64th National Film Awards: Akshay Kumar wins best actor for Rustom, best Hindi film is Neerja 64th National Awards:

64th National Film Awards: Akshay Kumar wins best actor for Rustom, best Hindi film is Neerja
64th National Awards: As the National Awards were announced today, Akshay Kumar emerged as the best actor while Neerja was the best Hindi film.
Akshay Kumar won his first National Film Award for his role in Rustom, a courtroom drama inspired by the 1959 Nanavati case, while Sonam Kapoor’s Neerja won the Best Hindi Film at the 64th National Film Awards announced on Friday. The Best Film award went to Marathi film Kasaav and Rajesh Mapuskar will be honoured as the Best Director for his Marathi film Ventilator. The film was produced by Priyanka Chopra. Akshay played the role a patriotic naval officer in the movie, who ends up in jail after killing the lover of his wife. The movie was directed by Tinu Suresh Desai. The jury, headed by filmmaker Priyadarshan, chose Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Pink, a female-centric courtroom drama, as the best film on social issues. Surabhi C M was named as the best actress for her role in Malayalam film Minnaminungu-The Firefly. Along with Neerja winning, Sonam also got a special mention from the jury. The movie is based on airhostess Neerja Bhanot, who displayed utmost courage to deal with armed terrorists and sacrificed her life to save others. Adil Hussain for Mukti Bhawan and Kadvi Hawa also got special mentions. Best Kannada film was won by Reservation while Best Marathi Film award went to Dashakriya. Best Gujarati Film goes to Wrong Side Raju and Best Tamil Film Goes went to Joker by Raju Murugan.
Here is the complete list of 64th National Film Award winners
Best Actor is Akshay Kumar for film Rustom
Best Actress is Surabhi CM for Minnaminunge
Best Film is Kasav
Best Director is Rajesh Mapuskar for Ventilator
Best Film on Social Issues is Pink
Best Supporting Actor is Manoj Joshi for Dashkriya
Best Supporting Actress is Zaira Wasim for Dangal
Best Environmental Film is ‘The Tiger who crossed the line’
Best Hindi Feature Film is Neerja, directed by Ram Madhvani
Best Marathi Film is Dashakriya
Best Kannada Film is Reservation
Best Bengali Film is Bisarjan
Best Children Film is Dhanak
Special Mention Award for The Eyes of Darkness
Best VFX to Ajay Devgn’s Shivaay
Indira Gandhi Award for debut director for Khalifa (Bengali)
Best Action Director and Stunt Choreographer to Peter Haines for Pulimurugan
Best Editing and Sound Mixing Award for Priyanka Chopra’s Ventilator
Best Female Playback Singer is Tumi Jake Bhalobaso by Iman Chakraborty
Best Animation Award goes to Mahayoddha Rama
Best Production Design has been won by Tamil film 24Nargis Dutt Award for best Feature film award on national integration went to Dikchow Banat Palaax, (Assamese film)
Best Popular film providing wholesome entertainment: Sathmanam Bhavathi
Best book on cinema was won by Lata Surgatha — a book that narrates the story of legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar. G Dhananjayan was selected as the Best Movie Critic. Uttar Pradesh was announced as the Most Film Friendly state by the jury. Special mention to the state of Jharkhand on jury’s recommendation.

What is Tomahawk Land Attack Missile?

What is Tomahawk Land Attack Missile?
The Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAM) was used by the United States to attack a Syrian airfield on Friday.
The Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAM) used by the United States to attack a Syrian airfield are all-weather, long range, subsonic cruise missiles. They are used primarily for land attack warfare and launched from ships as well as submarines. Depending on the variant their range could be between 1500 km and 2500 km.
The Tomahawk missiles can carry both nuclear and conventional payloads. For instance, the conventional, land-attack, variant can have a 1,000-pound-class warhead while the submunitions dispenser variant could hold 166 combined-effects bomblets.
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Designed to fly at very low altitudes at subsonic speeds, these missiles use mission tailored guidance systems to evade detection. Deployed first for the 1991 Operation Desert Storm, the missile has been used in several conflicts since.
In 1995, UK became the first foreign country to acquire 65 of these missiles.
Built by Raytheon Systems Company the Tomahawk missiles have been in existence since 1984, with variants in 1994 and 2004. Each unit costs nearly $569,000 and propelled by Williams International F107 cruise turbo-fan engine. They are between 5.56 and 6.25 meters long with a 51.81 cm diameter and 2.67 meters wingspan. They weigh between 1,315.44 kg and 1,587.6 kg depending on the payload. The missiles can hit speeds of up to 880 km/h and have a maximum range of 2500 km.
Also read | US strikes Syria air base, says it’s in response to chemical weapons attack by Assad regime
The Tomahawk Block IV (TLAM-E), the latest version of the missile, comes with “increased flexibility utilising two-way satellite communications to reprogram the missile in-flight”, option to change mission en route and live missile health and status messages during the flight. They also offer faster launch timelines, mission planning capability on the launch platform as well as the ability to loiter in the target area before striking.

