16 Feb 2022: PIB Summary for UPSC

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Guduchi
2. Shri Guru Ravidas
3. Jal Jeevan Mission
4. New India Literacy Programme
5. An Observation from the Devasthal Observatory

1. Guduchi

Syllabus: GS II, Issues relating to health

Prelims: About Guduchi

Mains: Herbal medicines as an alternative method of treatment

Context: A herb called Guduchi has been declared safe without any toxic effects by the Ministry of Ayush. 

About Guduchi: 

• Guduchi (Tinospora cordifolia) is considered to be the best rejuvenating herb according to Ayurveda. 
• The dosage is an important factor to determine the safety of the herb.
• A study inferred that a lower concentration of Guduchi powder increased the lifespan of fruit flies. The reverse is true when it is used at higher concentrations. 
• It has several medicinal properties like:
  • Anti-oxidant 
  • Anti-hyperglycemic
  • Anti-hyperlipidemic
  • Hepatoprotective (protects the liver)
  • Osteoprotective
  • Anti-cancer  
  • Antipyretic 
  • Anti-inflammatory  
  • Anti-microbial 
  • Analgesic
• It is beneficial in the treatment of various metabolic disorders and acts as a potential immunity booster.
• This herb is found in tropical and subtropical zones at an altitude of 600m and is grown in deciduous and dry forests at elevations up to 1000ft. 
• In India, it is usually found in the stretch of Kumaon to Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala and so on.
• Stems and roots are major components of various compound preparations.

Image Source: Times of India

2. Shri Guru Ravidas

Syllabus: GS I, Personalities

Mains: Contributions of Guru Ravidas

Context: The Prime Minister offered homage to the Bhakti saint Shri Guru Ravidas on the occasion of Ravidas Jayanti. 

About Guru Ravidas:

• He was a saint of the Bhakti Movement during the 15th to 16th century and was a mystic poet. 
• Ravidas Jayanti is celebrated on Magh Purnima which falls on the full moon day of the Magh month. 
• Ravidas Jayanti is identified based on the Purnima tithi.
• He propagated the Ravidassia religion that comprised his teachings directed against the prevalent evil practices of society. 
• He was a contemporary to saint Kabir. 
• He is venerated as a social reformer and a spiritual personality in many parts of India. 
• His devotional verses were inserted in the Sikh scripture, Guru Granth Sahib. 
• The Panchvani of Dadupanthis (Hindu warrior ascetic group) consists of the literary works of Ravidas. 
• The songs of Ravidas expound Nirguna-Saguna themes and the ideas that are the cornerstones of the Nath Yoga philosophy of Hinduism. 
• Sahaj, his iteration, depicted the mystical state that experiences a union of truths of the many and the one. 
• It is said that he opposed evil practices like casteism and untouchability. 
• Every year, on his birth anniversary, Shabad Kirtan is performed in Ravidas Mandir which is located in Delhi.

3. Jal Jeevan Mission

Syllabus: GS II, Government policies and interventions 

Prelims: Jal Jeevan Mission

Mains: The transformative role played by Jal Jeevan Mission towards equal distribution of water in the households across the country.

Context: Under the transformative programme of Jal Jeevan Mission, 9 crore rural households have been provided with access to tap water. This is a milestone achieved. 

Details of the matter:

• This achievement acts as a step towards the vision of providing clean tap water to every household by 2024.

Image Source: PIB

• On the 15th of August 2019, the Jal Jeevan Mission was announced and intended to improve the quality of life and ease of living in rural areas with the supply of tap water. 
• The objective is to develop the capacity of the local village community in order to achieve long term drinking water security. 
• ‘Har Ghar Jal’ is the motto and spirit of the mission. 
• Presently, every rural household in Goa, Haryana, Telangana, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Puducherry, Dadar and Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu is provided with the supply of tap water. 
• The mission also aims to ensure the freedom of mothers and sisters from the traditional cumbersome task of fetching water for households improving their health, education and socio-economic condition. 
• It is a bottom-up approach that involves community participation for programme implementation. This includes the Village Water & Sanitation Committee/Pani Samiti and Implementation Support Agencies to strengthen the functioning of the initiative. 
• Enormous priority has been given to water quality monitoring and surveillance activities.
• Five women in each village have been trained to test water samples with the help of field test kits. These kits test the water samples on 9 parameters such as pH, alkalinity, chloride, nitrate, total hardness, fluoride, iron, residual free chlorine and hydrogen sulphide.
• Technology has been incorporated to bring transparency and accountability in service delivery and judicious use of funds. 
• This mission is geo-tagged which means the planning and programme implementation for drinking water supply for every village have been mapped using hydro-geomorphological maps. 

Read about National Water Mission in the linked article.

4. New India Literacy Programme

Syllabus: GS II, Issues relating to Education

Prelims: New India Literacy Programme, National Education Policy 2020

Mains: Interventions intended for better learning outcomes. 

