Current Affairs 2 October 2020 – IAS Current Affairs

Current Affairs 2 October 2020 2020 focuses on Prelims-Mains perspective. Major events are :

1. SC Quashed Relaxations To Employers
2. Debt Service Relief To Myanmar
3. First Extreme UV light appeared
4. Greenland Ice Melting Impact
5. Richest 1% emit twice carbon as poorest 50%
6. Prelims Facts – 2 October 2020
   • • Sutures With Nanofiber Yarn
     • VAIBHAV Summit
     • Atal Tunnel

SC Quashed Relaxations To Employers

Why in News ?

SC Quashed Relaxations To Employers. The Supreme Court quashed the Gujarat government’s notifications granting temporary relaxations to employers on certain conditions related to working hours and payment of wages under the Factories Act, 1948.

• Notifications increased daily working hours from 9 to 12 hours, and required employers to pay overtime wages at a rate proportionate to the ordinary rate of wages.

Reason for Notification

• Covid-19 pandemic is a ‘public emergency’ as defined in Section 5 of the Factories Act.
  • Section 5 of Factories Act : In any case of public emergency the State Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, exempt any factory or class or description of factories from all or any of the provisions of this Act.
    • Public emergency means a grave emergency whereby the security of India or of any part of the territory thereof is threatened, whether by war or external aggression or internal disturbance.
• Lockdown caused a slowdown in economic activities, leading to an ‘internal disturbance’ in the State within the meaning of Section 5.

Supreme Court View

• Court called the notifications an affront to the workers right to life and right against forced labour.
• The right to life guaranteed to every person under Article 21
  • This includes a worker having an equal opportunity with social and economic freedom.
• Denying humane working conditions and overtime wages provided by law against the workers’ right to life and right against forced labour.
  • These exploitation are secured by Articles 21 and 23 of the Constitution.
• Also invoked its powers under Article 142 to do complete justice and directed that all workmen who had worked overtime be paid overtime wages at double the ordinary rate of wages as provided under Section 59 of the Act.
• Slowdown created by the Covid-19 pandemic does not qualify as an internal disturbance threatening the security of the state.
  • Unless the threshold leads to disruption of public order and threatens the security of India or a part of its territory.
• SC quashed relaxations to employers as the pandemic already worn-down the working class of the society, new notification will further trouble the working class.

Major Labour Protections Laws

• The Trade Unions Act, 1926 : Have the power to compel higher management to accept their reasonable demands. It falls under Article 19 of the constitution right to form associations and unions.
• The Payment of Wages Act 1936 : workers must get wages on time and without any unnecessary deductions and must be paid in money.
• Industrial Disputes Act 1947 : To safe guard the payment of compensation to the workman on account of closure or lay off or retrenchment.
• Factories Act, 1948 : Policies in India with respect to occupational safety and health in factories.

Source : Indian Express

Topic

GS II : Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation

Debt Service Relief To Myanmar

Why in News ?

India reached out to Myanmar and agreed to provide debt service relief under the G-20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative and help mitigate the impact of COVID-19.

• India is prepared to continue to extend all possible support to Myanmar in mitigating the health and economic impact of COVID-19.

G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative

• To grant debt-service suspension to the poorest countries to help them manage the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) approved in April to help developing nations survive the corona virus pandemic
  • It has seen 43 of a potential 73 eligible countries here defer $5 billion in ‘official sector’ debt payments.

India and Myanmar

• The 1,600 km India–Myanmar border separates the Indian states of Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.
  • Myanmar also share a maritime border along India’s Andaman Islands.
• India Myanmar Relation
  • Recently entered into a trilateral cooperation with Japan on the Rakhine State under which the three state will create soft infrastructure for 15 schools.
  • The efforts towards ensuring an early, safe and sustainable repatriation of internally displaced persons to Myanmar will continue.
  • Extradition Treaty, Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty on Civil and Commercial Matters and Agreement on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons under consideration.
  • India’s assistance to Myanmar is around $1.4 billion.
  • Working towards operationalising Sittwe Port.
    • The Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project will connect the eastern Indian seaport of Kolkata with Sittwe seaport in Myanmar by sea.
  • India and Myanmar have agreed to a 4-lane, 3200 km triangular highway connecting India, Myanmar and Thailand.

