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Daily PIB/ 09 March
General Studies- I
Topic– Role of women and women’s organizations, Population and associated issues, Poverty and developmental issues, Urbanization, their problems and their remedies.
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Nari Shakti Puraskar
Context:
The President of India, presented Nari Shakti Puraskar for the years 2020 and 2021 on the occasion of International Women’s Day.
- Twenty-eight awards — 14 each for 2020 and 2021 — were given to 29 women in recognition of their exceptional work towards women empowerment, especially the vulnerable and the marginalised communities.
About the award:
Nari Shakti Puraskar is the highest civilian honor for women in India.
- This National Award is an annually given by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to individual women or to institutions working for women empowerment.
- The awards are presented by the President of India on International Women’s Day (8 March), at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.
- Initially, in 1999 this award was instituted as ‘Stree Shakti Puraskar’. Later in 2015, the awards were reorganized and renamed as Nari Shakti Puraskar.
Eligibility:
As per the Guidelines, any individual of at least 25 years of age and institutions having worked in the relevant field for at least 5 years are eligible to be awarded.
Categories and Prize:
The awards also carry a cash prize. For the institutional category award, the cash prize is 2 lakh rupees and for the individual category award, the cash prize is 1 lakh rupees.
- The awards are given in six institutional and two individual categories.
- Each institutional category is named after renowned woman in Indian history.
Institutional categories:
- Devi Ahilya Bai Holkar Award for best private sector organization or public sector undertaking in promoting the well-being and welfare of women. It is named after Ahilyabai Holkar, an 18th-century ruler of the Malwa kingdom.
- Kannagi Devi Award for best state which has appreciably improved Child Sex Ratio (CSR). It is named after Kannagi, the central character of the Tamil epic Silapathikaram. In Tamil tradition, Kannagi is considered a goddess.
- Mata Jijabai Award for best urban local body for providing services and facilities to women. It is named after Mata Jijabai, mother of Shivaji, who founded the Maratha Empire in the 17th century.
- Rani Gaidinliu Zeliang Award given to a civil society organization (CSO) doing outstanding work for the welfare and well-being of women. It is named after Rani Gaidinliu, a 20th-century Naga spiritual and political leader.
- Rani Lakshmi Bai Award given to the best institution for research and development in the field of women empowerment. It is named after Lakshmibai, one of the leading figures of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and a queen of Jhansi.
- Rani Rudramma Devi Awards given to two District Panchayats and two Gram Panchayats for work in the area of women welfare especially related to the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana. It is named after Rudrama Devi, a 13th-century ruler of Deccan Plateau.
Individual categories:
- Nari Shakti Award for courage and bravery.
- Nari Shakti Awards for making outstanding contributions to women empowerment.
General Studies- III
Topic– Achievements of Indians in Science & Technology; indigenization of technology and developing new technology.
National Supercomputing Mission
Context:
Petascale Supercomputer “PARAM Ganga” was established at IIT Roorkee under National Supercomputing Mission.
About the NSM:
The National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) was announced in 2015 to enhance the research capacities and capabilities in the country by connecting them to form a Supercomputing grid, with National Knowledge Network (NKN) as the backbone.
- It aims to connect national academic and R&D institutions with a grid of more than 70 high-performance computing facilities at an estimated cost of Rs. 4,500 crores over the period of seven years by 2022.
- The NSM is setting up a grid of supercomputing facilities in academic and research institutions across the country.
- Part of this is being imported from abroad and part built indigenously.
Objective:
- To make India one of the world leaders in Supercomputing and to enhance India’s capability in solving grand challenge problems of national and global relevance
- To empower our scientists and researchers with state-of-the-art supercomputing facilities and enable them to carry out cutting-edge research in their respective domains
- To minimize redundancies and duplication of efforts, and optimize investments in supercomputing
- To attain global competitiveness and ensure self-reliance in the strategic area of supercomputing technology
Implementation:
The Mission is being jointly steered by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and implemented by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.
Application areas:
- Climate Modelling
- Weather Prediction
- Aerospace Engineering including CFD, CSM, CEM
- Computational Biology
- Molecular Dynamics
- Atomic Energy Simulations
- National Security/ Defence Applications
- Seismic Analysis
- Disaster Simulations and Management
- Computational Chemistry
- Computational Material Science and Nanomaterials
- Discoveries beyond Earth (Astrophysics)
- Large Complex Systems Simulations and Cyber Physical Systems
- Big Data Analytics
- Finance
- Information repositories/ Government Information Systems
Supercomputer under the NSM:
- PARAM Shivay, the first supercomputer assembled indigenously, was installed in IIT (BHU).
- It was followed by PARAM Shakti, PARAM Brahma, PARAM Yukti, PARAM Sanganak at IIT-Kharagpur IISER, Pune, JNCASR, Bengaluru and IIT Kanpur respectively.
As part of its tireless journey of success, NSM has now deployed “PARAM Ganga”, a supercomputer at IIT Roorkee, with a supercomputing capacity of 1.66 Petaflops.
General Studies- III
Topic– Infrastructure: Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways etc.
Polavaram Irrigation project
The National Green Tribunal has formed a committee and sought an action taken report on a plea against the execution of Polavaram Irrigation Project without requisite fresh environmental clearance.
- A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice AK Goel constituted a committee comprising officials from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Ministry of Jal Shakti, state pollution control board and the project proponent.
- The committee will be at liberty to interact with stakeholders concerned.
- MoEF will be the nodal agency for coordination and compliance.
About the Polavaram Project:
The Polavaram Irrigation Project is a Multipurpose one conferring Irrigation benefits in the upland areas of Visakhapatnam, East Godavari, West Godavari and Krishna Districts.
- It also envisages drinking water supply to Visakhapatnam Township and other towns and villages enroute.
- It will provide Industrial water supply to the Visakhapatnam coast based Steel Plant and other industries in the vicinity, generation of Hydal Power, affording Navigation facilities, development of pisciculture and providing recreation and other benefits, besides urbanisation.
The Project also provides diversion of 80 TMC ft. of Godavari Waters to Krishna Basin.
The Project is located in Andhra Pradesh near Polavaram village about 34 KMs upstream of Kovvur – Rajahmundry Road.
The river Godavari:
The river Godavari is one of the largest Rivers in India, being the second largest in the Indian Union.
- The Godavari, rises in the Western Ghats at Triambak near Nasik.
- After descending the Western Ghats, it takes a South-Easterly course across the Southern part of Indian Peninsula and after flowing through 1230 KM it falls into the Bay of Bengal near Rajahmundry.
- The total catchment area drained by the river is 3,12,812 Sq, K.M. (1,20,777 Sq. Miles) or nearly one tenth of India.
The main tributaries of the river are: the Manjira, the Pranhita, the Indravati and the Sabari.
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Yoga for stress management
Argentina federal police will now effectively use technique of Yoga for stress management of its personnel.
- Embassy of India in Argentina and University Institute of the Argentine Federal Police (IUPFA) will be jointly conducting a workshop on Yoga.
- The general objective of this workshop will be to promote the practice of Yoga as a tool to develop physical, mental and emotional well-being, incorporating discipline techniques for stress management.
National Skill Development Corporation
National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) is a not-for-profit public limited company incorporated on July 31, 2008 under section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956 (corresponding to section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013).
- NSDC was set up by Ministry of Finance as Public Private Partnership (PPP) model.
- During the pandemic induced lockdown, the National Skill Development Corporation has promoted online skilling through eSkill India portal.
- eSkill India has been instrumental in aggregating digital skilling avenues from the leaders in the field of digital skilling.
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