Prelim Bits 15-11-2019

Bazeera

• The archaeological experts from Pakistan and Italy have discovered a 3000-year-old city, named Bazeera in joint excavation in northwest Pakistan.
• According to the findings in 326 B.C Alexander the Great, defeated the opponents in battle at odigram area constructed the walled city named Bazeera.
• The experts also found traces of life in the city even before Alexander's period.
• Before Alexander, the followers of Indo-Greek, budhmat, Hindu Shahi and Muslims lived in the city.
• The discovery also find traces of Hindu temples, coins, stupa, pots and weapons of that period.

International Conference on Agricultural Statistics

• The 8th International Conference on Agricultural Statistics (ICAS-VIII) will be organized by the Ministry of Agriculture in New Delhi.
• The conference will be organised in collaboration with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, ISI-CAS, FAO, the USDA, ADB, World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Eurostat, AfDB and various other organizations.
• ICAS is a series of conferences that started in 1998 based on overarching need for agricultural data worldwide.
• The conference is conducted every three years and the last conference was held in Rome in 2016.

Golden Leaf Awards

• The Golden Leaf Awards were created to recognize professional excellence and dedication in the tobacco industry by Tobacco Reporter, an international magazine in the year 2006.
• The Golden Leaf Award is granted every year to companies that have achieved outstanding performance in five categories, namely:

1) Most impressive public service initiative

2) Most committed to quality

3) Most exciting newcomer to the industry

4) Most promising new product introduction

5) Most outstanding service to the industry

• Tobacco Board of India has been awarded the Golden Leaf Award 2019 for its efforts to initiate various sustainability (green) initiatives in Flue-Cured Virginia (FCV) tobacco cultivation in India.

Tobacco Board of India

• Tobacco Board of India is a statutory body established under Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
• Due to various efforts taken by the tobacco board, India is now world's fourth largest producer of FCV tobacco.
• The main functions of the Board include

1. Regulating the production and curing of Virginia tobacco,
2. Implementation activities for improving the yields and quality of tobacco,
3. Facilitating sale of tobacco through e-auctions,
4. Undertaking various grower welfare measures
5. Export promotion of tobacco and tobacco products.

Green Climate Fund

• The GCF was set up in 2010 under the UNFCCC’s financial mechanism to channel funding from developed countries to developing countries to allow them to mitigate climate change and also adapt to disruptions arising from a changing climate.
• The Green Climate Fund will support projects, programmes, policies and other activities in developing country Parties using thematic funding windows.
• It is intended to be the centrepiece of efforts to raise Climate Finance of $100 billion a year by 2020.
• The Fund is governed and supervised by a Board that will have full responsibility for funding decisions and that receives the guidance of the Conference of Parties (COP).
• The Fund is accountable to, and functions under the guidance of, the COP.
• Recently India has kicked-off a project to boost climate resilience in three coastal states in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), funded by the Green Climate Fund.
• The six-year project will build climate-resilient livelihoods for 1.7 million people in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha.

Pushkaram Festival

• Pushkaram festival is a festival of rivers that pertains to the 12 important rivers in India, It occurs once in 12 years for each river.
• In 2018, the Pushkaram festival was celebrated on the banks of the Tamiraparani in Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu.
• The Assam government is celebrating Brahmaputra Pushkaram- a 12-day mega river festival.
• Earlier, the Brahmaputra Pushkaram festival was held in 2007.
• It will be the second biggest river festival ever to be celebrated in the state of Assam after Namami Brahmaputra (State festival that celebrates the beauty of the Brahmaputra river)

AadiMahotsav

• TRIFED an organisation of Ministry of Tribal Affairs has started a new concept of organising “AadiMahotsav – National Tribal Festival”.
• It aims to provide direct market access to the tribal master-craftsmen and women in large metros and State capitals.
• The concept of organising AadiMahotsav in major cities has proved to be a boon for tribal artisans by eliminating the middle man and providing direct access to large markets, otherwise impossible to reach for them.

Source: The Hindu, PIB