Daily Current Affairs for UPSC IAS: 29th May 2023

National Review Conference Of Department Of Social Justice, Empowerment:

National review conference of Department of Social Justice, Empowerment recently conducted in New Delhi.

• Two-day national review conference organised by the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment will be conducted in New Delhi recently.
• The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment said, the focus of this conference is to discuss the issue pertaining to the welfare schemes being implemented by the department for the marginalized section of the society including Scheduled Castes, Other Backward Classes, Senior Citizens and others.
• The National Review Conference will have deliberation on an overview of the schemes, highlighting best practice and innovations from States and Union Territories to establish better synergy between the States and Centre.

G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group Meeting:

The three day Anti-Corruption Working Group meeting under the G20 India Presidency concluded recently at the Tehri, Uttarakhand.

• Its primary goal is to prepare “comprehensive recommendations for consideration by leaders on how the G20 could continue to make practical and valuable contributions to international efforts to combat corruption”.
• The ACWG has led the G20 anti-corruption efforts coordinating the collective and national actions taken by its members.
• The ACWG actively works with the World Bank Group, the OECD, the UNODC, the IMF, the FATF, as well as with the Business 20 (B20) and the Civil Society 20 (C20).

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar Birth Anniversary:

PM Modi, Lok Sabha Speaker & various ministers pay floral tribute to Savarkar on his 140th birth anniversary.

• Born on 28th May in 1883 near Nasik in Maharashtra, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was popularly called Veer Savarkar.
• Veer Savarkar was a freedom fighter .
• He called 1857 revolt as the first war of independence.
• He founded the following Organizations: Abhinav Bharat Society and Free India Society.
• He was also a member of India House. He was not the founder of Hindu Mahasabha, but he did served as its president.
• He opposed the Quit India struggle in 1942, calling it a “Quit India but keep your army” movement.
• Savarkar endorsed the ideal of India as a Hindu Rashtra and is credited with developing the Hindu nationalist political ideology Hindutva.
• He wrote the book ”Joseph Mazzini- Biography and Politics”.
• He published “The Indian War of Independence” about the Indian rebellion of 1857.
• The airport at Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar’s capital has been named Veer Savarkar International Airport.

Rejuvenating Watersheds For Agricultural Resilience Through Innovative Development (REWARD) Program:

The Secretary, Department of Land Resources (DoLR), Government of India (GoI) Shri Ajay Tirkey reviewed the Implementation Support Mission of World Bank Assisted Rejuvenating Watersheds for Agricultural Resilience through Innovative Development (REWARD) program.

• REWARD is a World Bank assisted Watershed development program which is being implemented from 2021 to 2026.
• The Development Objectives of REWARD program is to “Strengthen capacities of National and State institutions to adopt improved watershed management for increasing farmers resilience and support value chains in selected watersheds of participating States”.
• The program is being implemented to introduce modern watershed practices in the Department of Land Resources in the Ministry of Rural Development and in the States of Karnataka and Odisha.
• The total budget outlay of REWARD program is USD 167.71 million over a program period of 4.5 years.
• At the central level, the scope of the REWARD program covers management, monitoring, communication and knowledge sharing functions by DoLR.
• At the State level, the REWARD program will be contiguous in scope to the WDC-PMKSY 2.0, and support implementation of key science-based activities and demonstrations which eventually aims at synergising broader perspective of WDC-PMKSY 2.0 in other States in India.

Phase VI Of Sagar Parikarma Yatra:

Union Minister for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying launches VI Phase of Sagar Parikarma Yatra in Anadaman on May 29, 2023.

• Sagar Parikrama is an initiative taken by Gxovernment of India.
• The aim is to resolve the issues of the fishers, other stakeholders and facilitate their economic upliftment through various fisheries schemes and programs being implemented by the Government of India such as Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) and Kisan Credit Card (KCC).
• Sagar Parikrama is a program reflecting the far-reaching policy strategy of the government leading to the direct interaction with fishers and fish farmers to understand the issues of coastal areas and problems related to fishermen.

Report On Levels And Trends In Child Malnutrition: Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates:

UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), WHO (World Health Organization), World Bank Group have released a report titled- “Levels and trends in child malnutrition: Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates (JME)”, stating that in 2020, 18.7 % of Indian children were affected by Wasting caused by poor nutrient intake.

