• The deadline for The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha Evam Uttham Mahabhiyan (PM-KUSUM) scheme to install 30,000 MW solar power capacity in rural India by 2022, has now been pushed to 2026 due to Covid- 19.

About PM-KUSUM

• It is a scheme by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy launched in 2019.
• It is aimed at ensuring energy security for farmers in India, along with India’s commitment to increase the share of installed capacity of electric power from non-fossil-fuel sources to 40% by 2030 as part of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).

The Scheme consists of three components:

• Component A:Addition of 10,000 MW of solar capacity through installation of small solar power plants of capacity up to 2 MW. Procurement Based Incentive (PBI) will be provided for the first five years by MNRE to DISCOMs, for buying the power from farmers/developers.
• Component B:Installation of 20 lakh standalone solar powered agricultural pumps.
• Component C:Solarisation of 15 lakh existing Grid-connected Agriculture Pumps.
• Centre’s Assistance of 30%, State Government subsidy 30%; Remaining 40% by the farmer will be provided in component B and C.
• In North Eastern States, Sikkim, J&K, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Lakshadweep and A&N Islands, Centre’s assistance of 50%, State Government subsidy 30%, Remaining 20% by the farmer.

Expected Outcomes

• Employment Generation:The scheme has direct employment generation potential upto 7.55 lakh jobs for skilled and unskilled workers.
• Enhancing farmers’ income is one of the most important policy priorities of the Government. PM-KUSUM will serve this objective by replacing high cost diesel with less expensive solar energy.
• Day-time power:Providing solar panels for irrigation under PM-KUSUM would result in day-time reliable power to farmers making irrigation easier for them and also avoiding overuse of water and power.
• Reducing Carbon Emissions: PM-KUSUM will lead to reducing carbon emissions by as much as 32 million tonnes of CO2 per annum.
• Boost to domestic production:PM-KUSUM has a mandatory requirement for deploying domestically produced solar cells and modules under Component B and C. This will create demand for domestically produced solar cells and modules and thus give fillip to domestic solar manufacturing.

• The risk of global spread of poliovirus remains a public health emergency of international concern, a World Health Organization committee has found after looking into updates from 10 countries.
• While the risk of global spread of wild poliovirus remains, the risk of circulating vaccine-derived ones is higher.
• Several measures like declaring poliovirus transmission as a national public health emergency and ensuring vaccinations for travellers and residents have been recommended by WHO.

About Polio

• Poliomyelitis (polio) is a highly infectious disease that invades the nervous system.
• There are 3 types of wild polio virus – type 1, type 2, and type 3. Only type 1 wild poliovirus remains in circulation.
• There are two types of vaccinations that work against poliovirus: inactivated poliovirus (IPV) and oral poliovirus (OPV).

1. IPV is produced from wild-type poliovirus strains that have been inactivated (killed) with formalin.
2. OPV contains an attenuated (weakened) vaccine-virus, which activates an immune response in the body.

• However, OPV can lead to rare emergence of VDPVs when there is prolonged circulation or replication of the vaccine virus.

Types of VDPVs:

• Circulating VDPV (cVDPV), immunodeficiency VDPV (iVDPV), and ambiguous VDPV (aVDPV).
• VDPVs are mostly found in children with immune-deficiency and among populations with low immunity levels.
• In 2014, India was officially declared polio-free, along with the rest of the South-East Asia Region.

• Recently, Pradhan Mantri PVTG (Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups) Development Mission was proposed in Budget 2023-24 to improve socio-economic conditions of the PVTGs.
• This will saturate PVTGs families and habitations with basic facilities like safe housing, clean drinking water, improved access to education, health etc.
• An amount of 15,000 crore will be made available to implement the Mission in the next 3 years under Development Action Plan for the Scheduled Tribes.

About PVTGs

• The Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) are a group of tribal community people in need of greater support and development.
• Out of the 705 Scheduled Tribes in India, 75 have been identified as PVTGs and are spread across 17 states and one Union Territory.
• Odisha has the highest number of PVTGs in India.
• PVTG of Sahariyas has the highest population.

Brief History

• In India, tribal population makes up for 8.6% of the total population.
• In 1973, the Dhebar Commission created Primitive Tribal Groups (PTGs) as a separate category, which are less developed among the tribal groups.
• In 2006, the Government renamed the PTGs as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs).

