Daily Current Affairs 13 January 2020

Current Affairs Of Today Are

1) Rajasthan to get the first biotech park

Rajasthan will shortly get its first biotechnology park and an incubation center, for which a memorandum of understanding will be signed with the Centre’s Department of Biotechnology. The park and incubation center is expected to enable the State government to take up research in the field of biotechnology and provide employment to the youths
The two institutions would help promote interdisciplinary fields such as bioinformatics, biomedical engineering, and nanomedicine. The government also expect to support the Nirogi Rajasthan campaign launched recently in the health sector by strengthening it through bioinformatics
The Centre’s help would be sought for evolving startup ecosystem in various spheres of biotechnology after the signing of the MoU. Efforts would also be made to get recognition to the graduates in biotechnology stream in the recruitment examinations of the State Public Service Commission

2) Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC)

The Odisha government demanded that the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) be conducted simultaneously with the general census in 2021.
The State Cabinet chaired by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik here resolved to move the Centre with the plea to conduct a socioeconomic caste enumeration along with the general census, either by inserting suitable columns in the census format or by prescribing a separate format.

Why it is Needed?

This will enable the State government to accelerate the pace of development of these communities leading to inclusive growth with greater momentum. The welfare of the poorest and the weakest becomes the core objective of the State
Unavailability of reliable and authentic data about the exact numbers of socially and educationally backward classes and other backward classes/castes, geographical areas of their spread and density has been a huge challenge in ensuring focused and outcomespecific planning
The necessity of having such data was well appreciated by the Central government as evident from the SocioEconomic Caste Census of 2011
The State Cabinet also took note of the fact that in the proposed formats for 2021 census, there is no provision to capture the details of socially and educationally backward classes and other backward classes/castes despite having done much exercise in the SECC2011, the full data of which is yet to be released.

The Cabinet observed that no formal census, including the caste details of the population, has been done since 1931.

3) Light Combat Aircraft (LCA)Mk-1

In a major technological advancement, the naval variant of the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA)Mk-1 successfully completed the first arrested landing on the aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya
After completing extensive trials on the shorebased test facility (SBTF), the naval version of the LCA did a successful arrested landing on the INS Vikramaditya
The naval LCAMk1 made its maiden flight in April 2012. Two prototypes have been flying as part of the development. The SBTF in Goa, which replicates the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, was specifically built to train naval pilots in the complex maneuvers of landing on the short flight deck of an aircraft carrier.
With this feat, the indigenously developed niche technologies, specific to the deckbased fighter operations, have been proven, which will now pave the way for developing and manufacturing a twinengine deck-based fighter for the Indian Navy
The naval LCA is fitted with stronger landing gears to absorb forces exerted by the skijump ramp during takeoff, as it has to be airborne from 200m, and land within 100m, against the 1,000m required for normal fighter jets.

4) Rongali Bihu

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) authority of Assam has asked the Bihu committees across Assam to make all transactions, including payments to artists, through cheques.
Rongali Bihu is a major source of income for singers, musicians, comedians, actors, and others associated with the entertainment industry in Assam. Bihutolis, temporary stages, are set up for cultural programs that start midApril and end with Bogahi Bidai (farewell spring) more than a month later.

Problem artist will face

This is not a case of one singer or star-making a lot of money. Bihu is the only festival that ensures a decent income for artists, who have to sustain 2025 families of musicians, technicians, and helpers. It will be quite taxing for us if a big amount is deducted as GST after the cheques are deposited in the banks
The government can collect GST from professional artistes performing at major events but the traditional Bihu stages should be spared, more so as they provide space for folk artistes

About Rongali Bihu

Bohag Bihu or Rongali Bihu also called Xaat Bihu is a festival celebrated in the state of Assam and northeastern India and marks the beginning of the Assamese New Year. It usually falls on 2 April week, historically signifying the time of harvest. It unites the population of Assam regardless of their religions or backgrounds and promotes the celebration of diversity. In India, it is celebrated seven days after Vishuva Sankranti of the month of Vaisakh or locally 'Bohag' (Bhaskar Calendar). The three primary types of Bihu are Bohag Bihu or Rongali Bihu, Kati Bihu or Kongali Bihu, and Magh Bihu or Bhogali Bihu. Each festival historically recognizes a different agricultural cycle of the paddy crops. During Rangali Bihu there are 7 pinnacle phases: 'Chot', 'Raati', 'Goru', 'Manuh', 'Kutum', 'Mela' and 'Chera'.....

