• Emphasis on Safety, Quality Control and Consistency of Homoeopathy Product Posted On: 09 APR 2019 4:05PM by PIB Delhi The two-day Convention on World Homeopathy Day was inaugurated by Secretary, Ministry of AYUSH Dr. Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha in here today.


  • The World Homoeopathy Day is observed to commemorate the birth anniversary of the founder of Homoeopathy, Dr. Christian Fredrich Samuel Hahnemann. Sh. Nilanjal Sanyal, Chairman, Board of Governors, Central Council of Homoeopathy and Sh. Tridandi Chinna Ramanuja Jeeyar Swamiji also graced the inaugural ceremony. Tributes were paid by Dr. Gary Smyth, President, Faculty of Homeopathy, UK and Dr. Alok Pareek, President, LMHI (International).


  • Dr. Kotecha in his inaugural address emphasised the Ministry’s efforts to bridge the gap between science and tradition through researches in the field of AYUSH. He further said that the Ministry is equally dedicated to validate Homoeopathy through focused research, enhance its manufacturing and production standards, as well as assure the best quality education in the homoeopathy colleges.


  • He also shared about the schemes under the Ministry of AYUSH that provides support and motivation for promotion of Homoeopathy like the Central Sector scheme, Extra-Mural Research and Intramural research undertaken by the council’s etc. He also emphasised on the need to ensure safety, quality control and consistency of products for the credibility of homoeopathy.






  • About ‘Maharshi Badrayan Vyas Samman’ Awards: The Maharshi Badrayan Vyas Samman distinction is conferred on persons in recognition of their substantial contribution in the field of Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, Pali, Prakrit, Classical Oriya, Classical Kannada, Classical Telugu and Classical Malayalam.


  • Introduced in the year 2002. Given to selected young scholars in the age group of 30 to 45 years. Carries a certificate of honour, a memento and a one-time cash prize of Rs.1 lakh.


  • Who was Maharshi Badrayan? He was an Indian philosopher about whom almost no personal details are reliably known. Badarayana is regarded as having written the basic text of the Vedanta system, the Vedāntasūtra a.k.a. Brahmasūtra. He is thus considered the founder of the Vedānta system of philosophy. The date of Badarayana and his Brahma Sutras is uncertain. Different scholars have dated the Brahma Sutras variously from 500 BCE to 450 BCE.






  • Theme of World Health Day 2019 is Universal Health Coverage: Everyone, Everywhere. Background: From its inception at the First Health Assembly in 1948 and since taking effect in 1950, the celebration has aimed to create awareness of a specific health theme to highlight a priority area of concern for the World Health Organization.


  • Over the past 50 years this has brought to light important health issues such as mental health, maternal and child care, and climate change. The celebration is marked by activities which extend beyond the day itself and serves as an opportunity to focus worldwide attention on these important aspects of global health.


  • What is Universal health coverage? Universal health coverage (UHC) is about ensuring all people and communities have access to quality health services where and when they need them, without suffering financial hardship.


  • It includes the full spectrum of services needed throughout life—from health promotion to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care—and is best based on a strong primary health care system. Achieving UHC is one of the key targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.






  • Key findings: Growth in developing Asia is projected to soften to 5.7% in 2019 and 5.6% in 2020. Excluding Asia’s high-income newly industrialized economies, growth is expected to slip from 6.4% in 2018 to 6.2% in 2019 and 6.1% in 2020.


  • Since oil prices rose and Asian currencies depreciated, inflation edged up last year but remained low by historical standards. In light of stable commodity prices, inflation is anticipated to remain subdued at 2.5% in both 2019 and 2020. Only 20 of 45 individual economies are projected to see growth accelerate in 2019.


  • By sub-region, aggregate growth rates in Central Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia are expected to decelerate, while South Asia and the Pacific will bounce back from slowdown in 2018. In East Asian economy growth in East Asia decelerated by 0.2% to 6.0% in 2018, weighed down by weakening external trade and moderating investment in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) but sustained by resilient domestic consumption.


  • India’s position: Growth rate: India’s growth forecast is cut to 7.2% for 2019-20 because of a slower-than-expected pickup in investment demand. The growth rate in Financial Year 2020-21 is likely to be 7.3%. Recovery may be due to– agriculture and stronger domestic demand, improved health of banks and corporations and implementation of a value-added tax. The inflation is expected to average around 4% in the first half of FY2019, and therefore the Reserve Bank would have some room for lowering policy rates further increasing credit.


  • About ADB: The Asian Development Bank was conceived in the early 1960s as a financial institution that would be Asian in character and foster economic growth and cooperation in one of the poorest regions in the world.


  • It assists its members, and partners, by providing loans, technical assistance, grants, and equity investments to promote social and economic development. Established on 19 December 1966. Headquartered — Manila, Philippines. Official United Nations Observer.


