UPSC Daily Current Affairs | Prelim Bits 25-02-2020

Law Commission of India

• The Law Commission of India is a non-statutory body constituted by the Government of India from time to time.
• The Law Commission shall, on a reference made to it by the Central Government or suo-motu, undertake research in law and review of existing laws in India for making reforms therein and enacting new legislations.
• It shall also undertake studies and research for bringing reforms in the justice delivery systems for elimination of delay in procedures, speedy disposal of cases, reduction in the cost of litigation etc.
• The Commission was originally constituted in 1955 and is re-constituted every three years.
• The tenure of twenty-first Law Commission of India was up to 31st August 2018.
• The various Law Commission have been able to make an important contribution towards the progressive development and codification of Law of the country.
• The Law Commission has so far submitted 277 reports.
• Union government recently gave its approval for the constitution of the 22nd Law Commission for a period of three years from the date of publication of its Order in the Official Gazette.
• It will consist of:

1. A full-time Chairperson;
2. Four full-time Members (including Member-Secretary)
3. Secretary, Department of Legal Affairs as ex-officio Member;
4. Secretary, Legislative Department as ex officio Member; and
5. Not more than five part-time Members.

• The chairperson usually is a retired Supreme Court judge or a retired chief justice of a high court.
• The term of the previous commission had ended on August 31, 2018.

Blue Dot Network

• The Blue Dot network is “a multi-stakeholder initiative to bring together governments, the private sector and civil society to promote high-quality, trusted standards for global infrastructure development”.
• India and the US will discuss the Blue Dot network, a new proposal to cover infrastructure and development projects across the region and other countries.
• The US, which is leading the proposal, has already got Japan and Australia as partners in this idea.
• The proposal, which is part of the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy, is aimed at countering Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitious One Belt One Road initiative.
• The initiative will evaluate projects on various parameters, including level of public consultation, transparency in funding, debt traps and basic environment norms.
• Projects that meet the norms will get a “blue dot”, which will enable them to attract private funding and not have to depend on state-funding alone.
• Under BRI, China’s government and state-owned enterprises finance international projects by providing logistical support from concrete and steel to workers and cash. This approach, however, has been labelled by some experts as “debt-trap diplomacy”.
• Blue Dot will be about “supporting alternatives to predatory lending” by facilitating foreign investment in projects that come under this network.

Sustainable Development Goals Conclave 2020

• Sustainable Development Goals Conclave 202o: Partnerships, Cooperation and Development of North Eastern states, is being organized by NITI Aayog, in Guwahati, Assam.
• It is a three-day event, will see representations from the North Eastern states, Central Ministries, academia, civil society and international development organizations.
• NITI Aayog has the mandate of overseeing the adoption and monitoring of SDGs at the national and sub-national level. Progress in the northeast region is crucial in this decade of action for the country to achieve the SDGs by 2030.
• This conclave is part of the NITI Aayog’s continuous efforts towards fostering partnerships at the sub-national level.

UN-SDG 2030

• The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015.
• It provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.
• At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership.
• They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.
• The SDGs build on decades of work by countries and the UN, including the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
• In 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, more than 178 countries adopted Agenda 21, a comprehensive plan of action to build a global partnership for sustainable development to improve human lives and protect the environment.
• Member States unanimously adopted the Millennium Declaration at the Millennium Summit in September 2000 at UN Headquarters in New York.
• The Summit led to the elaboration of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to reduce extreme poverty by 2015.
• At the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012, Member States launched a process to develop a set of SDGs to build upon the MDGs and to establish the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.
• In January 2015, the General Assembly began the negotiation process on the post-2015 development agenda.
• The process culminated in the subsequent adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with 17 SDGs at its core, at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015.

NITI Aayog

• The Government, in January 2015, replaced Planning Commission with NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India).
• NITI Aayog is neither statutory, nor constitutional, it is established by an executive resolution.
• It is a government think tank/ Advisory body that advocates a holistic approach towards development of India.
• It aims to achieve Sustainable Development Goals and to enhance cooperative federalism by fostering the involvement of State Governments of India in the economic policy-making process using a bottom-up approach.
• The institution has to provide governments at the central and state levels with relevant strategic and technical advice across the spectrum of key elements of policy.
• This includes matters of national and international import on the economic front, dissemination of best practices from within the country as well as from other nations, the infusion of new policy ideas and specific issue-based support.
• Important initiatives of NITI Aayog includes “15 year road map”, “7-year vision, strategy and action plan”, AMRUT, Digital India and Atal Innovation Mission.
• Composition of NITI Aayog includes

