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  • [pib] CollabCAD tool to create 3D Computer Aided Designs

    Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog and National Informatics Centre (NIC) jointly launched CollabCAD.

    CollabCAD

    • It is a computer-enabled software system which provides a total engineering solution from 2D drafting & detailing to 3D product design.
    • It helps the user to build models in virtual 3d space and create and engineering drawings for the shop floor which makes it a complete package for smart manufacturing.
    • The aim of this initiative is to provide a great platform to students of Atal Tinkering Labs (ATLs) across the country to create and modify 3d designs with free flow of creativity and imagination.
    • This software would also enable students to create data across the network and concurrently access the same design data for storage and visualization.

    Back2Basics: Atal Innovation Mission (AIM)

    • The Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is a flagship initiative set up by the NITI Aayog to promote innovation and entrepreneurship across the length and breadth of the country.
    • AlM’s objectives are to create and promote an ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship across the country at school, university, research institutions, MSME and industry levels.
    • At the school level, AIM establishes Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) in all districts across India. ATLs provide tinkering spaces to children to hone their innovative ideas and creativity.
    • At the university, NGO, SME and Corporate industry levels, AIM is setting up world-class Atal Incubators (AICs) that would trigger and enable successful growth of sustainable startups in every sector.

  • [pib] “DekhoApnaDesh” Webinar

    The Ministry of Tourism has launched its “DekhoApnaDesh” webinar series to provide information on the many destinations and the sheer depth and expanse of the culture and heritage of India.

    Tourism and tourist sites carry a high incidence of possible prelims questions.  Take time to quickly revise the Swadesh Darshan , PRASHAD Schemes.   Click here for the repository of all such initiaitives.

    About DekhoApnaDesh

    • Under this, a series of webinars will showcase the diverse and remarkable history and culture of India through a documentary series on various cities.
    • It will be including various monuments, cuisine, arts, dance forms, natural landscapes, festivals and many other aspects of the rich Indian civilization.
    • The core of the webinar is based on tourism awareness and social history.
    • The webinar will be available in the public domain through the Ministry’s social media handles- “Incredible India” on Instagram and Facebook.
    • The first webinar, which was part of a series that shall unfold, touched upon the long history of Delhi as it has unfolded as 8 cities.

  • OPEC+ decides combine slashing of crude oil production

    India has made a case for affordable oil prices in the backdrop of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries-plus (OPEC+) combine slashing production amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Global crude oil pricing dynamics greatly impact  India and its import bill. Kindly refer to the article titled “Oil Prices and OPEC+” pinned below this newscard. Various aspects related to the issue are covered in the Burning Issue section . It seeks to answer all your doubts such as ; Impact on Fuel prices,  India’s forex reserves, Strategic petroleum reserves,  etc.

    Why a cause of worry?

    • OPEC accounts for around 40% of global production.
    • The OPEC accounts for 80% of India’s crude oil imports.
    • Any production cut by the OPEC plus arrangement impacts India’s energy security efforts in the short run.

    Impact on India

    • India, which is one of the major OPEC consumers, has always stood for a global consensus on responsible pricing.
    • Indian refiners have cut production as the lockdown has led to a sharp decline in demand for transportation fuels.
    • Demand for domestic cooking gas has, however, increased as more people stay indoors during the lockdown aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus.

    About OPEC+

    • The non-OPEC countries which export crude oil along with the 14 OPECs are termed as OPEC plus countries.
    • OPEC plus countries include Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Russia, South Sudan and Sudan.
    • Saudi and Russia, both have been at the heart of a three-year alliance of oil producers known as OPEC Plus — which now includes 11 OPEC members and 10 non-OPEC nations — that aims to shore up oil prices with production cuts.

    Back2Basics:  OPEC

    • OPEC is a permanent, intergovernmental organization, created at the Baghdad Conference in 1960, by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.
    • It aims to manage the supply of oil in an effort to set the price of oil in the world market, in order to avoid fluctuations that might affect the economies of both producing and purchasing countries.
    • It is headquartered in Vienna, Austria.
    • OPEC membership is open to any country that is a substantial exporter of oil and which shares the ideals of the organization.
    • Today OPEC is a cartel that includes 14 nations, predominantly from the middle east whose sole responsibility is to control prices and moderate supply.

    Also read:

    [Burning Issue] Oil Prices and OPEC+

  • ConFarm model of agricultural market

    A unique initiative titled Consumer-Farmer Compact in Telangana is ensuring food availability and access in COVID-19 times.

