Current Affairs - 2019-20

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Nirupama Rao, the former Indian Ambassador to US, has been appointed as a public policy fellow to a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS) where she will work on a project on the Sino-India ties. Rao will be affiliated with the Wilson Centre’s Asia program and spend 3 months in residence at the Wilson Centre from June 2017, which is a key non-partisan policy forum for tackling global issues. The WWICS is the living, national memorial to President Wilson, created by Congress in 1968 and headquartered in Washington DC. The Wilson Center provides a strictly nonpartisan space for the worlds of policymaking and scholarship to interact.

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Indian anti-hunger activist Ankit Kawatra has honoured with the 2017 Queen’s Young Leaders award for his exceptional work in transforming the lives of others. Kawatra is among the 60 others from all 53 Commonwealth countries to be felicitated with the prestigious award by Queen Elizabeth (II) at a ceremony in Buckingham Palace in London on June 29, 2017. The honourees will also undergo a year-long mentoring and online learning by the University of Cambridge to build leadership capabilities and better their work towards the communities. He is the founder of Feeding India, a not-for profit organization that works towards solving problems of hunger, malnutrition and food wastage, mainly by redistributing extra food from restaurants, canteens, households, corporates etc. to help people in need.

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India fulfils 85% of its crude oil requirements through imports. As of June, 2022, Iraq, Russia and Saudi Arabia are India’s largest three crude oil suppliers.

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The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the North East Industrial Development Scheme (NEIDS), 2017 with financial outlay of Rs.3000 crores upto March, 2020. Government will provide necessary allocations for remaining period of scheme after assessment before March 2020. NEIDS is a combination of the incentives covered under the earlier two schemes with a much larger outlay. In order to promote employment in the North East States, Government is incentivising primarily the MSME Sector through this scheme and is also providing specific incentive through it to generate employment. The newly introduced scheme will promote industrialization in the States of the North Eastern Region and will boost employment and income generation. All eligible industrial units which are getting benefits of one or more components of other schemes of the government will also be considered for benefits of other components of this scheme. The overall cap for benefits under all components of incentives will be of Rs 200 crores per unit.

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The Unified Commanders’ Conference (UCC) for the year 2018 has started at New Delhi on July 30 to review external security challenges as well as the country’s preparedness. The 2-day annual conference will provide a platform for discussions at the Apex Level on all ‘Joint Issues’ among the three Services & Ministry of Defence. The scope of this conference is to enable the forum to facilitate joint stock taking of the previous year’s performance of all Services & Departments of Ministry of Defence and jointly chart the course for the next year. The conference will be attended by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of State for Defence Subhash Ramrao Bhamre, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, the Chiefs of Army, Navy and Air Force among others.

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Article 311 provides protection to Public servants. There is need for rationalization and simplification of procedures to prevent the corrupt and dishonest elements in the system from cornering the benefits of the constitutional safeguards. Central Government has constituted a GoM to consider measures that can be taken to tackle corruption. One of the terms of reference is to consider amendment to Article 311 of the Constitution to provide for summary proceedings in cases of grave misdemeanour or blatant corruption by public servants. The issue is under consideration of GoM.

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Agasthyamalai Biosphere Reserve became part of World Network of Biosphere Reserves in 2016. ABR includes the Indian Ecoregions of South Western Ghats moist deciduous forests, South Western Ghats montane rain forests and Shola. It is the habitat for 2,000 varieties of medicinal plants, of which at least 50 are rare and endangered species. Rare animals include the tiger, Asian Elephant, and Nilgiri tahr. 

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All given features are of Forest owlet

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Recently, the Ministry of Science & Technology has launched Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhayay Vigyan Gram Sankul Pariyojana to formulate and implement appropriate S&T. The scheme is initially launched on pilot basis under which the Department of Science and Technology (DST) will adopt few clusters of villages in Uttarakhand and transform them to become self-sustainable in terms of science & technology with the help of available local resources and skills. Practice of agriculture, agro-based cottage industries and animal husbandry in an eco-friendly manner will be emphasized during the implementation of the project.

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The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2017 was awarded to Richard H. Thaler “for his contributions to behavioural economics”. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics, is an award for outstanding contributions to the field of economics, and generally regarded as the most prestigious award for that field. The prize was established in 1968. Although it is not one of the prizes that Alfred Nobel established in his will in 1895, it is referred to along with the other Nobel Prizes by the Nobel Foundation.