• PM Modi recently announced the Lakhpati Didi scheme on the eve of Independence day.
• Under this skill training will be provided to two crore women so that they can earn at least Rs 1 lakh annually.
• Under the scheme, women would be trained in skills like plumbing, LED bulb making, and operating and repairing drones, among others.

• The Reserve Bank of India has announced the launch of a centralised web portal, UDGAM (Unclaimed Deposits – Gateway to access Information).
• The RBI has developed a web portal to facilitate the public to easily locate their unclaimed deposits across multiple banks in one place.
• Reserve Bank Information Technology Pvt Ltd (ReBIT), Indian Financial Technology & Allied Services (IFTAS), and participating banks have collaborated on developing the portal.

UNCLAIMED DEPOSITS

• Balances in savings / current accounts which are not operated for 10 years, or term deposits not claimed within 10 years from date of maturity are classified as “Unclaimed Deposits”.
• These deposits are transferred to the Depositor Education and Awareness fund maintained by the central bank and can be claimed by the respective depositor along with the applicable interest.
• According to the RBI, as of February 2023, the central bank had unclaimed deposits worth over INR 35,000 crore from 10.24 crore citizens.

• Google honoured Subhadra Kumari Chauhan with a special graphic on her 117th birth anniversary on August 16.

ABOUT SUBHADRA KUMARI CHAUHAN

• On August 16, 1904, Subhadra Kumari Chauhan was born in Nihalpur, Uttar Pradesh.
• She was known to write constantly, even in the horse cart on the way to school, and her first poem was published when she was just 9.
• Subhadra Kumari Chauhan was a trailblazing writer and freedom fighter whose work rose to national prominence during a male-dominated era of literature.
• She published a total of 88 poems and 46 short stories.
• Jhansi ki Rani, Subhadra’s nationalist poem, is regarded as one of the most recited poems in Hindi literature.
• She was India’s first woman Satyagrahi to be arrested in 1923 in Nagpur.
• Her poetry and prose primarily centered around the hardships that Indian women overcame, such as gender and caste discrimination.
• She died in 1948 in a car accident near Seoni, Madhya Pradesh on her way back to Jabalpur from Nagpur.

• 16^th August 2023 marked the sixth anniversary of coming into force of the Minamata Convention on Mercury.

ABOUT MINAMATA CONVENTION

• It is the first global landmark treaty to protect people and the environment from the toxic effects of mercury.
• It was agreed at the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in Geneva, Switzerland in 2013.
  • It came into effect in 2017.
• Currently it has 144 parties and 128 signatories.
  • India ratified it in 2018.
• It is named after the Japanese city of Minamata, which experienced a severe, decades-long incidence of mercury poisoning in 1950s after industrial wastewater from a chemical factory was discharged into Minamata Bay.
• Major highlights of the Minamata Convention on Mercury include
  • a ban on new mercury mines,
  • the phasing out of existing mines and mercury-added products,
  • control measures on air emissions,
  • interim storage of mercury and its disposal
• The Global Environment Facility Trust Fund (GEF) is one of the two components of the financial mechanism of the Minamata Convention on Mercury, together with the Specific International Programme.

NOTE

• The planetGOLD programme, led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), aims to end the toxic trail of small-scale gold mining which includes use of mercury.

• PM was recently apprised of a MoU signed between the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission and Ministry of Health, Government of the Republic of Suriname for Recognition of Indian Pharmacopoeia (IP) in Suriname.

ABOUT IPC

• Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) is an Autonomous Institution of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
• IPC is created to set standards of drugs in the country.
• Its basic function is to update regularly the standards of drugs commonly required for treatment of diseases prevailing in this region.
• It further promotes rational use of generic medicines by publishing National Formulary of India.
• It publishes official documents for improving Quality of Medicines by way of adding new and updating existing monographs in the form of Indian Pharmacopoeia (IP).
  • IP prescribes standards for identity, purity and strength of drugs essentially required from health care perspective of human beings and animals.
• IPC also provides IP Reference Substances (IPRS) which act as a finger print for identification of an article under test and its purity as prescribed in IP.
• The Indian Pharmacopoeia (IP) is officially recognized by five countries: Afghanistan, Ghana, Nepal, Mauritius and the Republic of Suriname.
  • The Health Ministry seeks to expand the nations which recognize the IP.

