Press Information Bureau (PIB Analysis For UPSC)

Table of Contents

AYUSH

Ministry of AYUSH is organising a day long review meeting on “Draft of National Policy of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (MAPs) of India” tomorrow at Pusa Campus, New Delhi.
To improve and finalize the proposed draft Policy Document, National Medicinal Plant Board along with Federation of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Stakeholders are jointly organizing the one day review meeting.
This will be followed by 8 brainstorming sessions of more than 35 panellists on various topics.
The important areas of Medicinal Plants Sector like Forest & Conservation, Infrastructure, Marketing & Trade, Cultivation, Sustainable Harvesting & Post harvest Management, Quality & Certification, Research & Development, Regulatory & Legal framework, Networking & IT/Space Intervention, Finance and Information, Education & Communication and Capacity Building are proposed to be covered in the 8 sessions by specialists from all over the country.
During the Inaugural session, NMPB will also launch the “Voluntary Certification Scheme of Medicinal Plants Produce (VCSMPP)”, designed by NMPB through Quality Councils of India (QCI).
The main outcome of the excise shall be the final Draft Policy on National Medicinal Plants of India which will be reviewed by the Ministry of AYUSH.

Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation

Water Aid has recently released a report entitled “Out of Order – The State of the World’s Toilets 2017”.
This report quotes data from the WHO-UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP),which extrapolates sanitation data based on available data from past studies between 2000 and 2015.
This means it misses out on most of the progress under the Swachh Bharat Mission which aims to eradicate open defecation from the country by October 2019.
Recognizing that such an unprecedented commitment to bringing so many people out of open defecation in such a short span of time has no parallels anywhere in the world, the JMP, in the same report, inserted a special section with high praise for the rapid results being seen under the Swachh Bharat Mission, and stating that their report does not capture a lot of the work done since 2015, and hence the data is not up to date.
However, this point has not been mentioned in the report by Water Aid, thereby misleading the readers into believing that this is the present status of sanitation in India.
The report also mentions that 56% of people in India lack access to safe sanitation, whereas the present number is down to about 28%.
Such statements from an organization of the credibility of Water Aid are factually incorrect and irresponsible, especially since the Water Aid India team has been working closely with the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation and the Swachh Bharat Mission Gramin, and is fully aware of both the ground work, macro statistics and overall progress.

Water Aid’s comments on Swachh Bharat “Out of Order”.

Prime Minister’s Office−

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has congratulated Justice Dalveer Bhandari on being re-elected to the International Court of Justice.
“I congratulate Justice Dalveer Bhandari on being re-elected to the International Court of Justice. His re-election is a proud moment for us. Congratulations to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her entire team at Ministry of External Affairs and diplomatic missions for their untiring efforts that have led to India’s re-election to ICJ. Our deep gratitude to all the members of UNGA as well as UNSC for their support and trust in India”, the Prime Minister said.

”Recent event and a new concept”

The U.K. has already indicated to members of the Security Council that it plans to invoke a clause that has never been used to suspend voting on Monday and move to a conference mechanism of the General Assembly and the Security Council if the first round of voting does not yield a clear outcome.
The conference mechanism involves three members of the General Assembly and three of the Security Council jointly selecting the winner.
India has told member countries that this would amount to bypassing the desire of an overwhelming majority.
But if the U.K. wants to suspend voting after the first round on Monday and invokes the conference option, there is no way to stop it, as per rules.

“But its all done and dusted now”

Chennai: Unesco’s Creative Cities Network as the Creative City of Music

October 31, 2017: Chennai, famed for its rich musical heritage got UNESCO’s tag
Created in 2004 is at the forefront of Unesco’s mandate to foster innovation and creativity as key drivers for sustainable and inclusive urban ecosystems.
Chennai has been an irresistible force in music since the earliest period of recorded Tamil history.
Purandara Das (1484-1564): One of the most virtuosic early exponents of Carnatic music
He laid the foundation of the classificatory systems of raga and tala and of kritis, compositions at the core of the orally transmitted Carnatic repertoire.
The immortal kritis of saint-composers from Thanjavur, Thyagaraja, Muttuswami Dikshitar and Shyama Shastri have inspired generations of musicians and continue to be part of the living repertoire of Carnatic music celebrated in festivals such as the Vaggeyakara held in April in different venues in the city.
- A fine musical sense is embedded deep into the city’s DNA. There are more than 350 cultural institutions, 25 large institutional performance spaces and several neighbourhood, grassroots venues.
- The city has a serious pedagogical approach to the classical arts to ensure that they remain part of a historically unbroken tradition. In addition to degree and diploma courses available at the Music Department of Madras University and the Kalakshetra Foundation, there are many additional options available at places such as the Madras Music Association, the Madras Music Academy, the Brhaddvani Music Centre and in the home of maestros.
  - Music was institutionalised not only within temple precincts but also in gurukulams as part of the guru-shishya tradition.
  - The charm of the classical repertoire still manages to attract Tamil teens brought up with a strong sense of their cultural heritage.
  - Music lives in every home and that’s where they first cut their teeth.
  Consider young vocalists Anahita and Apoorva, who started their training with their grandmother, Shanti Jayaraman. Srivastha, a flautist who learnt the flute from his father P V Ramana and Ambi Subramaniam, son of Dr L Subramaniam, who proudly traces his musical lineage back to the trinity of singer, saint-composers. Also, Usha Uthup’s granddaughter Ayesha Elizabeth John, AR Rahman’s son Ameen, Akshay Hariharan, Shivam Mahadevan and many others budding musicians.
- Musicians such as T M Krishna have been reaching out to tribal, rural and fringe groups, especially groups like the Jogappas, a transgender community of devotional folk performers.Musically, the season kicks off with a big festival in November, which features a plurality of genres in intimate settings. It works as a preamble to the month-long festival held in December, the Tamil month of Margazhy, traditionally dedicated to spirituality and contemplation.
- At this time the entire city seems to transform into concert stages with hundreds of performances and epic queues to each one of them.
The city has also been warming up to movements seeking to equalise art and dismantle its caste-aligned history by moving art, audiences and performances venues away from the largesse of deep-seated privilege.
Carnatic singer, T M Krishna, the poster-boy of this movement, provocatively announced that he would boycott the December festival because it has reached an ‘anaesthetic tipping point’.
He has been supporting performances being organised in fishing hamlets and at the Chennai Central railway station.
The Urur Olcott Kuppam fishing village in South Chennai has been hosting a multi-genre festival since 2015, creating space not only for Carnatic performances but also Silambattam, a martial art and dance form, folk dances and Bharatanatyam danced to the beat of ‘parai’ drums, an instrument associated with Dalit communities.
Waltzing into Unesco’s Creative Cities Network has been no cakewalk and comes with its own unique challenges.−
The city will have to work within the framework of United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and effectively demonstrate culture’s role as an enabler for building sustainable ecosystems.
Chennai has a rich legacy of music, dance, theatre, folk and traditional arts.
Unesco’s validation is bound to lead to a tide of invasive tourism, in what is playfully called ‘Unesco-cide’ but Chennai is also not a city that gets easily fazed by attention.
It has been splaying itself open, but in a guarded way. Technology has changed the biochemistry of performances and iPhones have begun working as studios.
The younger lot of musicians are getting experimental, but many of them continue to find their cool quotient in classical music and dance.
Ghatam, khanjira, Thavil, Mugaveenai and other traditional instruments are still in vogue and organisations such as the Kalakshetra have begun restoring their traditional performance spaces.
It is evident that Chennai will continue to retain the charm of its classical repertoire even as it dabbles with technology, multiplicity of genres, the quirky and even the implausible.