IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-01

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Women allowed to work in night shifts in all factories in Karnataka

News

• The Karnataka government issued a notification allowing women to work in night shifts (7 p.m. to 6 a.m.) in all factories registered under the Factories Act.

Work in night shifts

• The State government has in the notification cited the Madras High Court judgement striking down Section 66(1)(b) of the Factories Act, 1948, which prohibited employment of women to work in night shifts, and certain conditions laid down by it.
• Currently, women are allowed to work night shifts only in the IT and IT-enabled service sectors.
• With this move, women will be allowed to work during nights in other sectors including manufacturing.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-02

Draft exclusive law to administer Sabarimala temple, Supreme Court directs Kerala

News

• The Supreme Court directed the Kerala government to draft a law exclusively covering the administration of the Sabarimala Sree Ayyappa Swami Temple by the third week of January.

Exclusive law

• A three-judge Bench expressed dissatisfaction when the State chose to produce a draft Bill The Travancore-Cochin Religious Institutions (Amendment) Bill of 2019 containing certain proposed amendments to the Travancore-Cochin Religious Institutions Act of 1950.
• The 1950 Act is presently governing over 100 temples, including Sabarimala.
• Justice Ramana pointed out that a temple which receives lakhs of pilgrims should be governed by a separate Act.
• The court said an exclusive law was imperative for the welfare of pilgrims and effective management of the famed temple.

NRC process to be carried out in entire country, says Amit Shah in Rajya Sabha

News

• The process to make a National Register of Citizens (NRC) will be carried out across India, Home Minister Amit Shah said in the Rajya Sabha and whenever it is done, the exercise will be repeated in Assam.

National Register of Citizens

• Home Minister said that, NRC was undertaken as per the Supreme Court directive. The process will be carried out across the country. No one irrespective of their religion should be worried. NRC doesn’t discriminate against any Indian citizen on the basis of religion. It is just a process to get everyone on the NRC and whenever it is done it is only obvious that it will repeated in Assam too.

Lok Sabha passes the Chit Funds (Amendment) Bill

News

• The Lok Sabha passed the Chit Funds (Amendment) Bill which will raise the monetary limits for chit funds and approves higher commission for “foreman”.

Chit Funds Bill

• The Bill also introduces words such as “fraternity fund”, “rotating savings” and “credit institution” to make chit funds more respectable.
• The maximum chit amount is proposed to raised from ₹1 lakh to ₹3 lakh for those managed by individuals or less than four partners, and from ₹6 lakh to ₹18 lakh for firms with four or more partners.
• The maximum commission for foreman the person who is responsible to handle the chit fund process is proposed to be raised from 5% to 7%. The bill also allows the foreman a right to lien against the credit balance from subscribers.
• In addition to a proposal for allowing subscribers to join the process of drawing chits through video-conferencing, the billallows State governments to specify the base amount over which the provisions of the Act would apply.

MHA tells States to strictly enforce ban on e-cigarettes

News

• The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has sent an advisory to all States and Union Territories asking them to strictly enforce the ban on e-cigarettes cleared by the Union Cabinet in September.

Ban on e-cigarettes 

• The Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes (production, import, export, distribution, storage and advertisement) Ordinance was promulgated on September 18.
• In a letter to Chief Secretaries and Directors General of Police of all States, the MHA said that the ordinance empowered police officers above the rank of sub-inspectors to “enter, search and seize” prohibited items without any warrant.
• It also asked States to sensitise the enforcement personnel for effective implementation of the ordinance.

India, U.K. scientists collaborate on clean air solutions for Delhi

News

• Atmospheric scientists from the U.K. and India have partnered to tackle chronic air pollution, which is impacting the health of more than 20 million people in Delhi.

Clean air solutions

• The Indian capital, one of the country’s most densely populated metropolis, has some of the worst air pollution of any city in the world.
• Air quality experts from the University of Manchester partnered with their counterparts from the Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences (IMES), the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) and the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) to help drive science-based policy changes.
• Their new, and ongoing, study will further identify the causes behind the pollution crisis and inform ongoing and future policy before analysing the effectiveness of the interventions.
• One of the key measures for determining the true extent of Delhi’s current pollution problem will be to measure particulate matter concentrations across the city. This detail will build a picture of the sum-total of all hazardous solid and liquid particles suspended in the air.
• The U.K. has extensive experience of conducting atmospheric chemistry measurements and carrying out computer modelling of air pollution that is world-leading. India has a rapidly growing research base in this field and a huge amount of local knowledge and understanding of the air pollution problems in Indian cities.
• Schools across the city have recently been ordered to close, construction projects halted and residents advised to avoid outdoor activities as the air quality has reached hazardous levels.
• Scientists from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology have already developed the SAFAR (System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research) for advanced air quality forecasting for Delhi.

Indian Naval Academy awarded President’s Colour

News

• The Indian Naval Academy (INA), located at Ezhimala in Kerala, which trains Naval officers, was awarded the President’s Colour by the President of India and the Supreme Commander of the Indian Armed Forces Ram Nath Kovind, on completion of 50 years.

