Current Affairs 22 October 2022 – IAS Current Affairs

Current Affairs 22 October 2022 focuses on Prelims-Mains perspective. Major events are :

National Curriculum Framework

Source: Live Mint
GS II: Policies and Developmental Studies

What is discussed under this topic?

1. About NCF

Why in News?

Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister for Education and Skill Development, unveiled the NCF for Foundational Stage and the pilot project of Balvatika 49 Kendriya Vidyalayas throughout the nation.

About NCF

• The first National Education Policy in India was developed in 1968.
  • The second was in 1986 and updated in 1992.
  • The most recent National Education Policy in India is NEP, 2020.
• The National Education Policy (NEP) provides a comprehensive framework for guiding the country’s educational progress.

  

• As an educational policy, it not only leads to educational progress but also gives guidelines for regulating and promoting education.
• Early childhood care and education, school education, higher education, teacher education, and vocational education are all covered under the education policy.
• The National Education Policy 2020 is India’s first education policy of the twenty-first century.
• It strives to meet our country’s numerous expanding developmental imperatives.
• The NCF has four sections:
  • National Curriculum Framework for Early Childhood Care and Education (NCFECCE)
  • National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE)
  • National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE)
  • National Curriculum Framework for Adult Education (NCFAE)
• The framework is built around the ‘panchakosha’ concept, which refers to the ancient Indian emphasis on the body-mind connection.
• According to the NCF, the five components are:
  • Physical development (sharirik vikas)
  • Life energy development (pranik vikas)
  • Emotional and mental development (manasik vikas)
  • Intellectual development (bauddhik vikas)
  • Spiritual development (chaitsik vikas)

Immediate Action Against Hate Speech : SC

Source : Indian Express
GS II : Important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability, e-governance- applications, models, successes, limitations, and potential; citizens charters, transparency & accountability and institutional and other measures

What is discussed under Immediate Action Against Hate Speech : SC?

1. What is Hate Speech?
2. Cases related to Hate Speech

Why in News ?

The police heads of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand were ordered by the Supreme Court to take immediate suo motu action against the perpetrators by filing criminal cases without first awaiting written complaints.

Key Facts

• Authorities were forewarned that proper action shall be taken against the erring officials” and that “any hesitation to act in line with this

  

  instruction would be seen as contempt of court.

• Background
  • Speeches made at a Virat Hindu Sabha recently held in the Capital by the VHP’s Delhi division and other Hindu organisations were emphasised in a plea that the bench of Justices K M Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy addressed.
  • There have been other similar petitions calling for action after anti-Muslim remarks at several Dharam Sansad gatherings.
• The bench said they shall ensure that immediately as and when any speech or any action takes place which attracts offences such as Sections 153A, 153B and 295A and 505 of the IPC etc.
  • Suo motu action will be taken to register cases even if no complaint is forthcoming and proceed against the offenders in accordance with law.

What is Hate Speech?

• The term “hate speech” describes objectionable statements that may endanger societal harmony and targets a group or an individual based on inborn qualities (such as race, religion, or gender).
• The idea is still hotly debated, particularly in regards to equality, non-discrimination, and freedom of speech.
• Hate speech can be spread offline or online and can be expressed through any form of expression, including pictures, cartoons, memes, items, gestures, and symbols.

Reasonable restrictions against Freedom of Speech

• Freedom Of Speech
  • Article 19 : Protection of certain rights regarding freedom of speech etc with reasonable restriction.
• IPC Section 295A : Punishment for deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.
• Section 153A of IPC : Promotion of enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony.

Cases related to Hate Speech

• In State of Karnataka v. Praveen Bhai Thogadia (2004), the Supreme Court emphasised the need of maintaining communal unity in order to secure the welfare of the people.
• Arup Bhuyan vs the State of Assam : The Court ruled that a single act cannot be penalised unless the perpetrator used violence or incited others to use violence.
• Ramlal Puri v State of Madhya Pradesh : The Supreme Court stated in 1973 that the standard to be followed is whether the speech in question offends the average man of common sense rather than the hypersensitive man.
• Ramji Lal Modi v State of Uttar Pradesh : Section 295A’s legality was challenged and the Supreme Court maintained the statute on the grounds that it was enacted to maintain public order.

Pillars of Creation: Webb Space Telescope

Source: Indian Express
GS III: Science and Technology

What is discussed under Pillars of Creation: Webb Space Telescope?

1. About the New View of the Pillars
2. About Pillars of Creation
3. About James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

Why in News?

The James Webb Space Telescope has reconstructed afresh with more depth, clarity, and colour one of the most iconic and awe-inspiring photographs of current astronomy, exhibiting colossal spires of interstellar gas and dust known as the Pillars of Creation.

About the New View of the Pillars

• The fresh view of the pillars was presented by NASA on Wednesday, three months after Webb’s inaugural set of cosmic photographs was unveiled when it began full operations.

  

• The photographs depict massive, towering columns of thick clouds of gas and dust where new stars are forming in an area of the Eagle Nebula in the Serpens constellation, around 6,500 light-years from Earth.
• Hubble’s visible-light optics revisited the pillars in 2014 to produce a clearer, larger panorama.
  • Webb recreated them in the near-infrared spectrum with much more translucency, bringing many more stars into view while revealing new features of the gas-and-dust clouds.
• The new view will assist researchers in revising their models of star formation by detecting significantly more exact counts of newly generated stars, as well as the amounts of gas and dust in the area.
• Infant stars are bright red spheres that emerge just beyond the pillars, where vast knots of gas and dust have collapsed under their own gravity and slowly heated up, giving birth to new stellar bodies.
• Wavy crimson bands that appear to be lava at the edges of certain pillars are ejections of materials from stars that are still developing amid the gas and dust and are thought to be only a few hundred thousand years old.
• The $9 billion Webb infrared telescope, built over two decades for NASA by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp, was launched into orbit on December 25, 2021, in collaboration with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
• It arrived in solar orbit almost a million miles from Earth a month later.
  • It is anticipated to transform astronomy by allowing scientists to peek deeper and with better accuracy into the cosmos, to the beginning of the known universe.

About Pillars of Creation

• Pillars of Creation is a Hubble Space Telescope image showing elephant trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, Serpens constellation, around 6,500-7,000 light-years from Earth.
• They are so named because the gas and dust are in the process of forming new stars while also being eroded by light from surrounding newly born stars.
• Space.com rated it one of the top ten Hubble photos taken on April 1, 1995.
• Arizona State University astronomers Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen took the photograph.
• The area was rephotographed by the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory in 2011, Hubble with a better camera in 2014, and the James Webb Space Telescope in 2015.

About James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

• The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is an infrared astronomy space telescope.
• As the biggest optical telescope in orbit, its great resolution and sensitivity allow it to see things that the Hubble Space Telescope cannot see because they are too ancient, far, or dim.
• This will allow researchers to look into various aspects of astronomy and cosmology, such as the development of the first stars, the birth of the earliest galaxies, and precise atmospheric characterisation of possibly habitable exoplanets.
• JWST was designed and developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in collaboration with two major agencies:
  • The European Space Agency (ESA)
  • The Canadian Space Agency (CSA)
• The James Webb Space Telescope has a mass that is about half of the Hubble Space Telescope’s mass.

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