ETEN Enlightens-Daily current capsules (Prelims Prominence) – 05thApril2018

Cabinet Decisions Competition Commission of

Cabinet approves rightsizing of CCI

 The Union Cabinet has given its approval for rightsizing the Competition Commission of India (CCI) from One Chairperson and Six Members (totalling seven) to One Chairperson and Three Members (totalling four)

 The proposal is expected to result in reduction of three Posts of Members of the Commission in pursuance of the Governments objective of "Minimum Government - Maximum Governance".

 As part of the Governments objective of easing the mergers and amalgamation process in the country, the Ministry had revised de minimis levels in 2017

Enlighten about CCI

 CCI goal is to create and sustain fair competition in the economy that will provide a ‘level playing field’ to the producers and make the markets work for the welfare of the consumers.  The Competition Act, 2002, as amended by the Competition (Amendment) Act, 2007, follows the philosophy of modern competition laws.  The Act prohibits anti-competitive agreements, abuse of dominant position by enterprises and regulates combinations (acquisition, acquiring of control and M&A), which causes or likely to cause an appreciable adverse effect on competition within India.

Objective of Competition Commission of India(CCI)  Remove negative competitive practices  Promote sustainable market competition  Protect the rights of the consumer  Protect the freedom of trade in Indian markets  Protect the rights of small traders from the large traders to ensure their survival  Advice and give suggestions to Competition Appellate Tribunal  Run informative campaigns and create public awareness about fair competitive practices.

Culture Six monuments / historical sites in North Eastern States identified for listing under World Heritage Site

 As many as 6 monuments/historical sites in the North Eastern states have been identified tentatively for listing under World Heritage Site.

 Tentative list for listing under world heritage in the north eastern states are

1. Apatani Cultural Landscape, Arunachal Pradesh 2. Iconic Saree Weaving Clusters of India 3. Moidams – the Mound – Burial System of the Ahom Dynasty, Assam 4. Namdapha National Park, Arunachal Pradesh 5. River Island of Majuli in midstream of Brahmaputra River in Assam 6. Thembang Fortified Village, Arunachal Pradesh

Enlighten about UNESCO world heritage site

 A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as of special cultural or physical significance.  The list is maintained by the international World Heritage Programme administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, composed of 21 UNESCO member states which are elected by the General Assembly.  Each World Heritage Site remains part of the legal territory of the state wherein the site is located and UNESCO considers it in the interest of the international community to preserve each site.  As of July 2017, 1,073 sites are listed: 832 cultural, 206 natural, and 35 mixed properties, in 167 states. Italy is the home for the largest number of sites with 53.

Culture More than 1 lakh art objects digitized under

Project ‘JATAN’

WHAT  Ministry of Culture has taken up a project named as JATAN in collaboration with C-DAC, WHY  for creating an online digital repository of museum collections on the national portal www.museumsofindia.gov.in for the museums under the administrative control of this Ministry.

Enlighten about it  Till now, 1,08,881 art objects have been digitized and uploaded on the portal.  Digitization of collections of old, rare and brittle documents/manuscripts/books in the Libraries under Ministry of Culture  National Library, Kolkata and Central Secretariat Library, New Delhi have digitized a total of 87 lakh pages of rare books etc. Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, Patna and Rampur Raza Library, Rampur have digitized 22.50 lakh folios of manuscripts.

Human Rights The Protection of Human Rights (Amendments) Bill, 2018

The Union Cabinet has given its approval to the Protection of Human Rights (Amendments) Bill, 2018 for better protection and promotion of human rights in the country.

Enlighten about the Salient Features

1. It proposes to include “National Commission for Protection of Child Rights” as deemed Member of the Commission; 2. It proposes to add a woman Member in the composition of the Commission; 3. It proposes to enlarge the scope of eligibility and scope of selection of Chairperson, National Human Rights Commission as well as the State Human Rights Commission; and 4. It proposes to incorporate a mechanism to look after the cases of human rights violation in the Union Territories. 5. It proposes to amend the term of office of Chairperson and Members of National Human Rights Commission and State Human Rights Commission to make it in consonance with the terms of Chairperson and Members of other Commissions.

Benefits

 The Amendment will strengthen the Human Rights Institutions of India further for effective discharge of their mandates, roles and responsibilities.

 The amended Act will be in perfect sync with the agreed global standards and benchmarks towards ensuring the rights relating to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the individual in the country.

NHRC/SHRC  The amendment to the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 will make National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) more compliant with the Paris Principle concerning its autonomy, independence, pluralism and wide-ranging functions in order to effectively protect and promote human rights.

Ministry of Earth Science High Performance Computing (HPC) Systems Pratyush and Mihir

 Ministry of Earth Sciences has augmented the High-Performance Computing (HPC) System at a total cost of Rs.438.9 Cr.

 The systems are installed at two sites Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune and National Center for Medium Range Forecast (NCMRWF), Noida with computing capacities of 4 peta flops and 2.8 peta flops, respectively.  The Two High Performance Computing (HPC) Systems Pratyush and Mihir installed at IITM, Pune and NCMRWF, Noida respectively have a total computing capacity of 6.8 peta flops.  The HPC system with After the current augmentation, the total HPC capacity of the ministry has gone up to 8.0 Peta Flops.  A combined capacity of 8.0 Peta Flops is now placed at the 4th position after Japan, UK and USA for dedicated HPC resources for weather/ community.  The HPC system is being used for the advanced dynamical prediction systems which are now being used for Seasonal prediction  The HPC system is also being used for generating probabilistic forecasts for extreme weather.

Index of eight core industries

Released by

 Ministry of Commerce and Industry

What’s the NEWS

 Eight core infrastructure sectors grew by 5.3% in February 2018.

1. Petroleum refinery production: It recorded 7.8% growth. 2. Fertilizer production: It recorded 5.3% growth. 3. Cement production: It recorded 22.9% growth. 4. Electricity generation: It grew by 4%. 5. Coal production: It grew by 1.4%. 6. Steel production: It grew by 5%. 7. Crude oil production: It declined by 2.4%. 8. Natural Gas production: It declined by 1.5%.

Enlighten about Core industries

 There are eight core sectors comprising of coal, crude oil, natural gas, petroleum refinery products, fertilisers, steel, cement and electricity. The eight infrastructure sectors, constitute 40.27% of the total index of industrial production (IIP).

Their weightage  Petroleum Refinery production (weight: 28.04%), Electricity generation (19.85%), Steel production (17.92%), Coal production (10.33%), Crude Oil production (8.98%), Natural Gas production (6.88%), Cement production (5.37%), Fertilizers production (2.63%).

Sources – LiveMint,PIB,The Hindu