General - Current Affairs for December, 2017

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi dedicated the naval submarine INS Kalvari to the nation, at a function in Mumbai. INS Kalvari is described as a prime example of "Make in India." He commended all those involved in its manufacture. The submarine is an excellent illustration of the fast growing strategic partnership between India and France. He said the INS Kalvari will add even more strength to the Indian Navy. The Prime Minister said that the 21st century is described as Asia's century. He added that it is also certain that the road to development in the 21st century goes through the Indian Ocean. That is why the Indian Ocean has a special place in the policies of the Government, he added. The Prime Minister said this vision can be understood through the acronym SAGAR - Security and Growth for All in the Region. India has played the role of "first responder" for its partner countries, in times of crisis. The human face of Indian diplomacy and Indian security establishment is our speciality. INS Kalvari: Know More

• INS Kalvari is most modern non-nuclear stealth submarine in India Navy.
• 'Kalvari' is Malayalam word that means deep-sea tiger shark.
• It reflects its agility, strength and predatory prowess.
• The length of INS Kalvari is 67.5 metres and height of 12.3 metres and weighs 1,565-tonnes and displacement capacity of 1,600 tonnes.
• It is powered by two 1250 kW MAN extremely silent diesel-electric diesel engines making it very difficult to detect underwater.
• It boasts highly advanced Combat Management System and a sophisticated Integrated Platform Management System.
• Its hull form, fin and hydroplanes are specifically designed to produce minimum underwater resistance. It has 360 battery cells (each weighing 750 kg) to power the extremely silent Permanently Magnetised Propulsion Motor.
• Its stealth capability is enhanced through mounting of equipment inside pressure hull on shock absorbing cradles
• Submarine Tactical Integrated Combat System (SUBTICS) suite is heart of INS Kalvari's weapons system which processes information from sonars on-board submarine in detecting targets which can then be engaged with torpedoes or missiles.
• It is armed with heavy weight torpedoes and Exocet anti-ship missiles. It can launch torpedoes both while submerged or on the surface.
• It has an attack-and-search periscope equipped with infrared and low light level cameras and laser range finders to spot targets on the surface of the sea.
• It is designed to operate in all theatres, including the tropics and can undertake multifarious types of missions typically undertaken by any modern submarine such as anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, intelligence gathering, area surveillance, mine laying etc.

Raksha Rajya Mantri Dr Subhash Bhamre dedicated to the nation two crucial bridges in Eastern Arunachal Pradesh on 12^th Dec 2017. The minister first inaugurated the Injupani Bridge, a 140 metre long bridge on Roing-Koronu-Paya road, which is a part of Trans Arunachal Highway. The completion of the Injupani Bridge would provide an uninterrupted access between Roing & Tezu, both important district HQs in Arunachal Pradesh. The minister then inaugurated the Deopani/Eze Bridge, which is 300 metre long pre-stressed concrete balanced cantilever bridge over the Eze river at Roing in Arunachal Pradesh.

The Ministry of Women & Child Development has launched a contest inviting creative minds to design a logo and suggest a tagline for its prestigious 'National Nutrition Mission'. It is an opportunity for citizens who aspire to see their design displayed on a National platform. The Government of India approved the National Nutrition Mission to ensure holistic development and adequate nutrition for pregnant women, mothers and children. The programme targets to reduce the level of stunting, under-nutrition, anaemia and low birth rate. Accordingly, it was felt pertinent to launch an appropriate logo and tagline to generate awareness among the masses.

The Union Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh chaired a meeting with the Chief Ministers of the Indo-Bangladesh Border (IBB) States. The Home Minister, giving highest priority to making borders secure, had earlier conducted border specific review meetings for Indo-China, Indo-Myanmar, Indo-Pakistan borders. The importance of securing the country's borders and putting in place the systems to facilitate legitimate trade and commerce was stressed. India has friendly relations with Bangladesh and all these measures will facilitate genuine trade and legitimate cross-border movement of people while curbing radicalization, illegal migration, and smuggling of cattle, fake Indian currency notes and drugs etc. Stress was on the need to prevent entry, at International borders, of illegal migrants some of whom have links with extremist groups for furthering anti-national activities with ulterior motives and posing threat to internal security. Also highlighted was the concept of Border Protection Grid (BPG) for multi-pronged and foolproof mechanism to secure our border. The grid will comprise of various elements namely physical barriers, non-physical barriers, surveillance system, Intelligence agencies, State Police, BSF and other State and Central agencies. BPG will be supervised by a State level Standing Committee under the Chairmanship of respective Chief Secretaries. BPG will ensure greater help for the States in the overall border security. For putting in place the BPG, he sought active participation of all stakeholders including State Governments. Indo-Bangladesh Border