Geotagging of assets created under RKVY

Geotagging of assets created under RKVY

1.    What is geo tagging?

·         Geotagging- It is the process of adding geographical identification like latitude and longitude to various media such as a photo or video. Geotagging can help users find a wide variety of location-specific information from a device. It provides users the location of the content of a given picture.

·         Geomapping-a  visual representation of the geographical location of geotagged assets  layered on top of map or satellite imagery

2.             Why is Geotagging important?

·       Several assets are created in the states under various schemes of the Ministry of Agriculture.  Under RKVY also, states have been utilising substantial amount of funds for creation of infrastructure/assets in agriculture and allied sectors such as soil testing labs, pesticide testing labs,  bio fertiliser setting units, custom hiring centres,  vaccine production units , veterinary diagnosis labs , dispensaries , milk collection centres , fish production units, godowns, cold storage, shade nets, pandals for vegetable cultivation   etc. Monitoring of such wide spread activities is of paramount importance to states and Government of India to understand flow of funds, inventorising the assets, bringing in transparency, planning of assets for future, and finally informing the farmers about the facilities available.

·       PM on several occasions emphasised on use of technology for reporting of assets created through geo-tagging (example: drought review meeting held on 14/ 05/2016).Finance Minister also highlighted monitoring of MGNREGA assets through Geotagging in his budget speech.

·       Geotagging for monitoring of assets is already started in Ministry of Rural Development for MGNREGA and Department of Land Resources for monitoring of watershed activities in the states. Postal department has also geotagged the post offices using NRSC Bhuvan Platform.

3.             Who does it?

·           National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) , ISRO at  Hyderabad : This  centre of ISRO has a software platform, Bhuvan that allows users to explore a 2D/3D representation of the surface of the Earth. It also acts as a platform for hosting government data. Bhuvan Application Services that are diversified and relevant for many ministries were released.

·            NRSC is involved in mapping of resources (Postal, GAIL, Forest etc) as well as monitoring of assets created under various schemes of Ministry of water Resources, Ministry of rural development etc.

·       The assets created under RKVY could be monitored by Geotagging them using BHUVAN, a geoplatforn of National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) of ISRO, Hyderabad. In future, the location of the infrastructure created and distances from each other could also be utilised for arriving at distribution of assets and optimum number of that particular asset required in a district or state.  The process involves development of a mobile app for mapping the assets through photographs and Geo-tagging (providing geo co-ordinates) before hosting on to DAC –RKVY platform that would be specially created for RKVY monitoring.

Proposal for geotagging of infrastructure /assets created under RKVY:

·         Therefore, it is proposed to prepare inventory of the assets created in the last one decade (2007-2017) under RKVY through Geotagging technique.  National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), wing of Indian Space Research Organisation is providing technical support to RKVY division and has come up with a detailed procedure for the same. The institute is involved in preparation of the required app, imparting training to the states etc..The trained officers at the field level will take the photographs (with details of latitude, longitude, year of creation etc.) of the assets and upload on to the Bhuvan-RKVY platform of NRSC.

·         So far NRSC has developed RKVY app, training manual, imparted training to 17 states regarding use of the app. The organisation will provide technical backstopping till the Geotagging exercise is completed. Pilot work has been initiated in 4 sattes of Orissa, Maharashtra, Bihar and Karnataka.  

·         A formal MoU is proposed  to be signed between DAC&FW and NRSC regarding use of BHUVAN for launching BHUVAN-RKVY platform. It is proposed to sign the MoU on 6^th April .Minsters of Agriculture, Department of Science, Secretary (DAC&FW), Director ISRO, Director NRSA and other senior officers from both the sides are expected to be present during the ceremony.

