GS Analyst
Daily Current Affairs

Four of the 20 relics of Lord Buddha preserved at the National Museum are being taken to Thailand for a month-long exposition.

About (Kapilvastu Relics)

• The relics at the National Museum are known as the ‘Kapilvastu Relics’ as they were recovered in 1898 from a site in Bihar believed to be the ancient city of Kapilvastu.
• It was an inscribed casket found at the stupa site in Piprahwa (near Siddharthnagar in Uttar Pradesh) that helped identify Kapilavastu.
• The casket contained the relics of Buddha and Sakya, his community.
• The relics fall under the ‘AA’ (rare) category of antiquities and art treasures.

Can they be lent for exhibitions?

• They are not meant to be lent for exhibitions, within India or in foreign nations.
• But the exposition in Thailand was being held upon a “special request” by the Thai Government

What are Buddha relics?

• Simply put, they are the Buddha's cremated remains.
• As per the Buddhist belief, at the age of 80 (486-483 BC), lord Buddha obtained salvation in Kushinagar (Uttar Pradesh).
• Lord Buddha was cremated as a universal king by the Mallas of Kushinagar.
• His funeral relicswere collected and divided into eight shares to be distributed among them
  1. Ajathsatrus of Magadha
  2. Vaishali's Licchavis
  3. the Sakyas of Kapilavastu
  4. Housing in Kushinagar
  5. Alakappa Bullies
  6. Mallas of Pava
  7. the Colossians of Ramagrama once
  8. Brahmana of Vethadipa
• The purpose was to place stupas on sacred relics.
• Other stupas appeared, one on top of the pipe where the remains were collected and the other on the coals.
• The remains were later excavated by Ashoka - ruler of the Maurya Dynasty, who ruled almost the entire Indian subcontinent from c. 268 to 232 B.C.
• He dispersed the remains and built stupas over them throughout his district.
• According to Ashokavadana, Ashoka had relics of Buddha placed on 84,000 stupas made up of Yakshas (usually gentle natural spirits).

Buddhism in India:

• Siddhartha Gautam, born in 563 BC, was part of the Sakya royal family that ruled from Kapilvastu, Lumbini. At the age of 29, Gautama left home and led a life of self-denial.
• After 49 days of meditation, Gautama received enlightenment under a pipal tree at Bodhgaya in Bihar.
• Buddha made his first sermon in the village of Sarnath, near the town of Benares in the UP. The event is known as the Dharma-Chakra-Pravartana (legal wheel revolution).
• He died at the age of 80 in Kushinagara, a city in the UP. The event is known as Mahaparinibban.

 The rules of Buddhism:

• Middle Path:Avoid both extremes of worldly pleasure and the practice of extreme self-The Buddha instead called the 'Madhyam Marg' or the intermediate method to be followed.
• Four good truths:Suffering (dukkha) is the backbone of the world, All suffering has a reason - Samudya, Suffering can end - Nirodha, Can be gained by following AtthangaMagga
• Eight-Way Ways:Positive Views, Proper Objective, Proper Speech, Proper Action, Proper Health, Positive Thinking, Positive Effort, Positive Concentration
• Five Principles or Pancasil- Violence, theft, sexual misconduct, lying or gossip, drunkenness

 Major Buddhist texts:

• Three pitakas: VinayaPitaka (moral code), SuttaPitaka (Dhamma Buddha): Divided into five Nicayas: Digha, Majjhima, Samyutta, Anguttara, AnguttaraKhuddaka, AbhidammaPitaka (philosophical analysis)
• Other important Buddhist texts include Divyavadana, Dipavamsa, Mahavamsa, Milind Panha etc.

Buddhist Schools:

• Mahayana:literally means "Great Car". It believes in the heaven of the Buddha and the idolatrous worship of the Buddha and the Bodhisattvas including the Buddha Nature.
• Hinayana:A small car literally. It believes in the original teachings of the Buddha or the Doctrine of the Elders. He does not believe in idolatry and seeks to gain personal salvation through self-discipline and meditation.
• Theravada:is a Hinayana sect, founded in Sri Lanka and later spread throughout Southeast Asia.
• Vajrayana:means "Car of Thunder", also known as tantric Buddhism.
• Zen: It is a school of Mahayana Buddhism founded in China.

