Current Affair 1:

Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award (PBSA)

 

News:

The Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award (PBSA) is the highest honour conferred on overseas Indians. PBSA is conferred by the Hon’ble President of India as part of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention on Non-Resident Indians, Persons of Indian Origin or an organization/institution established and run by the Non-Resident Indians or Persons of Indian Origin in recognition of their outstanding achievements both in India and abroad.

The 17th edition of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) Convention is scheduled to be held from 8–10 January 2023 at Indore, Madhya Pradesh.

A Jury-cum-Awards Committee, with Hon’ble Vice-President as the Chairman and Hon’ble External Affairs Minister as the Vice-Chair and other distinguished members from various walks of life considered the nominations for the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Awards, 2023 and unanimously selected the awardees. The awardees represent the excellence achieved by our diaspora in various fields.

Current Affair 2:

Government releases Draft in relation to online gaming

 

News:

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology today released draft amendments to the IT intermediary rules 2021, pertaining to Online Gaming for public consultations.

The draft has been prepared to ensure that online games should be offered in conformity with Indian laws and that the users of such games be safeguarded against potential harm.

According to the draft rules, an online game is one that “is offered on the internet and is accessible by a user through a computer resource if he makes a deposit with the expectation of earning winnings”. An “online gaming intermediary” means an intermediary that offers one or more than one online game (on the internet)”.

The rules propose setting up a self-regulatory body for grievance redressal and mandating know-your-customer (KYC) rules for gamers and online gaming intermediaries. The self-regulatory body will comprise five members from diverse fields such as medicine, online gaming, public policy, IT and psychology.

Online gaming is an important piece of the innovation and startup ecosystem that we are seeing develop around the world.

Online game betting and online game advertisements have been brought into the rules as a prohibition. The self-regulatory body that has been designed and built into the rules will be responsible for determining and certifying what is the permitted online gaming intermediary on the internet.

States or Centre?

The online gaming segment was handed over to the IT ministry in December last year. This came after an inter-ministerial task force submitted its report on online gaming regulation proposals to the Union Cabinet.

Until this development, online gaming was considered to be under the purview of the states.

What ministry said?

Chandrasekhar, however, said during Monday’s press briefing that “everything internet comes under MEITY and all intermediaries on the internet are regulated by the IT Act”.

“The states can do whatever they want to do vis-a-vis gambling and betting,” he added. “Our job and duty are to regulate the internet and to prescribe rules for the safe and trusted functioning of the internet. We are not policing; our intention is that online gaming in India has tremendous potential in terms of startups and investments. Our intention is that more and more startups in the sector (should) grow.”

The issue of whether online gaming can be regulated by the Centre or states has not been resolved and is pending before the Supreme Court in appeals filed by the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka governments.

Due diligence & KYC norms

An additional layer of due diligence is expected from online gaming intermediaries.

According to the draft rules, “the online gaming intermediary shall display a demonstrable and visible mark of registration on all online games registered by the self-regulatory body”.

Platforms will have to ensure that they display all their “regulations, privacy policy, terms of service and user agreements” prominently, including “policy related to withdrawal or refund of the deposit made with the expectation of earning winnings”, and information pertaining to risk of financial losses.

Current Affair 3:

First Sovereign Green bond Auction

 

News:

The Reserve Bank of India will auction 160 billion rupees ($1.93 billion) worth of sovereign green bonds in two tranches, the central bank said on Friday, in the government’s first-ever such debt sale to raise funds to finance clean projects.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the plan to issue sovereign green bonds in the 2022-23 budget as Asia’s third-largest economy attempts to tap the domestic debt market to finance green infrastructure projects.

About:

1. Sovereign Green Bonds' will be auctioned by RBI to raise funds to finance green/clean infrastructure projects.
2. Govt. of India will receive the money which will be provided for public sector projects like solar, wind, hydro etc.
3. These bonds will be a debt on Govt. of India and will be reflected in Capital Receipts in the Budget.
4. 'Green Financing Working Committee' headed by Chief Economic Advisor will select the projects from those submitted by different departments
5. The banks who will be purchasing these bonds can use under SLR securities

Auctioning Process: 'Uniform Price Auction'

RBI will auction the bonds where the bidders (banks/FIs) will have to quote the price (price here means interest rate). The lowest bid (interest rate) is the first considered and then each progressively higher bid is considered until the auctioneer (RBI) decides on an appropriate price/interest rate. The price/interest rate that is decided is the ‘uniform price’/interest rate at which all bonds will be sold. Participants who made a bid of the uniform price or lower are the winning bidders of the auction.

So basically all the bonds will be issued at the same interest rate to the winning bidders.

Current Affair 4:

Silent Valley Survey

 

News:

The survey held on December 27, 28 and 29 marked the 30th anniversary of the first bird survey in Silent Valley. Although the first survey was held in the last week of December 1990, the anniversary could not be celebrated in 2020 December because of COVID-19 restrictions.

A bird survey conducted at the Silent Valley National Park in the last week of December identified 141 species, of which 17 were new. So far, 175 species of birds have been spotted in Silent Valley.

Brown wood owl, Banded bay cuckoo, Malabar woodshrike, White-throated kingfisher, Indian nightjar, Jungle nightjar, and Large cuckooshrike were among the 17 species newly identified in the Silent Valley.

As many as 139 birds had been identified in a survey held in 2006, and the number species went up to 142 in the last survey held in 2014.

Birds such as Crimson-backed sunbird, Yellow-browed bulbul, Black bulbul, Indian white-eye and Indian swiftlet were found in abundance in Silent Valley.

About Silent Valley National Park:

Silent Valley National Park is a beautiful representation of the last remaining rain forest of Kerala. Historically it’s a paradigm of people’s movement to protect the forest. Silent Valley was declared as National Park in 1984 and formally inaugurated in the year 1985.

 

 

 

 

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