Nasa’s Cassini spacecraft to dive inside Saturn’s rings for mission finale

Nasa to send its Cassini probe into the unexplored region between Saturn and its rings for a scientific grand finale before the spacecraft’s suicidal plunge into the planet

Nasa is preparing to send its long-lived Cassini probe into the unexplored region between Saturn and its rings for a scientific grand finale before the spacecraft’s suicidal plunge into the planet, space officials said on Tuesday.

Since arriving at Saturn in July 2004, Cassini has been exploring the giant planet and its entourage of 62 known moons, including enigmatic Titan, believed by scientists to resemble an early Earth, and the ocean-bearing moon Enceladus, which is shooting ice particles out into space.

To avoid any chance that hitchhiking Earth microbes still alive on Cassini could contaminate any potential living organisms on Enceladus, Nasa plans to crash the spacecraft, which is running out of fuel, into Saturn on 15 September.

But before its demise, Cassini has one last mission. On 22 April, Cassini will make a final pass by Titan and use the moon’s gravity to slingshot itself into a new orbit that passes inside the 1,200-mile (1,930-km) wide gap between the edge of Saturn’s atmosphere and its inner-most rings.

Nasa is hoping Cassini will survive long enough for 22 dives inside the rings, revealing details about the their age and composition. But if a ring particle hits Cassini, it could bring the mission to an premature end because the spacecraft will be travelling at more than 70,000 miles per hour (112,654 kph).

“At those speeds, even a tiny particle can do damage,” Cassini flight engineer Joan Stupik, with Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told reporters during a news conference on Nasa TV.

Scientists hope to learn if the rings are as old as Saturn itself — roughly 4.6 billion years of age — or if they formed later after a passing comet or moon was shredded by the planet’s tremendous gravity.

During the close ring encounters, Cassini also will study Saturn’s atmosphere and take measurements to determine the size of the rocky core believed to exist at the centre of the gigantic ball of gas that accounts for most of its size.

However long Cassini lasts, “the grand finale will be spectacular,” said project scientist Linda Spilker, also with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“We’re flying in a region that has never been explored before,” she said. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if some of the discoveries we make with Cassini during the grand finale are the best of the mission

Ganges clean-up in a shambles, Narendra Modi intervenes

India’s $3 billion plan to clean the Ganges is badly behind schedule with large stretches contaminated by toxic waste and sewage, forcing PM Narendra Modi to intervene

India’s $3 billion plan to clean the Ganges river is badly behind schedule with large stretches contaminated by toxic waste and sewage, forcing Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene, according to government officials and documents seen by Reuters.

Much of the money allocated to the project, a flagship initiative for the Modi government, remains unspent, say officials from National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), a government body overseeing the project.

In one slide of a presentation to a top Modi aide in late January, NMCG officials marked almost the entire length of the river within three big circles to highlight “pollution in river Ganga”.

A 2018 deadline to clean the river is “impossible”, one NMCG official said. “If we want to meet the 2018 deadline, we should have commissioned plants to treat half the sewage already,” he said, requesting anonymity, because he is not authorised to speak on the record.

Over three-quarters of the sewage generated in the towns and cities of India’s crowded northern plains flows untreated into the 2,525km Ganges, according to the presentation, which has not been made public.

State administrations have struggled to find land for new treatment plants, while complex tendering processes have put bidders off pitching for new clean-up projects, officials said.

The Ganges is worshipped by Hindus, who make up about 80% of India’s 1.3 billion people.

Recognising that the clean-up mission is in a shambles, Modi has decided to take personal control, a senior NMCG official said. The clean-up drive is important as Modi wants to show tangible improvement before the next election in 2019.

His principal secretary, Nripendra Misra, has met NMCG officials almost monthly since November, demanding to see updates on the project’s progress, the NMCG official said. Misra did not respond to messages and calls seeking comment.

Modi, voted to power in 2014, committed $3.06 billion for the clean-up in the five years to 2020 but the January presentation showed just $205 million had been spent between April 2015 and March 2017.

Water resources minister, Uma Bharti, who is responsible for overseeing the clean-up and announced the 2018 deadline, did not respond to requests for comment.

“I have lost hope,” said Rakesh Jaiswal, head of a small Ganges-focused environmental group in the industrial city of Kanpur since 1993. “There has been nothing on the ground.”

Sewage, pollution

India’s top environmental court in February ruled “not a single drop of the Ganga has been cleaned so far”, accusing the government of wasting public money.

