• A Rs 20-crore project, submitted by the Irrigation and Public Health (IPH) Department to the Urban Development Department for the revival of the dried Dal lake here, is awaiting approval.
• Kulbhash Sharma, a resident of Naddi, said the lake used to retain water throughout the year. However, a few years ago, PWD officials dug up the base of the lake with JCBs to deepen it and remove silt. Since then, the lake had lost its capacity to retain water.
• Kangra DC Nipun Jindal said a Rs 20-crore proposal, submitted by the IPH Department to save the lake, was awaiting the approval of the Urban Development Department. Superintending Engineer, IPH Department, Dharamsala, Deepak Garg said the proposal was submitted under the AMRUT scheme of the Centre for its revival. The Rs 20-crore cost, given in the project report, was tentative. It was proposed to plug the leakage on the floor of the lake and it would be beautified as tourist destination. The approval was awaited, he said.
• The lake, located at a distance of about 11 km from Dharamsala in Tota Rani village near Naddi, though small, is a natural water body, vital for the ecosystem of the surrounding hills.
• The lake is located at a height of 1,775 metre and is surrounded by deodars. There is a Shiva temple on its banks. However, silt from the adjoining mountains had reduced its depth.
• About half of the lake area is filled with silt which has been converted into grassland. A massive operation with the help of the locals was launched in 2011 for removing the silt from the lake. The silt was used to create a parking near the temple area.
• Since then, the lake dries up rapidly. Sources said the district administration had called the geological experts to study the reasons as to why the lake was losing water. They had opined that the unscientific digging might have created aquaducts at the base of the lake, which was leading to draining of water. The sources said no solution had been found to the problem.

• The wildlife wing of the Forest Department has decided to extend the project for protecting the nesting and roosting sites of white-backed vultures, considered natural scavengers, being run in Kangra to nine other districts as well.
• The project being run only in Kangra district has shown positive results; there has been far more sightings of vultures. “We have decided to extend the project for protecting the nesting and roosting sites of vultures to nine other districts except Kinnaur and Lahaul and Spiti,” says Rajiv Kumar, Principal Chief Conservator, Wildlife, Forest Department.
• It was over two decades ago that the Wildlife Department had embarked on the project to preserve vultures, mentioned as one of the critically endangered species in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. The number of vultures, estimated to be merely 35 in 2004, has risen considerably over the years, as feeding stations have been set up in pine forests in Nagrota Suriyan area of Kangra.
• “The population estimation of vultures in Kangra and its adjoining areas has not been undertaken but the annual count of their nests and fledglings indicated that their number has gone up considerably to over 400,” says Rajiv Kumar. Vultures have been frequently sighted in several other parts of the state, including Nalagarh in Solan and Paonta Sahib in Sirmaur.
• The wildlife wing has adopted the strategy to protect natural habitats of vultures rather than undertake their in-situ breeding and conservation. “Some other states like Haryana have also undertaken their in-situ breeding and conservation at Pinjore but we have adopted a different strategy where focus is on protecting their nesting and roosting sites,” he adds.
• The money for the project will come from funds for the development and protection of natural habitats from various hydroelectric power projects like the Kol Dam. Besides, there are several Central agencies that can provide funds for the project.
• It is based on the encouraging results of the project launched in Kangra district that prompted the wildlife wing to extend it to nine other districts. A major component of the project will be to undertake an exhaustive survey to identify roosting and nesting sites so that a congenial habitat can help in increasing the number of vultures.
• Wildlife officials have managed successful fledging off of newborn in Kangra district. The main reason for the sharp dip in the population of vultures was over use of anti-inflammatory veterinary drug diclofenac, which proved fatal for vultures, which feed on carcasses. The use of this medicine has now been banned.

• The 2nd edition of the North East Olympic Games concluded in Shilllong, Meghalaya with Manipur emerging as the overall team champion with a total of 240 medals which included 88 gold medal 75 silver and 77 bronze medals.
• Assam took the second spot with a total of 203 medals which included 79 gold medals, 61 silver and 63 bronze medals.
• Arunachal Pradesh got the third spot from the host State with a total of 112 medals which included 39 gold, 36 silver and 37 bronze medals.
• Host State Meghalaya won a total of 149 medal consisting of 36 golds,  35 silver and 78 bronze medals and secured the fourth spot.
• Nagaland secured the fifth spot with a total of 78 medal comprising of 18 gold medals while Mizoram was at the sixth spot with a total of 106 medal including 16 gold medals. Tripura and Sikkim grabbed the 8th and 9th spots with four gold medals and three gold medals respectively.
• Nagaland will host the next edition of the Northeast Olympic Games.

