The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has released the Swachh Survekshan 2018 ranking for clean cities across the country.
Its objective is to encourage large scale citizen participation and create awareness amongst all sections of society about the importance of making towns and cities a better place to live in.
The ranking was done separately for cities with a population of one lakh or more (national ranking) and cities below one lakh (state and zonal rankings).
Survey was based on six parameters –
By Collecting and Transportation of Municipal Solid Waste
Processing and Disposal of Municipal Solid Waste
Sanitation-related progress
IEC (Information, Education, and Communication)
Capacity Building
Innovation and Best Practices
Based on the rankings, Indore is India’s cleanest city for second year in a row, followed by Bhopal.
Rhino habitat under threat of mining
Two adventure enthusiasts were recently lynched near the Kaziranga National Park, home to the largest population of one-horned rhinos in the world.
This incident has brought into focus the rampant mining, quarrying and stone crushing activities that are threatening the ecology of the Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong landscape.
The mining and quarrying activities are still going on despite the recommendations of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) to the Assam State government.
It was found that such activities were hampering the survival and conservation of the tiger, its habitats, co-predators, prey, including mega herbivores, and their transit routes during the annual flood season.
Indian Contingent awarded for 'Selfless Service'
The 7 Garhwal Rifles Infantry Battalion Group was awarded the United Nations Medal for ‘Selfless Service’ in the peacekeeping mission in South Sudan.
India has the legacy of supreme service and numerous operational tasks with utmost professionalism and dedication to the UN mandate.
And it is a largest cumulative troop contributor to United Nations Peacekeeping Missions mandated to maintain stability and negotiate peace settlement in turbulent regions of the world.
So far India has provided almost 200,000 troops in nearly 50 of the 71 UN peacekeeping missions over the past six decades, including 14 of the current 16 missions.
India’s First Robotic Telescope
The telescope located at the Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO) at Hanle in Ladakh is the India’s first robotic telescope.
It is also the first telescope designed through a multi-country collaborative initiative known as ‘Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen’ (GROWTH) to observe dynamic or transient events in the universe.
The fully robotic optical research telescope will capture cosmic events occurring in timescales much shorter than light years -years, days and even hours.
MPEDA to boost farming of black tiger shrimp
The Marine Products Export Development Authority has initiated efforts to revive black tiger shrimp farming.
A Multi Species Aquaculture Complex was built in Vallarpadam, Kerala is the first of its kind in India and has production capacity of 20 million disease-free shrimp seeds per annum.
This complex will cater to the high demand for good quality tiger shrimp in the international markets, especially Japan and the European Union.
The multi species hatchery and nursery for aquaculture will also produce seeds/fingerlings of 6-7 commercially important species, which are of high export demand.