Source : Indian Express

Topic

Prelims : India and Myanmar Border

GS II : India and its neighbourhood- relations

First Extreme UV light appeared

Why In News ?

Scientists have uncovered an important clue on how the dark ages of the Universe ended and how the first extreme-UV light appeared.

What is Extreme UV light ?

• They are high-energy ultraviolet radiation is electromagnetic radiation in the part of the electromagnetic spectrum spanning wavelengths from 124 nm down to 10 nm.
• Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Light (10-100nm) can only travel through a vacuum, and is completely absorbed in Earth’s atmosphere.
• EUV radiation ionizes the upper atmosphere, creating the ionosphere.
• Since solar EUV waves cannot penetrate the atmosphere, scientists must measure them using rockets and satellites.

Importance of EUV

• India’s first multi-wavelength satellite, AstroSat, has detected extreme-UV (EUV) light from a galaxy, called AUDFs01, 9.3 billion light-years away from Earth.
  • Such EUV radiation has enough energy to ionize a hydrogen atom by liberating its electron from the nucleus’s influence.
  • EUV photons emitted by galaxies like AUDFs01 could play a crucial role in reionizing the early universe soon after the Cosmic Dark Age and emitting the first light.
• Also this extreme UV wavelength regime is crucial to understand models of the stellar population, especially the massive, hot stars in early galaxies.
• Studying galaxies like AUDFs01 and many more, we could get an idea of how star formation rate, gas consumption rate, and growth of stellar mass in those primitive galaxies.

Source : PIB

Topic

GS III : Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, robotics, nano-technology, bio-technology and issues relating to intellectual property rights

Greenland Ice Melting Impact

Why in News ?

Greenland Ice Melting Impact the rise in sea level. The Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) is melting rapidly faster than at any other time in the last 12,000 years a new study has found.

What is the impact ?

• The increased loss of ice is likely to lead to sea level rises of between 2 centimetres (cm) and 10 cm by the end of the century from Greenland alone.
• Americans use more energy per person than any other nation in the world.
• Largest pre-industrial rates of mass loss up to 6,000 billion tonnes per century occurred in the early Holocene the period since the last ice age 12,000 years ago.
• Studied changes to the southwestern sector of the GIS from the beginning of the Holocene epoch.
  • Extending to 80-2100 years using simulations and predicted mass loss of between 8,800 and 35,900 billion tonnes over the 21st century.
• Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario — the one the GIS is now following — the rate of mass loss could be about four times the highest values experienced over the past 12,000 years.

Greenland

• It is the worlds largest Island, between Arctic and Atlantic Ocean within Denmark. 
• The lowest temperature ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere was recorded in Greenland with the Greenland Ice Sheet.
  • Between 1989 and 1993, US and European climate researchers drilled into the summit of Greenland’s ice sheet.
• The glaciers of Greenland are also contributing to a rise in the global sea level faster.
• The fishing industry is the primary industry of Greenland’s economy, accounting for the majority of the country’s total exports.

Source : Down To Earth

Topic

GS III :  Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment

Richest 1% emit twice carbon as poorest 50%

Why in News ?

Richest 1% emit twice carbon as poorest 50% based on a study released by a new report by Oxfam International and the Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI).

• A rich person contributes more to the climate crisis than a poor person
• Between 1990 and 2015, the richest 1 per cent of humanity accounted for 15 per cent of cumulative emissions
• The poorest 50 per cent accounted for only 7 per cent.

