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Municipal Performance Index 2020 has been released by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) Highlights:

The 2020 Municipal Performance Index (MPI): MPI reviewed the sectoral performance of 111 cities in five verticals (Delhi was evaluated by NDMC and three municipal companies).

These verticals consist of 20 industries and a total of 100 indicators. The five vertical areas under MPI are service, finance, policy, technology and Governance.

City ranking:

According to the assessment framework of MPI 2020, cities are classified according to their populations of “million+” (cities with a Population of more than one million) and “population of less than one million”.

In the “Millionaire” category: Indore has become the highest-ranked , followed by Surat and Bhopal. In the “less than a million” category: The New Delhi Municipal Council has become the leader, followed by Tirupati and Gandhinagar.

For about 600 years, Mleiha was the political centre of southeast Arabia before it was abandoned in the 3rd century CE. And for decades, the emergence of the tropical plant in the arid Arabian peninsula has been aquestion archaeologistshave tried to answer. Oman, they had concluded, was the source of the ancient Arab cotton trade. But now, scientists from the Museum of Natural HISTORY in Paris have found evidence in Mleiha that the earliest cotton in the Arab region came fromnorthwest India.

The irony, however, is that a fire which ravaged one of its most important buildings of Mleiha is also what preserved it for posterity. Within this Unesco World Heritage Site in the United Arab Emirates lies a tableaux frozen in fire. Its a mud brick building with 15 rooms around a central courtyard with signs of a life hastily abandoned in forgotten objects and prized possessions carelessly thrown around, and, the evidence of an ancient Indian trade route, cotton specifically, 31 whole seeds, 79 fragments and 7 raw fibre clusters.

Maharashtra, Naduand Uttar Pradesh remained the top three states with the highest employable talent, according to the India Skills Report 2021.Karnatakatakes the fourth spot followed byAndhra Pradesh. Bangalore is among the most preferred cities to work for aspiring professionals, the report said.

Rajasthan and West Bengal come in the top 10 states with employable talent, yet remain below Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi,Telanganaand Gujarat respectively. Haryana could not make it to this list again, despite the massive push from numerous Skill development measures.

The report, prepared by Wheebox in PARTNERSHIP with Taggd, CII, AICTE, AIU and UNDP, showed that 46% of the youth were considered highly employable Resources. This is far less than the previous years, indicating a skill gap in Education, it said, adding that this is still an encouraging statistic considering that the Average age of India is 26.8 years old.

More Women were found employable than men. In fact, the number of women enrolled in colleges and degree programs have increased over the past, the report said. The report is based on the assessment of 65,000 candidates.

Indias national accreditation system under the Quality Council of India (QCI) has been ranked 5^thin the world in the recent Global Quality Index (GQII) 2021. The GQII ranks the 184 economies in the world on the basis of the quality infrastructure (QI). Indias overall QI system ranking continues to be in the Top 10 at the 10^thposition, with the standardization system (under Bis) at 9^thand the metrology system (under NPL-CSIR) at 21^stposition in the world.

QI is the technical backbone for international trade, with metrology, standardization, accreditation and conformity assessment Services providing reliability and trust between trading partners.In India, the National Physical Laboratory under the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (NPL-CSIR) is the national metrology institute, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is the national standards body and the constituent national accreditation boards under Quality Council of India support are the custodians of the national accreditation system.

The GQII measures the relative development of countries QI. A formula calculates a score for each country based on its position in the sub-rankings for metrology, standards and accreditation.Geographically, the top 25 QI systems are mainly located in Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific, with some exceptions, such as India (10th), Brazil (13th), Australia (14th), Turkey (16th), Mexico (18th) and South Africa (20th).

Government of India has formulated a Greenfield (GFA) Policy, 2008 which provides detailed guidelines, procedures and steps related to construction of Greenfield airports across the country. Under the GFA Policy, the project proponent- an airport developer or the respective State Government willing to establish a Greenfield airport is required to send a proposal to the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) in the prescribed format for 2-stage approval process i.e., ‘Site Clearance’ followed by ‘In-Principle’ approval.

Since 2019, 6 Greenfield airports namely, Kalaburagi (project cost Rs. 175.57 crore), Orvakal (Kurnool) (project cost Rs. 187 crore), Sindhudurg (project cost Rs. 520 crore), Itanagar (project cost Rs. 646 crore)Kushinagar (project cost Rs. 448 crore) and Mopa (project cost Rs.2870 crore) have been operationalised, out of which Kushinagar and Mopa airports are International airports.

TheSupreme Court banned all construction activities in thecore areasoftiger reserves,national parksand wildlife sanctuaries after it was brought to its notice by a court-appointed panel that illegal constructions for establishment of a tiger safari was being done within in the buffer area of theCorbett Tiger ReserveinUttarakhand.

The MoEF&CC to review norms issued under Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 and Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 relating to setting up of zoos and safaris within and wildlife sanctuaries and amend the same so as to discourage use of wildlife habitat for wildlife tourism activities which are non-site specific.

India and the European Union (EU) announced the formation of three working groups under the Trade and Technology Council that was set up to deepen strategic ties with the trade bloc. India and EU had in April last year agreed to establish a TradeandTechnologyCouncil, to tackle the challenges at the nexus of trade, trustedtechnologyand security. Such a council is the first for India with any of its partners and second for the EU, following the first one it has set up with the United States (US).

The working Groups will now start preparing for the first meeting of the council, which will take place before the next EU-IndiaSummit in spring of 2023. Ministerial meetings of the council will take place at least once a year, with the venue alternating between the EU andIndia.

The United Arab Emirates is in early discussions with India to trade non-oil commodities in Indian rupees, Minister for Dr Thani Al Zeyoudi said in World Economic Forum, Davos. The minister said other countries, including China, had also raised the issue of settling non-oil trade payments in local currencies. He added that the UAE is hoping to conclude a trade agreement with Cambodia in the first quarter.

The move would build on an agreement signed in 2022, which aimed to increase trade excluding oil between the two countries to $100 billion by 2027. Trading in Indias currency would also signal a stark move away from the US dollar, which dominates global commodities markets as well as trade for countries along the Persian Gulf.

The Central Government has released a Post Devolution (PDRD) grant of 9,871 crores of rupees, distributed to 17 states after the finance ministry’s approval.

Highlights:

The state governments get the Post Devolution Revenue Deficit grant. Article 275 of the constitution provides for the grant.

The grants are distributed following the fifteenth Finance Commission‘s recommendations.

The parliament shall offer grants in aid to states, according to Article 275. India’s consolidated fund funds these grants.

The federal government has complete authority to set varying amounts for various states. The grant’s goal is to assist state governments in covering the costs of the projects, promoting the welfare of scheduled tribes, and improving the administration of scheduled territories.

Forest department employees rescued a leopard from the Sishugram Red Cross organisation near IIT Guwahati on February 3, 2022.

Highlights:

After being observed, the leopard will be released into its natural habitat.

Under its divisional competence, the NKF Division has also begun the process of conducting a leopard counting census.

North Kamrup Forest Division (NKF Division) has begun an exclusive leopard counting census in Assam’s forest and non-forest areas for the first time.

The leopard counting census has begun in Amingaon, Kamrup district, where leopards have high densities.

It began on January 31, 2022. Leopards will be counted using the camera trapping approach.

In the Amingaon area, 50 cameras would be deployed at Sila Reserve Forest, NIPER, Changsari, Aiims, and other locations.