Monday, 26th March, 2012

HEADLINES

• I was offered 14 crore as bribe says army chief
• First international flight from Vizag flagged off.

NATIONAL NEWS

• 500 year old coins found
  • ‘Ashtadhatu' (comprising 8 metals) and copper coins over 500 years old were found during the digging of a road in Barabanki, UP.
    
    
• Hybrid guide lights for fishermen at night
  • The device uses both solar and wind energy and enables fishermen to reach their destination on time and without any difficulty.
  • These solar and wind hybrid guide lights comprising LEDs with 40 watts capacity and 500 watts wind generator, are visible several kilometres from the shore.
  • “Unlike old lighthouses, these do not need diesel or generator to keep this device operational. Traditional lighthouses need at least a handful of workers to man it. But, this system does not need manual intervention and the operating cost is low.
    
    
• Global meet on woman in science
  • An international conference on ‘Women in science and engineering' is scheduled to take place at the Mody Institute of Technology and Science (MITS University). MITS University is organising the conference in association with the University of Missouri, College of Engineering, Columbia, USA.
    
    
• Kerala yet to prepare wetland list
  • Kerala is yet to prepare an inventory of its wetlands even as the deadline for the task, mandated by the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2010, ended nearly a year ago.
  • The rules required the States and Union Territories to identify wetlands within their territories and submit a brief document providing basic information of them within one year of the rules' notification.
  • The States were also asked to provide a broad geographic delineation of the wetland, its zone of influence along with a map.
  • An account of the pre-existing rights and privileges, consistent or not consistent with the ecological health of the wetland, was also to be submitted to the Central Wetland Regulatory Authority.
  • The rules were enacted so as “not to use wetlands beyond their carrying capacity.” They proposed to regulate the ones categorised as Ramsar wetlands, those located in ecologically sensitive and important areas such as national parks, marine parks, sanctuaries, and the ones recognised as, or lying within, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
  • The other wetlands covered by the rules include the “high altitude wetlands at or above an elevation of 2,500 metres with an area equal to or greater than five hectares and wetlands or wetland complexes below an elevation of 2,500 metres with an area equal to or greater than five hundred hectares.”
  • The Central Wetlands Regulatory Authority is empowered to issue directions suo motu for inclusion of any wetland under the rules
    
    
• UNESCO decision on western ghats soon
  • The World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will take a decision on including the Western Ghats as a World Heritage Site soon
  • The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) will submit its recommendations on the mountain ranges, a biodiversity hotspot, to the committee
  • At its Paris session in 2011, the committee had urged India “to review the scope and composition of the current serial nomination to take account of any recommendations of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel or other relevant information, to reflect the full spectrum of the ecological and biodiversity values of the Western Ghats, and to enhance further the protection of the values of the nominated property.”
  • It was proposed to explore “measures to reduce the impact of existing and planned infrastructure and disturbed areas on the values of the property and review and strengthen buffer zones or other measures to provide increased protection or buffering for the values within the nominated property.”
  • Steps to “strengthen the ecological connectivity measures to ensure consistency and greater functional linkages between component sites and improve coordination and integration between component parts of the property, particularly through the existing mechanisms of the Western Ghats Natural Heritage Management Committee,” was also proposed.
  • It was suggested to “harmonise arrangements between the Western Ghats Natural Heritage Committee and the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel and strengthen community membership and input through the establishment of the proposed Western Ghats Natural Heritage Conservation Authority and other relevant advisory committees.”
  • The committee had suggested nominating the Western Ghats under criteria seven, nine, and 10 of the operational guidelines for recommending sites. Only those properties of “outstanding universal value and including areas that are essential for maintaining the beauty of the property” qualify for criterion seven. Criterion nine is applicable to properties which are “outstanding examples representing significant ongoing ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems and communities of plants and animals.”
  • Criterion 10 is for “those properties which contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation.”

