Why in news?

• Recently, the Government has clarified that Aadhaar of husbands is not mandatory under the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana, PMMVY, to facilitate the inclusion of single mothers and abandoned mothers.

About PMMVY

• It is amaternity benefit programme being implemented in all districts of the country with effect from 1^st January, 2017.
• It is a centrally sponsored schemebeing executed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
• Cash benefits are provided to pregnant womenin their bank account directly to meet enhanced nutritional needs and partially compensate for wage loss.
• Implementation of the scheme is closely monitored by the central and state governments through thePradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana – Common Application Software (PMMVY-CAS).
• PMMVY-CAS is a web based software applicationthat enables tracking the status of each beneficiary under the scheme, resulting in expedited, accountable and better grievance redressal.
• Beneficiaries
• All Pregnant Women and Lactating Mothers (PW&LM),excluding those who are in regular employment with the Central Government or the State Governments or PSUs or those who are in receipt of similar benefits under any law for the time being in force.
• All eligible Pregnant Women and Lactating Mothers who have their pregnancy on or after 1^stJanuary 2017 for the first child in the family.

Benfits

• Beneficiaries receive a cash benefit of Rs. 5,000in three installments on fulfilling the following conditions:
• Early registration of pregnancy
• Ante-natal check-up
• Registration of the birth of the child and completion of the first cycle of vaccination for the first living child of the family.
• The eligible beneficiaries also receive cash incentive under Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY). Thus, on an average, a woman gets Rs. 6,000.

Why in news?

• On February 3, 2022, Tourism Minister G Kishan Reddy told the Rajya Sabha that Punaura Dham of Bihar has been included in the Ramayana circuit of the Swadesh Darshan scheme and in the PRASAD scheme.

About Punaura Dham

• Maa Janaki Janmabhoomi Temple is located in Punaura Dham village of Sitamarhi district of Bihar, which is also known as Punaura Dham.
• It is worth mentioning that the PRASAD scheme was launched in the year 2014-15 with the objective of improving the facilities and infrastructure at pilgrimage centers of all religions.
• At the same time, Swadesh Darshan Scheme was started in the year 2014-15 for the theme based Integrated development of tourist places like Ramayana Circuit, Buddhist Circuit, Jain Circuit etc.
• In Bihar, development of Patna Sahib under Prasad scheme and development of Jain circuit under Swadesh Darshan scheme, development of Kanwariya circuit, development of Gandhi circuit, Ramayana circuit and Buddhist circuit are included.

Why in news?

• A Trilogy book series titled, ‘India, That is Bharat: Coloniality, Civilisation, Constitution’ is authored by J Sai Deepak and published by Bloomsbury India.
• The 1st part was released on 15th August 2021, is set to launch the 2nd part in June 2022. Whereas, the 3rd and last part will be released in June 2023.
• It is the first part of a comprehensive trilogy, which examines the impact of European ‘colonial consciousness’ (or ‘coloniality’), on Bharat (India).It highlights how colonialism changes the socio-religious culture, history, education, language and racial patterns in India.
• India, That Is Bharat, the first book of a comprehensive trilogy, explores the influence of European ‘colonial consciousness’ (or ‘coloniality’), in particular its religious and racial roots, on Bharat as the successor state to the Indic civilisation and the origins of the Indian Constitution.

Why in news?

• The Aravalli Biodiversity Park in Gurugram, Haryana, has been declared as India’s first “Other effective area-based conservation measures” (OECM) site.
• This was informed by the Union ministry of Environment, forest and climate change on the occasion of World Wetlands Day.
• The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) gives OECM tag to those areas that are not protected but support rich biodiversity. The tag designates the area as a biodiversity hotspot on the international map.

About OECM

• OECM is a status for a place that has achieved effective in-situ conservation of biodiversity outside protected areas like forests.
• The park, which once was an abandoned mining pit, was transformed into a lush green forest patch in 10 years. Now, it has about 400 native species of plants.

About IUCN

• The IUCN is a global union composed of both government as well as civil society organisations. With more than 1400 organisations as its members, the IUCN is an international authority on the status of the natural world.
• Established in 1948, the IUCN has the tools and knowledge repository to help the world conserve nature and ensure sustainable development.
• It established the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 1964.
• The IUCN’s Secretariat is in Gland, Switzerland.

Why in  News

• India defeated Australia by 96 runs to reach the U-19 Cricket World Cup final.
• Skipper Yash Dhull struck a sublime 110 in as many balls and shared a game- changing 204-run stand with his deputy Shaik Rasheed (94 off 108 balls) to fire India to a formidable 290 for five after opting to bat on Wednesday.
• Indian bowlers then performed their roles to perfection to bowl Australia out for 194 in 41.5 overs. Lachlan Shaw’s fine 51 came too late in the day for Australia.
• Four-time champions India face England in the final and will be aiming to extend their dominance in the competition.