  • Voting rights: It is modelled closely on the World Bank, and has a similar weighted voting system where votes are distributed in proportion with members’ capital subscriptions. Japan > United States > China > India >Australia






  • What did Hawking propose? Stephen Hawking proposed a theory that primordial black holes are a source of dark matter. He computed that the mass of the primordial black holes could range from as low as one-hundredth of a milligram to as high as more than the mass of a thousand Suns.


  • What are primordial black holes? Two Soviet physicists, Yakov Borisovich Zel’dovich and Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov, showed that at the initial instant of the big bang, the densities would have been very high at many points, resulting in the formation of small black holes. They were named `primordial black holes’.


  • Are they visible? Black holes are not radiant and will not be visible through any telescope. However, as first suggested by Albert Einstein, if by chance, a tiny primordial black hole eclipses a distant star, light rays of the star will bend around the black hole due to gravitational effect, resulting in the star appearing to be brighter than it originally is for a short while. Called `gravitational lensing’, this rare phenomena can occur only when the star, the black hole and the observer on the Earth are aligned in a straight line.


  • When the black hole is in alignment with a distant star, due to gravitational attraction, light rays are bent inwards like a lens, making the star appear brighter.


  • Latest findings: The research team used the Hyper Suprime-Cam on the Japanese Subaru Telescope located in Hawaii to look for any tell-tale evidence of primordial black holes between Earth and Andromeda galaxy using gravitational lensing technique.


  • For one whole night,eam should have seen at least 1,000 gravitational lensing events. However, they were able to see at most one such candidate event, if not none. This implies Prof Stephen Hawking’s theory that such black holes make up all of dark matter is wrong.


  • What is dark matter? In most galaxies, the stars closer to the centre and the stars at the edge of the galaxies take almost same time to make one revolution. This implied that something invisible and enveloping the galaxies was giving an extra push to the outer stars, speeding them up. This entity has remained as one of the central unresolved puzzles in cosmology since 1930s. It is named `Dark Matter’.


  • The material is considered to be a ‘matter’ since it appears to have gravitational attraction and it is ‘dark’ because it does not seem to interact with light (or for that matter any part of the electromagnetic spectrum). Composition: Almost 85% of the total mass of the Universe is composed of dark matter.






  • General observations: In 2017, exposure to PM 2.5 pollution was found to be the third leading risk factor globally for Type 2 diabetes. The economic costs of diabetes are substantial — estimated as 1.8% of worldwide gross domestic product in 2015 and pose a growing challenge to health care systems in countries at all levels of development.


  • Type 2 Diabetes represents a substantial, growing, and costly health burden. In 2017, the disease accounted for more than 1 million deaths globally and burdens have increased by 175% and 141%, respectively, since 1990. There is a strong inverse relationship between a country’s level of social and economic development and the PM2.5 exposures experienced by its population; that is, less developed countries suffer PM2.5 exposures that are four to five times those of more-developed countries.


  • In 2017, annual PM2.5 exposures were highest in South Asia, where Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan had the highest exposures. Bhutan’s exposure level was the lowest in the region but was still above WHO’s first interim target. The 10 countries with the lowest national PM2.5 exposure levels were the Maldives, United States, Norway, Estonia, Iceland, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Brunei, and Finland.


  • Ozone pollution is a continuing challenge in more developed countries and is increasing in less developed areas, posing new air quality concerns. Air pollution collectively reduced life expectancy by 1 year and 8 months on average worldwide, a global impact rivaling that of smoking. This means a child born today will die 20 months sooner, on average, than would be expected in the absence of air pollution.


  • Key findings- India specific: India and China are collectively accounted for more than 50% of global 5 million deaths due to air pollution. Major PM2.5 sources in India include household burning of solid fuels; dust from construction, roads, and other activities; industrial and power plant burning of coal; brick production; transportation; and diesel-powered equipment.


  • An estimated 846 million people in India (60% of the population) and 452 million people in China (32% of the population) were exposed to household air pollution in 2017.


  • What has India done to reduce household emission? A sweeping government effort seeks to shift more households to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) instead of biomass fuels. While many families can afford subsidized LPG fuel, the fee for installing a household LPG hookup can be prohibitive. The government initiative, known as Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), provided LPG connections to 35 million poor families free of charge between 2016 and early 2018 and aims to provide 80 million connections by 2020.






  • Key facts: The Global Cool Coalition is a unified front that links action across the Kigali Amendment, Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals. Objective: It is expected to inspire ambition, identify solutions and mobilise action to accelerate progress towards clean and efficient cooling.


  • Supporters: Besides the UN, it is supported by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program and Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL). Composition: It includes government officials from Chile, Rwanda, Denmark as well as leaders from civil society, research and academia.


  • Why do we need it? Throughout the world, 2018 was the fourth hottest year, preceded by 2017, 2015 and 2016. With increasing incomes and urbanisation, number of air conditioning units across the globe is set to increase from 1.2 billion to 4.5 billion by 2050, and India alone may account for one billion units.