The river stretches from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal and is a water source for 400 million people. But it is also the destination for waste produced by 760 industrial units described by the NMCG as “grossly polluting”.

In addition, the NMCG presentation showed, about 4,800 million litres of sewage from 118 towns and cities flows into the Ganges every day. The functioning capacity to treat sewage is 1,017 million litres per day (MLD).

According to official data, the Modi administration has cleared the construction of plants to treat an additional 933 MLD, and the rehabilitation of existing plants with a capacity to clean an additional 1,091 MLD.

Of these, plants treating less than 160 MLD have been completed, but it is unclear if they have started operations. The problems are striking in Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh state: toxic pollution from tanneries operating in the industrial city flows down slum-lined open sewers into the Ganges.

Of the 456 tanneries in the state that back onto the river, most of them in Kanpur, authorities have shut down just 14, according to the government presentation.

The government has also lagged on the simpler tasks of cleaning the ghats, the riverside steps where devotees assemble to bathe, and the sites on the banks where bodies are cremated.

Of the 182 ghats to be modernised, work on only 50 has started. Of 118 crematoria, just 15 are currently being renovated, with work awarded for another 31, the presentation showed.

“The situation has deteriorated every year, fewer people visit now and there are no prayers at this river bank,” said Ram Das, a Hindu priest at a riverside temple.

Modi takes control

Modi may find it easier to launch new clean-up projects in Uttar Pradesh, through which the longest stretch of the Ganges flows, after his party wrested power from an opposition party in a state election last month.

Uttar Pradesh’s new chief minister Yogi Adityanath has long championed cleaning the Ganges. Last week he inspected a riverfront development along a Ganges tributary, calling for work to be accelerated.

“You will see improvements. We have asked the states to speed up progress and money is not an issue,” said C. V. Dharma Rao, deputy director general at the NMCG in New Delhi.

On a recent evening at a ghat in Kanpur city, workers were fixing sandstone around the steps that led down to the Ganges, one of dozens of riverfront facelifts that the government has launched.

But the state of the river was unchanged—black water, full of plastic and other waste thrown by devotees, flowed slowly as mosquitoes buzzed above.

How Rail Development Authority will change the Indian Railways landscape

Rail Development Authority will help the Indian Railways take decisions on pricing of services, consumer interests, generating revenue and competition, among others

The Cabinet on Wednesday evening flagged off a major reform in Indian Railways, by allowing the formation of an independent railway regulator called Rail Development Authority (RDA), with an initial corpus of Rs50 crore.

The regulatory authority will change the landscape of Indian Railways as it will help the national carrier take decisions on pricing of services commensurate with costs, protect consumer interests, suggest measures for enhancement of non-fare revenue, promote competition and encourage market development, create positive environment for investment, promote efficient resource allocation and benchmarking of service standards, and suggest measures for absorption of new technologies and human resource development.

Until now, reforms in Indian Railways like increase in train tariffs and reduction in the number of railway employees have been withheld due to political reasons.

The need for a rail regulator has been emphasized since 2001 by various committees. The first recommendation for an independent rail regulator came in 2001 when an expert group under the chairmanship of Rakesh Mohan suggested the formation of a regulatory authority to fix rail tariffs. Later, several railway committees suggested a Railway Tariff Development Authority. The most recent recommendation for RDA came through the National Transport Development Policy Committee (NTDPC) in 2014 and Bibek Debroy’s Committee in 2015.

In Railway Budget 2015-16, minister for railways Suresh Prabhu had announced that for the purpose of orderly development of infrastructure enabling competition and protection of customer interest, it is important to have a regulation mechanism independent of the service provider. Further, it was proposed to set up a mechanism for making regulations, setting performance standards and determining tariff.

Functions of RDA

The railway regulator will work within the parameters of the Railway Act, 1989. Here is what it will do:

• Tariff determination: The regulator will frame principles, recommend tariffs, principles for classification of commodities, frame principles for social service obligation and guidelines for track access charges on dedicated freight corridors.

• Ensuring fair play: The Railway Board has been often accused of bias. The regulatory body will ensure level-playing field for all stakeholders. It will help propose modifications and send suggestions or advisory notes on investment in railways by the Indian Railways, make suggestions regarding policies for private investment to ensure reasonable safeguards to PPP investors and to resolve disputes regarding future concession agreements.

• Setting standards: It will help set efficiency and performance standards, and disseminate information in line with global best practices and benchmarking.

