Important Current Affairs August 2020
Important current affairs from The Hindu, PIB and Indian express.
Important Current Affairs August 2020
1. Smart India Hackathon – 2020
Grand Finale of the fourth edition (Software) of Smart India Hackathon – 2020 concludes.
Details:
Smart India Hackathon (SIH) 2020 is a nationwide initiative to provide students a platform to solve some of the pressing problems we face in our daily lives, and thus inculcate a culture of product innovation and a mindset of problem-solving.
In SIH 2020, the students would have the opportunity to work on challenges faced within various Ministries, Departments, Industries, PSUs and NGOs to create world-class solutions for some of the top organizations including industries in the world, thus helping the Private sector hire the best minds from across the nation.
During the current edition of SIH, more than 240 problem statements based on 11 themes were worked upon by the participants.
The themes included tracking & tracing fake news, UAVs for disaster identification and alerting system, network connectivity in remote areas, etc.
ISRO was the largest contributor to the problem statements.
The 36-hour hackathon had prize money for each problem statement worth Rs. 1,00,000/-.
2. COVAX Facility
ACT Accelerator is a ground-breaking global collaboration to accelerate the development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines.
It is the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator.
COVAX aims to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines and to guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world.
COVAX is co-led by Gavi, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and WHO.
The goal of COVAX is by the end of 2021 to deliver two billion doses of safe, effective vaccines that have passed regulatory approval and/or WHO prequalification. These vaccines will be delivered equally to all participating countries, proportional to their populations.
3. Pak. map an absurd exercise, says India
What’s in News?
On the eve of the first anniversary of the special status of Jammu & Kashmir being withdrawn, the Pakistan Government has claimed to have unveiled a ‘new political map’.
It includes the entire Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir and parts of Gujarat, including Junagadh.
The map shows a part of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, with the lines emblazoned on it stating, “Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir”.
The text reads, “Disputed Territory – Final Status will be decided in line with the relevant UNSC resolutions”.
Junagadh in Gujarat is also shown as part of Pakistan.
Junagadh was a Hindu majority princely state whose Muslim ruler opted to join Pakistan in 1947 but whose Hindu subjects said they wanted to join India.
India’s reaction:
Ministry of External Affairs has called the unveiling of Pakistan’s new political map, an exercise in political absurdity.
The press statement of the Ministry states that there is neither legal validity nor international credibility in such an exercise.
3. Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN)
Context:
Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN) has ensured essential immunization services during the COVID pandemic.
About eVIN:
eVIN is an indigenously developed technology system in India that digitizes vaccine stocks and monitors the temperature of the cold chain through a smartphone application.
eVIN aims to support GOI’s Universal Immunization Programme by providing real-time information on vaccine stocks and flows, and storage temperatures across all cold chain points in these states.
The initiative aims to strengthen the evidence base for improved policy-making in vaccine delivery, procurement and planning for new antigens in India.
eVIN provides an integrated solution to address widespread inequities in vaccine coverage by supporting state governments in overcoming constraints of infrastructure, monitoring and management information systems and human resources, often resulting in overstocking and stock-outs of vaccines in storage centres.
The technological innovation is implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in partnership with the Government of India.
All cold chain handlers are provided smartphones with the eVIN application which allows for the digitization of vaccine inventories.
eVIN is a combination of software and SIM-enabled temperature loggers specially designed to improve vaccine stock keeping practices and temperature monitoring across states where this is implemented.
With eVIN, district officials can:
View real-time stock and temperature
Understand vaccine requirement
Enable emergency management
Keep track of consumption patterns
Have efficient stock reallocation
4. Covid India Seva’ – An Interactive Platform for Citizen Engagement on COVID-19
Covid India Seva is an interactive platform to establish a direct channel of communication with millions of Indians amid the pandemic.
This initiative is aimed at enabling transparent e-governance delivery in real-time and answering citizen queries swiftly, at scale, especially in crisis situations.
It works on a dashboard at the backend that helps process large volumes of tweets, converts them into resolvable tickets, and assigns them to the relevant authority for real-time resolution.
5. Revival of Post- COVID-19 Indian Economy
The Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC), an autonomous technology think-tank under the Department of Science & Technology (DST), is preparing a white paper to strategise revival of post-COVID-19 Indian economy.
This document would mainly focus on strengthening Make in India initiatives, commercialisation of Indigenous technology, developing a technology-driven transparent PDS, efficient rural health care delivery, reduction of import, adoption of emerging technology domains like AI, Machine Learning, Data Analytics and many more.
6. E-Learning Sees Upsurge During COVID-19
Owing to the COVID-19 lockdown, e-learning in the country has witnessed an appreciable upsurge. Both schools and higher education institutions have started various modes of online classes and sharing of study material depending on the resources available with them and with the students.
E-learning ranges from structured online classes through various platforms to teachers uploading lectures and class notes, sharing links of digital learning resources like SWAYAM and NPTEL, providing access to online journals.
The Education portals of NCERT like DIKSHA, e-pathasala, National Repository of Open Educational Resources, Senior Secondary Courses of NIOS, IGNOU Courses, UGC MOOCS courses, Shodhganga, and the other ICT initiatives like Robotics education (e-Yantra), Open Source Software for Education (FOSSEE), Virtual experiments (Virtual Labs) and Learning programming are also experiencing very large access rates.
SWAYAM PRABHA group of 32 DTH channels is devoted to telecasting of high-quality educational programmes on 24X7 basis using the GSAT-15 satellite.
Challenges:
Lack of internet connectivity and other required digital infrastructure with students is proving to be an impediment to e-learning in many cases.
Computer literacy, adaptability struggle and technical issues are other major challenges.