• Month-long Kashi Tamil Sangamam will start in Varanasi.
• The objective of Sangamam is to rediscover, reaffirm and celebrate the age-old links between Tamil Nadu and Kashi – two of the country’s most important and ancient seats of learning.
• Kashi Tamil Sangamam aims to provide an opportunity for scholars, students, philosophers, traders, artisans, artists and people from other walks of life from the two regions to come together, share their knowledge, culture and best practices and learn from each others’ experience. The endeavour is in sync with National Education Policy 2020’s emphasis on integrating the wealth of Indian Knowledge Systems with modern systems of knowledge.
• More than 2000 delegates from Tamil Nadu under 12 categories will visit Varanasi on 8-day tours during this sangamam.
• They will see places of interest in and around Varanasi including Prayagraj and Ayodhya, and participate in seminars, lectures, and, site visits to interact with local people of the relevant categories.
• Along with this, a month long exhibition of handlooms, handicrafts, ODOP products, books, documentaries, cuisine, artforms, history, tourist places of Tamil Nadu will be put up in Varanasi for the benefit of the local people.

• The International Financial Services Centres Authority, IFSCA and the Reserve Bank of India have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for collaboration in the field of regulation and supervision of regulated entities.
• As per an official statement, the MoU facilitates technical cooperation and exchange of information.
• The agreement aims to strengthen the safety, stability and soundness of respective financial ecosystems, thereby ensuring conducive environments for optimal business development and economic growth.
• While RBI is the central bank and monetary authority of India, the International Financial Services Centres Authority is a unified regulator responsible for development and regulation of financial products, financial services and financial institutions in the International Financial Services Centre (s), established across the country.

• National Commission for Women, NCW Chairperson Rekha Sharma has said that Digital Shakti Campaign has been accelerating the digital participation of women and girls.
• Digital Shakti Campaign is a pan-India project on digitally empowering and skilling women and girls in the cyberspace.
• It aims to train women and girls to use technology to their advantage and to keep themselves safe online.
• Sharma launched the fourth phase of the Campaign on Tuesday. She highlighted the continuous efforts of the Commission for empowering women in every sphere across the nation.
• In line with its commitment to create safe spaces for women and girls online, Digital Shakti 4.0 is focused on making women digitally skilled and aware to stand up against any illegal or inappropriate activity online.
• The NCW launched it in collaboration with CyberPeace Foundation and Meta.

What are the AI language models?

• AI language models aims to minimise the dependence on human labour for fields such as translation, customer service or computation. They automate manual processes and generate new insights based on the existing data.
• The deep learning processes of these AI models are used for instantly decoding foreign languages by making use of massive volumes of user data and content on their servers.

About Google’s 1,000 Language AI Model

• Google’s 1,000 language AI Model was announced at the AI event that was organized in November 2022.
• To investigate the potential of this massive project, Google is currently working on an AI language model that can support some 400 languages.
• This model is said to be the “largest language coverage” among existing speech models.

How is this new language model different from the existing AI models?

• Currently, numerous AI language models are deployed for businesses or research. Google’s 1,000 languages initiative seeks to improve these models as a whole for diverse use cases.
• It aims to create one gigantic model for the 1,000 commonly used languages across the globe. It covers widely used as well as rarely used languages, enabling them to co-exist, interact and grow together.

Other AI language models

• Open AI, an artificial intelligence research firm, developed GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3) set of models named Davinci, Curie, Babbage, and Ada to generate natural text responses and perform tasks such as classification, simple summaries, address correction, answering questions etc.
• Meta is developing an AI-based language translation. The company claims that its open-source M2M-100 model is said to be the first multilingual translation model that does not rely on English as the default language when it translates directly between 100 languages.
• The Facebook-parent company is also focusing on AI-based translation for not just text but also oral languages like Hokkien. Google is also currently collecting data for languages that are widely spoken but do not have online presence.