Constitution of RDA

The RDA will have a chairman and three members with a fixed term of five years each. They can be removed by the Central government only on certain grounds, including insolvency, conviction, misbehaviour, physical and mental incapability.

The organisation will be set up with an initial corpus of Rs50 crore and can engage experts from relevant areas for assistance.

It will be an independent body with a separate budget. The independence is ensured through provision of a separate budget, and the appointment and removal process.

The Central government will appoint the chairman and members by choosing from a panel of names recommended by the search and selection committee consisting of cabinet secretary as chairman, chairman railway board, secretary of department of personnel and training and chairman of any regulatory body of the Central government nominated by the cabinet secretary.

GDP is a flawed but magical indicator

All the back and forth about how GDP is calculated is only possible because despite all the flaws, the measure somehow ends up feeling right

Economists have long argued that the gross domestic product has many flaws as a measure of well-being and policy success. Yet there’s a good reason it’s still being used: There’s a certain magic to it, despite its science being somewhat iffy.

On Monday, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a paper by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein detailing an argument he has been making for years—that GDP calculations underestimate actual growth and productivity. This optimistic argument is based on the difficulty of measuring changes in the quality of products and services, and therefore of life. Feldstein points out, for example, that official measurements, for the most part, only catch quality improvements if a product or service requires more expensive inputs: “If it doesn’t cost more to produce a product or service this year than it did last year, there has been no improvement.”

That way, for example, leaps in the quality of healthcare—when a patient who used to need a week in hospital to recover from a cataract operation is now discharged on the day of the procedure—are not measured. The way official statistics measure the introduction of new products, too, doesn’t account for their actual contribution to consumers’ well-being or to the economy as a whole.

According to Feldstein, government messaging should be more optimistic to make sure people understand that their savings will buy more in the future. Goods and services are improving lives more than price increases would indicate.

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has long held the opposite view—that the GDP as measured today may overestimate well-being. For example, it counts any increase in government spending as positive, even though these increases may be inefficient or even counterproductive.

And as for those improvements in healthcare quality that form the basis of Feldstein’s argument, they, too, can be overestimated in the US because healthcare spending there is higher than other countries while the outcomes are the same or worse.

Some recent work also argues against the theory, supported by Feldstein, that the recent productivity slowdown is due to a failure of measurement. Last year, Chad Syverson of the University of Chicago pointed out that even the most generous estimates of the value added by the growth in digital technology aren’t big enough to bring productivity growth to its pre-2004 trajectory.

Another analysis by International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist Marshall Reinsdorf found that their unmeasured effect on productivity could only be small. Statistics fail to record some of the added value because of the tech sector’s use of tax havens, he wrote. But even the “free” Internet services provided now are counted through the advertising they attract. And some of the improvements that tech created for consumers don’t belong in the GDP calculation in the first place: If they save a user some personal time, that stays in the home and doesn’t affect economic activity (even if it did, it might be cancelled out by the time our digital addictions take out of our productive workday).

All the back and forth about how GDP is calculated is only possible because despite all the flaws, the measure somehow ends up feeling right. The distortions often end up cancelling themselves out.

In 2013, Nicholas Oulton of the London School of Economics’ Center for Economic Performance wrote a paper to disprove the notion that the UK’s economic growth had been overestimated because official calculations overstated the contribution of banking to GDP. He showed that “if banking output has been overstated, then the output of some other industry or industries must have been understated”.

Earlier this year, a team of IMF economists attempted to figure out how GDP numbers would have changed for a number of developed countries had they used an outdated deflation method, still used by China and India. It turned out that the effects wouldn’t have been consistently negative or positive for most countries; for Western European countries, on aggregate, the effects would have been small.

The team’s recommendation was that more countries adopt the more progressive deflation methods now used by most of the G20—but their research made it clear that in some cases the difference in the results would be tiny.

As much as GDP calculation isn’t an exact science, the results usually make sense. That’s why per capita GDP is one of the strongest predictors of happiness measured through people’s subjective perceptions of their well-being.

It’s fine to argue for better measures of well-being. These measures, however, add even harder-to-measure indicators, such as levels of social support, freedom and generosity. For many countries, these data are either unavailable or subjectively coloured.

The choice is between engineering and science: The former will accept an imperfect approximation, while the latter will always strive for perfection.

As Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen recently pointed out, GDP is “a pretty noisy indicator” at best. Yet it remains extremely useful as a reference