Relevance IN - Prelims (about Matla Abhiyaan)
What's the NEWS

• The Indian Navy carried out a five-day coastal security exercise, 'Matla Abhiyaan', with personnel of two naval boats, holding interactions with all stakeholders along the riverine border with Bangladesh

• The exercise, named after Matla River, aimed to interact with coastal communities to spread awareness on coastal security and understand the navigational complexities in the Sunderban deltaic waters.
• During the exercise, the two boats undertook patrol in the Sunderban delta, and along the Indo-Bangladesh protocol route
• The personnel of the naval boats interacted with the crew of fishing boats, tankers and launches operating in the Matla and Hooghly rivers and the narrow creeks of Sunderbans.
• The sailors also interacted with local fishermen to spread awareness on coastal security, and personnel of marine police stations at Maipith, Gobardhanpur and Gosaba enroute to Hemnagar

Environment Conservation
Indian gaur spotted in Konkan sanctuary for the first time in recorded history

Relevance IN - Prelims (about Indian gaur and location of Phansad Wildlife Sanctuary (PWS)
What's the NEWS

• Wildlife researchers recently documented the presence of an Indian gaur in the Phansad Wildlife Sanctuary (PWS) in Roha and Murud talukas of Raigad district(Maharashtra)
• This is the first time a sighting of this species of bison has been reported or documented at the sanctuary.

Know! more about Indian Gaur

• The Indian Gaur is listed as Schedule I species under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and is tagged as ‘vulnerable' on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List.
• Gaurs are the world's largest and tallest wild bovines, with 85% of their current population found in India.
• Male gaurs weigh 1,000-1,500kg, while females weigh 700-1,000kg. Their height ranges from 165-220cm (5 to 7ft).
• The animal spread across a variety of habitats, including tropical forests, grasslands, etc., across the hilly ranges of the Western Ghats, the northern limit of this animal along the west coast was known to be up to Mahabaleshwar

Phansad Wildlife Sanctuary (PWS)

• With tropical deciduous forests, PWS was established in 1986 and is spread across 52.6 square kilometres. It is just 13km away from Kashid beach in Raigad district.

Social Issues
National Consultation on the review of Beijing +25
Relevance IN - Prelims (about of Beijing Platform for Action and Beijing +25) + Mains (Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources
What's the NEWS

• To mark of 25 years of the adoption of Beijing Platform for Action, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MWCD), the National Commission for Women (NCW) and UN Women organized a National Consultation on the Review of Beijing+25

Objective

• To galvanize all stakeholders to implement actions that remove the most conspicuous barriers to gender equality.
• The aim of the consultation was to bring together civil society and the women and youth of India, gender equality advocates from all walks of life, in a national public conversation on the urgent actions that need to be taken for the realization of gender equality.

Know! about Beijing Platform for Action

• The 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, was one of the largest ever gatherings of the United Nations, and a critical turning point in the world's focus on gender equality and the empowerment of women.
• 2020 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), (Beijing + 25).

Know! the steps taken by the Ministry of Women and Child Development

• Beti Bachao Beti Padhao was expanded to all 640 districts resulting in a 13-point improvement in the sex ratio from 918 (2014-15) to 931 (2018-19)

Under the Beti Bachao Beti Padao, the Gross Enrolment ratio of girls is higher than boys.

• At Elementary level, girls' enrollment is 94.32% and boys' is 89.28%
• At secondary level, girls' enrollment is 81.32% as against 78% for boys
• At higher secondary level, girls' enrollment is 59.7% as compared to 57.54% for boys.

Poshan Abhiyan

• To improve health of children in the age of 0 to 6 years of age, adolescent girls and lactating women, Poshan Abhiyan was introduced. More than 6 lakhs Anganwadi workers are equipped with smart phones to upload the status of nutrition of more than 10 crore house hold.

PMMMY

• Over 17.43 lakh women were reached out under the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY Maternity Benefit Programme) and over 18.6 lakh were addressed through Women Helpline Number (181) across country

Representation of women

• To improve the overall gender responsiveness of the police and encourage participation of women in the force, advisory have been issued to increase representation of women to 33 percent resulting in extension of reservation in 15 additional States in the last 5 years.

Extension of maternity leave

• To strengthen the ecosystem for working women and encourage economic participation, extension of maternity leave duration from 12 to 26 weeks and compulsory establishment of crèche in work spaces have been effectuated through legislative amendment.

Bilateral Relations
India, Maldives sign five MoUs for establishing Addu Tourism zone

Relevance IN - Prelims (about the MoU and the geographical location of Addu) + Mains (GS II Bilateral relations)
What's the NEWS

• India and Maldives signed five MoUs for establishing the Addu Tourism zone in five islands of Addu atoll at a cost of 2.49 million dollars.
• A 6th MoU to set up a bottled water plant in Hoarafushi was also signed.
• All six projects are grant projects falling under India's High Impact Community Development Scheme (HICDP).
• These projects are driven by the needs of communities on the islands.

Know! about Addu

• Addu City is a city in Maldives that consists of the inhabited islands of the southernmost atoll of the archipelago.
  

• Addu City is the second-largest urban area in Maldives, in terms of population, and is one of the two urban areas to get the status of "city" other than the capital city, Malé, and Fuvamulah.
• Addu City has 6 districts. These divisions are naturally islands, but are well connected.
• Addu Atoll itself has islands in addition to the above, that are uninhabited.