• The Indo-Bangladesh Border covering 5 states of India including Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura and West Bengal is 4096 km long.
• So far in 3006 km border security infrastructure of fence, roads, floodlights and border out posts (BOPs) are in place and works in the remaining 1090 km are yet to be started.
• Out of this, 684 km will be secured with fence and the related infrastructure, and the balance 406 km with the non-physical barriers.
• Although bulk of the infrastructure is in place or under construction, construction in some parts is yet to commence mainly due to land acquisition issues.
• The areas to be covered by non-physical barriers are those where fencing is not feasible like rivers or nullahs etc.
• In these areas technological solutions of a networked combination of electronic gadgets like radar, day-night cameras, various types of sensors etc. all integrated in a command and control architecture will be used.

The Surface to Air Missile AKASH with indigenous radio frequency seeker against target Banshee, has been successfully launched from the Launch Complex-III at ITR Chandipur at 1338 hrs on Dec 5, 2017. The Radars, telemetry and electro-optical systems along the coast have tracked and monitored all the health parameters of the missile. This missile is being inducted into Army as Short Range Surface to Air Missile (SRSAM). This is the first Surface to Air Missile with indigenous seeker that has been test fired. With this success, India has achieved the capability of making any type of Surface to Air Missile. AKASH: Know More

• Akash (Sanskrit for Akasa "Sky") is a medium-range mobile surface-to-air missile defense system developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and produced by Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) for Missile Systems and Bharat Electronics (BEL) for other radars, control centers in India.
• The missile system can target aircraft up to 30 km away, at altitudes up to 18,000 m.
• It has the capability to "neutralise aerial targets like fighter jets, cruise missiles and air-to-surface missiles" as well as ballistic missiles.
• It is in operational service with the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force.

The government's own data showed that job creation in the formal sector was slowest in almost a decade, but it has said that it felt the ground reality on jobs was not being 'properly' captured as the existing system takes into account only the formal sector. However, this situation could change soon. All the economic activity in India, including in the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) and informal sectors, will soon get properly captured in line with international practices. Incidentally, on the directions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a task force was set up in May this year under the chairmanship of the then Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog, Arvind Panagariya. The panel's terms of reference included assessing the existing data systems and sources that provide information on jobs and job creation and then identifying alternate sources that could provide such data. The terms also included recommending mechanisms for capturing information on jobs and job creation on a regular basis for both the informal and formal sectors. The 'Task Force on Improving Employment Data', which had sought comments from stakeholders by July 23 on its draft report, will by September 2018 submit its final report, the current Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, Rajiv Kumar said. Among the main recommendations could be a change in the definition of employment/workers as well as ways to include and measure employment in the informal sector as well. Employment Data Task Force Plan

• The plan now is to include workers covered the Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948 (or other similar insurance), Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provision Act, 1952 (or other similar social security scheme), workers having coverage under private insurance or pension schemes or provident funds as well as workers subject to tax deduction at source on their income through submission of Form 16 or similar Income Tax form.
• The panel had identified the Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency (MUDRA) scheme, which provides small, unsecured loans to enterprises, as an important source of job creation.
• According to a report by the SKOCH Group on September 6, the MUDRA scheme had led to a total of 54,479,763 jobs being generated in just over two years.
• These included 37,753,217 direct jobs and 16,726,545 indirect jobs.

