Teachers’ Day- Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Birth Anniversary, 24×7 Rehabilitation Helpline Toll-Free helpline launched, Affordable Solar Powered Battery based Sprayers to tackle Water Crisis in Agriculture, Live Storage Status of Reservoirs in India, 5th BRICS Culture Ministers’ Meet
Teachers’ Day- Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Birth Anniversary
- Teachers’ Day is a special day for the appreciation of teachers, and may include celebrations to honour them for their special contributions in a particular field area, or the community in general.
- The idea of celebrating Teachers’ Day took root in many countries during the 19th century.
- In most cases, they celebrate a local educator or an important milestone in education.
- In India the birthday of the second president Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (5 September) is celebrated as Teacher’s Day since 1962.
- Many countries celebrate their Teachers’ Day on 5 October in conjunction with World Teachers’ Day, which was established by UNESCO in 1994.
- Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was born to Sarvepalli Veeraswami and Sarvepalli Sita (Sitamma) in a Telugu-speaking Niyogi Brahmin Hindu family, in Tiruttani in the erstwhile Madras Presidency.
- Radhakrishnan served as the first Vice President of India 1952–1962.
- He was one of India’s most distinguished twentieth-century scholars of comparative religion and philosophy.
- He believed that “teachers should be the best minds in the country”.
- Radhakrishnan was nominated 16 times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and 11 times for the Nobel Peace Prize.
- In 1931, Radhakrishnan was knighted by King Georga V for his services to education.
- In 1954, he was awarded the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India.
- Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan had once said, “Instead of celebrating my birthday, it would be my proud privilege if September 5 is observed as Teachers’ Day.”
- The tradition of celebrating Teachers’ Day started in India from 1962, in honour of the former president.
24x7 Rehabilitation Helpline Toll-Free Mental Health helpline launched
- Shri Thaawarchand Gehlot, Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment will launch the “24×7 Toll-Free Mental Health Rehabilitation Helpline “KIRAN” (1800-500-0019)” on 07th September 09, 2020 (Monday).
- This Helpline has been developed by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD), Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment to provide relief and support to persons with Mental Illness.
- This helpline will offer mental health rehabilitation services with the objective of early screening, first-aid, psychological support, distress management, mental well-being, promoting positive behaviours, psychological crisis management etc.
- It will function as a lifeline to provide 1st stage advice, counseling and reference to individuals, families, NGOs, Parent Associations, Professional Associations, Rehabilitation Institutes, Hospitals or anyone in need of support across the country.
- This toll free helpline will be operational 24 hours a day, seven days a week with the technical coordination of BSNL.
- It is backed by 660 clinical and rehabilitation psychologists and 668 psychiatrists.
- The 13 languages covered in the helpline are Hindi, Assamese, Tamil, Marathi, Odia, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati, Punjabi, Kannada, Bengali, Urdu and English.
- The helpline is dedicated to resolve mental health issues related to anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, suicide, depression, panic attack(s) adjustment disorders, post traumatic stress disorders and substance abuse.
- The helpline is being coordinated by the National Institute for the Empowerment of Persons with Multiple Disabilities (NIEPMD), Chennai and National Institute of Mental Health Rehabilitation (NIMHR).
Affordable Solar Powered Battery based Sprayers to tackle Water Crisis in Agriculture
- Water is a precious resource and water scarcity is looming large over the entire Nation. Agriculture, which consumes around 70% of Water, for irrigation purpose, is the most vulnerable sector of the Economy owing to this crisis.
- To address this issue there has been discussion on implementing solar pump in almost every farmland.
- Apart from solar pumps, CSIR-CMERI is working on methods to reduce water consumption required for irrigation.
- Initially, Drip irrigation was considered but later it was realised that Drip irrigation is not affordable for marginal to small farmers, who are the major stake holders in Indian Agrarian scenario.
- Those farmers use manual sprayers costing a few thousand rupees.
- As per the available knowledge, pesticides play very big role in increasing crop productivity, but large amount of pesticide sprays is wasted due to lack of appropriate machinery, and soil, water and air become polluted.
- Due to such harmful effects of pesticides, there is an increasing pressure to reduce their use and make their spraying more efficient.
- To make efficient sprayer, there is need to understand science of surface tension, viscosity, wettability, air drag, dynamic pressure, particle size, etc.
- CSIR-CMERI developed two variants of battery operated spray systems one for “marginal famers” and other for “small farmers”. Back Pack Sprayer, having capacity of 5 litres, is made for “marginal farmers”, while the Compact Trolley Sprayer having capacity of 10 litres, is made for “small farmers”.
- These sprayers are equipped with two separate tanks, flow control and pressure regulator to handle different water requirements of the crops, target/site specific irrigation, maintaining appropriate dilution of pesticide/fungicide to control the pest (on foliage, under the leaves, at root zone etc.), creating water based micro-roughness of leaf surface, maintaining soil moisture levels in a narrow range, and weed control.