Government follows the following criteria for identification of PVTGs-

• Pre-agricultural level of technology
• Low level of literacy
• Economic backwardness
• A declining or stagnant population.

• The country’s first hydrogen-powered train may run on the heritage Kalka-Shimla railway line by the end of this year. The Union Railway Minister had made announcement to this effect recently.
• The train will run on hydrogen fuel, which is a green fuel with zero carbon emission. Three hydrogen gas stations will be established at Shimla, Barog and Kalka railway stations. As per the government, the hydrogen train project has been expedited and is expected to be completed by December this year.
• After it is launched on the Kalka-Shimla railway line, the project will be expanded to other locations in the country.
• The train with seven coaches is expected to run on the line by the end of this year.
• The hydrogen train will run on the narrow gauge line at a higher speed of 27 kmph from the present train’s speed of between 22 kmph and 25 kmph. It will also give a fillip to tourism in the state.

• Two new feathery visitors, Baikal Teal and Orange-Bellied leafbird, have been sighted at Renuka Ji wildlife sanctuary during this winter migratory bird season. This is the first such sighting of two rare birds in Himachal Pradesh.

Baikal Teal

• Baikal Teal is larger than the common teal with characteristic green nape and yellow black auricular, neck and throat
• The habitat preference of this species is wetland and marshy areas where it can feed on microflora in lake ecosystem
• Baikal Teal breeds in the far-east on the edges of Tundra and has made its way through the Asian flyway to reach Renuka Ji wetland.
• At a time when environmental degradation is posing a threat to the flora and fauna, sighting of new birds points to the changing habitat of the birds.
• The sighting of this species is rare in India. This is the first record of the bird in the state. The habitat preference of this species is wetland and marshy areas where it can feed on microflora in lake ecosystem.
• This exercise is conducted every year during the winter when the birds migrate and would continue till the month-end.
• Orange-bellied leafbird is the other species sighted for the first time in the state. Its characteristic habitat is in the North-East India. As the bird feeds on nectar, it was spotted on the bottlebrush plant.
• Siberian rubythroat, green-tailed sunbird, small niltava, fire-tailed sunbird and water rail are some of the bird species spotted for first time in Renuka Ji Lake and the wildlife sanctuary in the recent past.

• UN agencies have welcomed a pledge by 12 African countries to end AIDS in children by 2030, announced on Wednesday at a meeting in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. 
• The declaration was announced at the first ministerial meeting of tha global alliance to end AIDS in Children, which brings together the 12 African countries with UNAIDS and other health agencies.

Current situation

• Currently, around the world, a child dies from AIDS-related causes every five minutes.
• Roughly half of children living with HIV, 52 per cent, are on life-saving treatment, whereas 76 per cent of adults are receiving antiretrovirals, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has described as “one of the most glaring disparities in the AIDS response.”
• Furthermore, although children comprise just four per cent of people living with HIV, they account for 15 per cent of all AIDS-related deaths.

• The Paris Club, an informal group of creditor nations, will provide financial assurances to the International Monetary Fund on Sri Lanka’s debt, Reuters has reported.
• An assurance from the Paris Club, as well as other bilateral creditors, is one of the conditions that Sri Lanka has to fulfil for the IMF to begin disbursing a $2.9 bn bailout package to the beleaguered nation that all but collapsed last year under a severe economic crisis.

What is the Paris Club?

• The Paris Club is a group of mostly western creditor countries that grew from a 1956 meeting in which Argentina agreed to meet its public creditors in Paris. Their objective is to find sustainable debt-relief solutions for countries that are unable to repay their bilateral loans.
• It describes itself as a forum where official creditors meet to solve payment difficulties faced by debtor countries.
• All 22 are members of the group called Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
  • India and China are not members.

• The Kashmir Valley has bucked the trend of Asiatic black bear ( Ursus thibetanus) attacks on humans rarely reported throughout the animal’s global range.
• The conversion of the bear’s natural habitat to orchards and farmlands is the primary reason for the ursine attacks over the past 30 years.
• Other reasons include the India-Pakistan border fencing which blocks the movement of the animal and a new generation of people who are not familiar with co-existing with large predators.
• Study recorded 2,357 Asiatic black bear attacks in the Valley between 2000 and 2020. A total of 2,243 attacks or 95.2% of the cases resulted in injury and 114 attacks or 4.8% of cases in death.

