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Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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Basic literacy, numeracy skills of rural Class VIII students in decline: ASER 2018

Basic literacy, numeracy skills of rural Class VIII students in decline: ASER 2018

News

  • While there has been some improvement in the reading and arithmetic skills of lower primary students in rural India over the last decade, the skills of Class VIII students have actually seen a decline.

Findings

  • The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2018, the results of a yearly survey that NGO Pratham has been carrying out since 2006, shows that more than half of Class VIII students cannot correctly solve a numerical division problem and more than a quarter of them cannot read a primary-level text.
  • Those figures are worse than they were a decade ago. In 2008, 84.8% of Class VIII students could read a text meant for Class II; by 2014, only 74.6% could do so, and by 2018, that percentage had fallen further to 72.8%.
  • Four years ago, 44.1% of students at Class VIII could correctly divide a three-digit number by a single-digit number; in 2018, that figure had fallen slightly to 43.9%.
  • Pratham researchers concluded that “without strong foundational skills, it is difficult for children to cope with what is expected of them in the upper primary grades”.
  • The picture is slightly more encouraging at the Class III level, where there has been gradual improvement since 2014. However, even in 2018, less than 30% of students in Class III are actually at their grade level, that is, able to read a Class II text and do double-digit subtraction.
  • These overall percentages also camouflage wide differences in skill level between States, or even between students in a single classroom.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

Sushma Swaraj discusses enhancing bilateral cooperation with Turkmenistan counterpart

News

  • External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met Foreign Minister of  Turkmenistan Rasit Meredow on the sidelines of the India-Central Asia Dialogue here and discussed enhancing bilateral cooperation across sectors.

Beyond News

  • External Affairs Minister arrived in the ancient city of Samarkand on Saturday on a two-day visit to Uzbekistan to attend the first India-Central Asia Dialogue, which focussed on a plethora of regional issues including enhancing connectivity to war-ravaged Afghanistan.
  • India enjoys close, friendly and historical ties with Turkmenistan and the two countries are part of the ambitious TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline project.
  • Turkmenistan, which sits on the world’s fourth-largest gas reserves, started building its section of the pipeline in December 2015. The TAPI pipeline will have a capacity to carry 90 million standard cubic metres a day (mmscmd) gas for 30 years.
  • The project will bring clean fuel to the growing economies of India and Pakistan. It will provide energy-hungry India gas to run its power plants.
  • Under the pipeline project, Pakistan and India will be provided 1.325 bcfd gas each and Afghanistan will be getting a share of 0.5 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) gas.
  • Prime Minister visited Turkmenistan in July 2015 during which a number of documents were signed between the two sides. It was a historic visit given that an Indian Prime Minister had visited Turkmenistan after 20 years.

Cabinet clears next gen I-T filing system; Infosys to implement ₹ 4,242 cr. project

News

  • IT major Infosys has been selected to implement the next generation system for processing income tax return filings, with the Union Cabinet sanctioning an estimated ₹ 4,241.97 crore for the project.

Beyond News

  • The move will help in bringing down the income tax return (ITR) processing time to one day and hence speed up refunds.
  • The Cabinet, gave its approval to expenditure sanction of ₹ 4,241.97 crore for Integrated E-filing and Centralised Processing Centre 2.0 Project of the Income Tax Department.
  • The processing time at present for ITR is 63 days and it will come down to one day after implementation of the project.
  • The current system, has been a success and the new project will be more tax friendly.
  • The e-filing and Centralised Processing Centre (CPC) projects have enabled end-to-end automation of all processes within the Income Tax Department using various innovative methods to provide taxpayer services and to promote voluntary compliance.
  • The Cabinet also sanctioned a consolidated cost of ₹ 1,482.44 crore for the existing CPC-ITR 1.0 project up to 2018-19.
  • The decision will ensure transparency and accountability besides faster processing of returns and issue of refunds to the taxpayers’ bank account directly without any interface with the Income Tax Department.
  • The broad objectives of the integration project include faster and accurate outcomes for taxpayer, enhancing user experience at all stages, improving taxpayer awareness and education through continuous engagement.
  • Besides, it will also be promoting voluntary tax compliance and managing outstanding demand.

India to buy U.S. oil and gas: New Delhi’s envoy to Washington

India to buy U.S. oil and gas: New Delhi’s envoy to Washington

News

  • India has committed to purchase $5 billion worth of oil and gas from the United States annually, and $18 billion worth of defence equipment that are under implementation, a top Indian diplomat here said, highlighting growing bilateral trade cooperation between the countries.

Beyond News

  • S. export to India has gone up by at least 30%, India’s Ambassador to the U.S.
  • In the last two years, bilateral trade has increased from $119 billion to $140 billion, he said.
  • In the field of oil and gas alone, India has committed to purchase $5 billion from the U.S. every year.
  • In the defence sector, India is looking at $18 billion worth of orders that are under implementation.
  • Not only this, the large number of Indian students, numbering 227,000 currently, contribute $6.5 billion to the American academic sector.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

China’s lunar probe sees first cotton seed sprout on Moon

News

  • A cotton seed carried to the Moon by China’s recent Chang’e-4 probe has sprouted, the first for any biological matter to grow on the Moon.

Beyond News

Images sent back by the probe showed that a cotton sprout had grown well, though no other plant was found growing.

  • On January 3, China’s robotic spacecraft Chang’e-4 landed on the far side of the moon, a first in the human history of space exploration.
  • The 1.3-tonne lander, which made a soft landing on the Moon, carried the seeds of cotton, oilseed rape, potato and arabidopsis, as well as eggs of the fruit fly and some yeast, to form a simple mini biosphere, according to a team led by scientists from Chongqing University in southwest China.
  • Plants have been grown on the International Space Station before but never on the Moon.
  • The ability to grow plants on the Moon will be integral for long-term space missions, like a trip to Mars which would take about two-and-a-half years.
  • It would mean that astronauts could potentially harvest their own food in space, reducing the need to come back down to Earth to re-supply.
  • The plants are kept in a sealed container on board the Chang’e-4 lander. The crops will try to form a mini biosphere an artificial, self-sustaining environment.
  • The lunar mini biosphere experiment on the lander is designed to test photosynthesis and respiration processes in living organisms that result in the production of energy.
  • The whole experiment is contained within an 18 cm tall, 3 kg canister that was designed by 28 Chinese universities.

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