G20 Summit 2023

• Presidency – India
• 2023 Theme – ‘One Earth One Family One Future’ meaning ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ (the whole earth is a family).
• It was written in Devanagari script, drawn from the ancient Sanskrit text of the Maha Upanishad.
• It resulted in adoption of New Delhi Declaration, which reflects India's motto of "Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas" –“Together with all, Development for all, Trust of all”.
• Outcome – The 55-member African Union was formally made permanent member of the G20, on par with the European Union.
• G20 – It was established in 1999, after the Asian financial crisis as a regular forum for Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors.
• Aim – To study, review, and promote high level discussion of policy issues pertaining to international financial stability.
• Member – 19 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US, Russia, Australia, Canada, Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, China and Indonesia), European Union and African Union.
• It does not have permanent secretariat.
• Presidency – It is chosen by a rotation system amongst the member countries.
• India holds the Presidency of the G20 from December 2022 to 30 November 2023.
• Troika – It comprises of the past, present, and future presidents.
• Troika 2023 includes Indonesia, India, and Brazil.

Women Reservation Act, 2023

President has given her assent to the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (128th Amendment) Bill, 2023 and now it will be known as the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023.

• Provides 33% reservation for women in Lok Sabha, State Legislative Assembly, and the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi.
• It will also apply to the seats reserved for SCs and STs in Lok Sabha and states legislatures.
• Article 330A and Article 332A to be introduced in the Constitution to propose changes for Lok Sabha and Assemblies respectively.
• It can be implemented only after a delimitation exercise is completed, and the next delimitation exercise is scheduled to be held in 2026. 
• Effectively, this means that the earliest implementation of the women’s quota in the Lok Sabha can be in the 2029 general election.
• Seats reserved for women will be rotated after each delimitation, as determined by a law made by Parliament.
• The Jammu & Kashmir Reorganisation (2nd Amendment) Act 2023 – It seeks to reserve one-third of all elected seats in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly for women.
• The reservation for women will also apply to the seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the J&K Assembly.
• The Government of Union Territories (Amendment) Act 2023 – It reserves one third of all elected seats in the Puducherry Legislative Assembly for women.

Rock Edicts of Ashoka

2 Ashokan era edicts were recently found in Delhi.

• Edicts – It is a decree or announcement of law, which can be under any official authority and can be issued in any number of physical forms
  • Major and Minor Rock Edicts
  • Major and Minor Pillar Edicts

Sacred Ensembles of Hoysalas (Karnataka)

Recently, Hoysala-era temples were added as to UNESCO’s World Heritage List thus becoming the 42nd site from India.

• The Chennakeshava temple – It is located in Belur.
• Major shrine of– Lord Vishnu
• Time period – Consecrated around 1117 AD
• Built by – Hoysala king Vishnuvardhana
• Nickname – Vijaya Narayana temple as it was built by the king to mark his victories against the Cholas.
• The Kesava Temple – It is located in Somanathapura (Mysore).

Time period – 1268 C.E

• Built by – Somanatha, a General of Hoysala King Narasimha III
• Major Shrine - Vaishnava shrine
• The Hoysaleswara temple – It is located on the banks of Dwarasamudra tank in Halebidu.

Time period – 12th Century C.E.

• Major Shrine – Lord Shiva
• It is believed to be the largest Shiva temple built by the Hoysalas.
• Halebidu was sacked by Malik Kafur, a general of the then Delhi Sultan Alauddin Khalji in the early 1300s.

Special Session of Parliament

A special session of Parliament was held in September 2023.

• Constitution of India does not use the term “special session”.
• Article 352 – It refer to a “special sitting of the House” to deal with proclamation of emergency.
• This part was added to the article during 44th Amendment Act to add safeguards to the power of proclaiming emergency in the country.
• If a Proclamation of Emergency is issued and Parliament is not in session, then one-tenth of Lok Sabha MPs can ask the President to convene a special meeting to disapprove the Emergency.
• Agenda – Either to celebrate a historical legacy like the Indian freedom struggle and Indian Independence or to pass a bill.
• Summon – The President, who summons a regular Parliamentary session will summon this session also as per provisions of Article 85(1) of the Constitution.
• Chair – For the 2 Houses to be in session, the Presiding Officers should chair their proceedings.
• The presiding officers can also direct that the proceedings of their respective Houses would be limited.
• The procedural devices like question hour would not be available to MPs during the session.
• 2 divisions of the special sessions
  • Proper special sessions – It happens with debates or discussions, and
  • Midnight sessions – It happens without any debates.
• Special sitting in Lok Sabha – In 2012, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 1st sitting of the Indian Parliament.
• Special sitting in Rajya Sabha – In 1977 and 1991 when the Lok Sabha was under dissolution to decide on the President’s Rule.