  • In the next 20 years, India’s cooling requirement will increase by eight times, with air conditioners alone consuming more than half of the total energy required for cooling in the country by 2037-38. India has already developed a national cooling action plan that was launched by the Union environment ministry on March 8, 2019.






  • What is GIAN program? Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) in Higher Education was launched in 2015. It is a program of Ministry of Human Resource and Development.


  • Aim: GIAN aims at tapping the talent pool of scientists and entrepreneurs to engage with the institutes of higher education in India to augment the country’s existing academic resources, accelerate the pace of quality reforms, and further strengthen India’s scientific and technological capabilities.


  • GIAN is envisaged to achieve the following objectives: To increase the footfalls of reputed international faculty in the Indian academic institutes. Provide opportunity to our faculty to learn and share knowledge and teaching skills in cutting edge areas.


  • To provide opportunity to our students to seek knowledge and experience from reputed International faculty. To create avenue for possible collaborative research with the international faculty.


  • Develop high quality course material in niche areas, both through video and print that can be used by a larger body of students and teachers. To document and develop new pedagogic methods in emerging topics of national and international interest.






  • Context: UAE awards PM Narendra Modi with Highest Civilian Honour. PM Modi has been awarded in recognition of efforts in giving “a big boost” to bilateral relations between both the countries.


  • The ‘Order of Zayed’ is the highest civil decoration instituted by the UAE. ‘Zayed’ is the founding father of the United Arab Emirates. It is awarded to Heads of Government/Head of State for their international relations with UAE.


  • In News- Bejjur vultures: They are also known as longbilled vultures (Gyps indicus). It is the smallest of the vultures. Feed exclusively on carrion, and mainly remains of cattle. Breed in colonies. Listed under the ‘critically endangered’ category by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Vulnerable to poisoning by Diclofenac.






  • How is democracy being viewed today? Periodic elections, party-based competitive candidates, and universal adult franchise have turned out to be the primary ingredients of democracy.


  • Concerns associated with such views: This common sense has come to cloud everything centrally associated with the idea of democracy in general and constitutional democracy in particular. Reading elections as democracy has also led to the equating of means with ends, celebrating the former, and abdicating it from all responsibility the latter demands. It tends to suggest a view of democracy in which the role of the masses decidedly ends at the hustings. This reduction of democracy to elections, today, threatens to undermine the core aspirations associated with it.


  • Why Elections alone cannot be termed as the sole conveyor of democracy? Elections can hardly be termed as the sole and effective conveyor belts of popular will in India any longer. The hype that has come to surround elections, the resources that it calls for, the close monitoring of the voters by boxing them in social straitjackets, and the media’s obsessive focus on elections as a gladiators’ den have deeply compromised elections as the preeminent device of representation of popular will.


  • In the process the electoral space of the poor and the marginalised has shrunk, as other devices have been put in place to elicit their assent. The trustworthiness of the election machinery alone cannot ensure that the voter is enabled to make a deliberated choice of momentous significance to his everyday life, opportunities and access to resources. Political parties with their stakes, almost without exception, have increasingly tended to fix the voters in social silos, rather than help them redefine their affiliations and connect to the wider social ensemble, if they choose to do so.


  • Redistribution of resources and opportunities has been lost in the endless litany of promises of goods and bounties. A promise, here and there, in the manifestoes of political parties that allude to redistribution sounds theatrical before their socially conservative stance.


  • Sections of the media have come to play second fiddle in amplifying the sound-bites of political leaders, deploying them to construct and reconstruct opponents, with specified social constituencies in view. They have found jingoism and archaic frames easy to stoke rather than nudge public sensitivity to reinforcing the democratic temper.


  • Highlighting fragments from popular memory-lane, spreading isolated events wide across the political space, and nurturing the effect of simultaneity, particularly with certain audiences in view, have been the take of much reporting these days.


  • Need of the hour: As a political community, the bonds that unite Indians are not given but have to be forged, and have to be forged consciously and deliberately.


  • Certain inheritances, beliefs, memories and shared practices can be a great help in this direction, but it is also important to realise that they can be equally divisive. India’s constitutional layout and public institutions can extend much support in streamlining and directing this political project, but cannot be its replacement. Auditing the election promises of political parties, extending support to some measures and rejecting others.


  • Measures such as access to quality education in the mother tongue, neighbourhood schools, strengthening public health systems, public transport, entrepreneurship and skill development, universal social insurance, and reaching out to those who suffer disadvantages in accessing these measures are definitely in synchrony with the democratic project.


  • At the same time for a large number of Indians the beliefs they uphold, and the practices that ensue therefrom are central to their idea of themselves. There is no reason why India’s democratic project cannot encompass such embeddedness and aspirations. There is a dire need to create a helm to focus on India’s democratic project.