Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 20 March 2017

:: National ::

Parliamentary panel described the traffic situation in the national capital as “alarming”

A Parliamentary panel has described the traffic situation in the national capital as “alarming” and said that the Delhi Police has “failed” to improve it.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs has observed that a large number of vehicles get registered in Delhi everyday and the roundabouts at various crossroads, instead of traffic signals, caused congestion.
In its report submitted to the Parliament, the panel headed by former Home and Finance Minister P Chidambaram has taken note of the choked roads in Delhi which make evacuation of “protected persons” difficult during a traffic congestion.
The committee has recommended that the Delhi Police needs to prepare a meticulous traffic management plan and allocate adequate funds to address the issue.
Urgent measures should be taken for managing the city traffic in a better way such as construction of more arterial roads and parking bays, declaring some roads as one-way.
Also coming up with effective emergency evacuation measures for protected persons and stringent measures against traffic violators,” the panel has recommended.

The proposed march of Jat protesters to Delhi called off

The proposed march of Jat protesters to Delhi in support of their demands, including reservation under the Other Backward Classes, was called off after the government promised to expedite the process of granting reservation to the community
The decision was taken following a marathon meeting of Jat leaders with Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and Union Ministers at Haryana Bhawan.
Few token dharnas by members of the samiti would continue till their demands were actually met.
Meanwhile, 18 police personnel, including an SP and a DSP, were among 35 injured when Jat protesters clashed with the police on being prevented from marching towards Delhi.

The four-month economic blockade in Manipur lifted

The four-month economic blockade in Manipur, imposed by the United Naga Council (UNC), was lifted, following the successful talks between the UNC, the State government and the Centre.
The UNC imposed the blockade to protest the creation of seven districts by the then Congress government because it violated “Greater Nagalim” envisaged by the group.
Asked whether the new BJP government would roll back the decision, an official of the Home Ministry said: “At the moment there is nothing like a roll-back; there are many stakeholders.”
“Tripartite talks succeeded in addressing the issues and UNC has agreed to lift the economic blockade. Government of Manipur took note of the grievances of the UNC, including that of them not being consulted while creating the new districts.

Recreation of the lost manuscript writing using ancient herbal ink

By unravelling the science behind Assam’s ancient herbal ink ‘mahi’, researchers are planning to recreate the lost techniques of manuscript writing. They say their efforts could boost heritage tourism.
The technique involves extracting ‘mahi’ using cow urine from a cocktail of fruit pulp and tree bark such as haritaki, amla, bibhitakhi or bhomora, mango and jamun — often infused with the blood of eels or catfish.
Rust from iron tools or nails was added for an intense black hue.‘Mahi’ was used in early and medieval Assam for writing on ‘sancipat’ (folios made of the bark of the sanci tree) manuscripts.
Some folios were gifted by Kumar Bhaskar Barman, the then King of Pragjyotishpura (ancient Assam) to Harshavardhana, an emperor who ruled north India from 606 to 647 C.E., a testimony to the period of use.
The endurance of the ink is proven by the stability of sancipat manuscripts. The key factor for this long-lasting marriage between ‘mahi’ and ‘sancipat’ is the herbal concoction’s resistance to aerial oxidation and fungal attacks.
The major phytochemical constituents in ‘mahi’ have been identified as phenolic acids, flavonoids and tannins and their complexes with iron.
Though there are several recorded recipes for ‘mahi’ formulation, one commonality exists for all: the season during which it is concocted.

:: Science and Technology ::

Air Force will have 123 Tejas jets by 2024-25

If the present development and capacity enhancement plans go as scheduled, the Indian Air Force will have 123 Tejas jets, indigenously made light combat aircraft, on its fleet by 2024-25.
To enable this, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) is in the process of setting up a new assembly line for the jets and is involving the private sector in a big way.
The IAF has placed orders for 40 jets in two batches of which the first 20 are in the initial operational configuration (IOC) and the remaining 20 in the final operational configuration (FOC).
Last July, the IAF operationalised the first Tejas squadron, 45 Flying Daggers, with three aircraft. Two more aircraft will join the squadron shortly.
Last November, the Defence Acquisition Council gave initial clearance for 83 aircraft in the Mk-1A configuration with specific improvements sought by the IAF.
Apart from the development, the low production rate of eight aircraft a year is delaying the induction of Tejas into the IAF.
The government recently gave sanction for setting up another assembly line to increase the production rate to 16 a year.
The IAF is in urgent need of new fighters and the LCAs will replace the MiG fighters which are being phased out. The IAF is scheduled to phase out all 11 squadrons of MiG-21 and MiG-27 fighters by 2024 on completion of their technical life.

Scientists have developed a new wireless Internet based on infrared rays

Scientists have developed a new wireless Internet based on infrared rays that is reportedly 100 times faster than existing Wi-Fi networks.
The wireless network developed by researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands not only has a huge capacity — more than 40 Gbit/s but does away with the need to share Wi-Fi as every device gets its own ray of light.
The wireless data comes from a few central ‘light antennas’, which can be mounted on the ceiling, that are able to precisely direct the rays of light supplied by an optical fibre.
The antennas contain a pair of gratings that radiate light rays of different wavelengths at different angles (‘passive diffraction gratings’).
Changing the light wavelengths also changes the direction of the ray of light. A safe infrared wavelength is used that does not reach the retina in the eye.
If a user is walking about and a smartphone or tablet moves out of the light antenna’s direction, then another light antenna takes over, researchers said.
The network tracks the precise location of every wireless device using its radio signal transmitted in the return direction, they said.
Current Wi-Fi uses radio signals with a frequency of 2.5 or five gigahertz. The new system uses infrared light with wavelengths of 1,500 nanometres and higher.
Researchers managed to achieve a speed of 42.8 Gbit/s over a distance of 2.5 metres.
The system has so far used the light rays only to download; uploads are still done using radio signals since in most applications much less capacity is needed for uploading.