About Asiatic Black Bears

• The Asiatic black bear is one of eight extant species of the bear family.
• It is a medium-sized bear species native to Asia that is largely adapted to an arboreal lifestyle.
• It has a coat of smooth black fur and can be distinguished by a V of white fur on its chest.
• It is spread across Asia, from the Himalayas to the Russian Far East.
• It has been categorised as Vulnerable under the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species and is also listed under Appendix I of CITES and Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
• The bears are found in 83 protected areas of India, spread across five states and 2 Union Territories in the Himalayas
• It is one of the large carnivore species having negative interactions with humans in the Indian Himalayas.
• Till now, methods used to determine the population status of Asiatic black bears in India have been limited to questionnaires, sign surveys and genetic sampling using hair samples.

• India has 111 payloads and 105 space debris objects orbiting the earth as tracked and catalogued by USSPACECOM
  • S. Space Command (USSPACECOM) is one of the unified commands of the Department of Defence of the US government.
• Space junk or debris consist of spent rocket stages, dead satellites, fragments of space objects and debris resulting from Anti-Satellite Weapons (ASAT). Hurtling at an average speed of 27,000 kmph in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), these objects pose a very real threat of collisions as studied under the Kessler Syndrome.
  • The Kessler Syndrome is a phenomenon in which the density of objects in the Low Earth Orbit grows so high that collisions between two objects could cause a massive cascade.

Space debris safety measures by Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO):

• Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has carried out 21 collision avoidance manoeuvres of Indian Operational Space assets in 2022 to avoid collision threats from other space objects.  Research and studies on the potential and emerging threats from space debris are carried out by ISRO and academia since the early 1990s.
• In 2022, ISRO System for Safe and Sustainable Operations Management (IS4OM) has been established towards more focused efforts to continually monitor the objects posing collision threats, improve the prediction of the evolution of space debris environment and concerted activities to mitigate the risk posed by space debris.
• ISRO is deploying new radars and optical telescopes under the Network for Space Objects Tracking and Analysis (NETRA) project.

About: ‘Project NETRA’

• It is an early warning system in spaceto detect debris and other hazards to Indian satellites. It will give India its own capability in Space Situational Awareness (SSA) like the other space powers.
• Modus Operandi:Under NETRA, the ISRO plans to put up many observational facilities: connected radars, telescopes, data processing units and a control centre.

Benefits:

• NETRA can spot, track and catalogue objects as small as 10 cm, up to a range of 3,400 km and equal to a space orbit of around 2,000 km.
• The NETRA effort would make India a part of international efforts towards tracking, warning about and mitigating space debris.
• More importantly, the SSA also has a military quotient to it and adds a new ring to the country’s overall security, against attacks from air, space or sea.
• This is a vital requirement for protecting our space assets and a force multiplier.
• Global Initiative: Clearspace-1 (of European Space Agency),which is scheduled to launch in 2025, will be the first space mission to eliminate debris from orbit.

• The Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) will soon start providing services offered by Common Service Centres (CSC).
• Plus they will be able to provide all the services listed on the Digital Seva Portal of CSC scheme to citizens.
  • Such services include banking, insurance, Aadhaar enrolment/update, legal services, agri-inputs like farm equipment, PAN card, etc.
• A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) of this effect was signed between the Ministry of Cooperation, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, NABARD and CSC e-Governance Services India Limited.
• This will not only help in fulfilling objective of ‘Sahkar Se Samridhi’ and making cooperatives the backbone of rural development, but will also strengthen both cooperatives and farmers.
• It will help in advancing the concept of Common Service Centres (CSC) to the smallest unit of the country very easily.
• The PACS will now be able to undertake 20 different activities including water distribution, storage, Bank Mitra. He said that the first and foremost task is to make the services provided by the Common Service Centres available to the rural population through PACS.
• Union Budget 2023-24 has a provision to make 2 lakh PACS in next 5 years and create a multi-purpose PACS in every Panchayat.

About PACS

• PACS, registered as cooperative societies, at the village level (one of the three-tier) provide short-term cooperative credit.
• Other two tiers: State Cooperative Banks at state level and District central cooperative banks.
• PACS are outside the purview of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, and hence not regulated by RBI.
• Around 63,000 PACS are functional in India; providing various facilities such as input facilities, agricultural implements, and storage facilities.
• About 50 percent of the country’s population is associated with cooperatives in one way or the other.