• The Government of India appointed retired bureaucrat Navneet Sehgal as Chairperson of Prasar Bharati.
  • The Prasar Bharati Chairman’s post has been vacant since A. Surya Prakash completed his tenure in February 2020.
• Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar, who is also the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, headed the selection panel for the post of Prasar Bharati Chairman.
  • The chairperson of the Press Council of India and a nominee of the President complete the three-member panel.
• The post of the Prasar Bharati Chairman has a three-year tenure or until the person attains the age of 70 years.

ABOUT PRASAR BHARATI

• Prasar Bharati is a statutory autonomous body established under the Prasar Bharati Act and came into existence on 23.11.1997.
• It is the Public Service Broadcaster of the country.
• The objectives of public service broadcasting are achieved in terms of Prasar Bharati Act through All India Radio and Doordarshan, which earlier were working as media units under the Ministry of I&B and since 1997 became constituents of Prasar Bharati.

• Maharashtra is set to be the first state to purchase land in Jammu and Kashmir to construct a facility for tourists and officials who visit the Union Territory.
• The Maharashtra Bhawan – the first state Bhawan in the Valley – will come up at central Kashmir’s Budgam on the outskirts of Srinagar city.
  • The Maharashtra cabinet sanctioned the purchase of the land recently.
• The bhawan will come up on a plot of land measuring 2.5 acres at Ichgam, close to Srinagar airport.
• The J&K government has approved the transfer of land to the state government, subject to a payment of Rs 8.16 crore.

• Two years after his dramatic ouster from office by a popular people’s movement, Sri Lanka’s former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has sought to defend his tainted regime, by launching a book titled ‘The Conspiracy to oust me from the Presidency’.
• The book attributes his political downfall to a “conspiracy” involving foreign and local parties.

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• Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Singh Thakur has released a book titled Israel War Diary.
• It has been written by Vishal Pandey, Chief Special Correspondent of Zee News.
• Vishal Pandey offered poignant insights into the inspiration behind the book and shared personal anecdotes from his experiences as a frontline journalist covering the Israel-Hamas conflict.

• The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) recently approved the appointment of IAS officer Rajeev Kumar Mittal as the Director General of the National Mission for Clean Ganga under the Ministry of Jal Shakti (MoJS).
• He is a 1998 batch officer from the Maharashtra cadre.

• Senior bureaucrat Rahul Singh has been appointed chairperson of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).
• He succeeded Nidhi Chhibber, who has been appointed as Advisor to the Niti Aayog.
• Singh, a 1996-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Bihar cadre, is currently serving as the Additional Secretary in the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT).

• Pandavula Gutta, a geological marvel older than the Himalayan hills, has been officially recognised as the sole Geo-heritage site in Telangana.
• Pandavula Guhalu is a prehistoric habitation site situated atop Pandavulakonda or Pandavula Gutta.
• The site was first discovered in the year 1990.
• Paleolithic cave paintings have been found here which offer a rare glimpse into the prehistoric man’s rock art identified on walls and ceilings of caves, rock shelters, and isolated boulders.

Experts say these cave paintings date back to at least the 7th Century.

• The Khelo India Rising Talent Identification (KIRTI) programme was launched by the Union Sports Minister recently.
• The scheme, aimed at school children in the age group of nine to 18 years, will focus on using sports as a tool for healthy life and primarily keep youngsters away from drugs and gadgetry distractions.
• KIRTI works on the principle of ‘catching them young’ and ‘nurturing’ them into champions using innovative IT tools, who will excel and secure medals at national and international levels.
  • The launch was also made in 50 centres across the country.
  • Fifty thousand applicants were being assessed in the first phase across 10 sports disciplines, including athletics, boxing, wrestling, hockey, football, and wrestling.
  • It was stated that 20 lakh assessments would be done in the first year to identify and assess talent through notified talent assessment centres.
• Data analytics based on artificial intelligence would be used to assess the sporting acumen of the aspiring athletes.

• The World Consumer Rights Day is observed annually on March 15 across the globe.
• The day serves as a reminder of adequate information regarding the quantity, quality, purity, potency, price, and standard of the commodity including the importance of protecting consumer rights.
• This year, the theme selected by Consumers International for World Consumer Rights Day 2024 is ‘Fair and responsible AI for consumers.’
• Brief History
  • The seeds of World Consumer Rights Day had been planted by former President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, on March 15, 1962, while addressing consumer rights before the US Congress.
  • This was the first time a world leader spoke about consumer rights.
  • The day was first observed on March 15, 1983, and since then, the United Nations has recognised and endorsed World Consumer Rights Day on a global scale.

• V-Dem Institute has released the Democracy Report 2024: Democracy Winning and Losing at the Ballot that tracks democratic freedoms worldwide.
• The report classifies countries into four regime types based on their score in the Liberal Democratic Index (LDI): Liberal Democracy, Electoral Democracy, Electoral Autocracy, and Closed Autocracy.
• The report is published every year in March.

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE

• The V-Dem Institute, led by Professor Staffan I. Lindberg, is an independent research institute and the Headquarters of the V-Dem project.
  • Staffan Lindberg is a Swedish political scientist.
• The institute is based at the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

FINDINGS ABOUT INDIA

• The V-Dem (or Varieties of Democracy) report finds India to be in the bottom 40-50% of the 179 countries reviewed, and now situated between Niger (better) and Ivory Coast (worse).
• It calls out the sharp autocratisation in India from 2013, putting it at one of the top ten autocratisers in recent times, with pulling down democracy at levels as it was in 1975.
• India also accounts for “about half of the population living in autocratising countries.”
• It notes that India is no longer termed a democracy, but “dropped down to electoral autocracy in 2018” and remains there at the end of 2023.