Large Hadron Collider accelerator helps in finding 5 new sub-atomic particles

Scientists using the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator have discovered a new system of five particles all in a single analysis.
The uniqueness of this discovery is that observing five new states all at once is very rare, researchers said.
The LHCb experiment is one of seven particle physics detector experiments collecting data at the Large Hadron Collider accelerator at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research).
The collaboration has announced the measurement of a very rare particle decay and evidence of a new manifestation of matter —antimatter asymmetry, to name just two examples.
The new particles were found to be in excited states — a particle state that has a higher energy than the absolute minimum configuration (or ground state) — of a particle called Omega-c-zero.
Omega-c-zero decays via the strong force into another baryon, called Xi-c-plus, (containing a “charm”, a “strange” and an “up” quark) and a kaon K-.
Then the Xi-c-plusparticle decays in turn into a proton p, a kaon K- and a pion p+.
The next step will be the determination of the quantum numbers of these new particles — characteristic numbers used to identify the properties of a specific particle — and the determination of their theoretical significance.
This discovery will contribute to understanding how the three constituent quarks are bound inside a baryon and also to probing the correlation between quarks, which plays a key role in describing multi-quark states, such as tetraquarks and pentaquarks.

Govt proposed a law to provide social security net to the 47.41 crore workforce

The Union government proposed an ambitious law to provide social security net to the 47.41 crore-strong workforce of the country.
The proposed code on Social Security and Welfare intends to make a shift in the social security framework of the country from an employment-based approach to a rights-based approach followed by some developing countries such as South Africa.
This means claiming social security benefits will become a right for everyone who joins the workforce.
At present, the social security set-up in India is only restricted to the formal sector where the employers make a contribution towards social security schemes such as provident fund, insurance and pension of the workers.
Only about 8% of the informal sector is covered under any social security scheme, according the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS).
At present, 82.7% of the 47.41 crore workforce is in the unorganised sector and does not have access to any kind of social security, according to the Labour and Employment Ministry.
When the draft code takes final shape in the form of a law, there will be universal coverage of social security schemes guaranteeing equal treatment to all the workers.
According to the proposed law, factories employing even a single worker will have to contribute towards social security benefits.
Also, even households employing domestic help will also have contribute towards schemes including provident fund and gratuity for the worker.
Self-employed persons, including agricultural labourers, will also make contribution towards the schemes on their own.
The existing social security schemes have a limited reach due to application of thresholds based on income and number of workers in a factory.
For instance, the provident fund and pension contribution, administered by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), is mandatory only for factories employing at least 20 workers.
Various researches have pointed out significant flaws in the present social security framework of the country.
The International Social Security Association (ISSA) in its ‘Social Security Coverage Extension in the BRICS’ report said that the best way to describe the social security coverage in India “is a patchwork” as there was a “total mismatch between the labour market realities and the history of social security laws.”
Only 1% of the agricultural workers have been provided social security cover, even as close to all the casual workers are deprived of any benefits and socially or economically deprived people had much less coverage than the others.
It also said that wage workers in the unorganised sector too had close to no social security benefit.
Even the proportion of wage workers covered under any social security law declined from 32.6% in 1999-2000 to 28.6% in 2004-05 and further to 26.4% in 2009-10 due to increased casual workers entering the workforce and a rise in informal sector.
One of the major issues with the draft law is that workers in the unorganised sector mostly are daily wage earners and providing monthly contribution towards their social benefit schemes would be a big task.

:: Business and Economy ::

Commerce dept wants benefits of keeping more than one IFSC in India

The Commerce Department has asked the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) to comment on the feasibility of having more than one International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in India.
It has also sought comments from the DEA on the viability of the Maharashtra government’s proposal for an IFSC in Mumbai.
If the IFSC, proposed to be set up at the Bandra Kurla Complex in the country’s financial capital, gets all the required clearances, it will be the second such centre in India following the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) in Gandhinagar.
The DEA, in the Finance Ministry, is the nodal agency for formulation and monitoring of economic policies at the macro-level such as the ones relating to the functioning of sectors like banking, insurance and capital markets, including stock exchanges.
IFSC-related matters fall within the jurisdiction of financial sector regulators such as the Reserve Bank of India, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority and Securities and Exchange Board of India as well as the Finance Ministry.
The Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act is pertinent in this case as IFSC is set up in a SEZ, and therefore, the Commerce Department has a crucial role here as it is the nodal body at the Centre for SEZ-related matters.
The SEZ Act merely states that the Centre can approve only one IFSC in a SEZ, and does not bar more than one IFSC in the country.
Citing examples in other countries, the Commerce Department, however, has said even advanced nations have been finding it difficult to develop more than one major international financial centre in their respective territory.
However, as the Centre had expressed reluctance to grant the Mumbai IFSC a ‘special exemption’ from the land norm, Maharashtra then sent a revised proposal stating that it is in possession of about 52 hectares for the IFSC.
The Maharashtra government had proposed that the Mumbai IFSC can even enter into collaborations with the GIFT City International Financial Services Centre as Mumbai has the advantage of being the country’s de facto financial capital.