05 November 2019: PIB Summary & Analysis

Read the daily PIB update and stay up-to-date on current affairs for the UPSC exam.

November 5th, 2019 PIB:- Download PDF Here

550^th Prakash Purab of Guru Nanak Devji

Context:

550^th Parkash/Prakash Purab (birthday celebrations) of the first Sikh Guru, Guru Nanak at Sri Ber Sahib Gurudwara at Sultanpur Lodhi.

Details:

• Sikhs celebrate the birth of Guru Nanak in the month of November. Sikh festivities revolve around the birth anniversaries of the ten Gurus. These occasions are also called Gurpurabs.
• Sultanpur Lodhi is a holy place for Sikhs because Guru Nanak lived there for 14 years. It is also believed that he attained enlightenment at this place.

For more on Guru Nanak and the other Sikh Gurus, click here.

No separate Environmental Clearance required to produce additional Ethanol from B-heavy molasses

Context:

The government announced that no separate environmental clearance is required to produce additional ethanol from B-heavy molasses as it does not contribute to the pollution load.

Details:

• This step is expected to help farmers and the sugar industry.
• With various incentives provided by the Government of India, sugar mills are expected to undertake production of ethanol from B-heavy Molasses and other by-products/products, resulting in incidental increase in the production of ethanol without any increase in the total pollution load in the existing distilleries or sugar mills to which environmental clearance has already been granted.

National Workshop on CPGRAMS Reforms

Context:

Union Minister inaugurates the National Workshop on CPGRAMS Reforms organised by DARPG. He also launched the Online Hackathon on Data-Driven Innovation for Citizen Grievance Redressal.

Details:

• The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), is the nodal agency of the Government of India in-charge of policy-making, monitoring and coordinating departments for public grievances.
• Centralized Public Grievance Redress And Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) is an online web-enabled system over NICNET (satellite-based nation-wide computer-communication network) developed by NIC.
• CPGRAMS is the platform based on web technology which primarily aims to enable submission of grievances by the aggrieved citizens from anywhere and anytime – (24×7) basis to Ministries/Departments/Organizations/State Governments who scrutinize and take action for speedy and favourable redressal of these grievances.
  • CPGRAMS was launched in 2007.
  • The CPGRAMS provides the facility to lodge a grievance online from any geographical location.
  • It enables citizens to track online the grievance being followed up with the departments concerned and also enables DARPG to monitor the grievance.
  • It has tried to automate the entire process of grievance redressal and monitoring.

About the Online Hackathon on Data-Driven Innovation for Citizen Grievance Redressal:

• The Hackathon was launched by the DARPG with the objective of providing technology-driven solutions to improve the grievance redressal mechanism in the country.
• The contest is open to students, academia, corporates, researchers, start-ups, MSME, communities and individuals.
• Potential solution prototypes would be selected by eminent Jury comprising experts from Government, Academia, Community, Industry, etc., which is to be identified and notified by DARPG.

Vigilance Awareness Week 2019

Context:

Indian Railways has celebrated Vigilance Awareness Week 2019.

About the Vigilance Awareness Week 2019:

• The awareness week was observed in Oct-Nov 2019 for a week.
• The theme of the event was “Integrity – A Way of Life”.
• The Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) administered an ‘Integrity Pledge’ to railway officials and released a vigilance magazine called ‘Chetna Aahwan’ incorporating articles, stories, poems and messages on relevant issues concerning vigilance.
• To spread the message of honesty and integrity amongst employees, passengers and other stakeholders, a unique method was adopted of circulating Integrity Pledge on a mass scale to railway employees, rail users and public at large through text messages and railway portal.
• More than 2 crore railway users received messages of the Integrity Pledge through the railway app.
• A special effort was made to organise internal and outreach activities in a number of schools and colleges in an effort to sensitize the youth.
  • Apart from distributing pamphlets, newsletters and journals on the topic, many seminars/workshops/skits/ street plays, employees/family competitions (debate, quiz, etc.), human chain formation & Customer Grievance Redressal Camps were also conducted.
  • Debates/essay competitions contests, etc. were organized in many educational institutions (schools and colleges).
• The Vigilance Awareness Week is being observed annually since 2000 around the first week of November.

For more on the Central Vigilance Commission, click on the linked article.

Wastelands Atlas

Context:

Union Minister for Rural Development released ‘Wastelands Atlas’ – 2019 with robust geospatial information.

About the Wasteland Atlas:

• The atlas provides district and state-wise distribution of different categories of wastelands area including mapping of about 12.08 Mha hitherto unmapped area of Jammu & Kashmir.
• The changes in wastelands between 2008-09 and 2015-16 have been presented in the Atlas.
• The effort has resulted in estimating the spatial extent of wastelands for the entire country to the tune of 55.76 Mha (16.96 % of the geographical area of the country i.e. 328.72 Mha) for the year 2015-16 as compared to 56.60 Mha (17.21%) in the year 2008-09.
• During this period 1.45 Mha of wastelands are converted into non-wastelands categories.
• A reduction in wasteland area was observed in the categories of land with dense scrub, waterlogged and marshy land, sandy areas, degraded pastures/grazing land and gullied and/or ravinous land.
• The Department of Land Resources in collaboration with the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Department of Space has published Wastelands Atlases of India – 2000, 2005, 2010 & 2011 editions.
• The new wastelands mapping exercise, carried out by NRSC using the Indian Remote Sensing Satellite data is brought out as the fifth edition of Wastelands Atlas – 2019.
• India with 2.4% of the total land area of the world is supporting 18% of the world’s population.
• The per capita availability of agriculture land in India is 0.12 ha whereas world per capita agriculture land is 0.29 ha.
• Unprecedented pressure on the land beyond its carrying capacity is resulting in the degradation of lands in the country. Therefore, robust geospatial information on wastelands assumes significance and effectively helpful in rolling back the wastelands for productive use through various land development programmes/schemes.

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