• The Prime Minister paid homage to socialist stalwart Acharya JB Kripalani on his birth anniversary (11^th November).
• He was an independence activist, Indian politician and an Educationist.

ABOUT J B KRIPLANI

• Full name- Jiwatram Bhagwandas (J.B.) Kripalani
• Born on 11^th November 1888 in Hyderabad, Sindh.
• He accompanied Mahatma Gandhiji in his campaign in Champaran movement.
• He was part of the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-22) and the Civil Disobedience movement and Quit India Movement (1942).
• He earned the moniker ‘Acharya’ around 1922 when he was teaching at the Gujarat Vidyapith( which was founded by the Mahatma Gandhi)
• He was the President of Indian National Congress (INC) at the time of independence.
• He served in the Interim government of India (1946–1947).
• He was the Chairman of Fundamental Rights subcommittee in the Constituent Assembly of India.
• He was the founder of the Praja Socialist Party (PSP).
• He moved the first-ever No confidence motion in Lok Sabha in 1963, immediately after the India-China War (1962).

• National Education Day is celebrated every year on November 11 across India to mark the birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad who was the first education minister of independent India.
• The National Education Day 2023 theme is “Embracing Innovation.”

ABOUT MAULANA AZAD

• Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin Ahmed bin Khairuddin Al-Hussaini Azad was born on November 18, 1888.
• He was a freedom fighter, educationist, scholar and senior leader of the Indian National Congress.
• Also called Maulana Azad, he was a key architect of Independent India.
• He was responsible for setting up the top education bodies including the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the University Grants Commission (UGC).
• Maulana Abul Kalam Azad also established the first Indian Institute of Technology – IIT Kharagpur.
• The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), Sahitya Academy, Lalit Kala Academy, Sangeet Natak Academy and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) were also set up under his guidance.
• He served as the education minister from August 15, 1947 to February 2, 1958 and passed away in Delhi on February 22, 1958.
• The Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) had announced on September 11, 2008 about observing the day as National Education Day across the country.
• Maulana Azad was posthumously awarded India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna in 1992.

• The World Science Day for Peace and Development is celebrated annually on November 10^th.
• It is a day to acknowledge the role of science in society and highlights the significant role of involving the public in debates surrounding the effects of new scientific innovations and to create awareness among people.
• The theme for 2023 is Building Trust in Science.
• The origin of World Science Day for Peace and Development is linked to the positive outcomes that emanated from the 1999 World Conference on Science in Budapest, Hungary.
• These achievements led UNESCO to formally declare the celebration of this day in 2001.

• The Hanle and Merak observatories in Ladakh spotted a phenomenon uncommon in India — an intense red aurora.
  • Auroras are patterns of bright lights in the sky that are seen when particles ejected by the Sun interact with the magnetic field around the Earth.
  • The phenomenon is usually visible closer to the poles.
• Hanle is an ideal place to observe the phenomenon as it is India’s only dark sky reserve — an area where special measures are taken to reduce artificial light pollution.
  • It is located 4500 metres above sea level.
• Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO), operated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, used an All-sky Camera to capture this extraordinary event.
• The red-coloured auroral activity, an unusual spectacle was attributed to a Stable Auroral Red (SAR) event, a rare atmospheric phenomenon that paints the sky in vivid shades of red, contrasting the more common green and blue curtains of light typically associated with auroras at higher latitudes.
  • The SAR event was triggered by a geomagnetic storm, a major disturbance of Earth’s magnetosphere caused by a solar storm.

• Minister of Cooperation recently launched the ‘Bharat Organics’ brand of the newly created National Cooperative Organics Ltd (NCOL) and asserted that it will emerge as the most “trusted” brand in India and abroad.

• NCOL’s logo, website and brochure were also launched.
• Initially, NCOL will sell the organic products in India and later will market in other countries.

