Daily Current Affairs   Date : 26^thFebruary,2022

 (30+ Questions hit in Prelims 2021 from this series)

Covers 4 Most relevant Sources

• The Hindu
• Indian Express
• PIB
• Mint

Index

• Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries (SFURTI) (PIB)
• Bhasha Certificate Selfie (PIB)
• Grants to Urban Local Bodies (PIB)
• Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) (TH, pg 15)
• Contributions of Indian Mathematicians (PIB)
• Employment Outlookof India (PIB)

 

1. Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries (SFURTI) (PIB)

• Context: The MSME Minister inaugurated the KONBAC SFURTI (Konkan Bamboo and Cane Development Centre – Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries) bamboo cluster at Kudal. The cluster will support 300 artisans.

Analysis

• SFURTI has been launched by the Ministry of Micro,Small & Medium Enterprises.
• The Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) is implementing this scheme.
• The main objective of the SFURTI scheme is toorganize the traditional industries and artisans into clusters:

• to make them competitive, and provide support for their long-term sustainability,

• to provide sustained employment for traditional industry artisans & rural entrepreneurs,
• to enhance marketability of products etc.

• The scheme provides support in the form of two interventions viz. Hard Interventions and Soft Interventions.

• Hard Interventions include creation of Common Facility Centres (CFCs), Raw material banks (RMBs), Up-gradation of production infrastructure, etc.
• Soft Interventions include counselling, trust building, skill development and capacity building etc.
• The scheme was revised in 2017-18. Under the revised scheme, two types of clusters are set up.
• The maximum financial assistance provided is Rs. 2.50 crore for a Regular Cluster (upto 500 artisans) and Rs. 5.00 crore for a Major Cluster (more than 500 artisans).

2. Bhasha Certificate Selfie (PIB)

• Context:Ministry of Education launched a campaign ‘Bhasha Certificate Selfie’ to encourage cultural diversity and promote mulitlinguism and to foster the spirit of Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat.

Analysis

• Bhasha Certificate Selfie initiative aims to promote Bhasha Sangam mobile app, developed by Ministry of Education and MyGov India.
• Using the app, people can learn 100+ sentences of daily use in as many as 22 scheduled Indian languages.
• The initiative, under the aegis of Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat, will aim to ensure that people acquire basic conversational skills in Indian languages.
• Rashtriya Ekta Diwas which is celebrated on October 31 every year to mark the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

3. Grants to Urban Local Bodies (PIB)

• Context:The Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance today released an amount of Rs. 1348.10crore to 6 States for providing grants to Urban Local Bodies.
• Note: You have already prepared this topic in detail from the15 Feb file.

4. Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) (TH, pg 15)

• Context:The U.S., Europe and several other western nations are moving to exclude Russia from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), an international network for banks to facilitate smooth money transactions globally.

Analysis

What is SWIFT?

• SWIFT is a messaging network used by banks and financial institutions globally for quick and faultless exchange of information pertaining to financial transactions.
• Each participant on the platform is assigned a unique eight-digit SWIFT code or a bank identification code (BIC).

• If a person, say, in New York with a Citibank account, wants to send money to someone with an HSBC account in London, the payee would have to submit to his bank, the London-based beneficiary’s account number along with the eight-digit SWIFT code of the latter’s bank.
• Citi would then send a SWIFT message to HSBC. Once that is received and approved, the money would be credited to the required account.

• The Belgium-headquartered SWIFT is merely a platform that sends messages and does not hold any securities or money.
• It provides standardised and reliable communication to facilitate the transaction.

What happens if one is excluded from SWIFT?

• If a country is excluded from the most participatory financial facilitating platform, its foreign funding would take a hit, making it entirely reliant on domestic investors.

Are any countries excluded from SWIFT?

• Certain Iranian banks were ousted from the system in 2018.

How is the organisation governed?

• It is regulated by G-10 (eleven industrial countries) central banks of Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, Switzerland, and Sweden, alongside the European Central Bank.
• The SWIFT oversight forum was established in 2012. The G-10 participants were joined by the central banks of India, Australia, Russia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, the Republic of Turkey, and the People’s Republic of China.

An Alternative to SWIFT

• During the last seven years, Russia, too, has worked on alternatives, including the SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) — an equivalent of the SWIFT financial transfer system developed by the Central Bank of Russia.
• The Russians are reported to be collaborating with the Chinese on a possible venture which will be a potential challenger to SWIFT.

5. Contributions of Indian Mathematicians (PIB)

• Context: Ministry of Culture has announced DHARA- an Ode to India’s knowledge system, a series of programmes which are powered by lecture demonstrations, celebrating India’s contribution across diverse field.

Analysis

• Ten Indian contributions to mathematics apart from zero include The Indian Numeral System, The Baudhayana-Pythagoras Theorem, The Mathematics of Language, The Sine Function in Trigonometry, Negative Numbers, Solutions to Quadratic Equations, Binomial Coefficients, The Virahanka-Fibonacci Sequences, Error-detecting/ correcting codes, First Exact Formula for Pi.

