Current Affairs May 11

Horticulture sector

Why in News?

  • Keeping in view the huge potential and role of the horticulture sector in increasing farmer’s income, the Government of India has allocated Rs. 2250 Crore for development of horticulture sector during 2021-22.
  • For ‘Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture’ (MIDH), a centrally sponsored scheme.
  • The Ministry is implementing MIDH with effect from 2014-15, for realizing the potential of the horticulture sector covering fruits, vegetables, root and tuber crops, mushrooms, spices, flowers, aromatic plants, coconut, cashew and cocoa.
  • Government intervention in the horticulture sector has led to the situation wherein horticulture production has surpassed the agriculture production in the country. During the year 2019-20, the country recorded its highest ever horticulture production.
  • MIDH has played a significant role in increasing the area under horticulture crops. Area and production during the years 2014 – 15 to 2019 – 20 has increased by 9% and 14% respectively.

PIB

 

 

Puducherry becomes ‘Har Ghar Jal’ UT

Why in News?

  • Puducherry has become ‘Har Ghar Jal’ UT by ensuring that every rural home in the Union Territory gets a household tap connection.
  • With this, the UT becomes the fourth State/UT after Goa, Telangana and Andaman & Nicobar Islands to provide assured tap water supply to every rural home under Union Government’s flagship programme, Jal Jeevan Mission.
  • Jal Jeevan Mission is being implemented in partnership with States/ UTs to provide safe tap water in adequate quantity of prescribed quality on regular and long-term basis to every rural home by 2024.

PIB

 

 

‘Connected Commerce: Creating a Roadmap for a Digitally Inclusive Bharat’

Why in News?

  • NITI Aayog and Mastercard released a report titled ‘Connected Commerce: Creating a Roadmap for a Digitally Inclusive Bharat’. The report identifies challenges in accelerating digital financial inclusion in India and provides recommendations for making digital services accessible to its 1.3 billion citizens.
  • Based on five roundtable discussions held in October and November 2020, the report highlights key issues and opportunities,with inferences and recommendations on policy and capacity building across agriculture, small business (MSMEs), urban mobility and cyber security.

Key issues addressed during the knowledge series were:

  • Acceleration of digital financial inclusion for underserved sections of Indian society.
  • Enabling SMEs to ‘get paid, get capital and get digital’ and access customers, and ensure their continued resilience.
  • Policy and technological interventions to foster trust and increase cyber resilience.
  • Unlocking the promise of digitization in India’s agriculture sector.
  • The essential elements of a digital roadmap to make transit accessible for all citizens.

Key recommendations in the report include:

  • Strengthening the payment infrastructure to promote a level playing field for NBFCs and banks.
  • Digitizing registration and compliance processes and diversifying credit sources to enable growth opportunities for MSMEs.
  • Building information sharing systems,including a ‘fraud repository’, and ensuring that online digital commerce platforms carry warnings to alert consumers to the risk of frauds.
  • Enabling agricultural NBFCs to access low-cost capital and deploy a ‘phygital’ (physical + digital) model for achieving better long-term digital outcomes. Digitizing land records will also provide a major boost to the sector.
  • To make city transit seamlessly accessible to all with minimal crowding and queues, leveraging existing smartphones and contactless cards, and aim for an inclusive, interoperable, and fully open system such as that of the London ‘Tube’.

PIB

 

Lunar Mission

Why in News?

  • SpaceX will launch the “DOGE-1 Mission to the Moon” in the first quarter of next year, with Elon Musk’s commercial rocket company accepting the meme-inspired cryptocurrency dogecoin as payment.

What is Dogecoin?

  • The digital token was created in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer as a faster but “fun” alternative to Bitcoin.
  • It was started as a satire on the numerous fraud crypto coins that had sprung up at the time, and takes its name and logo from a Shiba Inu meme that was viral several years ago.
  • Unlike Bitcoins, whose maximum possible number is fixed at 21 million (a figure that is estimated to be reached by 2040), Dogecoin numbers do not have an upper limit, and there are already more than 100 billion in existence.

THE HINDU

 

 

Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for children

Why in News?

  • S. regulators authorised Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for use in children as young as 12, widening the country’s inoculation program as vaccination rates have slowed significantly.
  • The vaccine has been available under an emergency use authorisation (EUA) to people as young as 16 in the United States.
  • Most children with COVID-19 only develop mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. However, children are not without risk of becoming seriously ill, and they can still spread the virus.

THE HINDU

 

 

China reports population growth closer to zero in 2020

Why in News?

  • China’s population growth is falling closer to zero as fewer couples have children, the government announced, adding to strains on an aging society with a shrinking workforce.
  • The population rose by 72 million over the past decade to 1.411 billion in 2020.
  • Annual growth averaged 0.53%, decelerating from the previous decade.
  • Chinese leaders have enforced birth limits since 1980 to restrain population growth but worry the working age population is falling too fast, disrupting efforts to create a prosperous economy.

THE HINDU

 

 

Indian immigrants in U.K.

Why in News?

  • Children born to Indians staying illegally in the United Kingdom will be granted emergency travel documents to return along with parents based on birth certificates issued by the British authorities, according to a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the two countries.
  • British citizenship is not acquired by birth alone, there are a combination of factors, including the year of birth and parents’ circumstances.

Revised pact

  • The MoU, which has been in the works for the past three years, has been revised after India declined a proposal by the U.K. to use DNA sampling to establish the nationality of document-less illegal immigrants who the U.K suspects to be Indians.
  • According to a earlier estimate by the U.K government, there are around 1,00,000 Indians who entered illegally or are overstaying their visa in the U.K.. India has contested the numbers saying the figure is not more than 2,000.
  • As per the fresh MoU, the time frame to verify the nationality of a person who holds an Indian passport and who has overstayed the visa will be not later than 30 days on the receipt of request from the U.K authorities.
  • Instances where a person has acknowledged that he is an Indian but does not have a passport or a ‘Visa Overstayer’ document, the time limit to establish the nationality will be 90 days.
  • The U.K will also have to follow the same procedures if a British national is found staying illegally in India.
  • The MoU will continue for seven years until terminated by either participant giving three months’ prior written notice. It will be revived automatically after seven years.