President’s Colour

• The President’s Colour, the highest honour that is bestowed upon a military unit, was received by Academy Cadet Captain Sushil Singh at a parade comprising 730 cadets of INA and a 150-men Guard of Honour.
• The INA was first established at a temporary location at Kochi in 1969, relocated to INS Mandovi at Goa in 1986, and finally moved to its permanent location at Ezhimala in 2009.
• INA, Ezhimala, over a period of 10 years has commissioned 5,930 officers into the Indian Navy and Coast Guard, including 531 women officers, the Navy said in a statement. The INA has a present strength of 963 trainees, including 44 women trainees and 26 trainees from friendly foreign countries.
• The Indian Navy was the first of the three Services to be awarded the President’s Colour on May 27, 1951.

India, Singapore ink LoI on use of Integrated Test Range at Chandipur

News

• India and Singapore exchanged a Letter of Intent that could pave the way for the city-state to conduct live firing of missiles like the Spyder air defence system at the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur in Odisha.

Integrated Test Range

• This was agreed during the 4th India-Singapore Defence Ministers’ Dialogue (DMD) which was co-chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his Singapore counterpart Dr. Ng Eng Hen in Singapore.
• It is perhaps for the first time that India will open Chandipur Integrated Test Range for any foreign country.
• The Integrated Test Range (ITR), a well equipped Test and Evaluation (T&E) center of DRDO, is set up to provide safe and reliable launch facilities for performance evaluation of rockets, missiles and air-borne weapon system, according to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) website.

Trilateral maritime exercise

• Two sides agreed to conduct the trilateral maritime exercise involving Singapore, India and Thailand annually from next year.
• The first Singapore-India-Thailand maritime exercise (SITMEX) was held in the Andaman Sea in September as part of the security and safety of Indo-Pacific sea lines.
• The SITMEX exercise underscores the shared responsibility of the three countries to work together in keeping sea lines of communications open and strengthens interoperability among them.
• The two sides identified new areas of cooperation in the already strong and diversified defence partnership, including in exercises and test firing by Singapore in India, information exchange, launch of micro satellites in India, geo-spatial data sharing, Artificial Intelligence and cybersecurity.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-03

53 road crashes, 17 deaths per hour in 2018: Annual government report

News

• More than 1.5 lakh people lost their lives in road crashes in the country in 2018, registering an increase of 2.4% as compared to the year before, when there were 1.47 lakh fatalities.

Road crashes

• The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways released the annual report on road accidents in India, which shows a daily average of 1,280 road crashes and 415 deaths. This translates into 53 crashes and the loss of 17 lives every hour. Road traffic injuries constitute the eighth leading cause of deaths in India in 2018.
• India is the most unsafe country in the world for road users across 199 countries, as reported by the Geneva-based World Road Federation’s World Road Statistics 2018.
• It’s followed by China (63,000 deaths) and the U.S. (37,000 deaths).
• The annual report also reveals that of the total people killed in road crash deaths in 2018, 48% were between 18 years and 35 years old. Minors involved in road crash deaths were at 6.6% of the total deaths.
• Over-speeding is a major killer, accounting for 64.4% of the persons killed. This category was followed by driving on the wrong side of the road, which accounted for 5.8% of the accident related deaths. Use of mobile phones accounted for 2.4% of the deaths and drunken driving accounted for 2.8% of the persons killed.
• Not wearing helmets and seat belts are not causes of crashes, but are critical for avoiding grievous injuries and fatalities. As many as 43,614 deaths or 28.8% of total road accident deaths in the country last year were caused due to “non-wearing of helmets”. “Non-wearing of seat belts” was linked to 24,435 deaths or 16.1% of total road accident deaths in the country.
• The latest data highlights the urgent need on part of the States to implement key road safety provisions of the Motor Vehicles Amendment Act, 2019.”
• Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Uttarakhand were among the States that heavily slashed the penalties levied under the amended law.

In a first, Kochi gets a biodiversity map

News

• In what is a first for an Indian city, a natural assets map that delineates Kochi’s biodiversity, detailing species of plants, animals, insects, and natural features has been prepared.

Biodiversity map

• Besides marking features such as marshlands, mangroves, backwaters and ponds, the map also identifies areas used as playgrounds, open spaces, and wetlands used for prawn culture.
• The mapping was taken up by the Kochi Corporation’s Centre for Heritage, Environment and Development and ICLEI-South Asia as part of a German-funded project, Integrated Subnational Action for Biodiversity (Interact-Bio), being implemented in India, Brazil and Tanzania.
• The four-year project launched in 2017 is targeted at implementing biodiversity strategies and action plans in three Indian cities – Kochi, Mangaluru and Panaji.
• Nature-based solutions that will help rejuvenate the city’s biodiversity and ecosystems will also be developed as part of the project.
• The GIS-based survey of 98 sqkm within Kochi Corporation limits identifies 119 hectares under mangrove coverage, 82 hectares of inland backwaters, 13 hectares of beach and 199 hectares of tree patches.
• A pictorial handbook on around 50 species of trees in Subhash Park and the labelling of these trees were also taken up as part of the project.

Three Rafale jets handed over to India: Government

News

• Three Rafale fighter jets have been handed over to the Indian Air Force (IAF) and are being used to train IAF pilots and technicians in France, the government said.

Rafale fighter jets

• • India and France signed an €7.87 billion (₹ 59,000 crore approximately) deal in September 2016 for 36 Rafale jets.
  • While the first Rafale jet was handed over to India on October 8, the first batch of four Rafale jets will arrive in India by May 2020.

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