Remembering Tilak, the ‘Father of Indian Unrest’
GS Paper 1: Modern Indian History from about the middle of the eighteenth century until the present- significant events, personalities, issues.
Important For:
Prelims exam: Tilak and his contributions
Why in News
In the eyes of Britishers, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, also known as Lokmanya Tilak, was the ‘Father of Indian unrest’ against the British Raj. 1st August was his 102nd death anniversary.
About Bal Gangadhar Tilak
• Bal Gangadhar Tilak, commonly known as Lokamanya Tilak was a leader of the Indian independence movement and belonged to the extremist faction.
• Mahatma Gandhi referred to him as “the Maker of Modern India,” and Jawaharlal Nehru, called him “the Father of the Indian Revolution.”
Personal Life
• Born as Keshav Gangadhar Tilak in 1856 in Ratnagiri, modern-day Maharashtra.
• Born into a middle-class Hindu family; got a bachelor’s degree from Pune.
• Initially worked as a Maths teacher. Later started working as a journalist and joined the freedom movement.
• He was one of the founders of the Fergusson College in Pune.
• He died in 1920 aged 64.
Political Life
• Tilak joined the Congress in 1890.
• He was opposed to moderate ways and views and had a more radical and aggressive stance against British rule.
• He was one of the first advocates of Swaraj or self-rule.
• He gave the slogan, “Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it.” He believed that no progress was possible without self-rule.
• He was part of the extremist faction of the INC and was a proponent of boycott and Swadeshi movements.
• He published two papers – Kesari in Marathi and Mahratta in English.
• Along with Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai, he was called the ‘Lal-Bal-Pal’ trio of extremist leaders.
• Tilak re-joined the INC in 1916, after having split earlier.
• He was one of the founders of the All-India Home Rule League, along with Annie Besant and G S Khaparde.
• For his political ideals, Tilak drew heavily from the ancient Hindu scriptures.
• He called for people to be proud of their heritage. He was against the blatant westernisation of society.
• He transformed the simple Ganesh Puja performed at home into a social and public Ganesh festival.
• He used the Ganesh Chaturthi and Shiv Jayanti (birth anniversary of Shivaji) festivals to create unity and a national spirit among the people.
• The Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav as popularised by him since 1894 is still one of the biggest festivals of Maharashtra.
Books Written by Tilak
The two important books are written by Tilak:
• Gita Rahasya
• Arctic Home of the Vedas
Creation and abolition of new districts
GS Paper 2: Functions and Responsibilities of the Union and the States
Important For:
Prelims exam: Creation and abolition of new districts
Mains exam: How creating new districts helps in governance?
Context
The West Bengal cabinet has approved the creation of seven new districts in the state.
Rationale behind creation of new districts
• States keep creating new districts from time to time.
• The idea everywhere is, generally, that smaller units would make governance easier and would benefit the people by bringing the government and the administration closer to them, and making them more accessible.
• Sometimes, the decision to create a new district is driven by local demands.
Who decides on creating or scrapping districts, or changing their boundaries?
• This power lies with the state governments, who can pass a law in the Assembly or simply issue an order and notify it in the gazette.
• The Centre does not have a say in the matter.
What is the centre’s role then?
• The central government does play a role, however, when a change of name of a district or railway station is contemplated.
• The request of the state government in this regard is sent to several central government departments before a no-objection certificate is issued.
Pendency of cases in high courts and representation of women in judiciary
GS Paper 2: Structure, Organization and Functioning of the Executive and the Judiciary
Important For:
Prelims exam: Data Trends
Mains exam: Right to Justice, Women in judiciary
Context
Over 59 lakh cases were pending in the High Courts until July 22, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.
Pendency of cases
• Replying to a question the law minister provided a break-up for a backlog of 59,57,454 cases in 25 High Courts.
• Allahabad High Court has the highest number of pending cases at over 10 lakhs.
• Next are the High Courts of Rajasthan (just over 6 lakh) and Bombay (just under 6 lakh).
Women judges
• The Minister presented the details on women judges.
• The 4 women judges in the Supreme Court are against a sanctioned strength of 34 judges, and the 96 women judges in the High Courts are against a sanctioned strength of 1,108 judges.
• Out of the 96 women judges in the High Courts, one-fourth of them are in Delhi and Madras HCs.
• Five HCs — Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura, Patna, and Uttarakhand — do not have a single woman judge.
Right to Justice:
In Anita kushwaha v. Pushap sudan supreme court held access to justice a facet of right guaranteed under article 14 and 21 of the constitution of India.
Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS)
GS Paper 2: E-governance – applications
Important For:
Prelims exam: CPGRAMS, PRAGATI
Mains exam: Role of CPGRAMS in E-governance
CPGRAMS- cornerstone of Citizen Centric Governance
• The Public Grievance Redressal mechanism in the Government of India operates on a decentralised basis, with the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) at the centre of it.
• Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System is an online platform available to the citizens 24×7 to lodge their grievances to the public authorities on any subject related to service delivery.
• It is a single portal (Pgportal.gov.in) connected to all the Ministries/Departments of Government of India and States.
• Every Ministry and States have role-based access to this system.
• CPGRAMS is also accessible to the citizens through standalone mobile application downloadable through Google Play store and mobile application integrated with UMANG.
• CPGRAMS also provides an appeal facility to the citizens if they are not satisfied with the resolution by the Grievance Officer, which can also be tracked.
Progress so far
• Most grievances from citizens involve excessive delays in making decisions, ranging from months to years.
• The public grievances have increased from 2 lakh in 2014 to more than 22 lakhs at present with more than 95 percent disposal of cases.
• CPGRAMS has reduced the average disposal time to 19 days and it will get further reduced after the Centre on July 27 reduced the time limit for redressal of public grievances from 45 days to 30 days.
Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation (PRAGATI)
PRAGATI is an information and communications technology-based platform for, as the name reveals, pro-active governance and timely implementation.
• It was launched in 2015.
• It is an interactive and integrated platform chiefly for addressing the grievances of the common man, while at the same time, monitoring government projects and programmes/schemes.
• The platform was designed by the PMO in coordination with the National Informatics Centre.
• The chief aims of the PRAGATI platform:
o Project implementation
o Project monitoring
o Grievance redressal
• The platform combines three technologies namely,
o Digital data management
o Video conferencing
o Geo-spatial technology
• The platform also brings together the different secretaries of the GOI and the States’ Chief Secretaries, along with the Prime Minister.
• The PM discusses the issues related to the projects and is also presented with the ground-level situation.
AlphaFold: AI-based Protein Structure Prediction Tool
GS Paper 3: Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, Robotics, Nano-technology, Bio-technology and issues relating to Intellectual Property Rights.
Important For:
Prelims exam: AlphaFold
Why in News
DeepMind, a company based in London and owned by Google, announced that it had predicted the three-dimensional structures of more than 200 million proteins using AlphaFold. This is the entire protein universe known to scientists today.
What is AlphaFold?
• AlphaFold is an AI-based protein structure prediction tool.
• It is based on a computer system called deep neural network.
• Inspired by the human brain, neural networks use a large amount of input data and provides the desired output exactly like how a human brain would.
Other techniques to predict protein structures
• Scientists predict protein structures using x-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, or cryogenic electron microscopy.
How AlphaFold is better than all other techniques?
• These techniques are not just time-consuming, they often take years and are based mainly on trial-and-error methods.
• The development of AlphaFold changes all of that. It is a watershed movement in science and structural biology in particular.
• AlphaFold has already helped hundreds of scientists accelerate their discoveries in vaccine and drug development since the first public release of the database nearly a year back.[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]