GS Analyst
Daily Current Affairs

The West Bengal cabinet has approved the creation of seven new districts in the state.

• In West Bengal, South 24-Parganas district sprawls over almost 10,000 sq km; North 24-Parganas is about 4,000 sq km in area — with populations of more than 8 million and more than 10 million each (2011).

Why have these districts been created?

• Generally the idea behind creation of smaller units is that it makes governance easier.
• It would benefit the people by bringing the government and the administration closer to them, and making them more accessible.
• Sometimes, the decision to create a new district is driven by local demands.
• Decentralisation and smaller administrative units bring better and more transparent governance, and smoother and more effective delivery of welfare.

The decision on creating or scrapping districts, or changing their boundaries:

• The power to create districts or to change boundaries lies with the state governments.
• The state government can pass a law in the Assembly or simply issue an order and notify it in the gazette.
• The Centre does not have a say in the matter.

Creation of new districts:

• The number of districts around the country has been going up steadily over the years.
• The 2001 Census recorded 593 districts, which went up to 640 in 2011.
• India currently has more than 775 districts.
• Uttar Pradesh has the most districts (75) in the country, followed by Madhya Pradesh (52). Goa, by contrast, has only 2 districts.
• The number of districts in a state is not always a function of the area of the state, or of its population.
• For example, West Bengal, has 42 Lok Sabha MPs but only 30 districts even after the addition of the 7 new districts
• In general, the largest districts in India by area cover sparsely populated areas — for example, Kachchh in Gujarat, and Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Barmer, and Jodhpur in Rajasthan.

Three private school teachers in Pune have been booked under the Juvenile Justice Act over allegedly thrashing three Class 10 students, and threatening to grade them poorly in internal assessments.

Corporal Punishment

• Corporal punishment means punishment that is physical in nature.
• There is no statutory definition of 'corporal punishment' targeting children in the Indian law.
• However, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 prohibits ‘physical punishment’ and ‘mental harassment’ under Section 17(1) and makes it a punishable offence under Section 17(2).
• According to the Guidelines for Eliminating Corporal Punishment in Schools issued by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR):
  • physical punishment is understood as any action that causes pain, hurt/injury and discomfort to a child, however light.
    • Examples include hitting, kicking, scratching, pinching, biting, pulling the hair, boxing ears, smacking, slapping, spanking, hitting with any implement (cane, stick, shoe, chalk, dusters, belt, whip), giving electric shock and so on.
    • It includes making children assume an uncomfortable position (standing on bench, standing against the wall in a chair-like position, standing with school bag on head, holding ears through legs, kneeling, and forced ingestion of anything, detention in the classroom, library, toilet or any closed space in the school.
  • Mental harassment is understood as any non-physical treatment that is detrimental to the academic and psychological well-being of a child including sarcasm, calling names and scolding using humiliating adjectives, intimidation, using derogatory remarks for the child, ridiculing or belittling a child, shaming the child and more.

What are provisions under the law against such punishment?

• Section 17 of the Right to Education Act, 2009, imposes an absolute bar on corporal punishment.
  • It prohibits physical punishment and mental harassment to children and prescribes disciplinary action to be taken against the guilty person in accordance with the service rules applicable to such person.
• Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act prescribes punishment for cruelty to children. In case of Corporal punishment, the accused would be penalised with rigorous imprisonment upto five years and fine up to Rs 5 lakh.
• In theory, corporal punishment is covered by all the provisions under Indian law that punish perpetrators of physical harm.
  • While these provisions make no distinction between adults and children, in practice, corporal punishment in schools and other institutions tends not to be prosecuted because it is still accepted socially at several places.
• National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) 
• The NCPCR guidelines for eliminating corporal punishment against children require every school to develop a mechanism and frame clear cut protocols to address grievances of students.
• Drop boxes are to be placed where the aggrieved person may drop his complaint and anonymity is to be maintained to protect privacy.
• Every school has to constitute a ‘Corporal Punishment Monitoring Cell’ consisting of
  • two teachers,
  • two parents,
  • one doctor,
  • one lawyer (nominated by DLSA),
  • counsellor,
  • an independent child rights activist of that area and two senior students from that school.
• This CPMC shall look into complaints of corporal punishment.
• CBSE has also issued guidelines to schools for ensuring an atmosphere free from fear in each affiliated school.

Scientists discovered the fungus, growing on dead plants, causes pyrene degradation using special enzymes.

• Researchers at the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research-Indian Institute of Petroleum (CSIR-IIP), Dehradun, have identified a fungus capable of removing toxic, recalcitrant, and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from the environment.
• The rapid pace of economic development and industrialisation has resulted in the release of several PAHs into the environment.
• The PAHs are ubiquitous environmental pollutants originating from multiple sources, including combustion of petrogenic fossil fuels, and incomplete incineration of municipal wastes and biomass.

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs):

• Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a class of chemicals that occur naturally in coal, crude oil, and gasoline.
• They result from burning coal, oil, gas, wood, garbage, and tobacco.
• PAHs can bind to or form small particles in the air.
• High heat when cooking meat and other foods will form PAHs.
• Naphthalene is a manmade PAH used in the United States to make other chemicals and mothballs.
• Cigarette smoke contains many PAHs.

Pyrene:

• Pyrene, possessing four benzene rings, belongs to the highly toxic class of PAHs, with carcinogenic and mutagenic properties.
• It gets lodged into the environmental matrices like soil, water and atmosphere, resulting in widespread environmental pollution, necessitating adequate remediation of contaminated environmental matrices.