Some of the contributions of ancient Indian mathematicians

Baudhayan

• The value of pi was first calculated by him. pi is useful in calculating the area and circumference of a circle.
• What is known as Pythagoras theorem today is already found in Baudhayan’s Sulva Sutra, which was written several years before the age of Pythagoras.

Aryabhatta

• Aryabhatta was a fifth century mathematician, astronomer, astrologer and physicist.
• At the age of 23, he wrote Aryabhattiya, which is a summary of mathematics of his time. There are four sections in this scholarly work.

• In the first section he describes the method of denoting big decimal numbers by alphabets.
• In the second section, we find difficult questions from topics of modern day Mathematics such as number theory, geometry, trigonometry and Beejganita (algebra).
• The remaining two sections are on astronomy.

• Aryabhatta showed that zero was not a numeral only but also a symbol and a concept.
• Discovery of zero enabled Aryabhatta to find out the exact distance between the earth and the moon.
• Aryabhatta contributed greatly to the field of science, too, particularly Astronomy (Khagolshastra).

• Khagol was the famous astronomical observatory at Nalanda, where Aryabhatta studied.

• Disregarding the popular view that our planet earth is ‘Achala’ (immovable), Aryabhatta stated his theory that ‘earth is round and rotates on its own axis.’
• He explained that the appearance of the sun moving from east to west is false by giving examples.

• One such example was: When a person travels in a boat, the trees on the shore appear to move in the opposite direction.

• He also correctly stated that the moon and the planets shined by reflected sunlight.
• He also gave a scientific explanation for solar and lunar eclipse clarifying that the eclipses were not because of Rahhu and/or Ketu or some other rakshasa (demon).
• The first satellite sent into orbit by India has been named after Aryabhatta.

Brahmgupta

• In 7th century, Brahmgupta took mathematics to heights far beyond others.
• In his methods of multiplication, he used place value in almost the same way as it is used today.
• He introduced negative numbers and operations on zero into mathematics.
• He wrote Brahm Sputa Siddantika through which the Arabs came to know our mathematical system.

Bhaskaracharya

• Bhaskaracharya was the leading light of 12th Century. He was born at Bijapur, Karnataka.
• He is famous for his book Siddanta Shiromani. It is divided into four sections: Lilavati (Arithmetic), Beejaganit (Algebra), Goladhyaya (Sphere) and Grahaganit (mathematics of planets).
• Bhaskara introduced Chakrawat Method or the Cyclic Method to solve algebraic equations.

• This method was rediscovered six centuries later by European mathematicians, who called it inverse cycle.
• In the nineteenth century, an English man, James Taylor, translated Lilavati and made this great work known to the world.

Mahaviracharya

• There is an elaborate description of mathematics in Jain literature (500 B.C -100 B.C).
• Jain gurus knew how to solve quadratic equations.
• They have also described fractions, algebraic equations, series, set theory, logarithms and exponents in a very interesting manner.
• Jain Guru Mahaviracharya wrote Ganit Sara Sangraha in 850A.D., which is the first textbook on arithmetic in present day form.
• The current method of solving Least common Multiple (LCM) of given numbers was also described by him.

• Thus, long before John Napier introduced it to the world, it was already known to Indians.

Some of the contributions of medieval Indian mathematicians

• Narayana Pandit, son of Narsimha Daivajna was well known for his works in Mathematics – Ganitakaumudi and Bijaganitavatamsa.
• Gangadhara, in Gujarat, wrote Lilavati Karamdipika, Suddhantadipika, and Lilavati Vyakhya. These were famous treatises which gave rules for trigonometrical terms like sine, cosine tangent and cotangent.
• Nilakantha Somasutvan produced Tantrasamgraha, which also contains rules of trigonometrical functions.
• Ganesa Daivajna produced Buddhivilasini – a commentary on Lilavati – containing a number of illustrations.
• Krishna of the Valhalla family brought out Navankura on the Bijaganit of Bhaskara-II and elaboration of the rules of indeterminate equations of the first and second orders.
• Nilakantha Jyotirvida compiled Tajik, introducing a large number of Persian technical terms.
• Faizi, at the behest of Akbar, translated Bhaskara’s Bijaganit.

• Akbar ordered to make Mathematics as a subject of study, among others in the education system.

• Naisiru’d –din-at –tusi, was another scholar of Mathematics.

Some of the contributions of modern Indian mathematicians

Ramanujan

• Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan (FRS), one of India’s greatest mathematical genius, was born at Erode in Tamil Nadu on 22 December, 1887.
• He could not complete his college education as he kept on developing his ideas and started posing problems and solving them in the Journal of Indian Mathematical Society.
• In 1911, he published in the same journal a brilliant research paper on Bernoulli Numbers. This got him recognition and he became well known in Madras circles as a mathematical genius.

6. Employment Outlookof India (PIB)

• The National Statistical Office (NSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has released the press note on Employment Outlook of the country covering the period September, 2017 to December, 2021 based on the administrative records available with selected government agencies to assess the progress in certain dimensions.