Sammakka-Sarakka Jatara, Asia’s biggest biennial tribal festival, is scheduled from February 21 to 24.

• Type: Tribal Festival (State Festival of Telangana)
• Conducted in: Medaram village by the committee of tribal priests.
• Sammakka Saralamma Jathara or Medaram Jathara is a tribal festival of honouring the goddesses celebrated in the southern state of Telangana.

• It commemorates the fight of a mother and daughter, Sammakka and Saralamma, with the reigning rulers against an unjust law.
• It is celebrated by the second-largest Tribal Community of Telangana- the Koya tribe.

• People offer bangaram/gold (jaggery) of a quantity equal to their weight to the goddesses and take holy bath in Jampanna Vagu (stream).
• It is a festival with no vedic or brahmanic influence.
• This fair is said to be the largest repeating congregation of tribal communities in the world. 
• It is held every two years (biennually).

Achieving one of the three priority areas agreed upon during India’s G20 presidency in 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Global Initiative on Digital Health (GIDH).

What is Global Initiative on Digital Health (GIDH)?

• GIDH is a platform for sharing knowledge and digital products among countries.
• The initiative will be a network of networks with four main components —
  • country needs tracker
  • country resource portal (a map of resources available in a country)
  • transformation toolbox that will share quality-assured digital tools
  • knowledge exchange

Through this evidence-based and comprehensive co-creation process, GIDH will ultimately aim to:

• ALIGN efforts to support the Global Strategy on Digital Health 2020–2025;
• SUPPORT quality assured technical assistance to develop and strengthen standards-based and interoperable systems aligned to global best practices, norms and standards;
• FACILITATEthe deliberate use of quality assured digital transformation tools that enable governments to manage their digital health transformation journey.

What is the importance of Digital Health?

• Digital health has the potential to prevent disease and lower healthcare costs, while helping patients monitor and manage chronic conditions.
• It can also tailor medicine for individual patients.
• Healthcare providers also can benefit from advances in digital health.
• Digital tools give healthcare providers an extensive view of patient health by significantly increasing access to health data and giving patients greater control over their health.
• The result is increased efficiency and improved medical outcomes.

What are the challenges of digital health?

• Data interoperability: Due to the massive amounts of data collected from a variety of systems that store and code data differently; data interoperability is an ongoing challenge.
• Additional challenges relate to concerns ranging from 
  • digital literacy among patients
  • unequal access to healthcare
  • issues related to data storage, access, sharing and ownership

Significance of the initiative

• The platform will help in democratising digital health technologies, especially for countries of the Global South.
• Digital health is a proven accelerator to advance health outcomes toward achieving Universal Health Coverage and the health-related Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

The Maharashtra Legislature unanimously passed a bill reserving 10% of the seats in educational institutions and the same proportion of government jobs for people from the Maratha community.

• This is the third such attempt by the state government to carve out a quota for the once-dominant agrarian community, after similar laws enacted in 2014 and 2019 were struck down by the courts.
  • The 2014 Maratha reservation law provided a 16% quota in jobs and education, but it was quashed by the Bombay high court.
  • The 2018 Maratha reservation provided a similar quantum of reservation, which the Bombay HC brought down to 12% and 13% respectively. The quota was quashed by the Supreme Court in May 2021.

What is the Bill?