    Such innovative models of agricultural marketing are very crucial while highlighting the limitations of APMCs and eNAM. Make personal notes of such initiatives.

    Consumer-Farmer Compact

    • The initiative is kicked off by some NGOs in June 2018 and has been endeavoring to bring farmers and consumers on the same platform for their benefit.
    • The consumers support farmers with their agricultural needs; in return, farmers ensure consumers are able to access food in a hassle-free manner.

    What does the initiative do?

    • The initiative requires consumers to support farmers at the beginning of a farming season.
    • Each consumer supports a group of farmers with about Rs 12,500 per acre for their farming needs.
    • In return, at the time of harvest, consumers are given products according to the value they invested, leaving the middlemen out.
    • They are provided with millets, pulses, oil, jaggery and other necessary items produced organically — either in bulk or on a monthly basis.
    • The initiative also aims to give millets a push in the urban market, enabling consumers to move beyond the commonly consumed grains such as rice and wheat.

    Significance

    • This model of sharing economy in the village has helped alleviate hunger and ensured their nutritional needs are met.
    • The farmers who are part of the initiative practice traditional ecological farming with an emphasis on biodiverse cultivation.
    • It helps them have dietary diversity in their food choices and control over their land and food production that is not dictated by the vagaries of the market.
    • The practice has brought them closer to a group of consumers who have been keen on trying an alternative route.

    Conclusion

    • At this juncture in crisis — when the free-market system and global trade are staring at an uncertain future — local solutions such as ‘Confarm’ hold greater prominence.
    • Such supply chains such are the need of the hour. Farmers and consumers must come together to face crisis moments in the future as well.

  • How IS regroups and its threat to India

     

    IS has shown its ability to strike by regrouping and co-opting local affiliates be it the case of Ester Sunday attack in Sri Lanka or a recent attack on a  Gurudwara in Afghanistan. For India, the presence of sleeper cells and their links with the Islamic jihad group has internal security implications. We have covered an op-ed dealing with the Gurudwara attack and discussed the futility of the US-Taliban peace deal.

    Security threat of IS to India and South Asia

    • In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was speculation about the degree to which al-Qaeda had been able to make inroads in India.
    • In recent years, the focus has shifted to the IS.
    • The creation of an IS-Khorasan (IS-K) in early 2015 with a visible presence in Afghanistan-Pakistan, seemed to suggest that the group is now targeting South Asia.
    • The recent terror attack on a gurdwara in Kabul (March 25) was also claimed by the IS. The IS released a photograph of one of a resident of Kasargod in Kerala
    • According to India’s leading terrorism think-tank SATP (South Asia Terrorism Portal), 99 persons from India were confirmed to have joined the IS in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

    Question about the ” Over-ground worker” of the terrorist organisation was asked by the UPSC in 2019.

    Close intelligence cooperation within and beyond South Asia

    • Last October, the NIA disclosed that it had arrested 127 IS sympathisers from across India since 2014, and the highest number of 33 were from Tamil Nadu.
    • The arrests by NIA were made throughout the country and not from a specific region.
    • This degree of spread is testimony to the close watch the Indian security agencies are maintaining concerning the IS.
    • One may conjecture that close intelligence cooperation has been established within and beyond South Asia.
    • The pattern that now obtains is that countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan have their own internal surveillance in place to monitor the activities of the IS-K.

    Ability of IS to regroup and ally with a domestic affiliate

    • The IS has demonstrated a proclivity to re-group by co-opting or merging with credible domestic affiliates, even if they are little-known.
    • In Afghanistan, the IS-K has sought to position itself favourably in the factional tussle, and the Kabul gurdwara attack is seen as part of this murderous strategy.
    • Pakistan connection: Islamic terror groups in the Af-Pak region are deemed to be as credible as the support that they receive from the deep-state in Pakistan.
    • It is pertinent that the main accused in the Kabul gurdwara attack is Aslam Faroqi, a Pakistani national.

    Conclusion

    The ability of IS to co-opt a local affiliate makes it a credible threat for India where there is a significant presence of the sleeper cells. In the light of that threat India and the other affected nations will have to strive individually and collectively to foil such nefarious designs.

  • Covid-19: Software vendors focus on big data, AI despite fall in IT spending

    The article discusses how COVID-19 has prompted the software companies to focus on technologies that are still in demand. The IT companies have started to focus on ways to leverage the potential of AI and the Big data to deal with the pandemic.

    Impact on IT companies and how they are planning to cope with it?