1. Chairperson - Prime Minister of India as the Chairperson.
2. Governing Council comprising the Chief Ministers of all the States and Lt. Governors of Union Territories.
3. Regional Councils will be formed to address specific issues and contingencies impacting more than one state or a region. These will be formed for a specified tenure.
4. The Regional Councils will be convened by the Prime Minister and will comprise of the Chief Ministers of States and Lt. Governors of Union Territories in the region.  These will be chaired by the Chairperson of the NITI Aayog or his nominee.
5. Experts, specialists and practitioners with relevant domain knowledge as special invitees nominated by the Prime Minister.

Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS)

• The Global MICS Programme was developed by UNICEF in the 1990s.
• It collects internationally comparable data on a wide range of indicators on the situation of children and women for use in policies, programmes, and national development plans.
• MICS is designed to collect statistically sound, internationally comparable estimates of about 130 indicators to assess the situation of children, women and men in the areas of health, education, and child protection.
• MICS is a rich source of data on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), collecting about 33 SDG indicators.
• MICS covers topics and indicators related to children’s well-being, women, and households, ranging from health and education to child protection and water and sanitation.
• In the most recent rounds of MICS, additional data are also collected on men.
• Data can be disaggregated for young people age 15-24 and by gender. 
• Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2019 is jointly conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and UNICEF.
• According to the report Bangladesh records sharp decline in Child malnutrition over the last six years.
• The survey also records improvement in access to and use of toilets, birth registration, ante-natal care coverage, institutional deliveries and similar other parameters indicating an overall improvement in child and mother health in the country.

Bay of Bengal Offshore Sailing Expedition (BBSE)

• Indian Naval Sailing Vessels Mhadei and Tarini set sail for the Bay of Bengal Offshore Sailing Expedition from the Indian Naval Ocean Sailing Node at Goa.
• It will cover a total distance of 6,100 Nautical miles each and will be at sea for 55 days.
• This would be the maiden major mixed crew sailing expedition of the Indian Navy with crew composition of five naval officers including two women officers in each boa.
•  The voyage would showcase harnessing of renewal energy namely wind energy to propel the boats.
• The expedition is also in pursuance of the GOI mission of 'Nari Shakti' providing opportunity to women officers at par with men.
• The Bay of Bengal Offshore Sailing Expedition will generate goodwill amongst the visiting nations and inspire participation in the forthcoming BIMSTEC Sailing Expedition being planned with mixed crew of member nations onboard Indian Naval Sailing Vessels.

INS Mhadei & INS Tarini

• Mhadei and Tarini inducted in the Indian Navy in 2009 and in 2017 respectively have been the vessels of choice for the naval expeditioners in various sailing expeditions, including three circumnavigations and thus have thousands of miles tucked under their belt.
• Mhadei has successfully completed two circumnavigations, three Cape to Rio trans-Atlantic races and several other expeditions around various continents.
• The vessel has covered in excess of 1,36,000 nautical miles.
• Tarini created history in 2017-18 when six Indian Naval women officers sailed the vessel on maiden circumnavigation voyage titled Navika Sagar Parikrama.
• She thereafter also participated in mixed crew Kochi to Seychelles sail training expedition during 10th anniversary celebration of the IONS.

PM Ujjwala Yojana

• Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) was launched in 2016 to distribute 50 million LPG connections to women of BPL families.
• The scheme led to an increase in LPG consumption by 56% in 2019 as compared to 2014.
• However, while access to LPG gas stoves and cylinders has increased in the scheme, the use of LPG cylinders remains low.

Himachal Grihini Suvidha Yojana

• Union home minister declared that Himachal Pradesh had become the first state in the country to have “100% LPG gas coverage”.
• But according to state residents and officials, these claims may not be entirely true, but they are not too far off the mark either.
• Following the implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, the state government launched its own Himachal Grihini Suvidha Yojana in May 2018 to cover the remaining households.
• Except families having a pensioner, income taxpayer or any member employed with the government, board, corporation etc, all households of the state without an LPG connection were eligible.
• Unless there was no female member in the family, the connections were issued only to women.
• In many cases, officials issued kits to a cluster of villages from a focal point.
• Till December 27, 2019, the department issued around 2.64 lakh such kits around the state which has a total population of 68.64 lakh (Census 2011).
• Some families were still left out, as is evident by a few thousand applications received after the deadline was extended.

Source: AIR, PIB, Indian Express