Abraham Accords

September 2023 marks an important milestone for West Asia and North Africa, 3 years since the signing of the Abraham Accords.

• Signed in - 2020
• Agreement between - United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel.
• Mediated by – The US
• Objective- To normalise ties between these Arab states and Israel.
• Following the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, Arab states including Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan have established diplomatic ties with Israel.
• It is sometimes referred to as “the new dawn of a new Middle East”.

South China Sea Dispute

Recently, Philippines coast guard removed the floating barrier placed by China that prevented Filipino fishing boats from entering a disputed area in South China Sea.

• South China Sea boundaries –Brunei, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
  • Taiwan Strait – Connects South China Sea with East China Sea
  • Luzon Strait – Connects South China Sea with Philippine Sea
• Rivers draining into it – The tributaries of the Pearl (Zhu) River including the Xi River, the Red River and the Mekong River.

• Senkaku or the Daioyu Islands dispute – Between China and Japan in East China Sea

Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

A crypto gambling platform dappGambl, concluded that most of the researched NFT collections were worth close to nothing.

• NFTs – They are blockchain-based tokens that each represent a unique asset like a piece of art, digital content, or media.
• It is an irrevocable digital certificate of ownership and authenticity for a given asset, whether digital or physical.
• Block chain is a distributed ledger where all transactions are recorded.
• Key characteristics – They are designed to be cryptographically verifiable, unique or scarce and easily transferable.
• Creation – It is created by an artist, creator, or license-holder through a process called minting.
• Minting – It involves signing a blockchain transaction that outlines the fundamental token details, which is then broadcasted to the blockchain to trigger a smart contract function which creates the token and assigns it to its owner.
• Thus a unique token identifier, or token ID is mapped to an owner identifier and stored inside a smart contract.
• When the owner of a given token ID wishes to transfer it to another user, it is easy to verify ownership and reassign the token to a new owner.
• It cannot be exchanged or replaced with tokens of same type as each are unique.
• Fractional NFTs (F-NFTs) – It allows multiple people to own a piece of the same asset by dividing the NFT into smaller fractions, each of which can be purchased individually.

Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) Report

According to the University of Chicago report, the air pollution has major impact on the life expectancy.

• Prepared by – University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute (UCEPI)
• Aim – To quantify the causal relationship between long-term human exposure to air pollution and life expectancy.
• Data – It uses highly localized satellite data, making it is possible to report life expectancy impacts at the county or similar level around the world.
• It is rooted in peer-reviewed research by an international team of scholars.
• Findings – In 2021, the average person in the world would have gained 2 years and 3 months of life expectancy if fine particulate pollution were reduced to meet the WHO guideline.
• The South Asian nation stands to lose 6.8 years of life on average per person.
• The average person living in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan is exposed to particulate pollution levels that are 51.3% higher than at the turn of the century.
• Bangladesh remains the most polluted country in the world.
• Significance – It is the 1st pollution index to show what the threat of air pollution means to a person’s life anywhere in the world.
• World Air Quality Report – by IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company.
• Air Quality Index – by Central Pollution Control Board

India’s Space Policy 2023

• Published by – ISRO
• It formally laid down the regulations of privatizing space missions in India.
• It also denoted clear guidelines of operations for New Space India Limited (NSIL) and Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe).

• Vision – To augment space capabilities and to enable, encourage and develop a flourishing commercial presence in space
• To use space as a driver of technology development and derived benefits in allied areas.
• To pursue international relations, and create an ecosystem for effective implementation of space applications among all stakeholders.
• Policy – ISRO will move out of manufacturing space systems, and instead focus only on advancing space R&D.
• Manufacturing and operations will be handled by NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), a public sector unit set up in 2019 under the Department of Space as the commercial arm of ISRO.
• IN-SPACe – Indian National Space Promotion & Authorisation Centre is expected to create regulatory framework to ensure a level playing field for the NGEs.
• It will also handle transfer of technology requests, in order to give private space firms access to already established ISRO-owned space infrastructure.

Statue of Oneness

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister unveiled the 108-foot-tall Statue of Oneness of Adi Shankaracharya at Omkareshwar.

• Statue of Oneness - Depicts Adi Shankaracharya as a 12-year-old child.
• Location –Mandhata Parvat hill at Omkareshwar, Madhya Pradesh.
• Adi Shankaracharya became a proponent of Advaita Vedanta at Omkareshwar.

