WHY IN NEWS

NTPC Limited, India’s largest power generating company

under Ministry of Power has become first energy company
in energy domain in India to declare its Energy Compact
goals as part of UN High-level Dialogue on Energy (HLDE).

➢ NTPC is among the few organisations globally to declare

its Energy Compact goals.
➢ NTPC has declared that it will form at least 2
international alliances/groups to facilitate clean energy
research and promote sustainability in energy value
chain by 2025.
➢ United Nations is set to convene a high-level dialogue in
September, 2021 to promote the implementation of the
energy-related goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development.

➢ It is a platform to unite and connect commitments and

actions. CONT.
➢ Energy Compacts bring together voluntary action to achieve affordable and clean energy for all (SDG7) by 2030.
➢ These are voluntary commitments from states and non-state actors, such as companies, regional/local governments,
NGOs, and others.
➢ Efforts to catalyze Energy Compacts are co-led by Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) together with UN-Energy
members.

➢ There is no platform to bring together SDG7 related commitments and actions from all stakeholders.
➢ Energy Compacts will allow countries to specify areas where they may require support on SDG7 targets, this can be
used to identify commitments by other actors to support these countries.

➢ The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 Parties at COP
21 in Paris, on 12 December 2015 and entered into force on 4 November 2016.
➢ By 2020, countries submit their plans for climate action known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
➢ In their NDCs, countries communicate actions they will take to reduce their Greenhouse Gas emissions in order to
reach the goals of the Paris Agreement.
CONT.
➢ The Paris Agreement provides a framework for financial, technical and capacity building support to those countries
who need it.
➢ With the Paris Agreement, countries established an enhanced transparency framework (ETF).
✓ Under ETF, starting in 2024, countries will report transparently on actions taken and progress in climate change
mitigation, adaptation measures and support provided or received.
✓ It also provides for international procedures for the review of the submitted reports.

➢ NDCs address Member State’s national climate ambitions and targets that are legally required under the Paris
Agreement, focusing on a country’s emissions profile from the economy as a whole.
➢ ECs are intended to reinforce and complement the achievement of the Paris Agreement, and contribute to Member
State’s enhanced NDC and long-term goals.
➢ ECs include a variety of voluntary commitments, actions, initiatives, and partnerships focused specifically on the
energy system.
➢ ECs are also open to all stakeholders in the global movement on SDG7, including businesses, organizations, and
subnational authorities, and will have annual mechanisms to track progress on the commitments
WHY IN NEWS
On 29th June, Pradhan Mantri Formalisation of Micro food processing Enterprises (PMFME) Scheme under Aatmanirbhar
Bharat Abhiyan completes one year (Launched on 29th June 2020).

➢ It is currently being implemented in 35 States and Union Territories.

➢ Nodal ministry for this scheme - The Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI).
➢ It is a centrally sponsored scheme.
➢ It is aimed -
✓ To enhance the competitiveness of existing individual micro-enterprises in the unorganized segment of the food
processing industry.
✓ To promote formalization of the sector.
✓ To provide support to Farmer Producer Organizations, Self Help Groups, and Producers Cooperatives along their
entire value chain.
➢ Implementation of the scheme for a period of five years from 2020-21 to 2024-25, with an outlay of Rs. 10,000 crore.

➢ One District One Product (ODOP) Approach

✓ The States would identify the food product for a district, keeping in perspective the focus of the scheme on
perishables. CONT.
 ✓ The ODOP product could be a perishable Agri produce, cereal-based product, or a food product widely produced
in a district and their allied sectors such as mango, potato, litchi, tomato, tapioca, kinnu, bhujia, petha, papad etc.

➢ Upgradation of Individual Micro Food Processing Units

✓ Individual micro food processing units desirous of upgradation of their unit can avail credit-linked capital subsidy
@35% of the eligible project cost with a maximum ceiling of Rs.10 lakh per unit.
✓ Training support would be provided to individual units that are being provided support for capital investment.

➢ Seed Capital to SHG

✓ Seed capital @ Rs. 40,000/- per SHG member would be provided to those engaged in food processing for working
capital and purchase of small tools.
✓ Priority would be given for SHGs involved in ODOP produce in giving seed capital.

