Comprehensive Current affairs 18 November 2020

 Draft rules under Code on Social Security

Labour Ministry of India notifies draft rules under Code on Social Security.

The ministry has sought objections and suggestions for the draft ruleswithin 45 days.

About the rules:

The rules, which provide for operationalization of provisions of the Code relating to EPF, ESIC, gratuity, maternity benefits, social security, and cess for such workers, have allowed self-registration on a government portal to avail these benefits.

The ministry “has already initiated action for the development of such portal.

It has also provided for Aadhaar-based registration of building and other construction workers on the specified portal of the central government and the state government or the state welfare board.

 The building workers would be entitled to the benefits in the state they are working in.

According to the ministry, provision has also been made in the draft rules pertaining to the gratuity of a worker who is on fixed-term employment.

The draft rules have also provided for a single electronic registration and its cancellation for an establishment in case of its business closure.

Moreover, the rules have also carried a provision with respect to manner and conditions for an establishment to exit EPFO and ESIC coverages.

Soumitra Chatterjee

Soumitra Chatterjee, Bengali superstar and one of India’s tallest actors, died on Sunday after fighting for his life since October 6, when the 85-year-old was admitted to Belle Vue Clinic here with symptoms of COVID-19.

Though he subsequently tested negative for the virus, the infection and the prolonged stay in ICU had severely affected the functioning of his vital organs, particularly his central nervous system.

His death was formally announced by the hospital at a quarter past noon.

About:

Soumitra was born in Mirjapur Street (now Surya Sen Street) near Sealdah railway station, in Calcutta in 1935. The first ten years of his early life were spent in Krishnanagar in West Bengal.

He graduated from the City College, Kolkata with honours in Bengali literature, as a graduating student of the University of Calcutta also have done masters in Bengali from the same university.

He is widely admired for his roles as Apu and Feluda

Power Generation from wet cloth.

A Tripura-based engineer developed a technology to power medical diagnostic kits and mobile phones by generating electrical power from a wet cloth.

• The innovation won him the coveted Gandhian Young Technological Innovation (GYTI) award.

About:

ShankhaSubhra Das, who is from Khedabari, a small village bordering Bangladesh in Sipahijala district, developed a device that relies on capillary action and water evaporation.

• He used a piece of cloth cut to specific dimensions to insert it into a plastic straw that is vertically fixed in a partially filled water container.

•Copper electrodes are attached to both ends of the straw to collect the voltage. When the liquid reaches to the top, due to capillary action, around 700 milli-volts are registered in the voltmeter.

A team of innovators with mechanical engineers and a sub-group of Biotech and bio-science experts are now working on achieving a compact design and integrating it with medical diagnostic devices.

Disagree over granting statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.

For the third time in ten years, the United States territory of Puerto Rico has voted in favour of statehood, and thus be treated at par with the current 50 states of the country.

About:

On November 3, the same day US voters chose Joe Biden over Donald Trump in the US election, a majority of Puerto Ricans voted yes in a non-binding referendum for full statehood while rejecting the ‘no’ option– which would have signalled approval for continuing their current commonwealth status or for starting the process of becoming an independent country.

At the same time, another part of the US – the country’s capital city, Washington, D.C.– has also for years been clamouring to become a full state.

In June this year, the Democratic party-controlled lower chamber of the US Congress acknowledged this demand, and passed a bill that could potentially make D.C. the 51st US state.

 Puerto Rico:

The Spanish-speaking island, slightly smaller than the Indian state of Tripura, is located in the Caribbean Sea, about 1,600 km southeast of the US state of Florida.

Since its discovery by the explorer Christopher Columbus in 1493, Puerto Rico was a part of the Spanish Empire for over 4 centuries until 1898, when it was annexed by the United States.

UN's Food Coalition Programme.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) launched the Food Coalition.

FAO Food Coalition:

• It was first proposed by Italy and now led by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

• Aim: to increase resilience of agricultural food systems, ensure global food access.

• Objective: To help countries achieve Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, especially the ones on ending hunger and poverty (SDG 2 and SDG 1).

• How to achieve this objective? It has a trust fund and a web-based hub which allows participants to access project-focused information and funding needed for such projects.

