June

10,
2018
NARROW GAUGE
In June 2018, the Indian Railways decided to preserve the five oldest, working narrow
gauge lines dating back to its colonial era.
About:

 Commercially working narrow gauge lines are pretty much non-existent in the world, other than
some hill railways in India, and this is an effort by the Railways to save them from complete
extinction.
 All the five lines are in Gujarat, totalling 204 km, and were originally owned by the princely state’s
Gaekwad Baroda State Railway (GBSR).
 One of the sections, the 33-km Dabhoi-Miyagam line, was India’s first narrow gauge railway stretch.
It started operations in 1862.
 In narrow gauge in India, the rails are 2 feet, 6 inches apart, requiring engines, coaches, machinery
and maintenance apparatus that are different from the rest of the broad gauge network, whose rails
are 5 ft, 6 inches apart.

AADHAR-LINKED PDS
Around half-a-dozen people have allegedly died of starvation in Jharkhand in the last six
months. Most of them were reportedly denied rations from PDS shops for failing to have
Aadhaar-based biometric authentication (i.e. their ration cards were cancelled because
they did not have Aadhaar linkage).
About:

 Background:
o Though the Supreme Court has said Aadhaar linkage is voluntary, at the village and
panchayat levels in Jharkhand, little appears to have changed.
o For a person getting food through PDS, it is mandatory to follow the Aadhaar-Based
Biometric Authentication (ABBA) system that is the practice of using an electric point of sale
(PoS) machine for each transaction.
o For implementing the ABBA system, it is necessary to have Aadhaar seeding, which is to get
one’s Aadhaar number linked to the ration card.
 Arguments for Aadhaar-Linkage:
o The government feels that by linking ration cards to Aadhaar, it will remove the corruption
in the PDS system. The government has also announced that it has achieved 100% Aadhaar
seeding.
 Hurdles:
o To get benefits under the PDS, biometric authorisation is required and this calls for
technological necessities which villages lack: uninterrupted power supply, a functioning PoS
machine, adequate mobile and Internet connectivity etc.

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o Many tribals are unaware of the requirement of compulsory Aadhaar seeding.
o According to experts, lakhs of people covered by the PDS are not linked with their Aadhaar
numbers.

INDO-CHINA TIES
In June 2018, two significant MoUs were signed between India and China on Rice Import
and Brahmaputra River.
Detail of two MoUs:

1. China has agreed to provide India hydrological data of the Brahmaputra river in flood season,
months after Beijing stopped the practice, crucial to predict floods.
2. China has agreed to import non-Basmati rice from India which is likely to bridge the ballooning trade
deficit to a certain extent.

INTERNATIONAL CANCER PROTEOGENOME CONSORTIUM (ICPC)

In May 2018, India became the 12th country to join the International Cancer Proteogenome
Consortium (ICPC) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), U.S.
About ICPC:

 It is a voluntary scientific organization that provides a forum for collaboration among some of the
world's leading cancer and proteogenomic research centers.
 In the Indian team, the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) is to study proteomics and the
Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH), Mumbai, India’s premier cancer institute, is to study the genomics of
three cancers, breast, head and neck, and cervix.

Do you know?
 Proteomics: Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins.
 Genomics: It is the branch of molecular biology concerned with the structure, function, evolution,
and mapping of genomes.
CORAL IVF
In June 2018, scientists stated that Coral In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) project in Australia’s
Great Barrier Reef is showing signs of success and needs to be scaled up to create a bigger
impact.
About:

 It is a coral fertility treatment designed to heal damaged parts of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. It is
designed to help reefs repopulate faster to help speed up the recovery time after a bleaching event.
 The programme is one of a number of experimental projects under way to save the reef.
 Background:

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o The Great Barrier Reef — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — lost around half of its coral in the
past few years after two mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, a pattern repeated on
coral reefs around the world.
o The bleaching occurs when warmer ocean temperatures caused by climate change put
major stress on coral organisms, turning them white. If they do not have time to recover,
they eventually die.

SUKRACHARYA RABHA
In June 2018, noted Assamese theatre personality Sukracharya Rabha died of cardiac arrest
at 41.
About:

 He founded ‘Badungduppa’, a rural-based theatre centre at his village Rampur.

 He used to organise the annual open-air theatre festival – ‘Under the Sal Theatre’ – which brought
theatre lovers from across the country and abroad to remote village in Goalpara district.
 He was awarded the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar of Sangeet Natak Akademi for the year
2009 for his notable talent in the field of theatre direction.

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