About Colombo Security Conclave (CSC):

• It is a regional security grouping comprising India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Mauritius.
• The CSC’s core objective is to promote regional security by addressing transnational threats and challenges of common concern to the Member States.
• Origin:
  • The CSC, initially known as the Trilateral for Maritime Security Cooperation, evolved out of trilateral meetings between National Security Advisors (NSAs) and Deputy NSAs from India, Maldives, and Sri Lanka, starting in 2011.
  • It came to a standstill after 2014 due to rising tensions between India and the Maldives. 
  • Since its revival and re-branding as the CSC in 2020, Mauritius and more recently, Bangladesh were added as members of the grouping.
• Current members of CSC include India, Bangladesh, Maldives, Mauritius, and Sri Lanka, while the Seychelles is an observer nation.
• CSC brings together NSAs and Deputy NSAs of the member countries.
• Cooperation under the conclave focuses on five pillars:
  • maritime safety and security
  • countering terrorism and radicalisation
  • combating trafficking and transnational organised crime
  • cyber-security and protection of critical infrastructure
  • humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
• Permanent secretariat: Colombo

Q1: What is the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC)?

BIMSTEC is an economic bloc that came into being in June 1997 through the Bangkok Declaration. Its members are Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal and Bhutan.

Source: Maldives joins India in Colombo Security Conclave, Dhaka stays away

About Saora Tribe:

• Saora is one of the ancient tribes of Odisha, which is also mentioned in the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata.
• They are called by various terms such as Savaras, Sabaras, Saura, Sora, etc.
• Though Odisha is the main land for the tribe, a small number of people are also found in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Assam.
• Language: They have their own native language called Sora, which is a Munda language, and they are one of the very few tribes of India that have a script for the language, Sorang Sompeng.
• The Saoras show their racial affinity to the Proto Australoid physical characters, which are dominant among the aborigines of Central and Southern India. 
• Religion: Saoras follow an ingrained and intricate religion, having faith in and worshipping a number of gods and spirits, who they believe are the supreme controllers of their regular lives.
• They have unique art practices, religious customs, as well as a dying tattooing tradition called ‘Tantangbo’.
• The Saoras can be divided broadly into two economic classes:
  • The Saoras of the plains (Sudha Saora) depending on their wet cultivation or wage earning and selling firewood.
  • The Hill Saoras (Lanjia Saora) practice shifting and terraced cultivation on the hill slopes.
• Settlement:
  • Saora villages do not conform to any particular type of settlement pattern.
  • Houses are scattered, and megaliths erected to commemorate dead kin are located close by.
  • Village guardian deities like Kitungsum are installed at the entrance of the settlement.
  • A typical house is a one-roomed thatched rectangular dwelling having stone and mud walls with a low roof and a high plinth front verandah. The walls are coloured with red earth.

Q1: Who are Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs)?

PVTGs are a more vulnerable group among tribal groups in India. These groups have primitive traits, geographical isolation, low literacy, zero to negative population growth rate and backwardness. Moreover, they are largely dependent on hunting for food and a pre-agriculture level of technology. Currently, there are 2.8 million PVTGs belonging to 75 tribes across 22,544 villages in 220 districts across 18 states and Union Territories in India. According to the 2011 Census, Odisha has the largest population of PVTGs at 866,000. It is followed by Madhya Pradesh at 609,000 and Andhra Pradesh (including Telangana) at 539,000.

Source: Saoras become 5th particularly vulnerable tribal group to get habitat rights in the state

About Digital Bus initiative: 

• It is a joint venture between the National Digital India Mission and the NIIT Foundation.
• It was started in 2017, aims to take technology to remote areas and also foster innovation and offer new opportunities and ensure that every community is able to thrive in the digital age.
• Objective
  • Reducing the Digital divide for those living in remote areas
  • Providing Linkages to Government programs and initiatives
  • Enhancing interest-levels in learning
  • Introducing the multidisciplinary approach to education
  • Encouraging collaborative learning
  • Developing interpersonal skills
  • Providing awareness on technology amongst rural community
  • Providing equal opportunities for rural youth
• Features of buses: These are solar-powered, 5G-enabled and are fully furnished classrooms with computers, Internet, and camera/video capabilities, with preinstalled e-courses, all available free of cost.
• Focus of the courses: These courses focus on fundamental functions like using e-mail, the Internet, and applications.
• It offers a career programme to help the beneficiary look for a job in the nearest city of town.

Q1: What is India's 'Digital India' initiative?

It was launched in 2015, strives to provide universal access to digital infrastructure, services, and efficient governance. A significant part of this effort is the recently proposed Digital India Act 2023 (DIA), which aims to establish flexible regulations that can adapt to technological changes, offer accessible mechanisms for online offense resolution, and ensure a legislative framework aligned with overarching governing principles.