➢ Marketing and branding support would be provided to groups of FPOs/SHGs/ Cooperatives

➢ Common infrastructure support would be provided to FPOs, SHGs, cooperatives, any Government agency, or private
enterprises.
WHY IN NEWS
Recently, The Supreme Court held that Persons with Disabilities (PwD) have right to reservation in promotions also.

➢ The SC observed that mode of entry in service is not a relevant criteria for promotion under PwD quota.
➢ Even if S/he was recruited in the regular category or developed the disability after gaining employment.
➢ SC held that Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995 does
not make a distinction between a person who may have entered service on account of disability and a person who
may have acquired disability after having entered the service.
➢ This 1995 Act recognizes the right to reservation in promotion.
➢ This Act has been replaced with the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016.
➢ The Supreme Court has observed that the rule of no reservation in promotions as laid down in Indra Sawhney Case
has no application to Persons With Disability (PWD).

➢ The Indira Sawhney case (1992) - SC held that the reservation policy cannot be extended to promotions.
➢ The 77th Constitutional Amendment – by inserting clause 4A in article 16 and restored provision of reservations in
promotions.

CONT.
➢ Nagaraj judgement (2006) - laid down three conditions that the state must meet prior to granting SC/ST a reservation
in promotion –
✓ State must show that backwardness of the class.
✓ Class is inadequately represented in position or service.
✓ Reservations are in the interest of Administrative efficiency.
➢ Jarnail Singh case (2018) - struck down the demonstration of backwardness provision from Nagaraj judgement.

➢ Government Educational Institutes and other Educational Institutes receiving grant from Government shall reserve at
least 3% seats for people with disabilities.
➢ No employee can be sacked or demoted if they become disabled during service, although they can be moved to
another post with the same pay and condition.
➢ No promotion can be denied because of impairment.

➢ It is enacted to fulfill its obligation to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, to
which India is a signatory.
CONT.
➢ The types of disabilities have been increased from 7 to 21 and it now also includes cerebral palsy, dwarfism, muscular
dystrophy, acid attack victims, hard of hearing, blood disorders etc. In addition, the Government has been authorized
to notify any other category of specified disability.
➢ In addition, Act authorized the govt. to notify any other category of specified disability.
➢ It increases the reservation for people suffering from disabilities from 3% to 4% in government jobs and from 3% to
5% in higher education institutes.
➢ Every child with benchmark disability between the age group of 6 and 18 years shall have the right to free education.
➢ A separate National and State Fund be created to provide financial support to the persons with disabilities.
➢ The Chief Commissioner for PwDs and the State Commissioners will responsible to act as regulatory bodies and
Grievance Redressal agencies, monitoring implementation of the Act.
WHY IN NEWS
Recently, Minister of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises inaugurated
NATRAX, a High-Speed Track (HST), in Indore.

➢ NATRAX – National Automotive Test Tracks

➢ It is one of the state-of-the-art automotive testing and certification centre
under National Automotive Testing and R&D Infrastructure Project
(NATRIP).
✓ NATRIP is a flagship project of the Ministry of Heavy Industries.
➢ NATRAX track is developed in over 1000 acres of land.
➢ Besides being the longest in Asia, the track is said to be the fifth-largest in
the world.
➢ The aim behind making this high-speed track in India is to ramp up vehicle
testing in India.
➢ The move could help Indore becoming a vehicle manufacturing hub, as
firms won’t have to go to other cities for testing purposes.
➢ High-speed performance tests for almost all categories of vehicles will be
conducted on the track.
➢ The track has been designed to achieve a maximum speed of 375KM/h.
➢ Besides testing purposes, the track can be also used for supercar racing.
WHY IN NEWS
Recently, NITI Aayog has released a comprehensive study on the not-for-profit hospital model in the country, in a step
towards closing the information gap on such institutions and facilitating robust policymaking in this area.

➢ Private hospitals are categorized into for-profit hospitals and not-for-profit hospitals.