• Statue of Unity – It is a statue of Sardar Vallabhai Patel, the Iron Man of India.
• It is the world’s tallest statue (182 m), located near the Sardar Sarovar Dam, in the banks of the Narmada River in Gujarat.
• Statue of Equality – It is the statue of Sri Ramanujacharya.
• It is the second-tallest statue in the world, located in Hyderabad in Telangana.
• Born in 1017 in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, he is revered as a Vedic philosopher and social reformer who travelled across India, advocating equality and social justice.
• Statue of Valour – A 125-foot bronze statue of 'Ahom general' Lachit Borphukan in Assam's Jorhat was unveiled in 2024.
• Battle of Alaboi and Battle of Saraighat were fought between Mughalas and Ahoms.
• Statue of Social Justice – A 206 feet statue of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar at Andhra Pradesh.
• Statue of Equality (In USA) – A 19-feet statue of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, part of the Ambedkar International Centre (AIC) in Maryland, is the largest statue of Ambedkar outside India.

Erg Chech 002

In 2020, some unusual rocks containing distinctive greenish crystals were found in the Erg Chech sand sea.

• Erg Chech – A sandy region of the Sahara in western Algeria and northern Mali.
• It consists largely of shifting dunes.
• The rocks containing distinctive greenish crystals, it turned out to be from outer space, left over from the dawn of the Solar System.
• They were all pieces of a meteorite known as Erg Chech 002, which is the oldest volcanic rock ever found.
• Erg Chech 002 – It is an ancient andesite meteorite, an “ungrouped achondrite”, which are rocks formed from melted planetesimals, which is what we call solid lumps in the cloud of gas and debris that formed the Solar System.
  • Ex – Angrites, Erg Chech 002.
• It contains abundant lead-206 and lead-207, as well as undecayed uranium-238 and uranium-235.
• Findings – It is some 4.56556 billion years old (around 120,000 years).
• Aluminium-26 was distributed quite unevenly throughout the cloud of dust and gas which formed the solar system.
• Conocarpus – It is a fast-growing exotic mangrove species.
• Proxima Centauri – A red dwarf star, nearest to the Sun.

 Warm Arctic Cold Eurasian (WACE) pattern

Together with rapid Arctic warming and sea ice decline, especially over the Barents–Kara seas, extreme cold winters have occurred frequently in mid-latitudes, particularly in Central Eurasia.

• It is a pattern with 2 distinct winter temperature anomalies centered over the Barents–Kara seas and Central Eurasia.
• 2 distinct winter temperature anomalies
  • Warm surface temperatures over the Arctic
  • Cold surface temperatures over Eurasia
• It is accompanied by an anomalous high pressure and anticyclonic circulation over the Eurasian continent.
• The sea ice loss in the Barents and Kara seas and the cooling of the Eurasian continent can both be traced to anomalous atmospheric circulations.
• Impact in Indian Ocean – It is also associated with upper air circulation changes that reach into the Indian Ocean sector.
• The rapid increase in the cyclogenesis potential over the Arabian Sea coincides with a shift in the WACE pattern.

GRIHA Norms

The Indian Army’s new Thal Sena Bhawan (TSB), coming up with GRIHA-IV (Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment) norms.

• Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment (GRIHA) - A national rating system that evaluates the environmental performance of a building holistically over its entire life cycle.
• Developed by TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) and has been adopted by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
• 3 stages for Evaluation – Pre-construction stage, building planning & construction stages and building operation & maintenance stage.
• Assessment – Based on 34 criteria and awards points on a scale of 100.
• Eligibility – A project must achieve at least 50 points to get minimum of 1 star.
• The criteria and appraisal norms is revised every 3 years or sooner.
• SVA GRIHA (Simple Versatile Affordable GRIHA) – It has been developed by ADaRSH in collaboration with TERI and is currently under pilot stage.
• It is meant to simplify, and make the greening of small buildings (less than 2500 sqm built-up area) affordable.
• Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) – Initiated by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) in 2007 and updated in 2017, sets minimum energy standards for commercial buildings.
• Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) - An environmentally oriented building certification program run by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).
• It aims to improve building and construction project performance across 7 areas of environmental and human health.

Beijing convention on the judicial sale of ships

15 countries join the Beijing convention on the judicial sale of ships.

• It is a UN convention to promote legal certainty in judicial sale of ships.