5) Four Refurbished Heritage Buildings in Kolkata

Ministry of Culture under the direction of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi is

developing cultural spaces around iconic buildings in various metro cities in the country. To

begin with the cities of Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Varanasi are being taken

up under this project. In Kolkata, 4 iconic galleries, namely Old Currency, Belvedere House,

Victoria Memorial Hall and Metcalfe House have been refurbished. New exhibitions have

been set up & old galleries curated therein.

1. Old Currency Building

This beautiful triple-storeyed structure is built in the early nineteenth century (circa 1833 CE), designed in Italian style with Venetian windows, cast iron grates of florid design, portcullis and railings, etc. The building was handed over to the Archaeological Survey of India in the year 2005. After protection of the monument, the main task was to save the building from further deterioration. Conservation work carried out recently in Old Currency building includes removal of accretions in the first and second floor; removal of damaged lime/cement plaster on interior walls and re-plastering with rich lime plaster followed by lime punning; repairs/removal of multilayered paints on windows and doors of the entire west wing; repairs and polishing of three wooden staircases; re-fixing of window glasses wherever missing; re-laying/polishing of marble stone flooring general electrification in an organized manner; provision of tower ACs in the first and second floors; sensor glass doors to access open courtyard; restoration of floral designs as per original in the open courtyard; provision of toughen glass parapet on the ground floor roof as a safety measure and vulnerable to the visitor’s access etc.
The restored Old Currency Building opens to the public as an ode to the art of Bengal, showcasing art across three centuries. Called “Ghare Baire – The Home, The World & Beyond”, the design and curation of this exhibition provide a glimpse of the richness, diversity, and depth of Bengal’s art over the centuries. The exhibition is sectioned into 13 broad categories, showcasing nearly 500 artworks, of over 450 are from the DAG collection and 20 are from the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi.

2. Belvedere House

The Belvedere Estate consists of Belvedere House and the 30-acre grounds surrounding it with a beautiful garden. It is located in Alipore opposite the Zoological Gardens. Belvedere House was the former palace for the Viceroy of India and later the Governor of Bengal. The National Library of India is housed therein, since 1948. Belvedere house has been renovated by CPWD, Govt of India at the cost of approx Rs. 10.00cr. Belvedere House was lying vacant since 2004 when the entire collection of the National Library of India was shifted to Bhasha Bhawan. On March 8, 2019, an exhibition was inaugurated by His Excellency, Governor of West Bengal, Shri Kishori Nath Tripathy on “Icons of Nationalism: from the Soils of Bengal” focussing on four iconic personalities i.e. Rishi Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, and Dr. Shayama Prasad Mookerjee.
Now, Indira Gandhi National Centre of Arts pays tribute to the Bengal renaissance and Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore with a very special exhibition in Belvedere House showcasing the original works of the Hungarian mother-daughter duo Elizabeth Sass Brunner and Elizabeth Brunner. Their portrayal of Santiniketan and Gurudev’s aura through their mystic visual oeuvre touches a cord. The exhibition also showcases portraits of people and places of India through the lens of four distinguished photographers: Raja Deen Dayal (1844-1905), Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), Shambhu Saha (1905-1988) and Sunil Janah (1918-2012) who captured some very mesmeric photographs that are fascinating indicators of life and times in their era.
The section “Vignettes of Bengal by Foreign Travellers–early 19th to mid-20th Century” culled from the illustrations of rare books of IGNCA offers a kaleidoscope of cultural motifs, people, art and architecture of then Bengal.

3. Metcalfe House

Metcalfe House, located on the junction of Strand Road and Hare Street, is one of the torch-bearers of colonial architecture in Kolkata that perpetuates the memory of Lord Charles Metcalfe. The building was completed in 1844 to accommodate the Agri-Horticultural Society in the ground floor and the Calcutta Public Library on the floor above it. The two-storeyed building is situated on a solid basement and facing towards the Ganga river. The design is taken from the portico of the Temple of the Winds at Athens.
After taking over this majestic building, Archaeological Survey of India regularly monitored the day to day conservation works of the building and finally, major conservation work was carried out in 2018-19. These works included: Roof treatment, repair of walls, doors + windows, removal of accretions, electrical works, repairs to the existing drainage, Repairs to the wooden staircases.
The Archaeological Survey of India, Kolkata Circle organized an exhibition on “Ami Kolkata Its History and Culture” on the first floor of the Medcalfe Hall after the execution of conservation work to the entire structure. On the ground floor, an exhibition is now set up by the National Museum, Delhi on “100 years of Bengali Cinema” in collaboration with the Film Heritage Foundation.

