UPSC Daily Current Affairs | Prelim Bits 13-06-2020
iasparliament
June 13, 2020
IFLOWS-Mumbai
Maharashtra government and Union Ministry for Health and Family Welfare, Science and Technology launched an Integrated Flood Warning System called ‘IFLOWS-Mumbai’.
IFLOWS is a monitoring and flood warning system that will be able to relay alerts of possible flood-prone areas anywhere between six to 72 hours in advance.
Mumbai is only the second city in the country after Chennai to get this system, similar systems are being developed for Bengaluru and Kolkata.
The system comprises seven modules-
Data Assimilation,
Flood,
Inundation,
Vulnerability,
Risk,
Dissemination Module and
Decision Support System.
The system has provisions to capture the urban drainage within the city and predict the areas of flooding.
The system incorporates weather models from the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), India Meteorological Department (IMD), field data from the rain gauge network of 165 stations set up by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), BMC and IMD.
Based on the amount of rain recorded, time, location, topography and forecast, the system is designed to generate flood warnings for specific geographical areas of the city.
All this information will then be routed to authorities.
The early warning forecast would include alerts on rainfall information, tide levels, storm surge for low-lying areas anticipated to be affected, thereby minimizing the damage from cyclones and heavy rain events in Mumbai by evacuating people to safe areas.
The system, initially only to be accessed by the civic body will enable them to issue alerts for citizens who can then avoid such zones.
Sahakar Mitra
Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare has launched a Scheme on Internship Programme (SIP) i.e. Sahakar Mitra.
It is an initiative by the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) for young professionals.
It is expected to be beneficial for both i.e. cooperatives as well as for the young professionals.
Earlier, the government launched 'The Urban Learning Internship Program (TULIP) Portal' to provide internship opportunities to thousands of fresh graduates and engineers of the country under the 'Smart City' projects.
The Sahakar Mitra scheme will help cooperative institutions access new and innovative ideas of young professionals while the interns will gain experience of working in the field to be self-reliant.
It will provide the young professionals an opportunity of practical exposure and learning from the working of NCDC and cooperatives as a paid intern.
It would also provide an opportunity to professionals from academic institutions to develop leadership and entrepreneurial roles through cooperatives as Farmers Producers Organizations (FPO).
In line with the AtmaNirbhar Bharat (Self Reliant India), it focuses on the importance of Vocal for Local.
The eligible participants to the scheme are as follows:
Professional graduates in disciplines such as Agriculture and allied areas, IT, etc.
Professionals who are pursuing or have completed their MBA degrees in Agribusiness, Cooperation, Finance, International Trade, Forestry, Rural Development, Project Management, etc.
NCDC has designated funds for the paid internship program under which each intern will get financial support over a 4 months internship period.
National Cooperative Development Corporation
The National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) was established by an Act of Parliament in 1963 as a statutory Corporation under the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare.
NCDC functions through its Head Office at New Delhi and multiple Regional Offices.
The objectives of NCDC are planning and promoting programmes for production, processing, marketing, storage, export and import of agricultural produce, foodstuffs, industrial goods, livestock and certain other notified commodities and services on cooperative principles.
The NCDC has the unique distinction of being the sole statutory organization functioning as an apex financial and developmental institution exclusively devoted to the cooperative sector.
It is a major financial institution for cooperatives, and has recently started Mission Sahakar 22, which aims to double farmers’ income by 2022.
World Food Prize 2020
The World Food Prize is the foremost international honor recognizing the achievements of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world.
The World Food Prize was created in 1986 with sponsorship by General Foods Corporation.
It is presented by the World Food Prize Foundation (USA), which has over 80 companies, individuals, etc. as donors.
It is also known as the "Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture".
It is an annual award that recognizes contributions in any field involved in the world food supply including plant, animal and soil science; food science and technology; nutrition, rural development, etc.
It is open for any individual without regard to race, religion, nationality or political beliefs.
In addition to the cash award of $2,50,000, the laureate receives a sculpture designed by the noted artist and designer, Saul Bass.
The Prize is presented each October on or around UN World Food Day (16th October).
Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work in global agriculture, conceived the Prize. He is also known as the Father of the Green Revolution.
Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, the father of India’s green revolution, was the first recipient of this award in 1987.
Dr. Rattan Lal
Indian-American soil scientist - Dr. Rattan Lal - has been declared the winner of the World Food Prize 2020.
He played a major role in developing and mainstreaming a soil-centric approach to increasing food production that conserves natural resources and mitigates climate change.
Three separate United Nations Climate Change Conferences have adopted his strategy of restoring soil health as a means to sequestering carbon.
In 2007, he was among those recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize Certificate for his contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, when the IPCC was named co-recipient of the Nobel Prize.
MB Lal committee
The MB Lal committee was constituted following a fire incident in October 2009 at the IOCL terminal at Jaipur.
It had nearly 118 recommendations with regard to safety guidelines to be followed by oil companies at their installations.
All recommendations of the committee approved by the petroleum ministry were supposed to be implemented immediately.
According to the ministry, at least 94 per cent of the recommendations made by the MB Lal committee have been implemented.
However Oil Industry Safety Directorate’s data shows eight accidents in oil and gas installations took place between April and June 1, 2020.
Such accidents are a grave reminder of the inadequate safety measures and the lackadaisical implementation of safety standards at oil and gas installations in the country.
Emergency Response Centers (ERCs)
Emergency Response Centers (ERCs) to handle major oil fires in the fastest way possible are yet to be set up in India, more than a decade after they were recommended by the MB Lal Committee.
This is according to the last report of the Parliamentary panel on Petroleum and Natural Gas that was tabled in the Lok Sabha in January 2019.
The ERCs were supposed to be completed in 2014.
But six years later, even after approval of the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, the recommendation is still pending.
An ERC would take 3-4 years to be set up and any incident during the intervening period might cause huge losses, it had further noted.
Till ERCs are set up, oil marketing companies (OMCs) including Indian Oil Corp Ltd (IOCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd and Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) should appoint an experienced agency on a temporary basis.
The agency should be able to provide 24X7 emergency fire-fighting services, with advanced equipment.
NHAI – Fully Digital
National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) under Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has gone ‘Fully Digital’ recently, with the launch of unique cloud based and Artificial Intelligence powered Big Data Analytics platform – Data Lake and Project Management Software.
The entire project management work flow of NHAI is transformed from manual to online portal based, wherein the complete project execution operations including ‘workflow with time lines’ and ‘alert mechanism’ have been configured.
All project documentation, contractual decisions and approvals are now being done through portal only.
The complete project documents and correspondences will be stored in Digital format in the cloud-based ‘Data Lake’ linked with GIS tagging and Unique Project ID, so that the project data can be easily retrieved as and when required from any location.
NHAI’s all contractors/ concessionaires/consultants/Authority Engineers (AE)/ Independent Engineers (IE) and Project Directors (PDs)/ Regional Officers (ROs) have already started using it extensively.
NHAI’s e-Office module is also integrated in the system so that all correspondences can flow digitally in a secured manner from field units to HQ seamlessly.
It will enhance transparency, as all officers and stakeholders, connected with the project can see what is going on real time basis which will amount to concurrent performance audit by the seniors.
