India and its Neighbourhood/GSII
Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal (BBIN)

What's the NEWS

• With Bhutan continuing to sit out the Motor Vehicles Agreement (MVA) of the sub-regional Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal (BBIN) grouping, a meeting of the other three countries was held to discuss the next steps in operationalising the agreement for the free flow of good and people between them.

• The BBIN meeting was the first such in-person meeting since February 2020 to discuss the MVA since the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak
• Officials finalised the wording of two separate protocols on passenger and cargo movement with an "enabling" agreement.
• An enabling MOU to be signed by India, Bangladesh and Nepal for implementation of the BBIN MVA by the three countries, pending ratification of the MVA by Bhutan, was finalised.
• Operationalising the MVA by concluding the Passenger and the Cargo Protocol will help realise the full potential of trade and people to people connectivity between the BBIN countries by fostering greater sub-regional cooperation.

• The original BBIN MVA was signed by all four countries in June 2015, but after objections in Bhutan over sustainability and environmental concerns, the Bhutanese parliament decided not to endorse the plan, and former Prime Minister Tobgay Tshering's government agreed to allow the other three countries to go ahead with the project for vehicular movement (BIN-MVA) in 2017.
• Progress on the seven-year-old project has been slow, nonetheless, despite several trial runs being held along the Bangladesh-India-Nepal road route for passenger buses and cargo trucks.
• The Asian Development Bank has supported the project as part of its South Asian Subregional Economic Cooperation programme
• The World Bank that has estimated that the implementation of the MVA will potentially see increase in traffic-regional trade within South Asia by nearly 60%, has also announced its interest in supporting infrastructure.
• In February 2022, the World Bank South Asia programme for BBIN listed projects worth $750 million, for which loans were in "the pipeline".
• They included upgrading border checkposts and land ports in Bangladesh with a view to upgrading both physical and commercial infrastructure.

• On the eve of International Women's Day, the ministry of women and child development (MoWCD), in partnership with the ministry of education and UNICEF, launched Kanya Shikhsa Pravesh Utsav
• It is a campaign to bring out-of-school adolescent girls in India back into the formal education and/or skilling system.
• This scheme will fulfil the target of Right To Education act that says to bring out-of-school girls back to the education system.

• Gap in upper primary and secondary schooling: While female enrolment has increased rapidly since the 1990s, there is still a substantial gap in upper primary and secondary schooling.
• High drop-out rates: Increased female enrolment is, compromised by persistently high rates of drop-out and poor attendance of girls relative to boys. Girls also constitute a large proportion of out-of-school children.
• Inter-state variations: There are also considerable inter-state variations in gender parity. While the greatest surges in female enrolment have been achieved in the most educationally disadvantaged states such as Bihar and Rajasthan, these states still have a long way to go to catch up with the better performing states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh.
• Son preference: Some studies suggest that girls are over-represented in the government schools, demonstrating continuing son preference where boys (highlighted in economic survey 2018) are educated in private and better schools which are of (perceived) better quality.

• Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao scheme: It aims to generate awareness and also improve the efficiency of welfare services for the girl child. The initial aim of the campaign was to address the declining child sex ratio but it also include propagating education, survival and protection of the girl child.
• Digital Gender Atlas: Ministry of Human Resource Development has prepared a digital gender atlas for advancing girls' education in India.
• National Scheme of Incentive to Girls for Secondary Education (NSIGSE): The objective of the scheme is to establish an enabling environment to reduce the drop outs and to promote the enrolment of girl children in secondary schools.
• Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan: In order to ensure greater participation of girls in elementary education, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan has targeted interventions for girls which include opening of schools, appointment of additional women teachers, separate toilets for girls, teachers' sensitisation programmes etc. In addition, Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas has been opened in Educationally Backward Blocks (EBBs).
• Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA): It envisages enhancing the quality of education by providing a secondary school within a reasonable distance of every habitation, improving quality of education imparted at secondary level, removal of gender, socio-economic and disability barriers.
• Udaan: CBSE has launched ‘Udaan' to provide free online resources to girl students of Class XI and Class XII for preparation. The special focus of the scheme is to address the low enrolment ratio of girl students in prestigious institutions.
• STEM education: To increase the participation of women in STEM education, supernumerary seats have been created in the IITs and NITs.