New fungus:

• A white-rot fungus Trametesmaxima IIPLC-32 has the potential to causemicrobial degradation of pyrene.
• According to researchers, growing on dead plants, this fungus causes pyrene degradation using special enzymes.
  
  

The Union Ministry of Jal Shakti (water resources), under the ‘National Perspective Plan’, had called for proposals to transfer water from water surplus basins to water deficit basins

• National Water Development Agency (NWDA) had identified 30 links in the country that included 16 peninsular rivers.
• There were two sensitive proposals among the six Karnataka proposals.
• These were the Bedti-Dharma-Varada and Aghanashini-Varada river links.

About Bedti-Varada river inter-linking project:

• The Bedti-Varada project was envisaged in 1992 to supply drinking water.
• The plan aims to link the Bedti, a river flowing west into the Arabian Sea, with the Varada, a tributary of the Tungabhadra River, which flows into the Krishna, which in turn flows into the Bay of Bengal.
• A massive dam will be erected at Hirevadatti in Gadag district.
• A second dam will be built on the Pattanahalla River at Menasagoda in Sirsi, Uttara Kannada district.
• Both dams will take water to the Varada via tunnels.
• The pre-feasibility report of the ‘Bedti-Varada link proposal’ was submitted by NWDA in August 2021.
• It envisaged the diversion of 242 million cubic metres (mcm) from the Bedti Basin to the water-scarce Tungabhadra sub-basin to irrigate 60,200 hectares (ha) in the Tungabhadra Project command Area of Raichur district.
• The draft detailed project report (DPR) of the Bedti-Dharma-Varada link and the drawings submitted by NWDA to the Government of Karnataka in February 2022, cover parts of the Bedti-Conservation Reserve and Shalmala Riparian Conservation Reserve.
• These are in the Western Ghats, which is eco-sensitive and a biodiversity hotspot.
  
  

Implications of the project:

If the project is implemented:

• The livelihood of the people in the downstream areas will be adversely impacted and the flora and fauna at the estuary will be affected.
• Forest loss shall impair the hydrological cycle, monsoon pattern and climatological conditions in the donor as well in the recipient basins.
• There will be threats to endangered species.
• When the free annual flow of water in the river system is prevented, there will be on-land transgression of marine water in the coastal zone. This will cause impairment of the interface between fresh and marine water, resulting in an acute shortage of drinking water.
• Changes in land use will aggravate natural hazards like landslides, lead to loss of forest wealth, disturb wildlife and human lead of life.
• The additional storage of 524 mcm of water, to be diverted from the proposed project into the heavily silted Tungabhadra reservoir, does not sounds technically possible.
• It will aggravate further, the problem of water logging and soil salinity in the area already under irrigation from the Tungabhadra Project.
• The surface and groundwater resources of the donor basin will be severely affected (both) for irrigation and even drinking needs during lean season.
  
  

August 2 is the birth centenary of the designer of the national flag, Pingali Venkaiah.

Pingali Venkayya

• Pingali Venkayya was a freedom fighter and the designer of the Indian National Tricolour who went on to become synonymous with the spirit of free and independent India.
• The national flag that we see today was based upon his design. His life and contribution to the freedom struggle have barely been documented.
• Born on August 2, 1876 in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, Venkayya served as a soldier in the British Army in South Africa during the Anglo Boer war in Africa.
• A firm believer in Gandhian principles and an ardent nationalist, Venkayya met the Mahatma during the war.
• He was 19 when the meeting took place and formed an association which would last for more than 50 years.
• He met the Mahatma once again in Vijayawada and showed him his publication with the various designs of the flag.
• Acknowledging the need for a national flag, Gandhi then asked Venkayya to design a fresh one at the national congress meeting in 1921.
• Initially, Venkayya came up with saffron and green colours, but it later evolved with a spinning wheel at the centre and a third colour-white.
• The flag was officially adopted by the Indian National Congress in 1931.
  
  
  
  
• In 2009, a stamp was also issued to commemorate him, and the Andhra Pradesh government recommended his name for the Bharat Ratna in 2014.
• In 2015, the then Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu renamed the AIR Vijaywada after Venkayya and unveiled his statue on its premises.

Built by 750 girl students of 75 schools across India, AzaadiSAT is all set for launch early next month onboard the maiden flight of ISRO's Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV).

• "AZAADISAT" is a satellite mission with the ambitious vision to encourage Government school children (from economically weak backgrounds) with the basic understanding and knowledge of space and tutor them to build a small experiment and launch it to the edge of space through a “Balloon Satellite” or through an “Orbital Satellite".
• The significance of this project is that it has been conceptualized to pay our tribute to mark the 75th anniversary of Independence - Azaadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav.
• The eight-kg satellite has 75 Femto experiments, selfie cameras to click pictures of its own solar panels and long-range communication transponders.
• The project, with a mission life of six months, is part of the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav celebrations, to mark the 75th anniversary of Independence.
• This is the first of its kind space mission with an all-women concept to promote women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) as this year’s UN theme is ‘Women in Space’.
• The primary payload of the first demonstration flight of SSLV is an earth observation satellite MicroSat 2A.

India to be part of 17-nation 'Pitch Black' exercise in Australia.

Exercise Pitch Black

• Exercise Pitch Black is a biennial three-week multilateral air combat training exercise hosted by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).
• Its last edition was held in 2018.
• It was conducted for the first time in 1981 between different RAAF units.
• It ensures that the training and integration of forces that occur during this exercise directly supports the Air Force's ability to conduct operations.
• This year's participants include Australia, Canada, India, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand, the UAE, the UK and the US.
• The Australian Navy was part of the Malabar naval exercise hosted by India in November 2020 as well as last year.