- The systems functions on Solar-Powered batteries, thus enabling its usage even in energy and power deprived agricultural regions of the Nation, thus reducing dependence on price volatile fossil fuels.
- The sprayers are simple to develop, easy to learn and implement, therefore will help to overcome water crisis faced by Indian farmers.
- The flow control feature of the Sprayers helps achieve multiple levels of Water/Pesticide flow thereby enhancing the flexibility and dynamicity of the coverage area as well as the intensity of the application.
- The Dual-Chamber design of the Sprayers helps achieve a degree of resource versatility as it allows the system to carry two variants of liquids at any particular instant.
- As per experiments conducted at CSIR-CMERI, the engaged farmers have informed that it helps save 75% of Water and 25% time-consumption while using the CSIR-CMERI developed sprayers.
- This design element might also help reduce the time consumption for Spray based Agricultural applications, as the farmer need not empty the contents of a single vessel completely before using a different content.
- These couple of variants can bring about a revolution in the sphere of Precision Agriculture by reducing usage of Water in Agriculture.
- This revolutionary technology will help in creating agricultural avenues even in arid and semi-arid regions, as the Water scarcity will no longer be feared by the farming community.
- The CSIR-CMERI developed sprayers provide a cost-effective socio-economic solution for both marginalised and small-scale farmers.
- The affordable pricing profile helps to provide opportunities to cottage and micro-industries in furthering the outreach factor of the technology widely.
- CSIR-CMERI has already developed solar tree of capacity 1 Kwp, 3 kwp, 5 kwp, 6 kwp, 7.5 kwp and 11.5 kwp,(which is now the Largest Solar Tree in the world).
Live Storage Status of Reservoirs in India
- Central Water Commission is monitoring live storage status of 123 reservoirs of the country on weekly basis. Out of these reservoirs, 43 reservoirs have hydropower benefit with installed capacity of more than 60 MW.
- The total live storage capacity of these 123 reservoirs is 171.091 BCM which is about 66.36% of the live storage capacity of 257.812 BCM which is estimated to have been created in the country.
- The Northern region includes States of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan. There are 8 reservoirs under CWC monitoring having total live storage capacity of 19.17 BCM. The total live storage available in these reservoirs is 14.52 BCM which is 76% of total live storage capacity of these reservoirs.
- The Eastern region includes States of Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Tripura and Nagaland. There are 18 reservoirs under CWC monitoring having total live storage capacity of 19.43 BCM. he total live storage available in these reservoirs is 14.28 BCM which is 73% of total live storage capacity of these reservoirs.
- The Western region includes States of Gujarat and Maharashtra. There are 42 reservoirs under CWC monitoring having total live storage capacity of 35.24 BCM. The total live storage available in these reservoirs is 30.60 BCM which is 87% of total live storage capacity of these reservoirs.
- The Central region includes States of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. There are 19 reservoirs under CWC monitoring having total live storage capacity of 44.45BCM. The total live storage available in these reservoirs is 38.12 BCM which is 86% of total live storage capacity of these reservoirs.
- The Southern region includes States of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, AP&TG (2combined projects in both states), Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. There are 36reservoirs under CWC monitoring having total live storage capacity of 52.81 BCM. The total live storage available in these reservoirs is 41.64 BCM which is 79% of total live storage capacity of these reservoirs.
5th BRICS Culture Ministers’ Meet
- The 5th BRICS Culture Ministers’ Meeting is held through video conference under the Chairpersonship of Russian Federation.
- The delegates from Culture Ministries of the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Russian Federation, the Republic of India, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of South Africa participated in the meeting.
- To explore possibilities of hosting a Digital Online Exhibition on a Shared theme towards end of 2021 under the auspices of BRICS Alliance of Museums. And to extend full cooperation and content sharing for website envisaged under the BRICS Alliance.
- Opening the BRICS Corner under the auspices of BRICS Alliance of Libraries proposed to be inaugurated during the India’s BRICS Presidency in 2021. The Corner will disseminate information related to the history and culture of BRICS countries. The corner will display the books, periodicals and other e-resources gifted by the BRICS countries, viz, Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa.
- The National Gallery of Modern Arts, New Delhi will host the BRICS Joint Exhibition titled ‘Bonding Regions & Imagining Cultural Synergies’ under the auspices of the BRICS Alliance of Art Museums and Galleries. The exhibition is proposed to be organized in 2021 coinciding with the BRICS event that India would be hosting in 2021. The exhibition aims to present around 100 works of art from the five prestigious institutions under the BRICS Alliance.
- At the end of the meeting Declaration of the V Meeting of the BRICS Ministers of Culture was agreed upon and signed by all the representatives of BRICS Nations.