• The Union Cabinet recently approved a scheme to add 10,000 e-buses to city bus services across the country, and to shore up urban infrastructure under green mobility initiatives with a focus on cities having no organised bus services.
  • An e-bus is any bus whose propulsion and accessory systems are powered exclusively by a zero-emissions electricity source.
• The PM e-bus Sewa scheme will have an estimated cost of ₹57,613 crore, of which the Centre will provide ₹20,000 crore.
• It will support bus operations for 10 years.
• The scheme will be implemented in two segments-
  • In 169 cities, 10,000 e-buses will be deployed using a public-private partnership (PPP) model; depot infrastructure will also be developed or upgraded to support the new e-buses, including the creation of behind-the-meter power infrastructure like substations.
  • in 181 other cities, infrastructure will be upgraded under the green urban mobility initiatives. In these cities, initiatives will focus on bus priority, infrastructure, multimodal interchange facilities, automated fare collection systems, and charging infrastructure.
• Cities with a population of three lakh and above will be covered under the scheme, including all the capital cities of Union Territories, and the northeastern and hill States.
• Around 45,000 to 55,000 direct jobs are expected to be generated via the scheme.
• States or cities will be responsible for running the bus services and making payments to the bus operators.
  • The Central government will support these bus operations by providing subsidies to the extent specified in the scheme.
• Benefits
  • This will help reduce noise and air pollution in Indian cities and also curb carbon emissions.
  • This scheme is also expected to bring in economies of scale for the procurement of electric buses through aggregation.

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced the development of a pilot Public Tech Platform for ‘frictionless credit’ by the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH).
• The Public Tech Platform would enable delivery of frictionless credit by facilitating a seamless flow of required digital information to lenders.

WHAT IS FRICTIONLESS CREDIT?

• Under digitalization, the digital credit delivery landscape is characterised by a multitude of data points required for credit assessment, distributed among different entities such as central and state governments, banks, credit information agencies, digital identity authorities, and more.
• This impedes the seamless and timely dispensation of rule-based lending processes.
• Frictionless credit means to streamline digital credit delivery by creating an open architecture using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to integrate various financial stakeholders, enhancing efficiency and innovation.

ABOUT RBIH

• It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of RBI.
• RBIH aims to create an ecosystem that focuses on promoting access to financial services and products for the low-income population in the country.

• Navroz- translated to ‘a new day’ – is the time to welcome the new year for Parsi community.
• Also known as Nowruz or Persian New Year, the first day of Zoroastrian calendar Farvardin is observed all over the world on March 21 around the time of vernal equinox as the triumph of spring over darkness.
• The Parsi community in India celebrates Navroz nearly 200 days after the rest of the world as it follows the Shahenshahi calendar.
• Nowruz for India falls in July or August and Parsi New Year 2023 was observed on August 16^th.
• Navroz is believed to be 3000 years old festival and emerged from one of world’s oldest religions Zoroastrianism.
• Parsi New Year is also related to the life of Jamshid, a Persian king of mythology.
• On this day, Parsis in India clean their homes, decorate it, wear new clothes, pray to God for happiness and prosperity and invite friends over for a good time and hearty meal.
• Navroz in India is mainly celebrated in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra.

• A team of engineers and researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) is currently developing a humanoid robot called “Pibot” that can fly aircraft without needing to modify the cockpit.
• “Pibot,” can control its arms and fingers to dextrously operate the flight instruments, even with severe vibration in an aircraft, using high-precision control technology.
• Its external cameras allow Pibot to monitor the current state of the aircraft and the internal ones help it manage essential switches on the control panel.
• Pibot is able to memorise complex manuals presented in natural language.
• Its memory is so large that it can memorise all of the Jeppesen aeronautical navigation charts around the world, which is impossible for human pilots, according to the KAIST team.
• It can memorise aircraft operation and emergency manuals and respond immediately.
• It can also communicate with air traffic controllers and humans in the cockpit using voice synthesis.

• A-HELP is an initiative of the Union Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying and the Ministry of Rural Development.
• Aim– To empower women by engaging them as trained agents who contribute significantly to disease control, artificial insemination under Rashtriya Gokul Mission (RGM), animal tagging, and livestock insurance.
• These women assist veterinarians in local departmental activities, help livestock farmers to take loans for entrepreneurship development, fill out applications, register animals in the Information Network For Animal Productivity and Health (INAPH) portal and help with insurance etc.
• Members of women self-help groups registered under the State Rural Livelihood Mission, who are helping in the form of Pashu Sakhi, will be trained as A-HELP.