current affairs 23 March 2022

Indian Economist Jayati Ghosh named as member of UN’s Advisory Board.

The United Nations (UN) Secretary General Antonio Guterres has announced the appointment of Indian development economist Jayati Ghosh as a member of UN’s newly established Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism.
The 12-member high-level advisory board on effective multilateralism will be co-chaired by former Liberian president and Nobel laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former Swedish prime minister Stefan Lofven.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has established a new interdisciplinary water management and policy centre called AquaMAP to solve water problems in India.
The AquaMAP was inaugurated at IIT Madras by Prof. K. Vijay Raghavan, the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, on March 19, 2022.
He also launched the website of AquaMAP– https://aquamap.iitm.ac.in/
Ligy Philip, department of Civil Engineering, IIT Madras, and dean (planning), IIT Madras, is the principal investigator of AquaMAP.
AquaMAP is a national water centre to provide smart solutions for challenging water problems by designing smart and optimal water management practices as a scalable model by leveraging best practices in management and innovative technologies, and implementing them at different locations across the country.

Tokyo Olympic gold medallist Neeraj Chopra has been awarded the Sportstar of the Year (Male) award at the 2022 Sportstar Aces Awards.
In female category, weightlifter Mirabai Chanu received the Sportstar of the Year award.
The Sportstar Aces Awards celebrate the spirit of excellence in sport.
The awards were presented by Byju’s Classes, with IDFC First Bank as the Associate Partner.

Former Indian cricket captain Gundappa Ranganatha Vishwanath has penned his autobiography titled Wrist Assured: An Autobiography, co-authored by senior journalist R Kaushik.
The book traces the cricketing journey of Gundappa Vishwanath who played Test Cricket for India between 1969 and 1986, making 91 appearances and scoring more than 6000 runs.

HDFC Bank has announced to launch the following two initiatives/applications to give a digital push to small business loans.
AutoFirst application: that will offer fully automated auto loans.
SmartHub Vyapar programme– It is an app that bundles all payment platforms – cards, UPI, QR code, tap pay and SMS-based payments. The programme for merchants will be launched soon and is in the pilot phase.