Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

Editorials are covered separately. HINDU NOTES are available free date wise| CLICK HERE

Mumbai’s Victorian and Art Deco buildings get World Heritage tag

News

• The city’s Victorian and Art Deco ensembles were given the green light by the International Council for Monuments and Sites, an advisory body to the UNSECO, thus securing India its 37th World Heritage site, and Maharashtra its fifth.

Beyond News

• The buildings around the Fort, Churchgate and Marine Drive areas of the city, with notable structures such as the Bombay High Court, Elphinstone College, the National Gallery of Modern Art and CSMT, form a part of the collection of Victorian, Neo-Classical and Indo-Saracenic architecture in the city.
• Residential buildings along Oval Maidan and around the Cricket Club of India, and the first row of buildings along Marine Drive, as well as the Regal and Eros cinema theatres, are part of the Art Deco cluster.
• Mumbai’s Victorian buildings are amongst the finest and most cohesive 19th century Victorian architecture in the world, and the city’s Art Deco buildings of the 20th century make up the second largest homogenous collection in the world.

Mini Neanderthal brains grown in U.S. lab

News

• Scientists have successfully grown pea-size versions of Neanderthal brains, an advance that may help better understand the species that went extinct about 40,000 years ago.

Beyond News

• Cultivating and studying these mini brains may reveal why Neanderthals died out and Homo sapienswent on to conquer much of the planet.
• Researchers compared the genome of Neanderthals with that of modern humans. Out of 200 candidate genes that showed significant differences between the two species, the researchers focussed on a gene expression regulator known as NOVA1.
• To grow mini Neanderthal brains, they used the gene-editing tool known as CRISPR to “Neanderthalise” human pluripotent stem cells, or immature cells that can develop into any cell in the body.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

EC portal to aid disabled voters

News

• The Election Commission will launch a voter education and electoral participation portal, with a section dedicated to the Persons with Disabilities (PwDs), in the backdrop of a two-day national consultation programme on issues pertaining to their inclusion in the poll process.

Beyond News

• The programme on “Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) in the Electoral Process” is being organised with a view to come up with a national policy on the issue.
• According to the 2011 census, India has around 70 million people with disabilities.
• Post-consultation, a comprehensive report on challenges along with short/medium/ long-term action points will be prepared. Among the participants will be senior government functionaries, representatives from political parties and NGOs, and experts.
• Under the EC’s Strategic Plan 2016-2025, greater participation of PwDs in the electoral process has been identified as one of the core objectives.

Punjab withdraws contentious legislation

News

• The Punjab government has withdrawn a contentious legislation that proposed life imprisonment for sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikhs.

Beyond News

• The Indian Penal Code (Punjab Amendment) Bill, 2016, and the Code of Criminal Procedure (Punjab Amendment) Bill, 2016, enabled introduction of a new amended Section 295 AA in the IPC for desecrating the religious book.
• The Bill was introduced in 2016 after over hundred incidents of desecration of the holy book. The government had suspected “foreign hand” in the incidents. The existing provision, Section 295A of the IPC (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs), makes such a crime punishable by imprisonment of three years.
• As per Home Ministry records, the Punjab government withdrew both legislations on May 3.
• The Home Ministry examines the Bills passed by the Assemblies that are repugnant to Central laws before they get the President’s assent to become a law.
• The Bill was returned by the Home Ministry to the State government in March 2017 as it violated the principle of secularism as mentioned in the Constitution.
• The government, sought legal opinion on the legislation and was told that the Bill could fail judicial scrutiny as it focussed on a particular religion. The Home Ministry recently reviewed over hundred pieces of legislation awaiting presidential assent.
• It called for a meeting of all State representatives to take a final decision on the Bills where a response was awaited from the State governments.

India backs FATF’s grey-listing of Pak.

News

• India welcomed the step by an international organisation that placed Pakistan on a special list of countries that are kept under watch in a move to counter international terror financing.

Beyond News

• In a statement, the External Affairs Ministry welcomed the grey-listing of Pakistan by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and expressed hope that Pakistan would prevent terror acts emanating from its territory.
• Being on the grey list will require Pakistan to meet additional guarantees while borrowing finance from international donors such as the International Monetary Fund.
• Pakistan had been on the grey list between 2012 and 2015 but was taken off the list.
• But subsequent terror attacks on Indian targets by groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), headed by Hafiz Saeed, and Jaish-e-Mohammed, led by Masood Azhar, revived the international demand to place the country back on the list.
• The decision to place Pakistan back on the grey list was taken following the plenary session of the FATF in February and it finally came into force. Pakistan had activated diplomatic channels to prevent the listing but Islamabad could not stop the move.

Anti-conversion law must stay: tribal groups

News

• Followers of indigenous faiths in Arunachal Pradesh have resented Chief Minister’s move to repeal an anti-conversion law that they say is necessary to save traditional belief systems and local cultures.

