1) Carbon Dating: Recently, the Allahabad High Court allowed the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to conduct Carbon Dating of a ‘Shivling‘ inside the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh
Carbon dating is a widely used method to establish the age of organic materials, things that were once living
Living things have carbon in them in various forms. The dating method is based on the fact that Carbon-14 (C-14) is radioactive, and decays at a well-known rate
Plants get their carbon through photosynthesis; animals get it mainly through food. Because plants and animals get their carbon from the atmosphere, they too acquire C-12 and C-14 in roughly the same proportion as is available in the atmosphere
When they die, their interactions with the atmosphere stop. While C-12 is stable, the radioactive C-14 reduces to one half of itself in about 5,730 years — known as its ‘half-life’ which is used to deduce the age of the organism
Carbon dating cannot be applied in all circumstances. It cannot be used to determine the age of non-living things like rocks, for example
Also, the age of things that are more than 40,000-50,000 years old cannot be arrived at through carbon dating
For determining the age of inanimate things, instead of carbon, decays of other radioactive elements that might be present in the material become the basis for the dating method
2) SCO Adopts India’s Proposal to Support DPI: The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has recently adopted India’s proposal to support the development and adoption of the country’s digital public infrastructure (DPI)
DPI refers to blocks or platforms such as digital identification, payment infrastructure and data exchange solutions that help countries deliver essential services to their people, empowering citizens and improving lives by enabling digital inclusion
India, through India Stack, became the first country to develop all three foundational DPIs, Digital identity (Aadhar), Real-time fast payment (UPI) and Account Aggregator built on the Data Empowerment Protection Architecture (DEPA)
3) Protection of Women from Sexual Harassment Act, 2013: In a recent judgment, the Supreme Court expressed concerns about the implementation of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) (PoSH) Act, 2013.
The POSH Act is a legislation enacted by the Government of India in 2013 to address the issue of sexual harassment faced by women in the workplace
The Supreme Court in a landmark judgment in the Vishakha and others v State of Rajasthan 1997 case gave ‘Vishakha guidelines’ which led to the development of PoSH Act
Internal Complaints Committee (ICC): Employers are required to constitute an ICC at each workplace with 10 or more employees to receive and address complaints of sexual harassment