➢
✓ The “Not-for-Profit” Hospitals are those, which provides affordable and accessible healthcare for many years.
✓ They utilize their resources and grants provided to them by the Government to provide cost-effective healthcare
to the population without being overly concerned about their profits.
✓ The owners of these hospitals are often charitable organizations or non-profit corporations.
✓ This sector provides curative healthcare, preventive healthcare.
✓ It also links healthcare with social reform, community engagement, and education.
✓ Nevertheless, over the years, this sector has remained understudied, with a lack of awareness about its services
in the public domain.
✓ The cumulative cost of care at not-for-profit hospitals is lesser than for-profit hospitals by about one-fourth in the
in-patient department.
✓ For-profit hospitals account for 55.3% of in-patients, while not-for-profit hospitals account for only 2.7% of in-
patients in the country.
CONT.
 ✓ The fees for service at not-for-profit hospitals are generally lower than for-profit hospitals and the income from
fees (above the cost of service) are reinvested in the hospital.
✓ These not-for-profit hospitals are a potential remedy to the challenges of unavailability and unaffordability of
healthcare in India.
✓ The infrastructure, services, and charges of these hospitals are positioned to cater to the unreached and
underprivileged population of the country.

➢ The study provides insights into the operation model of not-for-profit hospitals.
➢ It presents research-based findings on such hospitals — categorized under ownership and premise of service — and
makes subsequent comparisons with private hospitals and health schemes of the Union government.
➢ It discusses in detail the cost-containment strategies implemented by not-for-profit hospitals.
➢ It seeks to understand the challenges that burden the operations of these institutions and hinder their growth.
➢ The report proposes short- and long-term policy interventions —
✓ Dcriteria to identify these hospitals
✓ Ranking them through a performance index
✓ Promoting top hospitals for practising philanthropy and so on.
➢ It also highlights the need to use the expertise of these hospitals in managing human resources with limited finance in
remote areas.
WHY IN NEWS
Sri Lanka is “banking on” a $1 billion currency swap from India to meet its debt repayment obligations this year and tide
over the current economic crisis.

➢ A currency swap, sometimes referred to as a cross-currency swap, involves the exchange of interest—and sometimes
of principal—in one currency for the same in another currency.
➢ Interest payments are exchanged at fixed dates through the life of the contract.
➢ Terms and conditions are predetermined in this facility.
➢ Central banks and Governments engage in this with foreign counterparts to meet short term foreign exchange
liquidity requirements or to ensure adequate foreign currency to avoid Balance of Payments (BOP) crisis.

➢ The SAARC currency swap facility came into operation on 15th November, 2012.
➢ The RBI can offer a swap arrangement within the overall corpus of USD 2 billion.
➢ The swap drawals can be made in US dollar, euro or Indian rupee. The framework provides certain concessions for
swap drawals in Indian rupee.
➢ The facility will be available to all SAARC member countries, subject to their signing the bilateral swap agreements.
➢ The framework is valid from 14th November, 2019 to 13th November, 2022.
WHY IN NEWS
Recently, Pew Research Center, a non-profit based in Washington DC, released a report titled “Religion in India:
Tolerance and Segregation” on religious attitudes in India.
✓ The survey was conducted among 30,000 Indians through face-to-face interviews in 17 languages in late 2019
and the beginning of 2020.