• Developed by – United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL).
• Aim - It addresses the problem of new owners and those financing the purchase of vessels who, for instance, find themselves dealing with previous creditors laying claim to the ship as security for a loan.
• International Maritime Organisation (IMO) was supporting the establishment of the convention by acting as the repository for these notices and certificates of judicial sale.
• Information on pending and completed judicial sales of ships will be accessible online on IMO’s Global Integrated Shipping Information System (GISIS) platform.
• Parties – As of now, 15 States signed, but not signed by India yet.
• UNCITRAL – It is a subsidiary body of the U.N. General Assembly responsible for helping to facilitate international trade and investment.
• Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) – It is one of the key guiding documents on gender equality and women's empowerment.
• It was adopted at the 4th World Conference on Women in 1995.

World Coffee Conference (WCC 2023)

The 5th edition of the World Coffee Conference held in Bengaluru.

• WCC – It is a property of the London-based International Coffee Organization (ICO), a body set up in 1963 under the auspices of the UN.
• 5th WCC in Bengaluru – It is the 1st time India is hosting the conference.
• Organized by – The Coffee Board (Ministry of Commerce and Industry) and International Coffee Organization.
• Theme – Sustainability through circular economy and regenerative agriculture.
• Bengaluru is the coffee capital of India, accounting for over 70% of the country’s total coffee production.
• International Coffee Organization (IOC) – An intergovernmental organization bringing together exporting and importing Governments to tackle the challenges in the coffee sector.
• Members – They represent 98% of world coffee production and 67% of world consumption and India is one among them.

Munshi-Ayyangar formula

• The Munshi-Ayyangar formula is named after Drafting Committee members K M Munshi and N Gopalaswamy Ayyangar.
• The Munshi-Ayyangar Formula was proposed in 1950, which recommended Hindi in Devanagari Script to be the Official Language in India along with English for a period of 15 years.
• As part of the Munshi-Ayyangar formula, Article 343 of the Constitution was adopted in 1950.
• September 14 is observed as Hindi Diwas or Hindi Day, to commemorate the Constituent Assembly of India making Hindi the official language of the Union government.
• Article 343
  1. The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script.
  2. The form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals.
  3. For a period of 15 years from the commencement of this Constitution, the English language shall continue to be used for all the official purposes of the Union.
• When the 15-year period came to an end, protests broke out over the fear of imposition of Hindi in large parts of non-Hindi-speaking India.
• The resistance resulted in the Centre passing the Official Languages Act, which stated that English would continue to be upheld as an official language along with Hindi.
• Hence there is no national language for India.

UPAg (Unified Portal for Agricultural Statistics (UPAg)) Portal

•  UPAg Portal aims to address the complex governance challenges India’s farm sector is facing now.
• It is a platform designed to generate crop estimates and is integrated with other systems generating agriculture statistics such as price, trade, procurement, stock.
• It is a crucial component of the Digital Public Infrastructure for Agriculture.
• It is an initiative of the Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare under the Ministry of Agriculture.
• It aids to streamline and enhance data management in the agricultural domain.
• Key Features
• Data Standardization – It consolidates data from various sources into a standardized format for easier access and understanding.
• Data Analysis – It offers insights such as production trends and consumption patterns for making informed decisions.
• Granular Production Estimates – It improves the government's ability to respond to agricultural crises swiftly.
• Commodity Profile Reports – The reports will be produced using algorithms, and provides users with comprehensive insights.
• Plug and Play – Users will have the flexibility to use the portal's data to prepare their own reports, promoting data-driven decision-making.

Mithuns (Bos frontalis)

• Scientific name - Bos frontalis. Family – Bovidae.
• It is a ruminant (large group of herbivores with a 4-chambered stomach) species that is found in India (Northeast India), Bangladesh Myanmar, and China.
• It is the State animal of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland.
• Habitat – The mithun is semi-domesticated and is reared in a free-range forest ecosystem.
• Since the soil in these parts is acidic and low in salt content, mithuns have an affinity for salt.
• Food Animal Tag - Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) recognized this bovine as a ‘food animal’.
• Food animals are those that are raised and used for food production or consumption by humans.
• The recognition aids to help farmers and tribal village communities benefit commercially from the sale and processing of mithun meat.
• Other animals having food animal tag – Himalayan yak.

Psyche Mission

• Launched by - NASA in 2023
• Aim – To study the metallic asteroid called ‘16 Psyche’, located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
• Type- Orbiter
• Mission – By 2029, the spacecraft will begin exploring the asteroid and will spend about 2 years orbiting the asteroid.
• It will take pictures, map the surface, and collect data to determine Psyche’s composition.
• It uses solar electric propulsion and communicates with Earth through the Deep Space Network (DSN) of NASA.
• Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) - European Space Agency’s (ESA) mission to explore Jupiter and three of its moons - Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.