Daily Current Capsules

15th July 2022

Defence
LAUNCH OF Y - 3023 (DUNAGIRI)

What's the NEWS

• Dunagiri, a Project 17A frigate, will be launched into the Hooghly river at Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Limited
• Christened after a mountain range in the state of Uttarakhand, ‘Dunagiri' is the fourth ship of P17A Frigates.
• These are follow-on of the P17 Frigates (Shivalik Class) with improved stealth features, advanced weapons and sensors and platform management systems.
• ‘Dunagiri' is the reincarnation of the erstwhile ‘Dunagiri', the Leander Class ASW Frigate, which in her 33 years of service
• The first two ships of P17A Project, were launched in 2019 and 2020 at MDL and GRSE respectively.
• The third ship (Udaygiri) was launched at MDL on 17 May 22 earlier this year.
• P17A ships have been designed in-house by Indian Navy's Directorate of Naval Design (DND), which has successfully spear-headed design of numerous class of indigenous warships in the past.
• 75% of the orders for equipment & system are also being placed on indigenous firms including MSMEs.

• The Nilgiri-class frigates, also known as Project-17 Alpha frigates (P-17A), are a line of guided-missile frigates being manufactured for the Indian Navy by Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders (MDL) as well as Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE).
• The P-17A frigates were christened after the former-Nilgiri-class frigates, which served in the Indian Navy between 1972 and 2013
• The first six ships of the series were allotted the names utilized by the older class, namely - Nilgiri, Himgiri, Taragiri, Udaygiri, Dunagiri, and Vindhyagiri.
• The seventh and final vessel of the P-17A series, which did not have a namesake from the older class, was given the new name of Mahendragiri.

What's the NEWS

• The Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, launched the Platform of Platforms (POP) under the National Agriculture Market (e-NAM)
• 41 service providers from different platforms are covered under POP facilitating various value chain services

• The government announced integration of trading, transportation, logistics, warehousing, assaying, packaging, weather forecast and fintech services provided by 41 private entities with its electronic National Agriculture Market (e-NAM)
• It would make more farmers use the online platform to sell their produce to buyers of their choice.
• More than 17.6 million registered farmers, farmer producer organisations (FPOs), traders, commission agents and other stakeholders registered with the eNAM platform can avail these services provided by these private enterprises.
• With the introduction of POP, farmers will be facilitated to sell the produce outside their state borders.
• This will increase farmers' digital access to multiple markets, buyers and service providers and bring transparency in business transactions
• e-NAM integrates the platform of Service Providers as "Platform of Platforms" which includes Composite Service Providers (Service Providers who provide holistic services for trading of agricultural produce including quality analysis, trading, payment systems and logistics)

• National Agriculture Market (eNAM) is a pan-India electronic trading portal which networks the existing APMC mandis to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities.
• Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) is the lead agency for implementing eNAM under the aegis of Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, Government of India.
• The market facilitates farmers, traders and buyers with online trading in commodities.
• The market helps in better price discovery and providing facilities for smooth marketing of produce.

• To bolster measurement of air pollution in rural India, the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, is embarking on a $2.5-million project to install nearly 1,400 sensors in the rural blocks of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

• The three-year project is expected to be a pilot that, going ahead, could pave the way for a national network of air quality sensors in rural India.
• Air pollution in India is largely framed as an urban blight though causes of pollution, such as biomass burning and reliance on diesel generators for electricity, are worsening air quality in villages too.
• In 2019, the government launched the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) to reduce particulate matter air pollution by 20-30% by 2024.
• This, however, is primarily aimed at 122 cities that have been categorised as India's most polluted cities.
• Cities, because of their population density and industrial establishments, continue to be the overwhelming source of emissions.
• The country's current annual safe limits for PM 2.5 and PM 10 are 40 micrograms/per cubic metre (ug/m3) and 60 micrograms/per cubic metre.
• Under NCAP, ₹375.44 crore was provided to 114 cities from 2018-19 to 2020-21 and ₹290 crore was allocated to 82 cities for the financial year 2021-22.
• The programme has an allocation of ₹700 crore envisaged for 2021-26.

• The Government of India has declared the IT resources of ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and UPI managing entity National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) as ‘critical information infrastructure.

• The Information Technology Act of 2000 defines "Critical Information Infrastructure" as a "computer resource, the incapacitation or destruction of which shall have debilitating impact on national security, economy, public health or safety".
• The government, under the Act, has the power to declare any data, database, IT network or communications infrastructure as CII to protect that digital asset.
• Any person who secures access or attempts to secure access to a protected system in violation of the law can be punished with a jail term of up to 10 years.
• Created in January 2014, the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) is the nodal agency for taking all measures to protect the nation's critical information infrastructure.

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