Recent Context:

• Recently, The World Economic Outlook 2022 by IMF has been published and cut its forecast for India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in FY 2022-23 to 8.2%, making it the fastest-growing major economy in the world, almost twice faster than China’s 4.4 %.

Key Findings:

• It has also lowered India’s growth projection by 0.8 % points for 2022-23 from its previous forecast (9%) for the same period in 2021.
• In 2021, India registered a growth rate of 8.9 %.
• In 2023-24, India is estimated to grow at 6.9 %.
• The IMF has projected global growth at 3.6 % in 2022 and 2023, 0.8 and 0.2 % lower than in the January 2022 forecast, respectively

Reports by IMF:

• Global Financial stability report
• World Economic outlook

Recent Context:

• Recently, The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has released Special 301 Report 2022
• Released by: Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR)
• Purpose: To identify trading partners that do not adequately or effectively protect and enforce Intellectual Property (IP) rights or otherwise deny market access to U.S. innovators and creators that rely on the protection of their IP rights.
• Categories: The report places countries into:
• Priority Watch list countries -These are those countries that are having serious intellectual property rights deficiencies and require increased United States Trade Representative(USTR) attention.
• Watch List countries – These countries are having serious intellectual property rights deficiencies but are not yet placed on the Priority Watch list.
• Priority Watch List Countries: Argentina, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and Venezuela.

About Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD)

• It was launched in December 2021.
• It is the agency’s first-ever laser communications system.
• The LCRD will help the agency test optical communication in space.
• LCRD is a technology demonstration that will pave the way for future optical communications missions.
• The LCRD payload is hosted onboard the US Department of Defense’s Space Test Program Satellite 6 (STPSat-6).
• It will be in a geosynchronous orbit, over 35,000km above Earth.

Features:

• It has two optical terminals. One to receive data from a user spacecraft, and the other to transmit data to ground stations.
• The modems will translate the digital data into laser signals. This will then be transmitted via encoded beams of light.
• These capabilities make LCRD NASA’s first two-way, end-to-end optical relay.

Recent Context

• Recently, An anti-ship version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile was successfully test-fired jointly by the Indian Navy and the Andaman and Nicobar Command.

About BrahMos supersonic cruise missile

• The BrahMos is a ramjet supersonic cruise missile of a short-range developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Russian Federation’s NPO Mashinostroyeniya.
• BrahMos was named after two major rivers of India and Russia: Brahmaputra and Moskva.
• It is a two-stage (solid propellant engine in the first stage and liquid ramjet in second)
• It is capable of being launched from land, sea, sub-sea and air against surface and sea-based targets and has constantly been improved and upgraded
• It operates on the “Fire and Forgets” principlee it does not require further guidance after launch.
• Brahmos is one of the fastest cruise missile currently operationally deployed with speed of Mach 2.8, which is nearly 3 times more than the speed of sound.

Recent Context:

• Total global military expenditure increased by 0.7 per cent in real terms in 2021, to reach $2113 billion, according to new data on global military spending published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Important Facts:

• The five largest spenders in 2021 were the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom and Russia, together accounting for 62 per cent of expenditure.
• India’s military spending of $76.6 billion ranked third highest in the world. This was up by 0.9 per cent from 2020 and by 33 per cent from 2012.
• The USA and China alone accounted for 52 per cent. China, the world’s second largest spender.

Recent Context

• Google signed a MoU with the Telangana government to bring the benefits of the digital economy to the state’s young and women entrepreneurs, and officially off the construction of its three million square foot headquarters in the city from the ground up

About the collaboration

• Under this MoU, Google will be extending Google Career Certificate scholarships to the youngsters of the state to make them job-ready.
• Google will also be collaborating with the Telangana government to support the state’s women entrepreneurs through business, digital, and financial skills training.
• Google will also be strengthening the government’s school modernization efforts via learning and digital teaching tools and solutions.
• The organization will also be looking to support the government’s efforts of using digital technologies in agriculture and improving public transportation.