• Early childhood care and education policy proposed
  • With the aim of providing integrated services for the holistic development of all children from the prenatal period to six years, the government has proposed a National Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Policy that lays down the way forward for a comprehensive approach towards ensuring a sound foundation for every child. India has 158.7 million children in the 0-6 age group as per the 2011 Census.
  • Broadly, the policy focuses on re-structuring the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme and integrating early childhood education with the Right to Education Act to ensure a smooth transition into formal schooling.
  • This ECCE policy will cover all early childhood care and education programmes and related services in public, private and voluntary sectors in all settings across regions. These services include anganwadis (AWC), crèches, play schools, preschools, nursery schools, kindergartens, preparatory schools, balwadis, and home-based care.
  • The policy seeks to universalise the provision of ECCE for all children, mainly through the ICDS scheme in the public sector and other service provisions across systems. The Anganwadi Centre would be repositioned as a “vibrant child-friendly Early Childhood Development Centre” with adequate infrastructure and resources for ensuring a continuum of the ECCE in a life-cycle approach and child-related outcomes.
  • To standardise the quality of ECCE available to children, basic quality standards and specifications will be laid down valid across public, private and voluntary sectors. A Regulatory Framework for the ECCE to ensure basic quality inputs and outcomes, across all service providers undertaking such services, will be progressively evolved at the national level and implemented by States in the next five years.
  • A developmentally appropriate National Curriculum Framework for the ECCE will be developed. It will promote play-based, experiential and child-friendly provision for early education and all-round development.
  • To sustain the multi-sectoral and inter-agency collaboration, a thematic ECCE Committee with experts will be formed under the ICDS Mission Steering Group initially and later formed as a National ECCE Council, with corresponding councils at the State level, and later at the district level. The council will be the apex body to guide and oversee the implementation of the policy as well as keep ECCE programmes consistent with the National ECCE Policy.

INTERNATIONAL

• As trade ties soar, India and South Korea pushes strategic ties to the side
  • With bilateral trade volumes — especially after the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement kicked in two years back-up — nearly 70 per cent to $20 billion, the two leaders set a target of $40 billion by 2015.
  • An agreement on simplification of visa procedures was also signed.
  • The joint statement issued at the end of a meeting here on Sunday between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Lee Myung-Bak envisages cooperation in space activities, including the Indian launch of Korean satellites, as well maritime security, besides pitching for a trillion dollars of Korean investment in India's infrastructure sector over the next five years.
  • Dr. Singh also asked Mr. Lee to back Indian membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime.

• Tablets that support 23 Indian languages launched
  • Wishtel, a Mumbai-based company, has launched two tablet PCs, Ira and Ira Thing, which support 23 Indian languages.
  • The seven-inch portable devices run on Taiwanese chipmaker VIA Technology's 800 MHz processor and operate on the Google Android ecosystem. While Ira sports a TFT LCD resistive touch screen, 256 MB RAM and 2GB of storage, the top-of-line Ira Thing features a capacitive touch screen, 215 MB RAM with 4 GB of storage. They are priced at Rs. 4,000 and Rs.5,500 respectively.
  • Ira was designed as per the specifications of the Indian Institute of Technology Rajasthan, as part of the low-cost computing devices project under the National Mission of Education through the ICT and sponsored by the Ministry of Human Resources.

• Open access to government data on the cards
  • The way has been cleared for public access to the data collected by Union government ministries and departments, with official approval being accorded to the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP).
  • An Open Government Partnership was launched last year by the United States and seven other governments. Forty-three other governments have joined the partnership, which has endorsed an Open Government Declaration, expressing a commitment to better “efforts to systematically collect and publish data on government spending and performance for essential public services and activities.” It acknowledges the ‘right' of citizens to seek information on governmental activities.
  • India has not joined the partnership, but is collaborating with the U.S. in developing an open source version of software for a data portal.
  • The NDSAP states that at least five ‘high value' data sets should be uploaded to a newly created portal, data.gov.in, in three months of the notification of the policy. Uploading of the remaining data sets should be completed within a year.
  • The Department of Science and Technology will co-ordinate the effort and create the portal through the National Informatics Centre. The Department of Information Technology will work out the implementation guidelines, including those related to technology and data standards.
  • The Ministries and Departments can draw up, within six months of the notification of the policy, a negative list of data-sets that will not be shared, subject to periodic review by an ‘oversight committee.
  • The policy envisages three types of access to data: open, registered and restricted. Access to data in the open category will be “easy, timely, user-friendly and web-based without any process of registration/authorisation.” But data in the registered access category will be accessible “only through a prescribed process of registration/authorisation by respective departments/organisations” and available to “recognised institutions/organisations/public users, through defined procedures.” Data categorised as restricted will be made available only “through and under authorisation.”
  • The policy also provides for pricing, with the Ministries and Departments being asked to formulate their norms for data in the registered and restricted access categories within three months of the notification of the policy.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS AND COLUMNS

• An article on the Nuclear Security Summit
• A sainath article on the poverty line controversy

ECONOMICS

• Issues in the infrastructural areas addressed by the budget