4. Victoria Memorial Hall

The Victoria Memorial Hall(VMH), Kolkata, is undergoing a modernization and up-gradation of its galleries and stores, with a sanctioned budget of Rs. 59.96 crore. This project involves both the conservation of this iconic heritage building and a re-curation of the display in its galleries.
The building conservation has been done on such an extensive scale for the first time in VMH’s 99-year history. The entire marble surface of the gigantic building has been cleaned in an organic method, using Multani mitti, which has restored the marble’s pristine grandeur and earned the VMH the accolade of the ‘Cleanest Monument in India in 2015.
Seven of the renovated galleries are now ready for inauguration. Three of these on the ground floor – the Entrance, Royal and Portrait Galleries – showcase an exhibition on the transition from colonialism and nationalism, which display iconic oil paintings, including the Jaipur Procession of 1876, the world’s second-largest oil painting, as well as iconic watercolors of the Bengal nationalist school, like Abanindranath Tagore’ Bharat Mata (1905), which inspired the anti-colonial Swadeshi movement. The Royal Gallery – displaying the visual representation of India before the advent of photography, is set to re-open to the public after a long gap of 25 years. The Portrait Gallery showcases the first glimpses of nationalism in art and culture.
In addition to North wing galleries, four interconnected renovated galleries of the first-floor gallery complex showcase a magnificent exhibition on loan from the National Museum, New Delhi. These galleries display iconic miniatures on three themes – The Ramayana through Indian miniature painting, Shakti: the Feminine Power in Tantras, and Nala-Damayanti, a tale of love and passion. In an adjacent gallery is displayed, another innovative exhibition on loan from the National Council of Science Museums called Talking Devices. This is a unique example of the internal circulation of the treasures in the Ministry’s museums, based on exchange and temporary loans.

6) IIT-M designs room temperature sodium-sulfur battery

While conventional sodium-sulfur batteries require very high temperature (300 degrees C) for operation, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have designed a new sodium-sulfur battery that can be operated at room temperature. By operating the battery at room temperature, the team was able to achieve higher charge storage capacity (technically called the specific capacity) and nearly zero selfdischarge when the battery is not being used.
While high-temperature sodium-sulfur batteries have a charge storage capacity of about 558 mAh per gram, the battery designed by the IIT Madras team was able to achieve as much as 1,034 mAh per gram at a current density of 50 mA per gram. The battery also showed 83% retention of capacity even at the end of 500 cycles of charging and discharging. To assess the capacity retention, the researchers used a higher current density of 500 mA per gram. “The charge storage capacity was 650 mAh per gram to start with and after 100 cycles it reduced to 570 mAh per gram, at the end of 500 cycles, the charge storage capacity was 499 mAh per gram,” says Ajay Piriya from IIT Madras and first author of a paper published in the journal Advanced Materials Interfaces
Conventionally, sodium-sulfur batteries use a solid electrolyte (sodium beta alumina), which by default reduces the diffusion of sodium ions from the anode to the cathode at room temperature. It is to increase the diffusion of sodium ions that the temperature is raised to about 300 degrees C. So in place of a solid electrolyte the researchers used a glass fiber separator soaked in etherbased electrolyte that allows the battery to be operated at room temperature.
Sodium is supposed to react with sulfur and produce stable sodium sulfide through intermediate steps. Each of the intermediate steps produces different sodium polysulphides.
The first problem is that with an increasing amount of polysulphides getting dissolved into the electrolyte, there is a net loss in the cathode sulfur. Also, the dissolved polysulphides move towards the anode and form a coating over it. This reduces the performance of the battery.

7) ‘Levels and Trends in Child Mortality’ report by the United Nations (UN)

India is among the few countries in the world where, in 2018, the mortality for girls under 5 years of age exceeded that of boys, according to the ‘Levels and Trends in Child Mortality’ report by the United Nations (UN) interagency group for child mortality.
The report states that in 2018, fewer countries showed gender disparities in child mortality, and across the world, boys are expected to have a higher probability of dying before reaching age 5 than girls. But this trend was not reflected in India.
In some countries, the risk of dying before age 5 for girls is significantly higher than what would be expected based on global patterns. These countries are primarily located in Southern Asia and Western Asia

Sample Registration System

According to India’s 2017 Sample Registration System, the States with the highest burden of neonatal mortality are Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Uttar Pradesh, with 32, 33 and 30 neonatal deaths per 1,000 live births, respectively. India’s neonatal mortality rate is 23 per 1,000 live births.
Further, Jharkhand, Bihar, and Uttarakhand showed the largest gender gaps in under 5 mortality.
The burden of child mortality is determined both by the mortality rate (the proportion of children who die) and by the estimated population of any given State (total number of annual births). In this sense, Uttar Pradesh is the state with the highest number of estimated newborn deaths in India, both because of the high neonatal mortality rate and because of the large cohort of births that occur every year in the State by UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund).