Context: The Government of India has approved a scheme called the New India Literacy Programme to improve adult education and promote lifelong learning in accordance with the National Education Policy 2020. 

Objectives of the scheme: 

• The objective of the scheme is to deliver the necessary components that intend to skill the youth and make them suitable for employment. This is in addition to the foundational literacy and numeracy. 
• It focuses on providing financial literacy, digital literacy, commercial skills, health care and awareness, vocational training and so on. 
• It will be implemented through volunteerism and will be through online mode. 
• The materials and resources will be provided digitally with easy access to the registered volunteers. 
• It will cover the non-literates of the age of 15 years and above in all states and union territories. 
• It will also assist to achieve the target of foundational literacy and numeracy for FY 2022-27 which aims to cover 5 crore learners by using Online Teaching, Learning and Assessment System (OTLAS) in collaboration with the National Informatics Centre, NCERT and other institutions. 
• The programme will be funded by both the centre (about 70%) and the state.

Features of the scheme:

• The school will be the unit for implementation of the scheme.
• The survey of beneficiaries and voluntary teachers will be conducted in the schools.
• Performance Grading Index will be adopted for assessment at the state/UT and district levels on a yearly basis. 
• An Outcome-Output Monitoring Framework will be set up for annual achievement survey of learning outcomes. 
• Priority will be given in terms of categories to the girls and women, SC/ST/OBC/Minorities, Persons with Special Needs, marginalised/nomadic construction workers, labourers. 
• Priority in terms of location will pay special attention to the aspirational districts of the NITI Aayog:
  • Districts with a female literacy rate less than 60% as per the 2011 census
  • Literacy rates less than the national/state average
  • Districts/Blocks with large number of SC/ST/Minority population
  • Educationally backward blocks
  • Left-wing extremism affected districts
• This scheme will be a progressive step to transform adult education into education for all in the country. 

5. An Observation from the Devasthal Observatory

Syllabus: GS III, Awareness in the fields of Space

Prelims: Devasthal Observatory, About Pluto

Mains: India’s progress in space exploration and research. 

Context: An important observation pertaining to the atmospheric pressure at the surface of Pluto has been made by a team of Indian scientists from the Devasthal observatory along with their international counterparts. 

About the observation:

• It was found that the atmospheric pressure on the surface of Pluto is 80,000 times less than the atmospheric pressure at mean sea level on Earth. 
• The Devasthal optical telescope was used to provide data that helped in the calculation of the atmospheric pressure of Pluto. It was calculated by the observation of stellar occultation by Pluto on a particular day. 
• In astronomy, occultation occurs when a celestial object gets hidden from the view of the observer due to another celestial object passing in between them.
• Such an event has been observed in a compilation of twelve stellar occultations by Pluto within a span of 1988 and 2016. It has been observed that there is a three-fold monotonic increase of atmospheric pressure of Pluto. 
• An international team of scientists along with members from the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences used signal to noise ratio to determine the atmospheric pressure at the surface of Pluto.
• The team explained further that this occultation was particularly timely as it can assess the current models of the atmospheric evolution of Pluto.
• Pluto’s atmosphere is in a plateau phase close to the peak and is in agreement with the model values calculated earlier by the Pluto volatile transport model in 2019. 

Possible Inferences about Pluto:

• It is confirmed from the study that Pluto experiences intense seasonal episodes because of a large depression on Pluto known as Sputnik Planitia. 
• Pluto’s poles remain in permanent darkness or sunlight for decades which covers a 248 year long orbital period. 
• This leads to strong effects on its Nitrogen atmosphere that is controlled by vapour pressure equilibrium.
• It is found to move away from the Galactic plane as seen from Earth, stellar occultations by the dwarf planet are becoming increasingly rare, making this event a decisive one. 

Facts about Pluto:

• It is categorised as the dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt which is a donut-shaped region of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. 
• It is 1400 miles wide and orbits the sun about 3.6 billion miles away on an average. 
• A year of Pluto consists of 248 Earth years and a day on Pluto lasts 153 hours.
• Its atmosphere is thin and has nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide. 
• Pluto has 5 moons and the largest one is called Charon.
• It doesn’t have any ring system.
• New Horizons of NASA was the only spacecraft to visit Pluto. 
• The surface is harsh and cold  with a temperature of -378 to 396 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Devasthal Optical Telescope:

• It is 3.6 metre long clear aperture telescope which was built by Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) and is located at the Devasthal Observatory near Nainital, Uttarakhand. 
• It has been built in collaboration with the Belgian firm Advanced Mechanical and Optical System. 
• It was activated remotely in 2016 by the Prime Ministers of India and Belgium. 
• ARIES operates another 1.3 m telescope at the same location. 
• This is presently the largest telescope in Asia. 
• It features an optical spectrograph, a CCD imager and near-infrared spectrograph along with an active optics system having a wavefront sensor and pneumatic actuators which compensates for small distortions. 

Read previous PIB here.

February 16th, 2022, PIB:- Download PDF Here