ABOUT NCOL

• NCOL has been established under the Multi State Cooperative Societies Act, 2002.
  • NCOL is one of the three new cooperatives the government has set up recently.
  • The other two cooperatives work in the field of certified seeds and exports.
• National Dairy Development Board is the chief promoter.
• NCOL aims to cover the entire supply chain of organic products through cooperative networks by undertaking various activities like aggregation, certification, production, testing, procurement, storage, processing, branding, packaging, labeling, marketing, etc for the ultimate benefit of farmer members.

CURRENT STATUS

• Organic agriculture is practiced in 190 countries on 749 lakh hectares of land and India ranks 4th globally in organic agricultural land and first in number of producers as per 2020 data.
• India has 27 lakh hectares of land under certified organic certification, including cultivable and wild harvest areas.
• The country produced 29 lakh tonnes of certified organic products in 2022-23, as per the official data.

• Under the scheme notified by government on January 31, 2013, any company registered under Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956, can form an electoral trust.
• Under Section 17CA of the Income-tax Act, 1961, any citizen of India, a company registered in India, or a firm or Hindu Undivided Family or association of persons living in India, can donate to an electoral trust.
• The electoral trusts have to apply for renewal every three financial years.
• They must donate 95% of contributions received in a financial year to political parties registered under the Representation of the People Act, 1951.
• The contributors’ PAN (in case of a resident) or passport number (in case of an NRI) is required at the time of making contributions.
• The electoral trusts route is transparent on contributors and beneficiaries.
• Where there is only one contributor and one beneficiary of a particular trust, the public can know for sure who is funding whom.

• Scientists have discovered a black hole that is 10 times larger than the one in our Milky Way galaxy and also the oldest one.
  • Black holes are very dense objects with such intense gravity that even light cannot escape, if it strays too close.
  • They are formed when massive stars die or there is a direct collapse of gases.
• The new black hole is a record breaker: the most distant yet observed in X-rays.
• These new findings confirmed the claims that there were super-massive black holes existed at the dawn of the universe.

• NASA’s James Webb Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory teamed up over the past year to make the observations.
• They used a technique called gravitational lensing to magnify the region of space where this galaxy, UHZ1, and its black hole are located.
• The age of this black hole can be estimated to be around 13.2 billion years, considering the universe’s age to be 13.7 billion years.
  • Thus it dates back to 470 million years after the Big Bang.

• World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) recently released its annual World Intellectual Property Indicators (WIPI) report.

MAJOR FINDINGS

• In 2022, global patenting activity surged to a new record high, getting fillip by Indian and Chinese innovators as well as powered by increased levels of innovation, entrepreneurship and digitalisation in these countries.
• As per the report, innovators from around the world submitted 3.5 million patent applications in 2022, marking a third consecutive year of growth.
• Asia accounted for 9 per cent, 67.8 per cent and 70.3 per cent of global patent, trademarks and industrial designs filing activity in 2022.
  • The largest rise in filings was reported from India.
• The largest number of patents globally was in computer technology (11.1%), followed by electrical machinery (6.4%), measurement (5.8%), medical technology (5.2%) and digital communication (4.9%).

INDIA SPECIFIC

• Patent applications by residents of India grew by 31.6% in 2022, extending an 11-year run of growth unmatched by any other country among the top 10 filers.
• For the first time, there were more patents filed by Indian residents as against foreign filers, indicating at the country’s fast growing innovation ecosystem.
• In absolute terms, India accounts for the sixth largest number of patent applications globally.
  • China is by far the largest followed by the US, Japan, South Korea and European Union.

ABOUT WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ORGANISATION (WIPO)

• The World Intellectual Property Organisation or WIPO is a global body for the promotion and protection of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).
• It serves as a global forum for information, cooperation, policy, and services related to intellectual property (IP).
• Headquarters- Geneva, Switzerland
• It is a self-funding agency of the United Nations having 193 member states.
  • India became a member in 1975.