Source: How the Digital Bus initiative has empowered young adults in remote areas of the country

About Digital Agriculture Mission: 

• It is conceived as an umbrella scheme to support digital agriculture initiatives, such as creating Digital Public Infrastructure, implementing the Digital General Crop Estimation Survey (DGCES), and taking up other IT initiatives by the Central Government, State Governments, and Academic and Research Institutions.
• Three major components of DPI are envisaged under the Digital Agriculture Mission: AgriStack, Krishi Decision Support System (DSS), and Soil Profile Maps.
• Each of these DPI components will provide solutions that will allow farmers to access and avail of various services.
• AgriStack: The farmer-centric DPI AgriStack consists of three foundational agri-sector registries or databases: Farmers’Registry, Geo-referenced Village Maps, and Crop Sown Registry, all of which will be created and maintained by state/ UT governments.
  • Farmers’Registry: It will be given a digital identity (‘Farmer ID’) similar to Aadhaar, which will be linked dynamically to records of land, ownership of livestock, crops sown, demographic details, family details, schemes and benefits availed, etc.
  • Pilots projects for the creation of Farmer IDs have been carried out in six districts — Farrukhabad (Uttar Pradesh), Gandhinagar (Gujarat), Beed (Maharashtra), Yamuna Nagar (Haryana), Fatehgarh Sahib (Punjab), and Virudhunagar (Tamil Nadu).
  • Crop Sown Registry: It will provide details of crops planted by farmers. The information will be recorded through Digital Crop Surveys — mobile-based ground surveys — in each crop season.
  • Geo-referenced Village Maps: It will link geographic information on land records with their physical locations.
• Krishi DSS: It will create a comprehensive geospatial system to unify remote sensing-based information on crops, soil, weather, and water resources, etc.
  • This information will support crop map generation for identifying crop sown patterns, droughts/ flood monitoring, and technology-/ model-based yield assessment for settling crop insurance claims by farmers.
• Soil Profile Maps: Under the Mission, detailed Soil Profile Maps (on a 1:10,000 scale) of about 142 million hectares of agricultural land are envisaged to be prepared. A detailed soil profile inventory of about 29 million ha has already been completed.

Q1: What is Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)?

It is an open-source identity platform that can be used to access a wide variety of government and private services by building applications and products on a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) like India Stack.

Source: Cabinet approves the Digital Agriculture Mission today with an outlay of Rs. 2817 Crore, including the central share of Rs. 1940 Crore

About Cocoa Tree: 

• It is an important plantation crop grown for chocolates around the world. It is known as a crop of humid tropics and is native to the Amazon basin of South America.
• Cocoa trees grow about 20 degree snorth and south of the equator in regions with warm weather and abundant rain, including West Africa and South America. 
• Required climatic conditions:
  • It can be grown up to 300 m above mean sea level. 
  • Rainfall: It requires an annual rainfall of 1500-2000 mm.
  • Temperature: The temperature range of 15°-39°C with optimum of 25°C is considered ideal.
  • Soil: It requires deep and well drained soils. Majority of area under Cocoa cultivation is on clay loam and sandy loam soil.
  • It grows well in the pH range of 6.5 to 7.0.
• Shade requirement: It was evolved as an under-storey crop in the Amazonian forests. Thus commercial cultivation of cocoa can be taken up in plantations where 50 per cent of light is ideally available. 
• Major producing regions in the world: About 70 percent of the world’s cocoa beans come from four West African countries: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon.
• In India, it is mainly cultivated in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu mainly as intercrop with Arecanut and Coconut.

Q1: What are Plantation crops?

These are defined as a group of commercial crops perennial in nature, cultivated extensively in tropical and subtropical situations in a large and contiguous areas. They include coconut, areca nut, oil palm, cocoa, cashew nut, tea, coffee and rubber.

Source: Will chocolate’s future hinge on success of growing cocoa in the lab?

About India Semiconductor Mission (ISM):

• ISM is a specialized and independent Business Division within the Digital India Corporation.
• It aims to build a vibrant semiconductor and display ecosystem to enable India’s emergence as a global hub for electronics manufacturing and design.
• ISM has all the administrative and financial powers and is tasked with the responsibility of catalysing the India Semiconductor ecosystem in manufacturing, packaging, and design. 
• ISM has an advisory board consisting of some of the leading global experts in the field of semiconductors.
• ISM has been working as a nodal agency for the schemes approved under the Semicon India Programme. 