• Structure: The alliance would work as a voluntary network of networks and a multi-stakeholder coalition for a unified global action.

Need:

• As per State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, 2020, 690 million people were hungry in 2019.

• Now, COVID-19 pandemic could 130 million more people into chronic hunger by the end of 2020.

• Also, Global food prices continued to rise in October 2020 for the fifth successive month.

 • Thus, new collation will support measures to ensure food access and increase the resilience of agricultural food systems in response to COVID-19.

Indigenous Emergency Retrieval System.

CSIR-SERC, Chennai Develops Indigenous Emergency Retrieval System (ERS) for Power Lines.

About:

It is an indigenous technology, Emergency Retrieval System (ERS), for quick retrieval of power transmission in the event of failure of transmission line towers.

CSIR-SERC has signed an agreement for licensing of the ERS technology with M/s Advait Infratech, Ahmedabad.

At present, the ERS systems are imported.

There are very few manufacturers across the world and the cost is relatively high.

This technological development will enable the manufacturing in India for the first time, which will be an import substitute and will cost about 40% of imported systems.

ERS has huge market requirement in India as well as in SAARC and African countries. Hence, this technological development is a big leap forward towards AtmaNirbhar Bharat and Make in India.

Emergency Retrieval System:

ERS is a lightweight modular system that is used as temporary support structure to restore power immediately after the collapse of transmission line towers during natural calamities such as cyclone/earthquake, or manmade disruptions.

ERS can be assembled quickly at the disaster site for restoration of power in 2-3 days, whereas the permanent restoration may take several weeks.

This development is very significant as failure of transmission lines severely impact lives of common people and causes huge monetary loss to the power companies.

As the total losses/damages are directly proportional to the outage duration, time is a crucial factor in reinstating or remediating the damaged/fallen structures.

Technical specifications:

Made of structurally highly stable box sections, ERS is lightweight, modular and reusable.

It provides complete solution from member connections up to the foundation for different type of soil conditions.

The system is verified through rigorous structural tests.

Basic knowledge and tools are enough to assemble and install ERS at the disaster site.

Suitable configurations for different voltage-class of transmission line systems are possible.

The system is compact and yet provides full functionality on erection. It is designed as a scalable system for 33 to 800 kV class of power lines and can help in building a disaster resilient society.

Leonid meteor shower.

The Leonid meteor showers are currently making their yearly appearance, and will reach their peak in India on November 17 and 18, according to Norway-based website timeanddate.com.

• In 2020, these showers are active from November 6th to November 30th.

Key findings:

•The Leonids emerge from the comet Tempel-Tuttle, which requires 33 years to revolve once around the Sun.

•These meteors are bright and among the fastest moving– travelling at speeds of 71 km per second. During this year’s showers, peaks of around 10 to 15 meteors are expected to be seen every hour.

 •As per report, the Leonid showers include fireballs– bright and large meteors than can last longer than average meteors, and “earthgazers”– meteors which appear close to the horizon with colourful and long tails.

•Meteor showers are named after the constellation they appear to be coming from.

•The Leonids originate from the constellation Leo the Lion– the groups of stars which form a lion’s mane.

What is a meteor shower?

On its journey around the Sun, the Earth passes through large swathes of cosmic debris. The debris is essentially the remnants of comets — great frigid chunks of matter that leave behind dirty trails of rocks and ice that linger long after the comets themselves have passed.

As the Earth wades through this cloud of comet waste, the bits of debris create what appears from the ground to be a fireworks display in the sky — known as a meteor shower.

Several meteor showers can be seen around the year. According to NASA, over 30 meteor showers occur annually and are observable from the Earth.

For instance, the Perseid meteor shower occurs every year in August and was first observed over 2,000 years ago.

Panna Biosphere Reserve.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has recently included the Panna Biosphere Reserve (PBR) in its World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR).

Highlights:

• It is the third in Madhya Pradesh to be included in the list after Pachmarhi and

Amarkantak. The Fuvahmulahand Addu Atoll in the Maldives has also been included in the WNBR.

 • It is established in 1981, PBR is located in the Panna and Chhatarpur districts of Madhya Pradesh with an area of around 540 km. sq. It is situated in the Vindhya mountain range in the northern part of Madhya Pradesh.