➢ Indians value religious tolerance, though they also live religiously segregated lives.
✓ Across the country, 84% people say that to be “truly Indian,” it is very important to respect all religions.
✓ Indians also are united in the view that respecting other religions is a very important part of what it means to be a
member of their own religious community (80%).
➢ For many Hindus, national identity, religion and language are closely connected
✓ Nearly two-thirds of Hindus (64%) say it is very important to be Hindu to be truly Indian.
▪ In which, 80% also say it is very important to speak Hindi to be truly Indian.
➢ Among Hindus, views of national identity go hand-in-hand with politics.
➢ Dietary laws are central to Indians’ religious identity.
✓ Nearly three-quarters of Hindus (72%) in India say a person cannot be Hindu if they eat beef.
➢ Muslims are more likely than Hindus to say the 1947 partition harmed Hindu-Muslim relations
✓ Only three-in-ten Muslims say it was a good thing.
✓ 43% of Hindus say Partition was beneficial for Hindu-Muslim relations, while 37% say it was harmful.
✓ Two-thirds of Sikhs (66%) say that it was bad for Hindu-Muslim relations. CONT.
➢ India’s caste system, an ancient social hierarchy with origins in Hindu writings, continues to fracture society
✓ 70% Indians say that most or all of their close friends share their caste.
✓ 64% Indians say it is very important to stop women in their community from marrying into other castes.
✓ 62% Indians say it is very important to stop men in their community from marrying into other castes.
➢ Religious conversion is rare in India; to the extent that it is occurring, Hindus gain as many people as they lose.
✓ 0.7% of respondents say they were raised Hindu but now identify as something else.
✓ 0.8% say they were not raised Hindu but now identify as Hindu.
✓ 0.4% of survey respondents are former Hindus who now identify as Christian, while 0.1% were raised Christian
but have since left Christianity.
➢ Most Indians believe in God and say religion is very important in their lives.
✓ 97% Indians say they believe in God.
➢ India’s religious groups share several religious practices and beliefs.
✓ 29% Sikh, 22% Christian and 18 % Muslim women in India say they wear a bindi, even though the bindi has Hindu
origins.
✓ Meanwhile, Muslims in India are just as likely as Hindus to say they believe in karma (77% each), as do 54% of
Indian Christians.
✓ 7% of Indian Hindus say they celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid, and 17% celebrate Christmas.
➢ Muslims favor having access to their own religious courts
✓ But followers of other religions are far less likely to support Muslim access to this separate court system.
➢
✓ It was adopted on 13 December 2006 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
✓ It opened for signature on 30 March 2007 and came into force on 3 May 2008.
✓ It is an international human rights treaty of the United Nations intended to protect the rights and dignity of
persons with disabilities.
✓ Parties to the Convention are required to promote, protect, and ensure the full enjoyment of human rights by
persons with disabilities and ensure that persons with disabilities enjoy full equality under the law.
✓ The Convention was the first U.N. human rights treaty of the twenty-first century.

➢
✓ It is a digital proof that a person has either been vaccinated against Covid-19, or received a negative test result,
or recovered from the viral infection.
✓ It has been created to ensure that restrictions currently in place can be lifted in a coordinated manner.
✓ While the “green pass” is expected to make the experience of travel hassle-free for people by doing away with
restrictions, it is not absolutely compulsory.
✓ At the recent meeting of G7 countries, Union Health Minister of India said that India was “strongly opposed to
a ‘vaccine passport’ at this juncture”.
➢
✓ From a pair of neutron star-black hole (NS-BH) collision/merger.
✓ Until now, the LIGO-Virgo collaboration (LVC) of gravitational waves detectors has only been able to observe
collisions between pairs of black holes or neutron stars.
▪ Basically, Scientists have earlier detected binary black hole mergers and binary neutron star mergers (until
now). But this is a hybrid collision.

➢
✓ Neutron stars – They are formed when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses.
✓ Black hole - It is a region in space where the pulling force of gravity is so strong that neither matter nor light can
escape. This phenomenon occurs when a star is dying.
✓ A neutron star has a surface and black hole does not.
✓ A neutron star is about 1.4-2 times the mass of the sun while the other black hole is much more massive.

➢
✓ These waves are 'ripples' in space-time caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the
Universe.
✓ Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 in his general theory of relativity.
➢ The Laser Interferometer Gravitational – Wave Observatory (LIGO)
✓ It is world’s largest gravitational waves observatory.
✓ It consists of two widely-separated interferometers within the United States.
✓ On September 14, 2015, It made the world's first direct detection of gravitational waves.

➢
✓ It is area of high pressure that parks over a region like a lid on a pot, trapping heat.
✓ They are more likely to form during La Niña years like 2021, when waters are cool in the eastern Pacific and
warm in the western Pacific.
▪ That temperature difference creates winds that blow dense, tropical, western air eastward.
▪ Eventually that warm air gets trapped in the jet stream and ends up on the U.S. West Coast.