Current Affair 1:

Legal Literacy and Legal Awareness Programme (LLLP)

 

News:

Since 2012, Department of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India has been implementing Access to Justice Scheme in North Eastern States including Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura and in UT of Jammu & Kashmir.

Major focus: Legal Empowerment of community, dissemination of simplified Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials in local languages and dialects and capacity development of Panchayati Raj Functionaries and Village Chiefs on formal justice delivery system.

Aim: To empower the poor and disadvantaged sections of society to seek and demand justice services.

What is the Duration of the Programme?

DoJ has formulated a scheme on Access to Justice named ‘Designing Innovating Solutions and Holistic Access to Justice (DISHA)’ to be implemented during the period of 2021 to 2026.

DISHA aims to merge different Access to Justice (North East & Jammu and Kashmir) programmes being implemented by DoJ while simultaneously upscaling them to all India level.

One of the key objectives of DISHA is implementation of Pan India Legal Literacy and Legal Awareness Programme.

It aims to secure “Justice” to the people of India as enunciated in the Preamble and under Articles 39A, 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India.

What are the Broad Objectives of the Programme?

With the overall objective of increasing access to justice for disadvantaged sections the Programme has the following broad deliverables:

1. Use of Technology for enhanced delivery of legal literacy, its Knowledge Products and implementation of Innovative and Holistic ideas.
2. Mainstreaming legal literacy through building and forging partnerships across Ministries and allied Departments, Institutions, Schools etc.
3. Capacity Building and Utilization of Existing Grassroot/frontline Workers/ Volunteers.
4. Developing of Indicators to measure Legal Literacy and Legal Awareness in India.
5. Concurrent Evaluation and Assessment of Legal Literacy and Legal Awareness Programmes.

Current Affair 2:

Rebate of State and Central Levies and Taxes (RoSCTL) Scheme

 

Read:

The Rebate of State and Central Taxes and Levies (RoSCTL) Scheme shall remain in force up to 31st of March 2024.

Current Affair 3:

National Efficient Cooking Program

 

News:

Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), a joint venture of Public Sector Undertakings under Ministry of Power, launched its groundbreaking National Efficient Cooking Programme (NECP).

The National Efficient Cooking Programme (NECP) introduces induction-based cookstoves, which offer a cost advantage of 25-30% over traditional cooking methods, promising both energy savings and cost-effective cooking solutions. EESL aims to deploy 20 Lakh induction cookstoves across India to reduce the environmental impact of cooking methods and improve the health of citizens.

EESL has partnered with Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) for the large-scale deployment of induction cooktops. This partnership is expected to accelerate the acceptance and large-scale adoption of modern electric cooking devices in Indian kitchens.

The NECP is aligned with India’s National Cooling Plan, which targets efficient cooling solutions for the masses by 2024. EESL is supporting these efforts by providing innovative, affordable solutions on a large scale.

EESL has a proven track record of success in promoting energy efficiency in India. For example, its UJALA program has distributed millions of LED bulbs, resulting in significant energy savings and carbon emission reductions.

Current Affair 4:

A new eDNA sequencing method to assess biodiversity

 

News:

Researchers from the Laboratory for the Conservation of Endangered Species (LaCONES) at the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad, have developed a new non-invasive method to assess the total biodiversity of any ecosystem by sequencing the DNA fragments found in the environmental samples such as water, soil or air.

Their study, published in the journal Ecological Indicators, shows that this method can detect all kinds of organisms, including viruses, bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes such as fungi, plants, insects, birds, fishes and other animals from just a few litres of water sample without any direct capture or counting of species.

Why old method is a problem?

To monitor and conserve biodiversity, scientists need to survey organisms living in different habitats and track their changes over time. But the available biodiversity assessment methods cannot estimate the total species diversity accounting for all the microbes and non-microbes that inhabit an ecosystem. The traditional monitoring methods also require extensive taxonomic expertise, and are not scalable to large ecosystems because they can be expensive, labour-intensive and time-consuming.

To overcome these limitations, the researchers developed a lysis and PCR-free molecular approach to extract and read the genetic information encoded in free-floating environmental DNA (eDNA). eDNA is DNA shed by all organisms into their surroundings through natural processes during their lifetime or after death.

In this new method, the researchers filter out eDNA from environmental samples, read their sequences, and thus, identify the source of the eDNA. They tested their method in the highly biodiverse wetland ecosystem of Chilika Lagoon in Odisha.

By comparing over 10 billion sequences of eDNA fragments from multiple seasonal samples with a large database of reference sequences from all the known species, the researchers were able to detect organisms across the tree of life.

They estimated that the total taxonomic diversity of Chilika Lagoon is about 1071 families across the tree of life, comprising approximately 799 families of eukaryotes, 230 families of bacteria, 27 families of archaea, and 13 families of DNA viruses. The researchers also found the relative abundances of families of organisms vary significantly across different locations and seasons in the ecosystem. This indicates that the method can also help monitor the changes in biodiversity across space and time.

 

 

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