Current Affairs – March, 2019

World Consumer Rights Day 2019

March 15 every year is celebrated as World Consumer Rights Day. The theme of the World Consumer Rights Day 2019 is “Trusted Smart Products”.

The theme aims to highlight what consumers want and need from a connected world and how important it is to put them at the heart of the development of these digital products and services.

Genesis of the World Consumer Rights Day

The genesis of the World Consumer Rights Day can be traced to the special message to the US Congress on 15th March 1962 by President John F Kennedy. The special message probably the first formal address about consumer rights by a World Leader. The first World Consumers Day was celebrated at 1983 and since then every year March 15 is celebrated as World Consumers Day.

World Consumers Day aims to highlight that rights of all consumers are respected and protected and to protest against market abuses and social injustices which undermine those rights.

Consumer Rights in India

The Consumer Protection Act 1986 gives 6 basic rights to the consumers:

• Right to choose the product.
• Right to be protected from all kind of hazardous goods.
• Right to be informed about the performance and quality of all products.
• Right to be heard in all decision-making processes related to consumer interests.
• Right to seek redressal, whenever consumer rights have been infringed.
• Right to complete consumer education.

March 15 is observed as World Consumer Rights Day to raise global awareness about consumer rights and needs.

IIT Kharagpur Inks MoU for High Performance Computing Facility & Data Center

IIT Kharagpur has signed an MoU with Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) to set up a 1.3 Petaflop high-performance computing facility and data centre funded under the National Supercomputing Mission.

The new supercomputing system would be used for specific challenge domains like cryptography, chemistry, molecular dynamics, drug discovery, artificial intelligence and data sciences where the new system would be utilized.

PetaFlop

PetaFlop is the measurement of computing power based on the frequency of mathematical calculations that can be done per second.

National Supercomputing Mission

National Supercomputing Mission initiated in 2015 is being implemented and steered jointly by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) at an estimated cost of Rs.4500 crore over a period of seven years.

Objectives of the Mission

• The Mission envisages empowering India’s national academic and R&D institutions spread by installing a vast supercomputing grid comprising of more than 70 high-performance computing facilities.
• To bring supercomputing within the reach of the large Scientific & Technology community in the country.
• To provide a significant qualitative and quantitative improvement in R&D and higher education in the disciplines of Science & Technology.
• To enable the country with a capacity of solving multi-disciplinary grand challenge problems.

The mission envisages installing vast supercomputing grid comprising of over 70 high-performance computing facilities spread across the county.