.
• India imports fruits and vegetables, services, fertilizers and lubricants from Uzbekistan.

Parakram Parv

• Parakram Parv is being celebrated to highlight the valour and accomplishments of the Indian Army.
• To mark the second anniversary of the Surgical strikes, carried out by the Indian army, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today inaugurated the Parakram Parv at the Combined Commanders’ Conference in Jodhpur.
• The Parakram Parv, an exhibition, will commemorate the second anniversary of the surgical strikes and is being organised by the Konark Corps at the Jodhpur Military station.

Centre of Excellence for Data Analytics 

• Union Minister of Electronics & IT, Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad today inaugurated Centre of Excellence for Data Analytics (CEDA) in New Delhi.
• Minister of State for Electronics & IT  Sh. S.S. Ahluwalia said that data analysis has been traditionally done since the time of Kautaliya for effective decision making, but today with great capabilities achieved in Information and communication technologies Data analysis can help in effective and efficient governance.
• Centre of Excellence for Data Analytics (CEDA) will aid in fast-tracking the adoption of advanced analytics in government.

CEDA aims to:

• Be a focal point and centre of expertise in data analytics for government and public sector

It aims at providing following services to Government:

1. Data Quality Assurance Services –. The centre will provide data profiling tools and techniques and necessary expertise to analyse the data for quality issues. While data cleaning shall be done for making the data ready for analytical use, recommendations shall also be given in order to help the department take necessary actions to further improve their data collection process.
2. Custom-built Data Analytics Solutions – Build analytic solutions that are specific to a particular problem which may relate to a single or a combination of departments.
3. Develop reusable assets – This will be one of the many USPs of the centre. CEDA will build Data Analytic solutions that address a generic data analytics problem that is prevalent across departments or States. Such a solution will then be made available to other departments/states as a pre-built analytic solution that can be operationalized for the new States at a cost effective and a much faster rate.
4. Knowledge Management – CEDA will implement knowledge repository to collect learnings from across projects and share best practices across initiatives and will ensure usage of best practices in across the government.
5. Capacity Building and Self Service Analytics – Besides creating the analytics solutions for the government departments, the centre’s focus would also be to train and enable the departments to do self-service analytics by simplifying the data in a manner in which an administrator can use it with minimum technical support.
6. Change Management – CEDA will help ministries in assessing impact from the analytics solutions and help in understanding changes to organizational roles and responsibilities

DIGIVAARTA Launched

• DigiVaarta has been launched to spread awareness amongst the common public on digital payment topics such as BHIM, Aadhar Enabled Payment Systems (AePS), Bharat QR, and Security Do’s and Don’ts to begin with.

Aim:

• To enable citizen government dialogue and engage citizens in educational and outreach programmes. With the mobile phone as its interface, DigiVaarta’s content and communication style is interactive and adaptive.
• The same message can be used to interact with both smart phone and feature phone users.
• It can engage the user over multiple channels in a 2-way interaction, using different content styles (stories, images, videos, discussions and polls) in different languages.

Locate Public Toilets on Google Maps

• The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, under the aegis of Swachh Bharat Mission – Urban (SBM – U), has partnered with Google to launch the Loo Review campaign to encourage all local guides in India to rate and review public toilets on Google Maps.
• 500+ cities in India with more than 30,000 toilets with the name of “SBM Toilet” are currently live on Google Maps.
• Objectives of the Swachh Bharat Mission – Urban (SBM – U) is to provide sanitation coverage through public toilet facilities across cities in India for achieving Open Defecation Free (ODF) status.
• With around 3400cities already having achieved ODF status, and other cities gearing up towards the same, there is now a need to ensure that the ODF status is sustained through continuous usage and proper maintenance of public toilets.

All India Radio Streaming Services on Amazon Alexa Smart Speakers

• Vividh Bharati and 14 other regional language streaming services of All India Radio will be streamed on Amazon Alexa.
• Archival assets of All India Radio will be made available in Amazon Alexa in near future.
• All India Radio will get an additional platform for global and domestic audiences and will cover all the shadow areas of the terrestrial broadcasting in the regional, headquarters and metro cities.
• Alexa would supplement All India Radio’s website and App.

SATAT initiative to promote Compressed Bio-Gas

Aim:

• Providing a Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation (SATAT) as a developmental effort that would benefit both vehicle-users as well as farmers and entrepreneurs.

Background

• Bio-gas is produced naturally through a process of anaerobic decomposition from waste / bio-mass sources like agriculture residue, cattle dung, sugarcane press mud, municipal solid waste, sewage treatment plant waste, etc.
• After purification, it is compressed and called CBG, which has pure methane content of over 95%. Compressed Bio-Gas is exactly similar to the commercially available natural gas in its composition and energy potential.
• Given the abundance of biomass in the country, Compressed Bio-Gas has the potential to replace CNG in automotive, industrial and commercial uses in the coming years.

Rail Heritage Digitisation Project

• The project is a landmark effort, first of its kind in this part of the globe, to showcase country’s Rail Heritage to National and International audience.
• Whenever we look at the evolution of the transport system in India, all these rich traditions, history and culture will play an important role in understanding how the Indian Railways has evolved.
• This project is a gift from the 13 Lakh Railways employees to the 130 crore citizens of India.
• 22 digital screens across different locations in India will be set up for showcasing this historic project.

Background:

• Railways in India started its journey on 16th April, 1853 between Bori bunder and Thane.
• Railways in India not only expanded to be one of the largest network in the world but also significantly contributed to social, technological and economic development of this country.

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