23 Aug 2021: PIB Summary & Analysis

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Sree Narayana Guru
2. “Yuktdhara” Geospatial Planning Portal
3. INS Chilka
4. Maritime Partnership Exercise between Navies of India and the Philippines
5. Colonel Rank to Women Officers
6. Stockholm Water Week
7. SARS-CoV-2 NGS-BRICS Consortium

1. Sree Narayana Guru

Context:

PM remembered Sree Narayana Guru on his Jayanti.

Know more about social reformer Sree Narayana Guru on This Day in History dated Sep 20.

2. “Yuktdhara” Geospatial Planning Portal

Context:

“Yuktdhara” Geospatial Planning Portal launched.

About “Yuktdhara” Geospatial Planning Portal:

• Yuktdhara is a geospatial planning portal for facilitating Gram Panchayat level planning of MGNREGA
• The new portal under Bhuvan “Yuktdhara” will enable the planning of MGNREGA assets using remote sensing and GIS based information.
• The platform will serve as a repository of assets (Geotags) created under various national rural development programmes i.e. MGNREGA, Integrated Watershed Management Programme, Per Drop More Crop and Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, etc., along with field photographs.
• This G2G service for rural planning fosters decentralised decision making.
• The Bhuvan geospatial portal has been developed by ISRO and it supports various government programs and initiatives cutting across ministries and sectors.

3. INS Chilka

Context:

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence (SCOD) visited the prestigious ab-initio sailors training establishment of the Indian Navy, INS Chilka.

About INS Chilka:

• INS Chilka is the only ab-initio training establishment of the Indian Navy, which trains more than 6600 raw recruits annually to make them able-bodied sailors.
• INS Chilka was commissioned in 1980 and is located in Odisha in the vicinity of Chilika Lake.

Note:

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence (SCOD) is a Department Related Standing Committee (DRSC) of selected members of parliament for legislative oversight of the defence policies and decision making of the Ministry of Defence (MOD).

4. Maritime Partnership Exercise between Navies of India and the Philippines

Context:

Maritime Partnership Exercise on 23 August between the Indian Navy and the Philippine Navy.

Details:

• Two ships of the Indian Navy, namely INS Ranvijay (Guided Missile Destroyer, D55) and INS Kora (Guided Missile Corvette, P61), on deployment to the Western Pacific, carried out a Maritime Partnership Exercise with a frigate of the Philippine Navy in the West Philippine Sea.
• The joint evolutions conducted during the exercise included several operational manoeuvres and the participating ships of both navies were satisfied with the consolidation of interoperability achieved through this operational interaction at sea.

Also read: List of military exercises.

5. Colonel Rank to Women Officers

Context:

Indian Army grants time scale Colonel Rank to Women Officers.

Details:

• A Selection Board of the Indian Army cleared the way for the promotion of five women officers to Colonel (Time Scale) rank, post completion of 26 years of reckonable service.
• This is the first time that women officers serving with the Corps of Signals, Corps of Electronic and Mechanical Engineers (EME) and the Corps of Engineers have been approved to the rank of Colonel.
• Previously, promotion to the rank of Colonel was only applicable for women officers in the Army Medical Corps (AMC), Judge Advocate General (JAG) and the Army Education Corps (AEC).
• The widening of promotion avenues to more branches of the Indian Army is a sign of increasing career opportunities for women officers.
• Combined with the decision to grant permanent commission to women officers from a majority of branches of the Indian Army, this step defines the Indian Army’s approach towards a gender-neutral Army.

6. Stockholm Water Week

Context:

The Safe Water Network, USAID and WRI India jointly convened the session on ‘Making Cities Water Positive Through City Water Balance Plan’ in Stockholm Water Week’s first day.

Details:

• The Director-General of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) participated in the session as a key panellist.
• ‘Making Cities Water Positive through City Water Balance Plan e-Toolkit’ was launched comprising 7 modules and 29 tools to assist the decision-makers in developing and implementing solutions for making Cities Water Positive.

7. SARS-CoV-2 NGS-BRICS Consortium

Context:

The Ministry of Science’s Dept of Biotechnology (DBT) in collaboration with BRICS countries is implementing the SARS-CoV-2 NGS-BRICS consortium and a multi-centric programme to study the impact of severe COVID-19 conditions on TB patients.

Details:

• The SARS-CoV-2 NGS-BRICS consortium is an interdisciplinary collaboration to advance COVID-19 health-relevant knowledge and to contribute to improvements in health outcomes.
  • The consortium will accelerate the translation of genomic data leading to clinical and public health research and interventions from clinical and surveillance samples.
  • It seeks to achieve this by utilising high-end genomic technologies, and epidemiologic and bioinformatics tools for future use in diagnostic assays and tracking transmission dynamics of COVID-19 and other viruses.
• The second multi-centric programme consists of an interdisciplinary team of researchers from India, Brazil and South Africa who would investigate the impact of severe COVID-19 on transient peripheral immunosuppression and lung hyper inflammation conditions in Tuberculosis (TB) patients for epidemiology and comorbidity.

Read previous PIB here.

August 23rd, 2021, PIB:- Download PDF Here