History, Indian Art & Culture-GS Paper I

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Geography-GS Paper-1

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Social Issues-GS Paper 1

1. 508 districts in country are free of manual scavenging: Ministry report

1. The Union Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry has now said that only 508 of the 766 districts in the country have been declared free of manual scavenging.
   • The scheme for rehabilitation of manual scavengers has now been merged with the NAMASTE scheme for 100% mechanisation of sewer work.
   • The Union Budget for 2023-24 showed ₹100-crore allocation for the NAMASTE scheme and no allocation for the rehabilitation scheme.
   • To incentivise mechanisation, the scheme also provides for capital subsidies for workers willing to mechanise their work and become empanelled with the local body concerned.

Constitution, Polity and Governance- GS Paper II

1. Manipur govt. yet to take stand on adding Meiteis to ST list
2. The Indian polity, a democratic diagnosis

1. As ethnic clashes continue between the Meiteis and the Kuki-Zomi people in Manipur.
2. India, it said, ‘shall be a Union of States’ and the provisions of Part XI of the Constitution would govern the relations between the Union and the States.
   • B.R. Ambedkar had emphasised that the eventual objective of social democracy is a trinity of liberty, equality and fraternity, best achieved through the effective functioning of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.
     • These foundational principles were spelt out in the Preamble of the Constitution and were reinforced by the Supreme Court of India in the Basic Structure doctrine.
   • Challenge was in effective functioning of the principal ingredients
   • Progressive decline in its functioning year-wise, session-wise and decade-wise.
   • Parliament has lost its effectiveness as an instrument of scrutiny, accountability and oversight.

Social Justice: Education, Health and Human Resource-GS Paper II

1. NCB arrests six after huge haul of LSD and marijuana

1. Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB)
   • LSD, a psychedelic drug

International Relations-GS Paper II

1. Submarine deal can be a flagship project, says German Minister
2. Why is there trouble in Kosovo again?
3. China overtakes the U.S. in scientific research output

1. India and Germany discussed the progress of a deal for the procurement of six advanced conventional submarines by the Indian Navy under Project-75I.
2. In the aftermath of one of the worst escalation of tensions between Kosovo and Serbia in at least a decade, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) last week sent 700 more of its peacekeeping troops to Kosovo.
   • Both Kosovo and Serbia lie in the Balkans, a region of Europe made up of countries that were once a part of the erstwhile Republic of Yugoslavia.
   • Kosovo, a former province of Serbia, unilaterally declared Independence in 2008 and is recognised as a country by about 100 nations including the U.S. and a number of EU-member countries.
   • Serbia, however, does not recognise Kosovo’s sovereignty and continues to consider it as a part of itself despite having no administrative control over it.
   • Serbia lost Kosovo for 500 years to the Ottoman Empire in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo. During the Ottoman Rule, the ethnic and religious balance shifted in Kosovo, leading it to become a majority ethnic Albanian region with Muslims.
   • After five centuries of Ottoman rule, Kosovo became part of Serbia in the early 20th century and post the Second World War, it was eventually made a province (with autonomy) of Serbia, which was then one of the six republics of Yugoslavia.
   • Currently, an ethnic Serb minority of more than 50,000 resides in multiple municipalities in the northern part of Kosovo bordering Serbia, making up about 5.3% of the country’s population.
   • The Kosovo Serbs do not recognise Kosovo state institutions, receive pay and benefits from Serbia’s budget, and pay no taxes either to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo or Belgrade, the Serbian Capital.
   • Kosovo cannot become a member country of the UN without Serbia’s approval as it has its diplomatic allies in Russia and China who would veto such a decision.
3. For a long time, the U.S. led the world in the number of scientific research papers published and the number of citations that these papers racked up.
   • China was found to have overtaken the U.S. on a metric designed to capture quality as well: the number of researchers or institutions whose papers received the most citations for papers in the 82 natural science journals tracked by Nature Index.
   • India stood fifth on this list.
   • China upped its focus on science and technology and investments in it in 1976, as part of the ‘Four Modernizations’ programme.
     • By 2015, it was spending 2.07% of its GDP on R&D.
     • In 2018, it had more than 4 million scientific researchers within its borders — the world’s highest — making the quantity of papers unsurprising.
     • A notable feature of China’s rise is the ‘Thousand Talents’ programme it launched in 2010. It incentivised accomplished research scholars to move to China, where they could receive large one-time bonuses, special research funds, priorities on grants, privileges on their visas (if they weren’t Chinese), and help with housing.
   • While China is well in the lead on patents filed, India is fourth.

Indian Economic Development-GS Paper III

1. Seeing India’s energy transition through its States

1. India’s global climate pledges — 50% non-fossil electricity generation capacity by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2070 — are backed by domestic energy targets at the national level.
   • India’s achievements on its 2022 target for 175 GW renewable energy offer some insights into the complexities.
   • States are critical actors in India’s energy transition as there is a multi-tier governance of energy production and usage.
   • About 80% of the current renewable energy capacity is confined to Six states in the west and south of India.
   • In a federal setting, States matter for four functions critical to energy transition.
     • First, States as spheres of implementation are critical to the realisation of national targets.
     • Second, the legacy issues in the electricity sector, such as high losses, unreliable supply and service quality, if left addressed, could be exacerbated by the transition.
     • Third, States as laboratories of policy innovations have been instrumental to India’s energy transition. PM KUSUM is an adoption of successful State experiments on the solarisation of agriculture at a national scale.
     • Fourth, States could also be roadblocks to national goals, particularly when the goals are perceived to be misaligned with State priorities.

Science and Technology- GS Paper III

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Biodiversity and Environment, Disaster Management- GS Paper III

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Security: Internal and External- GS Paper III

1. Indigenous heavyweight torpedo successfully tested

1. The Navy test-fired an indigenously designed and developed heavyweight torpedo, Varunastra
   • The mainstay of anti-submarine torpedo for all Naval warships
   • replace the older torpedoes on all naval ships that can fire a heavyweight torpedo
   •  a ship-launched anti-submarine torpedo and was designed and developed by the Naval Science and Technological Laboratory in Visakhapatnam under the Defence Research and Development Organisation.

Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude-GS Paper IV

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