Economic Survey 2019-20 :The Health Score Index

• The Economic Survey 2019-20 has proposed that regulators and other stakeholders begin using an index to determine the health of non-bank lenders and housing financiers

Know! more about the Health Score Index

• The Health Score Index, according to the survey, can be used to identity and monitor the financial and operational resilience of non-bank lender depending on their "rollover risk"-or the risk an NBFC faces from frequent repricing or rolling over of their short-term debts that could raise costs, leading to credit rationing.
• The ‘health score' can predict the constraints on external financing (or refinancing risk) faced by NBFC firms.
• It ranges from -100 to +100, with higher scores indicating higher financial stability of the firm/sector.
• The regulators can use the index to detect early warning signals of impending rollover-risk problems among non-bank lenders and housing financiers as a downtrend in the health score of a company can be used to trigger enhanced monitoring.
• It can also be used to set prudential thresholds on the extent of wholesale funding that can be permitted for firms in the shadow banking system

Economic Survey 2019-20 :Singapore's Temasek model
Temasek-Like Structure Proposed To Speed Up Disinvestment

• The Economic Survey, released by the Chief Economic Adviser's office a day ahead of the Union Budget, has proposed a new structure of disinvestment to maximise returns from public sector enterprises.
• The survey suggests that the government take a leaf out of Singapore's Temasek model and transfer its holdings in central public sector enterprises to a separate corporate entity, which would be managed by an independent board.
• This entity can then continue to divest individual units at appropriate points in time.
• The government can transfer its stake in the listed CPSEs to a separate corporate entity.
• This entity would be managed by an independent board and would be mandated to divest the government stake in these CPSEs over a period of time.
• This will lend professionalism and autonomy to the disinvestment programme which, in turn, would improve the economic performance of the CPSEs.

Budget 2020-21: Tourism and Culture
Rs 2,500 crores in 2020-21 for the tourism sector.
Rs 3,150 crore for Ministry of Culture
Highlights

• Proposal to establish first Indian Institute of Heritage and Conservation with the status of a deemed university to operate under the Ministry of Culture.
• India had moved up from rank 65 in 2014 to 34 in 2019 in the Travel & Tourism Competitive Index (World Economic Forum)
• 8 new museums, which includes building infrastructure around 5 Iconic Sites, besides proposing renovation of 5 major museums across the length and breadth of India.

The Union Finance Minister proposed the following:
5 Archeological sites to be set-up/developed as Iconic Sites with on-site Museums at the following locations:

•  Rakhigarhi (Haryana)
•  Hastinapur (Uttar Pradesh)
•  Shivsagar (Assam)
•  Dholavira (Gujarat)
•  Adichanallur (Tamil Nadu)

• Maritime Museum to highlight Harappan Age at Lothal, Ahmedabad, by Ministry of Shipping

KOLKATA:

• Indian Museum: Re-curation of the oldest museum in India as announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January 2020.
• Numismatics and Trade Museum to be located in the historic Old Mint Building
• Support for setting up Tribal Museum in Ranchi (Jharkhand)
• Renovation and re-curation of 4 more museums across India
• Four more museums are to be renovated. At the historic Old Mint building in Kolkata, a museum on numismatics and trade is to be located
• A tribal Museum at Ranchi, Jharkhand is to be set up.
• A Maritime museum to be set up in Lothal, a maritime site of Harappan age. This is to be set up by the Ministry of Shipping.
• India has move up to rank 65 in 2014 to rank 34 in 2019 in the travel and tourism competitive index. The index is prepared by the World Economic Forum.

Governance
Launch of Portal Santusht

Relevance IN - Prelims (about Santusht + about CPGRAM) +Mains (GS II e-governance, accountability and transparency)
What's the NEWS

• ‘Santusht' - Implementation Monitoring Cell (IMC) has been constituted in the Office of Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Labour and Employment in January 2020.

Know! more about Santusht

• The objective of ‘Santusht' is to promote transparency, accountability, effective delivery of public services and implementation of policies, schemes of Ministry of Labour and Employment at grassroot level through constant monitoring.
• For public grievances, Centralized Public Grievance Redresal and Monitoring System (CPGRAM) portal is already functional.

Centralized Public Grievance Redresal and Monitoring System (CPGRAM) portal

• A web based Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) has been designed and implemented in all the Ministries / Departments of Government of India.
• A customized software with local language interface has also been designed for the state governments. This software is called CPGRAMS - States.
• The state module of CPGRAMS has been implemented in 9 States/Union Territory namely Haryana, Odisha, Rajasthan, Puducherry, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Uttrakhand, Jharkhand and Punjab.
• CPGRAM is an online web-enabled system developed by NIC, in association with Directorate of Public Grievances (DPG) and Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG).
• Prime Minister is the supreme head of the public grievances
• Public Grievances Redressal is one of the flagship initiatives for the reformation in governance started by the Indian central government through addressing the grievances of general public.

Science and Technology
DST launches SATHI Initiative for building shared, professionally managed strong S&T infrastructure
Relevance IN - Prelims (about SATHI Initiative) + Mains (GS III awareness in the field of science and technology)
What's the NEWS

• To address the need for building shared, professionally managed and strong Science and Technology infrastructure in the country which is readily accessible to academia, start-ups, manufacturing, industry and R&D labs, the Department of Science & Technology has launched a unique scheme called "Sophisticated Analytical & Technical Help Institutes(SATHI)".

Know! more about it

• These Centres are expected to house major analytical instruments to provide common services of high-end analytical testing, thus avoiding duplication and reduced dependency on foreign sources. These would be operated with a transparent, open access policy.
• DST has already set up three such centres in the country, one each at IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi and BHU at a total cost of Rs 375 Cores.
• It is planned to set up five SATHI Centres every year for the next four years.
• SATHI will address the problems of accessibility, maintenance, redundancy and duplication of expensive equipment in our Institutions, while reaching out to the less endowed organizations in need, e.g., industry, MSMEs, startups and State Universities.
• This will also foster a strong culture of collaboration between institutions and across disciplines to take advantage of developments, innovations and expertise in diverse areas.
  
  

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