About the Report

• While the richest 10 per cent accounted for 46 per cent of emissions growth, the poorest 50 per cent accounted for only 6 per cent.
• The global carbon budget is being rapidly depleted not to afford communities around the world dignity and a decent standard of living but to expand the consumption of the rich.
• The largest share of emissions by the rich was from flights and cars, including private jets, luxury SUVs and sports cars.
• The report shows the need to focus on clipping emissions of the richest 10 per cent : Reduction of the per capita footprint to the 1.5°C-consistent level by 2030 would cut annual carbon emissions by over a third.
• About half of the emissions of the richest 10 per cent are associated with North America and the European Union (EU).
• The per capita emissions of the richest 10 per cent Americans were 52.4 tonnes.
• India In the Report
  • Centre for Science and Environment’s analysis of the carbon budget in 2018, according to which an Indian emitted only 1.97 tonnes carbon dioxide (tCO2).
  • India’s per capita emissions were a fraction of not just the EU (6.78 tCO2 / person).
  • The per capita CO2 emissions of the richest 10 per cent Indians were about 4.4 tonnes in 2018.

Other Key Points

• Report highlighted the need for systemic change rather than a sole focus on individual action
• It called for new economic models that don’t depend on the endless growth in consumption of the already affluent.
• Moderate measures such as carbon tax and non-binding climate commitments from corporations and countries are also inadequate.

Source : Down To Earth

GS III : Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment

Prelims Facts – 2 October 2020

Sutures With Nanofiber Yarn

Why in News ?

A team of researchers at IIT Madras is ready with a prototype of suture thread made of nanofiber yarns that is bio-absorbable and can deliver a higher load of antibiotics and/or therapeutics at the site itself.

About the research

• Nanofiber yarns are thread-like structures formed by twisting together hundreds of nanofibers.
• Suture material uses nanofibers woven as yarn using certain specific techniques, and the strength can be varied depending on the target tissue (skin, muscle, cartilage).
  • Surgical suture materials are used in the closure of most wound types.
  • The ideal suture should allow the healing tissue to recover sufficiently.
• Compatibility, mechanical strength, stem cell interaction, immune responses, and antibacterial property were compatible with prescribed norms in surgical procedure.
• The bio absorbability aspect makes sure that the sutures do not have to be removed.

Alternative Methods for Stitching tissues

Other options such as staples, glues and strips have become available. 

Source : The Hindu

VAIBHAV Summit

Why in News ?

Prime Ministerwill inaugurate Vaishvik Bhartiya Vaigyanik (VAIBHAV) Summit.

Vaishvik Bhartiya Vaigyanik (VAIBHAV) Summit

• VAIBHAV Summit is a global virtual summit of overseas and resident Indian Researchers and Academicians, and is being organized from 2nd October to 31st October 2020.
• Aim of the summit is to bring Indian origin luminaries in academic institutes and R&D organizations across the world and resident counterparts on a single platform to debate upon collaboration mechanisms to strengthen academic and S&T base in India for global development.
• More than 3000 overseas Indian origin academicians and scientists from 55 countries and more than 10,000 resident academicians and scientists are taking part in the summit.
  • Also deliberate in 18 different areas and 80 topics in more than 200 deliberation sessions virtually.

Source : PIB

Atal Tunnel

Why in News ?

Prime Minister Shall inaugurate Atal Tunnel, Rohtang.

About the Tunnel

• Atal Tunnel is the longest highway tunnel in the World.
• The 9.02 Km long tunnel connects Manali to Lahaul-Spiti valley throughout the year.
  • The tunnel reduces the road distance by 46 Kms between Manali and Leh and the time by about 4 to 5 hours.
• Earlier the valley was cut off for about 6 months each year owing to heavy snowfall.
• Tunnel is built in the Pir Panjal range of Himalayas at an altitude of 3000 Mtrs.
• Technology Used
  • It has the state of the art electromechanical system including semi transverse ventilation system, SCADA controlled firefighting, illumination and monitoring system.
  • Telephone connections at every 150 Mtrs for emergency communication.
  • Fire hydrant mechanisms at every 60 Mtrs.
  • Auto incident detection system with CCTV cameras at every 250 Mtrs.
  • Air quality monitoring at every 1 Km.
  • Broadcasting system throughout the tunnel.

Source : PIB

Current Affairs 2 October 2020 : Our major Sources for the Current Affairs are The Hindu, Indian Express, PIB, Down To Earth etc. For more queries and mentor-ship please contact us.