Findings of the Report:

• Half of all children with wasting in the world live in India.
• In 2022, an estimated 45 million children under five (6.8 %) were affected by wasting globally, of which 13.6 million were suffering from severe wasting.
• More than three quarters of all children with severe wasting live in Asia and another 22 % live in Africa.
• India had a stunting rate of 31.7 % in 2022, down from 41.6 % in 2012, a decade ago.
• Some 148.1 million of children under age five worldwide, were affected by stunting in 2022.
• Nearly all children affected lived in Asia (52 % of the global share) and Africa.
• There are 37 million children under five who are overweight globally, an increase of nearly four million since 2000.
• India had an overweight percentage of 2.8 % in 2022, compared to 2.2 % in 2012.
• There is insufficient progress to reach the 2025 World Health Assembly (WHA) global nutrition targets and UN-mandated Sustainable Development Goal target 2.2.
• WHA global Nutrition Targets are:
  • Reduce stunting by 40% in children under 5
  • Reduce the prevalence of anaemia by 50% among women in the age group of 19-49 years
  • Ensure 30% reduction in low-birthweight
  • Ensure no increase in childhood overweight;
  • Increase the rate of exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months up to at least 50%
  • Reduce and maintain childhood wasting to less than 5%.

Global Greenhouse Gas Watch (G3W):

The 19th World Meteorological Congress (WMC) has approved the Global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Watch (G3W), a GHG monitoring initiative, to reduce the heat-trapping gases and combat Climate Change.

• The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in the Collaboration with WHO also framed 2023-2033 Implementation Plan for Advancing Climate, Environment and Health Science and Services to manage the impact of Climate Change.
• Greenhouse Gas Watch (G3W) will establish internationally coordinated top-down monitoring of greenhouse gas fluxes to support the provision of actionable information to the UNFCCC Parties and other stakeholders.
• The GHG watch will fill critical information gaps and provide an integrated and operational framework.
• The framework will bring all space-based and surface-based observing systems, as well as modeling and data assimilation capabilities, under one roof.
• The monitoring infrastructure will build on and expand WMO’s long-standing activities in GHG monitoring, implemented as part of the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) and via its Integrated Global GHG Information System (IG3IS).
• The GAW of WMO focuses on building a single coordinated global understanding of atmospheric composition, its change, and helps to improve the understanding of interactions between the atmosphere, the oceans and the biosphere.
• IG3IS aims to coordinate an integrated global GHG information system, linking inventory and flux model based information with atmospheric observations and modelling, to provide the best possible estimates of greenhouse gas emissions at the national and urban scales.

18 New PetaFLOP Supercomputers : For Weather Forecasting

India is set to introduce 18 new petaFLOP supercomputers dedicated to weather forecasting, aiming to enhance the accuracy and resolution of weather predictions.

• These state-of-the-art machines will significantly improve forecasting capabilities at the block level, predict cyclones with greater accuracy and lead time, and provide detailed ocean state forecasts.
• FLOPs, or Floating-Point Operations per Second, is a metric used to measure computational performance and efficiency in high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI).
• Floating-point operations involve mathematical calculations with real numbers that have fractional parts.
• Using floating-point encoding, extremely long numbers can be handled relatively easily.
• FLOPs are not the sole metric to evaluate a computer’s performance. Factors like memory bandwidth, latency, and architectural features also contribute.
• However, FLOPs provide a baseline for comparing computational capabilities, particularly in tasks dominated by floating-point calculations.

PIL : Inauguration Of New Parliament Building By President

SC refuses to entertain PIL seeking direction to Lok Sabha Secretariat for inauguration of new Parliament building by President

• PIL has not been defined in any Indian statute. However, Courts have interpreted and defined PIL.
• The Hon’ble Supreme Court of India has, in the case of Janata Dal v. H.S.Chaudhary, [(AIR 1993 SC 892) held that lexically, the expression ‘PIL’ means a legal action started in a court of law for the enforcement of public/general interest where the public or a particular class of the public some interest (including pecuniary interest) that affects their legal rights or liabilities.
• Any individual or organisation can file a PIL either in his/her/their own standing i.e. to protect or enforce a right owed to him/her/them by the government or on behalf of a section of society who is disadvantaged or oppressed and is not able to enforce their own rights.
• The concept of “Locus Standi” has been relaxed in the case of PILs so as to enable the Hon’ble Court to look into grievances that are filed on behalf of those who are poor, illiterate, deprived or disabled and are unable to approach the courts themselves.

User Meet Of XPoSat:

The chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), S Somanath, addressed students and scientists during the ‘User Meet of XPoSat’ at the ISRO headquarters in Bengaluru.

• He emphasised the importance of effectively utilizing data from science-based space missions and encouraged Indian scientific institutions to identify talented students and motivate them to work with emerging data technologies like XPoSat.
• XPoSat stands for X-ray Polarimeter Satellite.
• It is India’s pioneering polarimetry mission aimed at studying various dynamics of astronomical sources in extreme conditions.
• It is only the world’s second polarimetry mission using X-Ray after NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) that was launched in 2021.
• XPoSat is a collaboration between the ISRO and the Raman Research Institute (RRI), Bengaluru, Karnataka.