Key Facts about Semicon India Programme:

• The ISM was launched in 2021 with a total financial outlay of Rs. 76,000 crore sunder the aegis of the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY), Government of India.
• It is part of the comprehensive program for the development of sustainable semiconductor and display ecosystems in the country. 
• The programme aims to provide financial support to companies investing in semiconductors, display manufacturing, and design ecosystem.
• It also promotes and facilitates indigenous Intellectual Property (IP) generation and encourages, enables, and incentivizes the Transfer of Technologies (ToT).
• The following four schemes have been introduced under the aforesaid programme:
  • Scheme for setting up of Semiconductor Fabs in India.
  • Scheme for setting up of Display Fabs in India.
  • Scheme for setting up of Compound Semiconductors/Silicon Photonics/ Sensors Fab and Semiconductor Assembly, Testing, Marking and Packaging (ATMP)/OSAT facilities in India.
  • Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme.

Q1: What are Semiconductors?

These are materials that have electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. They are the foundation of modern electronics and power a vast array of technologies such as computers, smartphones, solar panels, and medical devices. 

Source: Cabinet approves fifth semiconductor unit in India

About Namibia: 

• Location: It is located on the southwestern coast of the African continent in the Southern and Eastern Hemispheres of Earth.
• Namibia shares a border with the surrounding countries of South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Angola. The Atlantic Ocean borders it to the west. 
• It has a diverse environment that is home to deserts, marshlands, savannas, mountains, and river valleys. 
• Namibia's extent can be divided into three topographic zones from west to east.
  • The coastal Namib Desert runs along the country's coast on the Atlantic Ocean. It gives way to the Central Plateau to the west with the Kalahari Desert located further inwards. 
• Rivers: The only permanent rivers are the Kunene, the Okavango, the Mashi and the Zambezi on the northern border and the Orange on the southern.
• Mountain: Brandberg, also known as Mount Brand is Namibia’s highest mountain and is located along the plateau’s western escarpment.

Q1: What is Savanna grassland?

It is a vegetation type that grows under hot, seasonally dry climatic conditions and is characterized by an open tree canopy above a continuous tall grass understory (the vegetation layer between the forest canopy and the ground).

Source: Why Namibia plans to kill hundreds of its majestic wild animals for meat

About Thanjavur Veena : 

• The Thanjavur veena is an Indian instrument and has an interesting construction.
• They are of two types viz. the "Ekantha Veena" and "Sada Veena'.
• Ekantha Veena" is carved from a single block of wood, while Sada Veena,' has joints and is carved in three sections namely resonator, neck and head.
• The veena has 24 fixed frets (Mettu), so that all ragas can be played.
• It is made of fresh bark from a Jack Fruit Tree. The tree bark is forced to undergo several rounds of testing before being finalized for usage.
• The work involves making the resonator ( kudam), the neck ( dandi) and a tuning box — the three integral parts of a veena.
• It takes up to 15-20 days to get the finished product. The wood gets cut, intricately carved, shaped, and assembled.
• Types
  • There are four types of veena. While Rudra veena and Vichitra veena are popular in Hindustani classical music, Saraswati veena and Chitra veena are used in Carnatic classical music.
• Thanjavur is the only place where Saraswati veena is made. Saraswathi, the goddess of learning and arts, is portrayed with a veena. 

Q1) What is Carnatic Music?

Carnatic Music is a form of Indian classical music with origins in Southern India. Lyrics in Carnatic music are largely devotional; most of the songs are addressed to the Hindu deities. Source: Strung out: Bobbilli Veena craftsmen struggle for livelihood.

Source: In Frames: Thanjavur tunes its wood stock

About Grom-E1 Missile:

• It is a sophisticated weapon created from the Soviet-era Kh-38 “air-to-surface” missile.
• It was developed by Russia and officially unveiled for the first time in 2018.
• It combines the features of both a missile and an aerial bomb.
• Features:

Maximum Range: 120 km (75 miles).

• It features a high-explosive modular warhead equipped with a contact detonator.
• In addition to its standard configuration, there is a variant with a thermobaric design capable of detonating at high altitudes.
• The bomb itself weighs 594 kg (1,310 pounds), with a 315 kg (694 pound) warhead.
• The effectiveness of the Grom-E1 depends on the altitude and speedof the aircraft that launches it.
• For instance, its maximum range of 120 km (75 miles) can be achieved when dropped from an altitude of 12 km (7.5 miles) at a speed of 1,600 km per hour (994 mph). At an altitude of 5 km, the range decreases to approximately 35 km.
• This weapon can be deployed by Russian aircraft such as the MiG-35, Su-34, Su-35, Su-57, and certain helicopters.

Q1: What are Cruise Missiles?

Cruise missiles are unmanned vehicles that are propelled by jet engines, much like an airplane. They can be launched from ground, air, or sea platforms. Cruise missiles remain within the atmosphere for the duration of their flight and can fly as low as a few meters off the ground. Flying low to the surface of the earth expends more fuel but makes a cruise missile very difficult to detect. 

Source: Russia attacks Kharkiv with Grom-E1 missile-bomb for first time: Details