DNA 14 JULY

National Green Tribunal prohibits dumping of waste near Ganga banks 

• An area of 100 metres from the edge of the Ganga between Haridwar and Unnao has been declared a ‘No Development Zone,' with the National Green Tribunal (NGT) prohibiting dumping of waste within 500 metres of the river.
• An environment compensation of Rs. 50,000 will be imposed on anyone dumping waste in the river
• The NGT also directed the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments to formulate guidelines for religious activities on the ghats of the Ganga and its tributaries.
• All industrial units in the catchment areas of the Ganga should be stopped from indiscriminate groundwater extraction.
• The green court reiterated its earlier order of a ban on mechanical mining in the Ganga -
• “No instream mechanical mining is permitted and 
•   The mining on the floodplain should be semi-mechanical and preferably more manual.”

How to ensure implementation of Directives:Supervisory Committee 

• Appointed a Supervisory committee:headed by the Secretary of the Water Resources Ministry and comprising IIT professors and officials of the Uttar Pradesh government 

                            -to oversee implementation of the directions passed in its verdict. 

                            -The committee is to submit reports at regular intervals.

 

• Sand and Gravel mining should be permitted only after a detailed and comprehensive assessment of the annual replenishment
• After ensuring that the connectivity of the river is not disturbed and that only a quantity less or equal to the annual replenishment is permitted to be removed from the riverbed or the banks

Art & Culture :Regional Festivals 

Tiwa tribals prepare a ‘jhum’ eld during the Panthai Langa ritual in Karbi Anglong district of Assam on Thursday. It is believed that Tiwas, who live in the hills, are not permitted to prepare their paddy eld for the next harvest before performing this ritual

Tiwa  is an ethnic group/indigenous tribe inhabiting the states of Assam and Meghalaya  

They are recognized as a Scheduled tribe within the State of Assam.

They were known as Lalungs in the Assamese Buranjis, Colonial literature and in the Constitution of India

Though members of the group prefer to call themselves Tiwa (meaning "the people who were lifted from below").

Now, e-visa facility for Uganda

• After much deliberation, India has added Uganda to the list of countries to which it extends the electronic visa (or e-visa) facility.At present, India offers e-visa facility to only 18 of the 54 African Nations.
• Indian authorities remove Uganda from the high-risk category of nations, as there is a healthy trade and business relationship with the African nation. 
• The e-visa scheme will further boost our prospects The e-visa is an online pre-authorisation that allows visa on arrival through nine airports and three seaports. 
• India is currently in stiff competition with China for the Ugandan import market.
• The East Africa nation is also home to a 30,000-strong Indian community, mostly Gujaratis.
• In the past, security agencies had reported the presence of several Mumbai-based underworld gangsters in Kampala, the country's capital. This had discouraged India from extending the e-visa facility to Ugandans, an official said.
• In March, the Ugandan Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda was in Mumbai, where he met heads of automobile and pharmaceutical firms and pledged to invest $100 million in India.
• In February, Vice-President Hamid Ansari on his visit to Uganda announced that the two countries had agreed to expand cooperation in the "energy sector, training of personnel for space research, and peaceful uses of atomic energy".
• The Home Ministry implements the e-visa scheme, and any country is removed or added to the list on the basis of inputs from security agencies.
• At present, India offers the e-visa facility to 162 countries.
• Recently, the government increased the window for application under the e-visa system from 30 to 120 days.
• Once applied for, the e-visa is granted within 72 hours.
• Conceptualised when the UPA was in power, the e-visa facility was operationalised in 2014.

EAC(East African Community)

The East African Community (EAC) is an intergovernmental organisation composed of six countries in the African Great Lakes region in eastern Africa: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. 

The organisation was founded in 1967, collapsed in 1977, and revived on 7 July 2000 

HQ:Arusha,Tanjania

Liu Xiaobo, Chinese dissident who won Nobel Prize, dies 

• Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, China's most prominent political prisoner, died at a hospital in China. He was 61.
• Liu had been transferred to the hospital after being diagnosed with advanced liver cancer in prison in May 2017 but remained under police custody
• Liu was only the second Nobel Peace Prize winner to die in prison, a fact pointed to by human rights groups as an indication of the Chinese Communist Party's increasingly hard line against its critics.
• The first, Carl von Ossietzky, died from tuberculosis in Germany in 1938 while serving a sentence for opposing Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
• Liu's supporters and foreign governments had urged China to allow him to receive treatment abroad, but Chinese authorities insisted he was receiving the best care possible for a disease that had spread throughout his body.
• Liu was imprisoned for the first time in connection with the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.
• He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2010 while serving his fourth and final prison sentence, for inciting subversion by advocating sweeping political reforms and greater human rights in China.

PM’s task force recommends scrapping 5-yearly job survey

• The Prime Minister-appointed task force has recommended that traditional Employment-Unemployment Surveys carried out by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) every five years be scrapped.
• The panel has instead suggested a new periodic labour force survey to provide                                                    - estimates of labour force,                                                                                                              - employment, unemployment, nature of employment and industry.
• To get more frequent employment trends data, an urban module of this survey will be updated every quarter.
• The recommendation comes amidst criticism about the lack of adequate jobs as well as a debate over jobs cuts in the economy.
• However, refuting criticism, the task force, headed by NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya, in the report has mentioned that "much of the recent debate on jobs in the media has relied on the estimates from the Quarterly Enterprise Surveys," which has "severe limitations".
• QES conducted by Labour Bureau measure employment in eight broad sectors of industry and services.
• The Centre has sought comments on the recommendations made public by July 23.
• A time use survey should also be conducted at three year intervals to provide data on time spent in various occupations and non-market activities, the panel said.
• The survey will help track how time spent by households has been changing and measure women's participation in unpaid work.