• The first edition of the India Finance Report was published by the Centre for Advanced Financial Research and Learning (CAFRAL).

• Its theme is “Connecting the Last Mile: Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) in India”.

MAJOR FINDINGS

• It has taken stock of India’s non-bank financial companies sector — commonly called the shadow banking sector — and pointed out both the ongoing improvements and emerging risks.
• After the liquidity crisis of 2018 and the Covid pandemic, the NBFC sector has improved, along all dimensions — capital position, asset quality, and profitability.
• Monetary Policy Transmission through NBFCs is strong but delayed.
• UPI usage has exponentially increased since its inception in 2016, with its growth outpacing all other modes of digital payments.
  • A 10% increase in per capita UPI transactions usually leads to a 4.6 per cent rise in fintech lending and 1.5 per cent in lending by commercial banks.
  • There were over 8.68 billion transactions per month on the UPI network, with over 300 million unique users and close to 400 participating banks, as of March 2023

ABOUT UPI

• Launched in 2016, UPI allows an instant, real-time payment network and is operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
• The payment system is built as an “interoperable protocol”, which allows third-party vendors to build apps to provide payments as a service.

ABOUT CAFRAL

• CAFRAL is an independent body set up by the Reserve Bank of India in 2011.
• It is a not-for-profit organisation that promotes research in the finance, macroeconomics, and public policy.

• World Health Organisation recently released the Global TB Report.

MAJOR FINDINGS

• There was a major global recovery in the number of people diagnosed with TB and treated in 2022, after two years of COVID-related disruptions
• TB still remains the world’s second leading cause of death from a single infectious agent.
• Global TB targets have either been missed or remain off track.
• The net reduction from 2015 to 2022 was 8.7%, far from the WHO End TB Strategy milestone of a 50% reduction by 2025.
• The reported global number of people newly diagnosed with TB was 5 million in 2022.
• TB caused an estimated 1.30 million deaths in 2022.

INDIA SPECIFIC FINDINGS

• India carried the highest burden of tuberculosis (TB ) cases in the world in 2022, the report said.
• Around 87% of the world’s total cases in 2022 emerged from 30 high TB-burden countries, with two-third of the cases registered from eight countries.
  • India with 27 per cent ranked highest, followed by Indonesia (10 per cent), China (7.1 per cent), the Philippines (7 per cent), Pakistan (5.7 per cent), Nigeria (4.5 per cent), Bangladesh (3.6 per cent) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (3 per cent).
• In India, 8 million cases of TB were registered and of them, 342,000 people (12 per cent) died due to the disease, the report said.
• The “net decrease in TB-related deaths from 2015 to 2022 was 19 per cent, falling far short of the WHO End TB Strategy milestone of a 75 percent reduction by 2025”.

HEALTH MINISTRY RESPONSE

• India’s efforts have resulted in the reduction of TB incidence by 16 per cent from 2015 to 2022, almost double the pace at which global TB incidence is declining, which is 8.7 per cent.
• TB mortality has also reduced by 18% during the same period in India.

ABOUT TUBERCULOSIS

• Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
• The most common affected organs ones are lungs, pleura (lining around the lungs), lymph nodes, intestines, spine, and brain.
• It is spread through inhaling tiny droplets from the coughs or sneezes of an infected person.
• Symptoms include cough with sputum and blood at times, chest pains, weakness, weight loss, fever and night sweats.

TYPES

• Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is a form of TB caused by bacteria that do not respond to isoniazid and rifampicin, the 2 most powerful, first-line anti-TB drugs.
  • It is treatable and curable by using second-line drugs such as Bedaquiline.
• Extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) is a more serious form of MDR-TB caused by bacteria resistant to isoniazid and rifampin, plus any fluoroquinolone and at least one of three injectable second-line drugs.
• Totally drugresistant tuberculosis (TDR-TB): Resistant to all first- and secondline TB drugs.