SESSIONS OF PARLIAMENT

SESSIONS OF PARLIAMENT

Summoning

The president from time to time sumons each House of Parliament to meet. But, the maximum gap between two sessions of Parliament cannot be more than six months. Parliament should meet at least twice a year.

Maurya Court Art

Mauryan Sculpture

The Maurya period is marked by an impressive progress in the Indian sculpture. Dr. Ananda Coomarswamy differentiates the Mauryan sculptures into Court art and the Popular Art. The Court art includes the pillars and their capitals while the popular art includes the works of sculptors such as the Yakshas and Yakshinis. The Yaksha image from Parkam and Yakshini Image from Besnagar are examples of popular art.

CLASSICAL LANGUAGE

According to Article 343, the official language of the India should be Hindi in Devanagari script. As per Eight schedules of the Indian constitution, we have 22 languages. In 2004 it was decided by the Indian Government to proclaim Indian Languages meeting certain requirements as “Classical Language”. 

Criteria 

ü  Extraordinary antiquity of its early transcripts or verified history over a period of 1500-2000 years.

ü  A body of ancient literature or texts, which is considered a valuable heritage by generations of speakers.

ü  The literary tradition should be unique and not hired from another language community.

The classical language and literature being diverse from modern, there may also be a discontinuity among the classical language and its later forms or its sprouts

Classical Languages

ü  In 2004, Government of India declared Tamil as the Classical Language of India.

ü  In 2005, right after Tamil, the government declared Sanskrit as Classical Language of India. These two languages are undeniably parental sources for several languages belonging to the Indo-European family and the Dravidian family of language groups.

ü  The government gave the classical language status to Kannada and Telugu in 2008.

ü  Malayalam was declared as a classical language in 2013 and in 2014, Odiya was also given the status of the Classical language.

Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)

Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)

• Established in 1945 with the objective of eliminating hunger and improving nutrition and standards of living by increasing agricultural productivity.
• Secretariat is located in Rome, Italy.
• Key programmes==> Food Security Programmes, Codex Alimentarius, & International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) etc.

Codex Alimentarius – International Food Standards==> established by FAO and WHO develops harmonized international food standards, guidelines and codes of practice to protect the health of consumers and ensure fair trade practices in the food trade. CAC has recently adopted three Codex standards for black, white and green pepper, cumin and thyme owing to India‘s efforts to benchmark global spices trade.
International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) ==>it aims to protect cultivated and wild plants by preventing the introduction and spread of pests.
Globefish

• Globefish is an unit within the FAO, responsible for information and analysis on international fish trade and markets.

Flagship Publications Every year, FAO publishes a number of major ‘State of the World’ reports related to food, agriculture, forestry, fisheries and natural resources. 1.      State of Agricultural Commodity Markets 2.      State of Food and Agriculture 3.      State of Food Insecurity in the World 4.      State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture 5.      State of the World’s Forest Genetic Resources 6.      State of the World’s Forests 7.      State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture 8.      State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture 9.      State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 10.    Status of the World’s Soil Resources

Globefish‘s flagship reports cover over 14 of the most major traded seafood commodities, including shrimp, tuna, salmon, small pelagics and other species with detailed statistics