PIB Summary- 23rd August, 2021 | PIB (Press Information Bureau) Summary - UPSC PDF Download

Sree Narayana Guru

Details

• Born to Madan Asan and his wife Kuttiyamma in Chempazhanthy, a village near Thiruvananthapuram, Sree Narayana Guru was named Narayanan. His family belonged to the Ezhava caste and was considered ‘avarna’ according to the social mores of the time.
• He was a pioneer reformer who rejected the caste system and stressed the equality of man. He also gave the universal message, “One caste, one religion, one God.”
• Educated by his father and at a nearby school, Narayana or ‘Nanu’ as he was called was influenced by Vedanta.
• He also taught Sanskrit to students at a local school with close associate Chattampi Swami.
• Chattampi Swami introduced Guru to Thycattu Ayyaavu, a Hatha Yogi. From Ayyaavu, Guru learnt Hatha Yoga and other philosophies, which had a deep impact on him.
• From an early age, Guru was drawn towards asceticism. He lived as a hermit in a forest at Maruthwamala for eight years.
• In 1888, he built a temple dedicated to Lord Shiva at Aruvippuram which was against the caste-based restrictions of the time. When questioned by Brahmins on this deed, Guru replied that the Shiva he had consecrated was not a Brahmin.
• In one temple he consecrated at Kalavancode, he kept mirrors instead of idols. This symbolised his message that the divine was within each individual.
• He contributed many important literary works, the most influential being Atmopadesa Satakam which he composed in 1897.
• In 1904, he chose Sivagiri in Varkala to pursue his spiritual deeds.
• He also founded an Advaita Ashram in Kalady.
• Guru built many Hindu temples which were open to people from all castes and religions.
• He was also a keen educator and stressed on the importance of education for all. He taught Sanskrit and the Upanishads to students from all castes, including the ‘low caste’ students who were not permitted to study the scriptures.
• He travelled all over Kerala and the Madras State visiting people and spreading his message of unity and ‘one God’. He believed that the ultimate goal of all religions was the same and it was pointless for people to fight over caste and religion.
• He also lent his support to the Vaikkom Satyagraha which was aimed at temple entry in Travancore for the lower castes. Mahatma Gandhi met Guru during this time.
• Rabindranath Tagore also had met Narayana Guru. In Tagore’s words, “I have been touring different parts of the world. But I have never come across one who is spiritually greater than Sree Narayana Guru”.
• Dr Palpu, a devotee of Guru, established the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP Yogam) in 1903 to further Narayana Guru’s message.
• Sree Narayana Guru breathed his last on 20 September 1928. This day is observed as Sree Narayana Guru Samadhi in Kerala and is a public holiday there. His birth anniversary is also celebrated as Sree Narayana Jayanthi.

“Yuktdhara” Geospatial Planning Portal

About “Yuktdhara” Geospatial Planning Portal

• Yuktdhara is a geospatial planning portal for facilitating Gram Panchayat level planning of MGNREGA
• The new portal under Bhuvan “Yuktdhara” will enable the planning of MGNREGA assets using remote sensing and GIS based information.
• The platform will serve as a repository of assets (Geotags) created under various national rural development programmes i.e. MGNREGA, Integrated Watershed Management Programme, Per Drop More Crop and Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, etc., along with field photographs.
• This G2G service for rural planning fosters decentralised decision making.
• The Bhuvan geospatial portal has been developed by ISRO and it supports various government programs and initiatives cutting across ministries and sectors.

INS Chilka

Context: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence (SCOD) visited the prestigious ab-initio sailors training establishment of the Indian Navy, INS Chilka.

About INS Chilka

• INS Chilka is the only ab-initio training establishment of the Indian Navy, which trains more than 6600 raw recruits annually to make them able-bodied sailors.
• INS Chilka was commissioned in 1980 and is located in Odisha in the vicinity of Chilika Lake.

Note: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence (SCOD) is a Department Related Standing Committee (DRSC) of selected members of parliament for legislative oversight of the defence policies and decision making of the Ministry of Defence (MOD).

Maritime Partnership Exercise between Navies of India and the Philippines

Details

• Two ships of the Indian Navy, namely INS Ranvijay (Guided Missile Destroyer, D55) and INS Kora (Guided Missile Corvette, P61), on deployment to the Western Pacific, carried out a Maritime Partnership Exercise with a frigate of the Philippine Navy in the West Philippine Sea.
• The joint evolutions conducted during the exercise included several operational manoeuvres and the participating ships of both navies were satisfied with the consolidation of interoperability achieved through this operational interaction at sea.

Colonel Rank to Women Officers

Details

• A Selection Board of the Indian Army cleared the way for the promotion of five women officers to Colonel (Time Scale) rank, post completion of 26 years of reckonable service.
• This is the first time that women officers serving with the Corps of Signals, Corps of Electronic and Mechanical Engineers (EME) and the Corps of Engineers have been approved to the rank of Colonel.
• Previously, promotion to the rank of Colonel was only applicable for women officers in the Army Medical Corps (AMC), Judge Advocate General (JAG) and the Army Education Corps (AEC).
• The widening of promotion avenues to more branches of the Indian Army is a sign of increasing career opportunities for women officers.
• Combined with the decision to grant permanent commission to women officers from a majority of branches of the Indian Army, this step defines the Indian Army’s approach towards a gender-neutral Army.

Stockholm Water Week

Details

• The Director-General of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) participated in the session as a key panellist.
• ‘Making Cities Water Positive through City Water Balance Plan e-Toolkit’ was launched comprising 7 modules and 29 tools to assist the decision-makers in developing and implementing solutions for making Cities Water Positive.

SARS-CoV-2 NGS-BRICS Consortium

Context: The Ministry of Science’s Dept of Biotechnology (DBT) in collaboration with BRICS countries is implementing the SARS-CoV-2 NGS-BRICS consortium and a multi-centric programme to study the impact of severe COVID-19 conditions on TB patients.

Details

• The SARS-CoV-2 NGS-BRICS consortium is an interdisciplinary collaboration to advance COVID-19 health-relevant knowledge and to contribute to improvements in health outcomes.
  • The consortium will accelerate the translation of genomic data leading to clinical and public health research and interventions from clinical and surveillance samples.
  • It seeks to achieve this by utilising high-end genomic technologies, and epidemiologic and bioinformatics tools for future use in diagnostic assays and tracking transmission dynamics of COVID-19 and other viruses.
• The second multi-centric programme consists of an interdisciplinary team of researchers from India, Brazil and South Africa who would investigate the impact of severe COVID-19 on transient peripheral immunosuppression and lung hyper inflammation conditions in Tuberculosis (TB) patients for epidemiology and comorbidity.