• World Veterinary Day is observed on the last Saturday of April every year. This year it falls on 30th April 2022. World Veterinary Association was established with an objective to provide global leadership for the veterinary profession and promote animal health and welfare and public health through advocacy, education, and partnership.
• The theme for World Veterinary Day 2022 is “Strengthening Veterinary Resilience”. This essentially means providing veterinary doctors with all kinds of help, and resources they require in their journey.
• In 2001 World veterinary Association came up with World veterinary day. It all started with an international veterinary congress meeting led by a person named John Gamgee who was a veterinary college professor.

Recent Context

• The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) engineering marvel, Atal Tunnel, built-in Rohtang in Himachal Pradesh, received the Indian Building Congress (IBC) ‘Best Infrastructure Project’ award in New Delhi.

About Atal Tunnel

• The 9.02-km tunnel is the longest highway tunnel in the world above the height of 3,000 metres.
• It cuts through a mountain west of the Rohtang pass and shortens the distance between Solang Valley and Sissu by around 46 km and takes around 15 minutes to cover. Earlier, it would take nearly 4 hours to travel between the two points.
• Rohtang Pass is located in the state of Himachal Pradesh.
• It is present on the Pir Panjal Range of Himalayas.
• The tunnel, built using the New Austrian Tunnelling Method (NATM), was dedicated to the nation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 3, 2020.
• Fires inside the tunnel will be controlled within an area of 200 metres, and fire hydrants are provided at specific locations throughout the tunnel.
• Pollution sensors continuously monitor the air quality in the tunnel, and if the air quality is below the desired level, fresh air is injected into the tunnel via two heavy-duty fans on each side of the tunnel.

Recent Context:

• The World Bank has approved a USD 47 million projects to support the Government of India’s Mission Karmayogi, a national program to build civil service capacity. There are nearly 18 million civil servants employed across India, with approximately two-thirds at the state government and local authority levels.
• The Bank’s financing aims to support the Government’s objectives of enhancing the functional and behavioural competencies of approximately four million civil servants. It will focus on three components: the development and implementation of competency frameworks; the development of an integrated learning platform; and program monitoring, evaluation, and management.

About Mission Karmayogi: : National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB)

Launch Year: 2014

Aim & Objective

• Building a future-ready civil service with the right attitude, skills and knowledge, aligned to the vision of New India.
• To prepare Indian civil servants for the future by making them more creative, constructive, imaginative, proactive, innovative, progressive, professional, energetic, transparent, and technology-enabled.
• Comprehensive reform of the capacity building apparatus at the individual, institutional and process levels for efficient public service delivery.

Funding:

• A sum of Rs 510.86 crore will be spent over a period of 5 years from 2020-21 to 2024-25.
• The expenditure is partly funded by multilateral assistance to the tune of $50 million.

Six Pillars of NPCSCB are:

• Policy Framework
• Institutional Framework
• Competency Framework
• Digital learning Framework
• The electronic Human Resource Management System
• The monitoring and evaluation system

Features of the scheme:

• IGOT Platform: The capacity building will be delivered through iGOT Karmayogi digital platform, with content drawn from global best practices.
• The platform will act as a launchpad for the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB).
• Rules based to Roles based : The programme will support a transition from “rules-based to roles based” Human Resource Management (HRM) so that work allocations can be done by matching an official’s competencies to the requirements of the post.
• Apart from domain knowledge training, the scheme will focus on “functional and behavioural competencies” as well, and also includes a monitoring framework for performance evaluations.
• Integrated Initiative: Eventually, service matters such as confirmation after probation period, deployment, work assignments and notification of vacancies will all be integrated into the proposed framework.

Why in news?

• Russia has withdrawn from unwto amid ukraine conflict, losing with immediate effect its rights and privileges as part of un specialized agency.
• Unwto is United Nations agency responsible for promotion of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism.
• Headquarters are based in madrid, spain since 1976.
• India is the founder member of unwto.