ABOUT U- 19 WORLD CUP

• The 2022 ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup is an international limited-overs cricket tournament that is held in the West Indies with sixteen teams taking part.
• It is the fourteenth edition of the Under-19 Cricket World Cup, and the first to be held in the West Indies

Why in news?

• The Indian government has allocated Rs. 60,000 crore to the “Har Ghar Nal se Jal” scheme for the financial year 2022-2023.

About the scheme

• The Jal Jeevan Mission, which is implementing the Nal se Jal scheme, was launched in 2019.
• It is aimed at providing tap water supply to all rural households and public institutions located in villages such as schools, anganwadi centers, health centers, panchayat buildings, etc.At the time of launch, an estimated 3.23 crore (17%) households were reported to have tap water connections.
• The central government is implementing the scheme in partnership with state governments. It is aiming to complete full coverage in all states by 2024. The estimated outlay of the program is Rs. 3.60 lakh crore, of which the government’s contribution is Rs. 2.08 lakh crore.
• The FM in her speech said that 7 crore households (nearly 45%) have so far been covered under the scheme.
• Several states and union territories have already achieved 100% coverage of tap water connections under the scheme.These include Goa, Telangana, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Puducherry, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, and Haryana.

Why in news?

• Khadi Prakratik Paint has been developed from cow dung by Kumarappa National Handmade Paper Institute (KNHPI), Jaipur, a unit of Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), under the administrative control of the Ministry of MSME.
• Khadi Prakratik paint is eco-friendly and cost effective.
• It is envisaged that manufacture ofKhadi Prakratik Paint will promote local manufacturing, create sustainable employment and generate additional revenue for farmers and cow shelter homes and will also generate employment in the rural areas, which will improve the rural economy and help in controlling the migration from rural to urban areas, in the country.
• Cow dung is a major constituent used in the manufacture of Prakritik Paint. 100 kgs. of cow dung is utilized for making 500 liters of paint. Therefore, setting up of paint units would be helpful in utilization of cow dung and thereby help in cleaning the environment.

Why in news?

• The Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) has installed and commissioned Param Pravega, one of the most powerful supercomputers in India, and the largest in an Indian academic institution, under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM).
• It has a total supercomputing capacity of 3 petaflops (1 petaflop equals a quadrillion, or 1015 operations per second).
• It has been designed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).
• A majority of the components used to build this system have been manufactured and assembled within India, along with an indigenous software stack developed by C-DAC, in line with the Make in India initiative.
• The Param Pravega system at IISc. is a mix of heterogeneous nodes, with Intel Xeon Cascade Lake processors for the CPU nodes and NVIDIA Tesla V100 cards on the GPU nodes. The hardware consists of an ATOS BullSequana XH2000 series system, with a comprehensive peak compute power of 3.3 petaflops.

National Supercomputing Mission (NSM).

• NSM is steered jointly by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), and implemented by C-DAC and IISc.
• The Mission has supported the deployment of 10 supercomputer systems so far at IISc., in IITs, IISER Pune, JNCASR, NABI-Mohali and C-DAC, with a cumulative computing power of 17 petaflops.
• About 31,00,000 computational jobs have successfully been carried out by around 2,600 researchers across India till date.

Why in news?

• The government has appointed former civil servant Ravi Mittal as the chairperson of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI).
• Mittal would head the IBBI for five years or till he is 65 years of age, whichever is early.
• Mittal, has served as Secretary of Information and Broadcasting (I&B), among other positions.
• Mittal will be the second full-time Chairperson of the IBBI, a key institution in implementing the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), which came into force in 2016.

About IBBI

• The IBBI is a regulatory institution set up by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs for enforcing the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.
• The board regulates corporate insolvency and resolution processes.
• It also regulates insolvency professionals and information utilities.

Why in news?

• India recently inked an interim agreement confirming its commitment to work on the mega science project —  Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) — proposed to be the world’s largest radio telescope.
• The agreement will be valid for one year.
• The signing of the Cooperation Agreement between India, represented by TIFR – National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), and SKA, was held virtually.
• This move will facilitate India to make its first monetary contribution towards the construction phase of the SKA, which got underway last year. Though India is a participating country in the setting up of the world’s largest radio telescope, it is yet to get the central government’s approval to become a Member Country.

About SKAO

• SKAO is working towards the establishment of the world’s largest radio telescope.
• SKAO is a new intergovernmental organisation dedicated to radio astronomy and is headquartered in the UK.
• SKA will be built in Australia and South Africa.
• Along with the three host countries, Italy, France, China, Switzerland and Canada are among the countries building SKAO, which is expected to be operational by the end of this decade.