Cyclone Ockhi, predicted to pass over the Lakshwadeep islands and veer away from mainland India will now turn and head towards parts of coastal Maharashtra and South Gujarat. It was unlikely to cause much havoc as there was not much moisture in the Arabian Sea for the weakening cyclone to draw on. Recurving cyclones such as these are rare. The death toll in Kerala due to the cyclone has gone up to nine. As many as 6007 persons were accommodated in 34 relief camps opened by the district administration in Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Alappuzha, Ernakulam, Thrissur and Malappuram. 130 fishermen from Kerala and Tamil Nadu were in safe shelters on four islands - Kalpeni, Kiltan, Chetlat and Agatti - and had received medical aid. TN, Lakshwadeep and Kerala have been impacted by the cyclone so far. What is a Recurving Cyclone?

• Generally tropical cyclones, known variously as hurricane, typhoons etc., start out moving west then turn toward the pole of their hemsphere and finally end up moving east.
• This pattern is called recurvature.
• The recurvature has something to do with the rotation of the Earth. Local wind and temperature conditions and local topography can influence the path and produce erratic elements to the paths but the general pattern has to have a geophysical explanation.
• That explanation is that a cyclone has two components of angular momenta. One is with respect to its own spin axis and the other is with respect to the spin axis of the Earth. When a body with angular momentum, such as a gyroscope, is subjected to a torque it precesses; i.e., it angular momentum vector rotates.
• If a body with angular momentum is forced to precess then it is subject to a torque. A cyclone rotates with the Earth and its angular momentum vector is kept pointing vertically because of the rising of warm air in its eye (center).
• The resulting torque forces the cyclone toward the pole in its hemisphere.
• But as the cyclone moves toward the pole it gets closer to the spin axis of the Earth.
• The preservation of angular momentum then results in the cyclone moving faster with respect to the pole and hence starts moving east. Its path has thus recurved.

The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi yesterday has approved setting up of National Nutrition Mission (NNM) with a three year budget of Rs.9046.17 crore commencing from 2017-18. Features: The NNM, as an apex body, will monitor, supervise, fix targets and guide the nutrition related interventions across the Ministries. The proposal consists of    - mapping of various Schemes contributing towards addressing malnutrition    - introducing a very robust convergence mechanism    - ICT based Real Time Monitoring system    - incentivizing States/UTs for meeting the targets    - incentivizing Anganwadi Workers (AWWs) for using IT based tools    - eliminating registers used by AWWs    - introducing measurement of height of children at the Anganwadi Centres (AWCs)    - Social Audits    - setting-up Nutrition Resource Centres, involving masses through Jan Andolan for their participation on nutrition through various activities, among others.

The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) conducted the Regional Level Marine Oil Pollution Response Exercise named 'Clean Sea-2017' at sea off Port Blair, Andaman & Nicobar Islands. The objective of exercise was to ascertain preparedness of IGC, resource agencies and other stakeholders in responding to major oil spill in line with provisions of National Oil Spill Disaster Contingency Plan (NOS-DCP).

In a first, the World Health Organisation has formulated clinical guidelines on responding to children and adolescents who have been sexually abused. The guidelines put forward recommendations for the frontline health care providers - general practitioners, gynaecologists, paediatricians, nurses and others - who may directly receive a victim of sexual abuse or may identify sexual abuse during the course of diagnosis and treatment. While Indian doctors have welcomed the new guidelines, they feel that there is more than just guidelines required in the country. In 2010, the IAP released similar guidelines on 'recommendations on recognition and response to child abuse and neglect in the Indian setting. Like the IAP guidelines, the new WHO guidelines too focus on the recommendations and good practice suggestions in terms of disclosure made by the child, obtaining medical history, conducting physical examinations and forensic investigations, documenting findings, offering preventive treatment for HIV post exposure, pregnancy prevention, and other sexually transmitted diseases, psychological and mental health interventions among others. The guidelines highlight that child sexual abuse has a short-term as well as long-term mental health impact like lifetime diagnosis of post-traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, externalising symptoms, eating disorders, problems with relationships, sleep disorders and suicidal and self-harm ideation and behaviours. Health consequences of the abuse include the risk of pregnancy, gynaecological disorders such as chronic non-cyclical pelvic pain, menstrual irregularities, painful periods, infections and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. One of the most commonly seen mistakes in handling child sexual abuse cases is re-traumatising the child as well as his parents with questions. Such mistakes can be avoided if those dealing with such cases are well trained.