Major causes of neonatal mortality

Half of all under5 deaths in 2018 occurred in five countries: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia. India and Nigeria alone account for about a third.
The major causes of neonatal mortality are preterm birth, intrapartum related events, and neonatal infection.
The report adds that despite advancements made over the past two decades, a child or a young adolescent died every five seconds in 2018.
Current trends predict that close to 10 million 5 to 14-yearolds, and 52 million children under 5 years of age, will die between 2019 and 2030

8) Mass planting of exotic trees in Nilgiris harmful

A Coonoorbased trust proposes to plant more than 10,000 trees in the Nilgiris almost all of the exotic flora from avenue trees such as jacaranda and podocarpus to pine and bottlebrush.

Conservationists say that the mass plantation drive will be harmful to the environment in the long term

How exotic trees will affect

Exotic trees have a huge impact on soil chemistry on the ground, preventing native grass, plants, and herbs from taking root underneath the canopy.
It has a knockon effect on wildlife, which leads them into vacating the areas
When exotics take root, they increase the water demand in that region, impacting not just the Nilgiris but other districts further downstream that rely on rivers emanating from the hills

Only native grasses should be grown in what were previously grasslands, or Shola trees should be grown where they existed previously

9) Private property is a fundamental right: Supreme court Judgement

A citizen’s right to own private property is a fundamental right. The State cannot take possession of it without following due procedure and authority of law, the Supreme Court held in a judgment
The State cannot trespass into the private property of a citizen and then claim ownership of the land in the name of ‘adverse possession’, the court said, adding that grabbing private land and then claiming it as its own makes the State an encroacher.
In a welfare state, right to property is a human right, said a Bench of Justices Indu Malhotra and Ajay Rastogi.
A welfare state cannot be permitted to take the plea of adverse possession, which allows a trespasser i.e. a person guilty of a tort, or even a crime, to gain legal title over such property for over 12 years. The State cannot be permitted to perfect its title over the land by invoking the doctrine of adverse possession to grab the property of its own citizens
The court was hearing a plea filed by Vidya Devi, a widow, whose four acres of land was taken over by the Himachal Pradesh government in 1967.
The Supreme Court noted that in 1967, ‘right to private property was still a fundamental right’ under Article 31 of the Constitution.
The property ceased to be a fundamental right with the 44th Constitution Amendment in 1978. Nevertheless, Article 300A required the State to follow due procedure and authority of law to deprive a person of his or her private property, the Supreme Court reminded the government.

10) Two Coast Guard ships commissioned

Two Indian Coast Guard Ships (ICGS) Annie Besant and Amrit Kaur were commissioned by Defence Secretary Ajay Kumar at Kolkata
The ships are fitted with state-of-the-art technology, and navigation equipment, along with Bofors 40/60 guns and 12.7 mm Stabilised Remote Controlled Guns for enhanced fighting efficiency
While Annie Besant will be based at Chennai, Amrit Kaur will be based at Haldia

11) Second wetland bird count conducted

Kaziranga recorded 96 species of wetland birds one of the highest for wildlife reserves in India, according to the second wetland bird count conducted on January 9-10
The survey registered a total of 19,225 birds belonging to 96 species under 80 families. The first waterfowl census in 2018 had yielded 10,412 birds covering 80 species, belonging to 21 families
With 6,181 individuals, the barheaded goose led the species count, followed by the common teal at 1,557 and northern pintail at 1,359. All three belong to the family Anatidae
The other species with sizeable numbers include gadwall, common coot, lesser whistling duck, Indian spotbilled duck, little cormorant, ferruginous duck, tufted duck, Eurasian wigeon, Asian openbill, northern lapwing, ruddy shelduck, and spotbilled pelican.
The survey covered four ranges of the park Agoratoli, Bagori, Kohora and Burapahar
More than half the birds (9,924) and 85 of the 96 species were recorded in Agoratoli Range. This was because Sohola, the largest of Kaziranga's 92 perennial wetlands, is in this range.
The first wetland bird survey in Kaziranga, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, was conducted in 2018
Data on avian wealth is important because the wetlands nourish Kaziranga's ecosystem. Increase or decrease in the number of birds is indicative of the park's health

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