22th Dec Daily current affairs for UPSC Civil Service Exam 2017

DARPAN

• Ministry of Communication launched “DARPAN - Digital Advancement of Rural Post Office for A New India”.
• The project aimed at realizing financial inclusion of un-banked rural population.
• It is IT modernization project which intends to provide a low power technology solution to each branch postmaster to improve service delivery.
• DARPAN offers core banking services such as cash deposit and withdrawal in savings bank and recurring deposit, mini statement, Aadhaar seeding and daily transaction report.
• The application will also be used for the reimbursement of social security benefits such as MNREGS, old age pension and DBT.
• It is targeted to complete the project by March 2018.

SRISTI

• SRISTI - Sustainable Rooftop Implementation for Solar Transfiguration of India is a proposed scheme by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
• The proposed scheme will incentivise the installation of roof top solar projects in India.
• It aims to achieve a national solar rooftop target of 40 GW by 2021-22.
• Under SRISTI, a central financial assistance will be provided only for installation of roof top solar plants in residential sectors.
• Once approved, the concept will acts as a basis for phase – II of solar rooftop power programme.

ICGS Sujay

• Samarth Class OPV is a series of six 105m offshore patrol vessel (OPV) being built by Goa Shipyard Limited for the Indian Coast Guard.
• Indian Coast Guard Ship Sujay is the sixth in the series of six OPV under Samarth class.
• The other ships are ICGS Samarth, Shoor, Sarathi, Shaunak, Shaurya.
• ICGS Sujay is based at Paradip, Odisha under the operational and administrative control of Commander Coast Guard Region (North-East).
• It will be deployed extensively for EEZ surveillance and will give a fillip to the maritime protection in the state of Odisha and West Bengal in particular.

Kimberly Process

• The Kimberley Process (KP) is a joint Government, International Diamond Industry and Civil Society initiative to stem the flow of Conflict Diamonds.
• Conflict Diamonds- Rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments.
• In its 2016 session held in Dubai, India was appointed as Vice Chair of KP for 2018 & Chair for 2019. The EU will be chair for 2018.
• This year, the session was held at Brisbane, Australia.
• It came into effect in 2003 with representation from 81 countries including EU.
• India is one of the founding members, which held chair for the year 2008.

Ro – Ro services in India

• In RO-RO service, vessels have either built-in or shore-based ramps that allow the cargo to be efficiently rolled on and off the vessel when in port.
• This is in opposite to the lift-on and lift-off (lo-lo) vessels, which use a crane to load and unload cargo.
• This service is currently in operational in two states – Gujarat and Assam.
• Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) rolled out a regular RO-RO between Assam-Meghalaya connecting Dhubri and Hatsingimari.
• Dhubri and Hatsingimari are located in the north bank and south bank of River Brahmaputra.
• Recently, India’s first RO-RO passenger (RO Pax) service was inaugurated between Ghogha in Saurashtra and Dahej in south Gujarat in the Gulf of Khambhat region.

  

 Mini-Earth like Planets

• The Alpha Centauri system is located 24.9 trillion miles from Earth, which is the closest star system to our planet.
• An Earth-like planet was discovered last year in the system.
• Scientists have recently detected data from the observatory located in Chile.
• The data shows that the planet orbiting around stars Alpha Centauri A and B would be almost small, rocky planets.
• This new information will help astronomers narrow down the search area and prioritize their efforts to detect additional planets in the system.

Source: PIB, BusinessLine, Economic Times