Daily UPSC Current Affairs | 13th June 2020

Dear Aspirants
IASbhai Daily Current Affairs for UPSC PRELIMS & MAINS 2020 is an initiative to dilute major articles from leading Newspapers in India which are most relevant to UPSC preparation –‘THE HINDU, LIVEMINT , INDIAN EXPRESS’ and help millions of readers who find difficulty in answer writing and making notes everyday. Hence we choose articles on daily basis and analyse them with respect to UPSC PRELIMS 2020.

“Whenever you see a successful person you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them.” –Vaibhav Shah

HIGHLIGHT INFO:

ORANGE COLOUR: Important for Prelims.

RED COLOUR: Important for Mains.

BLACK COLOUR: Must Read !

BLUE COLOUR : Important Links/Survey.

PINK COLOUR: Reports/Themes/Summits.

Page Contents:

NHAI goes fully digital

HEADLINES:

NHAI becomes first construction sector organisation to go ‘Fully Digital’

WHY IN NEWS:

The entire project management work flow of NHAI is transformed from manual to online portal based.

MINISTRY? :-Ministry of Road Transport & Highways

SYLLABUS COVERED: GS 2:3:GOVERNANCE : TRANSPORT

LEARNING:

For PRELIMS understand the purpose of data lake and its performance oriented cloud based technology.

For MAINS you can include many familiar key points from here in any of your answers related to governance .

ISSUE:

As one of the biggest reform, the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) under Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has gone ‘Fully Digital’, with the launch of unique cloud based and Artificial Intelligence powered Big Data Analytics platform – Data Lake and Project Management Software.

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.

DATA LAKE SOFTWARE

With advance analytics, the Data Lake software will forecast the delays, likely disputes and will give advance alerts.
Thus apart from expediting the decision making, it will also facilitate in taking correct and timely decisions as the system.
This is likely to predict financial impacts of different alternatives based on the historical data.
This will reduce a lot of disputes.
Data Lake software will ensure work is carried out within the deadlines in a transparent manner.

The complete project documents 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.

IASbhai WINDUP:

NHAI has a history of having large number of arbitration cases pending with huge amount of claims and counter claims.
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.
The Data Lake will bring revolutionary changes to NHAI with benefits like No delays, Quick decision making, No question of missing records, Work from anywhere/anytime.

SOURCES:THE HINDU & PIB/DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS for UPSC CSE Prelims & Mains

Quality Council of India

HEADLINES:

Shri Piyush Goyal reviews the Quality Council of India

WHY IN NEWS:

Minister says that Quality is going to define India’s future

MINISTRY? :-Ministry of Commerce & Industry

SYLLABUS COVERED: GS 3:COMMERCE : QCI

ISSUE:

Quality Council of India is a non-profit autonomous society, under the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT)

QUALITY COUNCIL OF INDIA

QCI establishes an accreditation structure in the country and to spread quality movement in India by undertaking a National Quality Campaign.

The Mission of QCI is to lead nationwide quality movement in India by involving all stakeholders for emphasis on adherence to quality standards in all spheres of activities primarily for promoting and protecting interests of the nation and its citizens.
The new Norm will call for new quality standards in all fields, including education, health, shopping, services.

IASbhai WINDUP:

QCI and GeM (Government e-Marketplace) should join hands to ensure that all high value products on the GeM portal are quality certified.

SOURCES:THE HINDU & PIB/DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS for UPSC CSE Prelims & Mains

COVID-19 community transmission in African countries

HEADLINES:

COVID-19 community transmission in 26 of 54 African countries: WHO

WHY IN NEWS:

Several African countries have a poor healthcare system — about five hospital beds per 10,000 population

SYLLABUS COVERED: GS 3:Health:Diseases

LEARNING:

For MAINS you should be able to replicate the definition of community transmission as provided by WHO . This will surely raise your bars in fetching more marks .

ISSUE:

About 115 days into the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed community transmission in at least 26 of 54 countries in the continent.

COMMUNITY TRANSMISSION

Community transmission “is evidenced by the inability to relate confirmed cases through chains of transmission for a large number of cases, or by increasing positive tests through sentinel samples (routine systematic testing of respiratory samples from established laboratories),”-WHO.
In West Africa, 12 of 15 countries reported community transmission, with Nigeria and Ghana being the most affected.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR AFRICA

The WHO recommended strengthening of primary hospitals and expanding capacities to deal with implications of widespread community spread of the virus SARS-CoV-2.
Nigeria, for example, has only five hospital beds and less than four doctors per 10,000 of the population.
Less than two doctors are available per 10,000 of the population in Ghana.

IASbhai WINDUP:

Community transmission in Africa in the unplanned cities is now an urban risk as well, with over half of the urban population living in slums.

SOURCES:THE HINDU & PIB/DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS for UPSC CSE Prelims & Mains

Lonar lake

HEADLINES:

Samples from Lonar lake sent for testingResearch institutes to study strange phenomenon of water turning pink

WHY IN NEWS:

Sight to behold: The colour of water turning pink in Lonar lake, with a mean diameter of 1.2 km in Buldhana district, has attracted locals, nature enthusiasts and scientists

SYLLABUS COVERED: GS 1 : Lakes

ISSUE:

Located around 500 km from Mumbai, it is a popular tourist hub and also attracts scientists from all over the world.

GEO-HERITAGE MONUMENT

Formed after a meteorite hit the Earth some 50,000 years ago, Lonar lake has saline water and is a notified national geo-heritage monument.

Some experts have attributed the change to the mixing of dunaliella algae with halo bacteria, forming a beta carotine pigment and turning the water pink.

IASbhai WINDUP:

“There have been such instances in other parts of the world. In a lake in Iran, the water turns reddish due to increase in salinity.”

SOURCES:THE HINDU & PIB/DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS for UPSC CSE Prelims & Mains

Let us ‘Discuss’

IASbhai WINDUP:

Let us know what you think about this in the comment section.

SOURCES:THE HINDU/DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS for UPSC CSE Prelims & Mains

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