• Ken River (one of the least polluted tributaries of the Yamuna River) flows through the reserve and the Ken-Betwa river interlinking project will also be located in it. The region is also famous for Panna Diamond Mining.

About Biosphere Reserves:

• They are representative parts of natural and cultural landscapes extending over large areas of terrestrial or coastal/marine ecosystems or a combination thereof and representative examples of biogeographic zones/provinces.

• The idea of the biosphere reserve was initiated by UNESCO in 1974 under the MAB with the objective of obtaining international cooperation for the conservation of the biospheres.

• The first biosphere reserve of the world was established in 1979 and since then the network has increased to more than 600 in 119 countries across the world.

• A scheme called Biosphere Reserve has been implemented by the Government of India since 1986.

• The financial assistance is given in a 90:10 ratio to the North Eastern Region States and three Himalayan states and in the ratio of 60:40 to other states for maintenance, improvement and development.

The State Governments prepare the Management Action Plan which is approved and monitored by the Central MAB Committee.

• India has a total of 18 Biosphere Reserves and with the inclusion of PBR, the number of internationally designated WNBR has become 12.

About Man and Biosphere Programme:

 It is launched by the UNESCO in 1971, it is an Intergovernmental Scientific programme that aims to establish a scientific basis for the Improvement of relationships between people and their Environments.

• Every year UNESCO designates new Biosphere reserves and removes others to promote the conservation of biodiversity and resolve man-animal conflict at that site and enable sustainable use of Natural Resources.

• It combines the natural and social sciences, economics and education to improve human livelihoods and the equitable sharing of benefits, and to safeguard natural and managed ecosystems, thus promoting innovative approaches to economic development that are socially and culturally appropriate, and Environmentally Sustainable.

Government to govern OTT Platforms.

• In a move that will have a far-reaching impact, the Union government has brought Over

The Top (OTT) platforms, or video streaming service providers such as Netflix, Amazon

Prime and others, under the ambit of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

About:

• Currently, there is no law or autonomous body governing digital content. In a gazette notification issued recently, online films, digital news and current affairs content now come under the purview of the I&B Ministry headed by Prakash Javadekar.

• The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has found a vast swathe of unregulated content, namely news online and over the top (OTT) platforms which had escaped any architecture of regulation. While the print was regulated by the Press Council of India and Television, both News and Entertainment, were being regulated by the Cable Networks Regulation Act (2005), content on online, the Government felt, fell into a black hole with no oversight.

Why OTT Platforms need a Regulator?

 • Lack of Regulation: While traditional media in India are regulated under specific laws such as:

✓ Films are regulated under the Cinematograph Act of 1952—which provides for the certification of cinematograph films for public exhibition.

✓ The Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 —that applies to content appearing on cable televisions.

✓ However, there is no such specific law for regulation of content over OTT platforms.

• Censorship Problem: Generally, the Government in India censors the content on grounds of public morality, communal harmony or cultural preservation, among various reasons. However, due to the lack of censorship, content on OTT platforms can disrupt social harmony and moral fabric of society.

• No Consensus of Self-Regulation: OTT platforms had signed a self-regulation code under the aegis of the Internet and Mobile Association of India. However, there’s no consensus on the code amongst the various OTT platforms operating in India.

• Cultural Homogenisation: India is projected to become the second largest online video-viewing audience by 2020. In this context, OTT platforms are streaming a lot of cross-cultural content. Though it is good for creating a cosmopolitan world, it has aggravated some of the means in the society like cultural imperialism.

How does the Ministry propose to regulate news and OTT online?

• No details as of now, but it is learnt that the Programme Code that governs content on TV and which found an outlet in the Cable Television Network Regulation Act, 1995, may serve as a template to frame rules for online content.

• The Programme Code lists several don’ts that channels are required to observe and follow. Currently, the Electronic Media Monitoring Centre, which was set up in 2008, is entrusted with the work of monitoring content on TV.

 • It puts out reports on violations of the Programme Code. The findings go to an inter-Ministerial Committee. There is a possibility that the brief of the monitoring service could be extended to include online content.

• However, Monitoring content 24x7 has its own challenges. Whether the Ministry will set up a committee involving the public to look into complaints received remains to be seen.