What's the NEWS

• NSM has deployed "PARAM Ganga", a supercomputer at IIT Roorkee, with a supercomputing capacity of 1.66 Petaflops.
• The system is designed and commissioned by C-DAC under Phase 2 of the build approach of the NSM.
• Substantial components utilized to build this system are manufactured and assembled within India along with an indigenous software stack developed by C-DAC, which is a step towards the Make in India initiative of the Government.
• Availability of such a supercomputer will accelerate the research and development activities in multidisciplinary domains of science and engineering

• The National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) which is being steered jointly by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeiTY) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and implemented by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, has progressed significantly.
• The four major pillars of the NSM, namely, Infrastructure, Applications, R&D, HRD, have been functioning efficiently to realize the goal of developing indigenous supercomputing eco system of the nation.
• C-DAC has been entrusted the responsibility to design, development, deployment and commissioning of the supercomputing systems under the build approach of Mission.
• The Mission plans to build and deploy 24 facilities with cumulative compute power of more than 64 Petaflops.
• Till now C-DAC has deployed 11 systems at IISc, IITs, IISER Pune, JNCASR, NABI-Mohali and C-DAC under NSM Phase-1 and Phase-2 with a cumulative compute power of more than 20 Petaflops.
• Under the build approach, C-DAC is building an indigenous supercomputing ecosystem in a phased manner, which is leading to indigenously designed and manufactured supercomputers.
• It has designed and developed a compute server "Rudra" and high-speed interconnect "Trinetra" which are the major sub-assemblies required for supercomputers.

• NSM Platform for Genomics and Drug Discovery.
• Urban Modelling: Science Based Decision Support Framework to Address Urban Environment Issues (Meteorology, Hydrology, Air Quality).
• Flood Early Warning and Prediction System for River Basins of India.
• HPC Software Suite for Seismic Imaging to aid Oil and Gas Exploration.
• MPPLAB: Telecom Network Optimization.

• Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog announced their partnership with Snap Inc. to drive Augmented Reality (AR) skilling among the Indian youth.
• Snap Inc. is a global camera company and Snap's camera plays a transformative role in how people experience the world around them, combining what they see in the real world, with all that's available to them in the digital world.
• Over a two-year timeframe, Snap Inc is expected to train over 12,000 teachers affiliated with the Atal Tinkering Labs on Augmented Reality, enabling the reach of the program to millions of students affiliated with ATL's network of schools.
• Snap Inc also announced its partnership with the Atal Incubation Centers (AICs) to support the Indian start-up ecosystem with AR advertising bootcamps, Ad credits and other opportunities.
• The partnership kick started on International Women's Day, with the launch of a nationwide Lensathon (AR making hackathon), throughout the month of March.
• The hackathon will be focused on increasing participation of girls and young women over 13 interested in AR.

What's the NEWS

• On the occasion of the International Women's Day, Government eMarketplace [GeM] has launched a new service vertical "Stitching and Tailoring Services" on the GeM portal in partnership with USHA International Ltd., through its Silai School Programme.
• The service will open new opportunities for Usha Silai Women and self-help groups in urban and rural areas to enhance their livelihood incomes through sewing orders placed by various Government departments and agencies and fulfil the 3 percent procurement target set aside for women MSE entrepreneurs.
• Government e Marketplace is a 100 percent Government owned Section 8 company setup under the administrative control of the Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, for procurement of goods and services by State Government and Central Government organizations.

Prelims Factoids
Jharokha

What's the NEWS

• As part of the Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Textiles are organizing "Jharokha-Compendium of Indian handicraft/ handloom, art and culture".
• It will be a PAN India celebration which will be held at 16 locations in 13 states and UTs.
• Jharokha is a celebration of the traditional Indian handicrafts, handlooms, and art & culture.
• The first event under this celebration is being organized in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh starting from 8th March 2022 on the occasion of International Women's Day.
• It will be organized at Rani Kamlapati Railway Station which is named after the brave and fearless Queen Kamlapati of the Gond kingdom of Madhya Pradesh.
•  This first event celebrates womanhood and the contribution of women in the field of art, craft and culture.
• All the stalls at the event are being setup by the women artisans making it more special.

• The Union Minister for Power and New & Renewable Energy launched the Virtual Smart Grid Knowledge Center (Virtual SGKC) and Innovation Park
• The event was attended by senior officials from the Ministry of Power (MOP), POWERGRID, National Smart Grid Mission (NSGM), and United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
• The SGKC has been established by POWERGRID with support from the MOP and NSGM for demonstration and advancement of frontier smart grid technologies. It is located within the POWERGRID.

• SGKC aims to be one of the leading Centers of Excellence globally to foster innovation, entrepreneurship and research in smart grid technologies and create capacities in the power distribution sector.
• The Virtual SGKC that was launched today enables a digital footprint of the physical setup of SGKC, the need for which was felt during COVID-19 pandemic.
• The Virtual SGKC has been conceptualized and developed by POWERGRID with support from the Ministry of Power and technical assistance from USAID.
• The platform as launched co-exists with the physical setup and provides remote access to all existing SGKC offerings and more.
• The platform presently hosts more than 50 solutions from over 30 technology partners across 8 thematic areas spanning across new and advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, IOT, etc.

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