About:

• Its latest report, titled ‘Financing India’s Urban Infrastructure Needs: Constraints to Commercial Financing and Prospects for Policy Action’, puts forth the urgent requirement to leverage greater private and commercial investments to meet the emerging financial gaps.

Highlights:

• Financing on a repayable basis can be done either through debt, private lending or public-private partnership investments.
• These require a recurrent source of revenue to meet obligations, thus, mandating raising adequate resources.
• Much of the urban infrastructure in India is financed by tied intergovernmental fiscal transfers, that is, vertical and horizontal transfer of finance for attaining certain objectives sub-nationally.
• Of the finances needed to fund capital expenditures for Indian cities, 48% is derived from State governments, 24% from the Central government and 15% from urban local bodies’ own surplus.
• The rest includes public-private partnership (3%), commercial debt (2%) and loans from Housing and Urban Development Corporation, or HUDCO (8%).
• The report argues that the overall funding base to raise commercial revenues “appears to be low” owing to weak fiscal performance of cities and low absorptive capacity for execution of projects.
• The report states that city agencies have been unable to expand their resource and funding base to support private financing for services such as water supply, sewerage networks and bus services, as they are highly subsidised.

Solutions:

• The central idea is to increase cities’ fiscal base and creditworthiness.
• For improving their fiscal base, it states, cities must institute a buoyant revenue base and be able to recover the cost of providing its services.
• The latter could be attained by revising property taxes, user fees and service charges, among other streams, from the current low base.

About:

• People across India can log onto the ‘Shabd Shala’ website and provide suggestions for possible translations of these words or their most prevalent usages in their respective languages.
• After collating all the suggestions, the Technical Words Selection Committee will zero in on the most popular or appropriate translations for each word, following which a glossary would be brought out in all the respective languages.
• The committee, to be constituted in consultation with the Education Ministry, will comprise of subject experts in science and technology, and experts in linguistics and the Sanskrit language.

The Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology:

• It was established on October 01, 1961 in pursuance of a Presidential Order dated April 27, 1960.
• Presently, CSTT is functioning under Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Government of India with its headquarters at New Delhi.
• The main objective is to evolve standard terminology, propagate its use, and distribute it widely.
• The commission is mandated to collaborate with State governments, universities, regional textbook Boards, and State ‘Granth Academies’, which are nodal bodies in-charge of providing translations of English textbooks in local languages for institutions of higher education.
• Eighteen States were mandated to have Granth Academies.

• The third edition of the ‘Pan-India’ Coastal Defence Exercise ‘Sea Vigil-22’ took place on November 15-16, 2022. The exercise was a build up towards the major Theatre Level Readiness Operational Exercise (TROPEX), which the Indian Navy conducts every two years. Sea Vigil and TROPEX together will cover the entire spectrum of Maritime Security challenges.

What is exercise Sea Vigil?

• This National Level Coastal Defence Exercise was conceptualised in 2018 to validate various measures that have been instituted towards enhancing maritime security since ‘26/11’. It was aimed to jointly conduct operations with the Coast Guard and the police forces of coastal states spanning India’s 7,516-kilometre coastline.
• The exercise also included India’s two million square km Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), involving all coastal states and Union Territories, along with other maritime stakeholders, including the fishing and coastal communities.
• Coastal Security being a major sub-set of Coastal Defence construct, the concept of ‘Sea Vigil’ is to activate the Coastal Security apparatus across India and assess the overarching Coastal Defence mechanism.
• The exercise is being conducted by the Indian Navy in coordination with the Coast Guard and other Ministries entrusted with the task of maritime activities.
• The scale and conceptual expanse of the exercise is unprecedented in terms of the geographical extent, the number of stakeholders involved, the number of units participating and in terms of the objectives to be met.
• Assets of the Indian Navy, Coast Guard, Customs and other maritime agencies participated in Ex Sea Vigil.

Operational Dimensions

• While smaller scale exercises are conducted in Coastal States regularly, including combined exercises amongst adjoining states, the exercise Sea Vigil at the national level is aimed to serve a larger purpose. It provides opportunity, at the apex level, to assess the country’s preparedness in Maritime Security and Coastal Defence.