    • Fall in spending: Spending on information technology (IT) globally is expected to shrink by 3-4% by the end of 2020.
    • Impact: That would have a severe impact on hardware and slowdown in the software and service businesses.
    • How companies are planning to deal with the situation? Software vendors such as IBM, SAP Software Solutions and Microsoft Corporation plan to make use of emerging technologies to become more relevant to their customers.
    • IBM has created an AI platform ‘Watson Assistant for Citizens’ on its public cloud.
    • The platform helps citizens understand and respond to common questions about covid-19, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.
    • While the ongoing pandemic is having a dreadful impact on companies at scale, matured ones are taking a pause and rethinking their analytics approach.
    • Using data analysis to prepare contingency plan: Data science teams are being called into action to crunch petabytes of data and build best business models on trusted data for decision-makers to quickly prepare contingency plans.
    • This is where we are seeing enterprises using AI, machine learning, and natural language processing to mine the data and build predictive or prescriptive models in IBM Cloud Pack for Data.

    UPSC could ask question connecting the use of IT and its potential to deal with the pandemics. And it could also be other way round you can cite the example of use of IT in the health sector.

    Adoption of the AI by various sectors

    • The government and public service agencies as well as healthcare and research companies urgently need AI solutions and analytics as they are in a race to find a treatment for the deadly disease.
    • Other industries with high end-user touch-points like banks, insurance, retail, etc. are also in urgent need to use AI/ML-driven analytics and cognitive technologies to automate their communications, streamline predictions, decision making, etc.

    AI and Big data could be a game-changer across the various sectors, health being one of them. As among the buzzwords in technologie today UPSC could ask about AI and Big data.

    Covid-19 as an opportunity for the IT industry

    • The covid-19 crisis is an opportunity for IT vendors to build and improve on their capabilities on AI and big data.
    • Leveraging AI: They are also keeping an eye on emerging uses cases in AI for disease detection, tracking, and prevention.
    • Relatively smaller companies are also launching dedicated AI-based apps to assist people amid the covid-19 crisis.
    • Eka Software Solutions recently released ‘COVID-19 Risk Monitoring’, it help customers quickly gain visibility in supply chain risks by showing a company’s contract position across countries with reported cases of the virus.
    • Based on company data, the app instantly visualises contracts at risk and provides businesses with the ability to identify alternate suppliers to maintain business continuity.

    Conclusion

    As the epidemic is far from being tamed, various sectors are likely to feel the existential crisis and IT could be one of them. But they can also turn this crisis into an opportunity by leveraging the AI and Big data in tackling the epidemic at various levels.

  • Agmark, Hallmark, ISI, BIS, BEE and Other Ratings

  • Use the COVID crisis to transform the agri-marketing system

    This article discusses the impact of lockdown on farmers and how the disruption of the supply chain is adding to their difficulties in selling their produce in the markets.

    In the last two weeks or so, we have been reading about farmers and issues around the agri-marketing supply chain. If you have been following the story on Agriculture Marketing Reforms, you would remember us talking about it in the op-ed titled “A smarter supply line”

    There are 6 suggestions to overhaul our agri-marketing system. These are-

    1. Abolish/reframe the APMC Act

    • There is an urgent need for abolishing or reframing the APMC Act and encourage direct buying of agri-produce from farmers/farmer producer organisations (FPOs).
    • The companies, processors, organised retailers, exporters, consumer groups, that buy directly from FPOs need not pay any market fee as they do not avail the facilities of APMC yards.

    APMC Act restrict the farmers from selling their produce outside the market yard, so in the present context of Covid-19 this is a counterproductive restrictions. UPSC asked question on in in 2014.

    2. The warehouses can also be designated as markets.

    • The warehouse receipt system can be scaled up.
    • The private sector should be encouraged to open mandis with modern infrastructure, capping commissions.

    3. The futures trading should be encouraged by allowing banking finance to hedge for commodity price risks.

    A futures contract is a standardized legal agreement to buy or sell something at a predetermined price at a specified time in the future, encouraging this would help farmers assurance of price and help in making decion for the sowing based on price signal from he markets.

    4. Promote e-NAM through proper assaying and grading the produce and setting up dispute settlement mechanism; rope in major logistics players for delivery of goods.

    5. Avoiding rush in the markets: Procurement must be staggered through coupons and incentives that give farmers an additional bonus for bringing the produce to the market after May 10, or so.