Beyond News

• Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act framed in 1978 would be repealed in the next Assembly session.
• In statements issued, the Indigenous Faith and Cultural Society of Arunachal Pradesh (IFCSAP) and the Nyishi Indigenous Faiths and Cultural Society (NIFCS) slammed the move as “minority appeasement and detrimental to the growth of indigenous people of the State”.
• The Nyishi, belonging to the Tani group, is the largest ethnic community in Arunachal Pradesh. The IFCSAP and the NIFCS are major organisations that fight for preservation of indigenous faiths such as Donyi-Polo and Rangfra.
• These organisations believe the growth of Christianity in the State from none in 1951 to being the largest religious group at 30.26% in 2011  has been at the expense of the followers of indigenous faiths.
• Repealing the law that safeguards the indigenous people would open the floodgates of poaching and it would lead to marginalisation of the indigenous people.
• The NIFCS said scrapping the anti-conversion law would extensively damage the basic structure of indigenous faiths and cultures that are still languishing from the persistent and aggressive influence of foreign cultures.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Agni-V to be part of nuclear arsenal soon

News

• India’s longest-range ballistic missile, Agni-V, will be inducted into the nuclear arsenal very soon.

Beyond News

• The Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) with a range of over 5,000 km can reach most parts of China.
• It is a strategic asset which will act as a deterrent.
• Missile features the latest technologies for navigation and improved accuracy. Earlier variants of the Agni family of long-range missiles have already been deployed.
• Last month, the canisterised variant of the missile was successfully test-fired by the user, the Strategic Forces Command (SFC). A few more user trials are planned in the next few weeks.
• The Agni series of missiles constitute the backbone of India’s nuclear weapons delivery, which also includes the Prithvi short-range ballistic missiles and fighter aircraft.
• The submarine-based nuclear arsenal, which assures second strike capability in the face of the proclaimed no-first-use policy, is taking shape.
• While one nuclear ballistic missile has been inducted, more submarines and longer range submarine-launched ballistic missiles are under various stages of development.

PSLV bags first Australian order

News

• The Indian PSLV launcher has broken into a rising Australian space market and bagged its first small but promising order from Down Under.

Beyond News

• Fleet Space Technologies, an IoT (Internet of Things) startup, disclosed last week that its first 10-kg nanosatellite Centauri I would fly to space on a PSLV later this year.
• The prospect for the PSLV is in the fact that Adelaide-based Fleet plans to put up a constellation of an unstated number of tiny satellites all of which will need a suitable, timely launch vehicle to take them to space.
• Australia is in the throes of setting up its space agency and an industry around it. Adelaide in South Australia is the current hub of this activity. The second nanosat, Centauri II, is to be launched on the U.S. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket later this year.
• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has planned a part-commercial PSLV flight around August.
• The PSLV’s three versions can lift satellites of 1,000-1,750 kg to distances of around 600 km in pole-to-pole orbits.
• A neat launch record has made the booster a trusted and affordable space vehicle for small satellites. Big rocket players are focussed on taking heavy, multi-tonne satellites to space.
• Since its first commercial launch in 1999, the PSLV has put in orbit 237 small satellites of 28 countries, About half of them are from the US. Antrix recently said it has many more orders confirmed or under discussion.
• A news release from the Australian company said it is developing a series of 10-kg nanosatellites about the size of a shoebox to enable low-cost connectivity for agriculture, logistics, mining and other industries.

Decreasing ‘greenness’ in India’s forests

News

• ‘Greenness’ is consistently decreasing across more than 46 lakh hectares of various types of forest in India, particularly in core protected areas. This indicates that our forests are vulnerable.

Findings

• India’s diverse forests face several threats including forest degradation, as the loss of greenness signifies. Scientists analysed NASA’s MODIS satellite images of India’s forests at eight-day intervals for 15 years (2001 to 2014) and assessed the persistent decreases in greenness. Using an index that determines the amount forest “vigour,” they assessed the seasonal greenness of 14 different forest types: the negative the trend of greenness over years, the more degraded and vulnerable the forest.
• They found that the highest degradation is in moist deciduous forests (more than 20 lakh hectares), especially in the states of Chhatisgarh, Odisha, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
• Wet evergreen forests – including those in the Western Ghats and Eastern Himalayas are also affected, with the major changes observed in Karnataka and Arunachal Pradesh, followed by Kerala and Meghalaya.
• More than 15% of India’s total mangrove forests also showed a decrease in greenness. Nearly 80% of these changes occurred in ‘core’ forests like protected areas.
• Using statistical analyses, the team determined the ‘spots’or areas where the decrease in seasonal greenness were high and spatially contiguous.
• West Bengal was a major hotspot of mangrove degradation. Arunachal Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and Meghalaya were hotspots of decreasing greenness of wet evergreen forests while Manipur, Tamil Nadu, Mizoram, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh showed degraded montane (high-elevation) wet forests.
• The result of this study could provide first hand information to prioritise and plan conservation of these areas or restore them to their original glory.
•  
• CLICK HERE TO SEE DATE WISE CURRENT AFFAIRS.