THE HINDU

 

 

Rani Rudrama Devi

Why in News?

  • Two rare sculptural portraits of Kakatiya queen Rudrama Devi were unearthed and identified by an archaeologist on the premises of Sangameswara Swamy Temple at Teerthala village in Khammam district recently.
  • Sangameswara temple is panchakuta – a five-unit marvellous shrine monument consisting of wonderful architectural features and requisite components for the comfortable worship of divinities.

About Sculpture

  • The sculpture indicates that Rudrama Devi visited the Sangamesvara temple at the time of its sanctification.
  • While the second sculptural panel is in a rectangular frame representing arrival or the Rudrama Devi on a royal elephant to this temple site, and probably a provincial chief under her control is welcoming her by stopping the running elephant with his hands.
  • As per the Ganapati Deva`s Malkapuram inscription, Chaitra Bahula Ashtami is her birthday. This year it has fallen on May 4.
  • Teerthala is a non-descriptive village popular for the historical temple dedicated to Sangameshwara- Shiva, the temple which was constructed during the reign of Rani Rudrama Devi on the banks of Akeru river.
  • The place is venerated as ‘Triveni sangama sthali’ confluence of three rivers – Akeru, Munneru and Buggeru.

THE HINDU

 

 

Covid-19 after vaccination

Why in News?

  • A small-scale study in healthcare workers at a private hospital in Delhi found that “breakthrough” infections occurred in 13.3% of them (about 1 in 7), with one requiring hospitalisation.

What are breakthrough cases?

  • People who get infected with Covid-19 even after getting a vaccine shot are known as “breakthrough cases”, implying that the infection has broken through the protection provided by the vaccine.

IE

 

 

Vaccination

Why in News?

  • Out of 250 candidate vaccines that were being developed, at least 10 have already been approved for emergency use in different parts of the world. Most of the first flush of approved vaccines were based on two technologies never used in humans earlier.
  • These include mRNA-based vaccines of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and the viral vector-based vaccines of Astra Zeneca/Oxford University, Sputnik V, and Coronavac of CanSino Biologics from China.
  • Vaccines based on the time-tested technology of using an inactivated virus include Covaxin of Bharat Biotech-ICMR, Janssen of Johnson and Johnson, and vaccines from Sinovac and Sinopharm from China.
  • All these are safe and efficacious in protecting from severe disease and death but not necessarily from infection. These are given as two jabs, with the exception of Janssen, a single-shot vaccine.
  • A DNA-based vaccine from Zydus Cadila in India, are in the final stages of development.

So many and yet shortage

  • First, with about seven billion people to be vaccinated worldwide, with mostly two jabs each, the demand is obviously very high.
  • Second, the rich nations have behaved as they always do. More than 80% of available vaccines have been ordered and/or already stocked by a few countries representing only about 20% of the world population. Even with a WHO-led effort like COVAX, only about 1% of the African population has received vaccines so far.
  • On the other hand, approval for Sputnik V was recently denied in Brazil. Vaccines of China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm are not yet approved in western countries.
  • Efficacious and safe vaccines, regardless of their origin, need to be critically but quickly examined and added to the pool.

IE

 

 

Covid-19 line on Everest

Why in News?

  • To prevent coronavirus transmission at the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain, China is planning to erect a “line of separation” at the top to prevent mingling with climbers ascending from Nepal, where a wave of the pandemic is currently surging.
  • Everest is on the border of Nepal and China, and can be climbed from both sides.
  • In December, the two countries had jointly announced the “new” elevation of the mountain at 8,848.86 metres above sea level — 86 cm higher than what was recognised since 1954 by the Survey of India.

What is China planning to do on Mount Everest?

  • Nepal, whose tourism sector has been badly hit by the global crisis, has so far not cancelled the spring climbing season, which lasts from April to June before the monsoon rains begin.
  • From its side, China has not allowed any foreign tourists to scale the mountain since the start of the pandemic.
  • A small team of Tibetan climbing guides will ascend Everest and set up the “line of separation” at the summit to stop any contact between mountaineers from both sides of the peak, but did not specify how it would do so.

IE

 

 

China’s Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine

Why in News?

  • Recently, the WHO listed China-made Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, implying that the vaccine can now be used in immunisation drives worldwide. The vaccine is produced by the Beijing Bio-Institute of Biological Products Co Ltd, which is a subsidiary of China National Biotec Group (CNBG).
  • Sinopharm is the first non-Western vaccine to get WHO backing and will possibly be used for the COVAX programme, under which vaccines are supplied to low and middle-income countries.

How does this vaccine work?

  • The Sinopharm vaccine is an inactivated coronavirus vaccine, like Covaxin developed by Bharat Biotech India (BBIL) in collaboration with the National Institute of Virology (NIV).
  • Inactivated vaccines take the disease-carrying virus (in this case SARS-CoV-2) and kill it using heat, chemicals or radiation.
  • WHO notes that these vaccines take longer to make and might need two or three doses to be administered. The flu and polio vaccines use this approach as well.
  • Out of the major vaccines being used in the world, Sinopharm, Covaxin and Sinovac (also developed by China) are the only ones that use inactivated virus.
  • Others such as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are mRNA vaccines, whereas Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sputnik and Johnson and Johnson’s single-dose vaccines use a viral vector.

IE