    6. The amount provided under PM Kisan should be increased from Rs 6,000 to at least Rs 10,000 per farming family to partially compensate them for their losses.

    Way forward

    • Besides these, Prime Minister would benefit by taking a leaf out of the book of President Donald Trump. Modi should lead from the front by holding daily press briefings and announce a country-wide relief package amounting to around 8-10 per cent of GDP.
    • Whatever the causes of this disaster are, it is clear that the WHO failed in its duty to raise the alarm in time. India must ask for fundamental reforms in the UN System, including the WHO, making it more transparent, competent, and accountable.

  • What are Primordial Black Holes (PBH)?

    A scientist duo from Pune has studied primordial black holes that were born as a result of a tiny bump in the potential energy levels of the universe, at a time when it was expanding rapidly.

    Strange space events are known to be the favourites of UPSC 🙂

    Primordial Black Holes (PBH)

    • PBH are a hypothetical type of black hole that formed soon after the Big Bang
    • It is believed that they are formed as a result of collapsing radiations as opposed to the collapse of massive stars, which is the case of any other black holes.
    • PBH can be massively large as 3000kms or be extremely tiny like nucleus of an atom.

    What did the study conclude?

    • The study has confirmed that this marginal rise in potential energy resulted in birth of several PBHs and also emitted very powerful gravitational waves.
    • Approximately 14 billion years ago before the commencement of the Hot Big Bang phase, the very young universe was found to be active and expanding at a highly accelerated rate.
    • This exponential growth in its size was fuelled by the presence of uniform energy field and density as the universe passed through the Cosmic Inflation phase.
    • According to the scientists, as time passes, this uniform energy prevailing in the Inflation Field wanes out.
    • As a result, the universe resumes its normal decelerating rate.

    Expansion of universe

    • Gravity is normally attractive in nature. The PBH did undergo rapid expansion due to the Inflation field which contrarily possessed repulsive gravity.
    • This pushed the universe to expand at a much faster rate than normal.
    • The universe had expanded to nearly 10^27 times its original size, that too, within just fraction of a second by the time Cosmic Inflation phase concluded.
    • Thereafter, the remnant energy possessed by this gravitational force got converted mainly into photons (light) in addition to protons, electrons, neutrons and other particles.
    • As the universe continued to grow exponentially during the Cosmic Inflation phase, it sent across tiny quantum jitters.
    • These fluctuations, released in a specific fashion, when sufficiently large, slowly give birth to galaxies and stars. Among those that were significantly large, helped form PBHs.

     

  • What is Contact Tracing Technology?

    Global technology giants Apple and Google have announced that they are partnering on developing contact tracing technology to help governments and health authorities tackle the novel coronavirus pandemic.

    What did tech-giants announce?

    • Contact tracing is considered essential for bringing epidemics under control and is expected to help governments in relaxing lockdown orders.
    • The tech companies announced that they would build a comprehensive solution that includes application programming interfaces (APIs) and operating system-level technology to assist in enabling contact tracing.

    What is contact tracing?

    • The WHO defines contact tracing as the process of identifying, assessing, and managing people who have been exposed to a disease to prevent onward transmission.
    • Via contact tracing, people who have come into contact with a person carrying a disease are alerted and identified.

    Importance of contact tracing

    • Identifying people at the onset of symptoms and promptly isolating them reduces exposure to other persons, preventing subsequent EVD (Ebola Virus Disease) infections.
    • Additionally, prompt isolation and admission of the symptomatic person to a treatment facility decreases the delay to supportive treatment, which improves the likelihood of survival.

    How will the new technology by Google and Apple work?

    • Google and Apple are the developers of the Android and iOS platforms respectively, which together power most of the world’s smartphones.
    • Both companies will release application programming interfaces (APIs) that would enable interoperability between Android and iOS devices using apps from public health authorities.
    • The official apps will be available for users to download via their respective app stores, as per the press release.
    • When this step is realized, phone-based matching via official apps will help alert people if they have come in contact with someone diagnosed with COVID-19.

    Actual working

    • For this to work, COVID-19 patients would have to declare their status to the respective apps voluntarily.
    • Following this, all people whose Android/iOS smartphones were detected nearby such patients, would get notified.
    • This means the user will be notified even if he/she was around a stranger who has tested positive for the disease.

    Issues with contact tracing

    • Privacy, transparency, and consent are of utmost importance in this effort.
    • The tech giants should look forward to building this functionality in consultation with interested stakeholders.

    Note: How is our Aarogya Setu app different from the technology mentioned in the newscard?