• Bill: Maharashtra State Reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes Act 2024
• In the bill passed by both houses of the state legislature, the Maharashtra government cited the findings of a report submitted by the Maharashtra State Commission for Backward Classes (MSCBC) as the basis for the reservation.
• Key-findings of the Report:

• • Marathas account for 28% of Maharashtra’s population, and are in an “exceptional circumstances and extraordinary condition” of backwardness, making it a fit case for reservation over the 50% ceiling mandated by the Supreme Court.
  • The 10% quota is over and above the existing 62% reservation in the state, which includes 10% for those belonging to economically weaker sections (EWS) and remaining 52% caste based quota
• Based on these findings, the commission recommended that the Maratha community be notified as a socially and educationally backward class under Article 342(C) and Article 366(26C) of the constitution, indicating the need for a separate social component with different and independent percentages from the existing reserved castes.
• Article 342-C of the Constitution empowers the state to list the backward communities as per the provisions of Articles 15(4) and 16(4).
• The Bill outlines the provision of a 10-year review period after the implementation of the proposed reservation.

The United Kingdom slipped into recession, with its worst gross domestic product (GDP) performance in 2023 in years. Japan lost its spot as the world’s third-largest economy. Its economy is now the world’s fourth-largest after it contracted in the last quarter of 2023 and fell behind Germany. 

What is a Recession?

• A recession is commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction.
• A recession is a significant decline in economic activity that lasts for months or even years.
• Experts declare a recession when a nation’s economy experiences
  • negative gross domestic product (GDP)
  • rising levels of unemployment
  • falling retail sales
  • contracting measures of income and manufacturing for an extended period of time

What causes recessions?

These phenomena are some of the main drivers of a recession:

• A sudden economic shock: An economic shock is a surprise problem that creates serious financial damage. 
• Excessive debt: When individuals or businesses take on too much debt, the cost of servicing the debt can grow to the point where they can’t pay their bills.
• Asset bubbles: When investing decisions are driven by emotion, bad economic outcomes aren’t far behind.
• Too much inflation: Inflation is the steady, upward trend in prices over time.
• Too much deflation: While runaway inflation can create a recession, deflationcan be even worse.

Why UK, Japan fell into recession?

How would it impact India?

• While India’s GDP has been performing relatively better, no one is immune to economic problems, in the era of globalisation.
• External headwinds are poised to hurt India’s economy too, as service exports are a major part of revenue generated by India’s IT industry and global price rise can make India’s imports expensive. 
• India & the UK:Negotiations between India and the United Kingdom for the proposed free trade agreement (FTA) are at an advanced stage, but India is keen to safeguard its interests.
• India & Japan:According to the MEA’s October 2023 report, bilateral trade totaled US$ 21.96 billion during FY 2022- 23. Exports from Japan to India during this period were US$ 16.49 billion and imports were US$ 5.46 billion.

What is India’s future prospective?

• Shrinking gap: The gap between developed countries and emerging nations is shrinking, with India likely to overtake Japan in nominal GDP in a few years.
  • India is likely to overtake Japan to become the world’s third-largest economy with a GDP of USD 7.3 trillion by 2030, S&P Global Market Intelligence said in its issue of PMI in October 2023.
• Beneficial diversification: India is benefiting from growing interest from multinationals, which see the country as a key alternative manufacturing base in the context of developed economies' supply chain diversification strategies.

What India can do to sidestep the recessionary trend?

• India is currently the world's fifth-largest economy, placed behind the US, China, Japan and Germany.
• For India, it's crucial to continue focusing on-
  • strengthening domestic demand
  • enhancing productivity
  • promoting sectors with high growth potential
  • diversifying trade partners
  • reducing dependency on a single market for exports and imports

The resurgence of proposals for semiconductor fabrication facilities in India, with applications from the Tata Group and Tower Semiconductor, has reignited interest and hope in the country's semiconductor manufacturing sector.

Basics of Semiconductor industry

• The semiconductor industry has four main segments —

• raw materials
• foundry
• fabless design
• packaging
• To be totally self-dependent in the semiconductor supply chain, India needs to master all four segments.
• One of the most important aspects of manufacturing advanced semiconductor chips is packaging and testing, also known as Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test — an area currently dominated by China and Taiwan. 
• ATMP (Assembly, Test, Mark, and Pack) and OSAT are good starting points for India.

Challenges for India

• Capital requirement: The semiconductor industry is extremely labour, technical and capital-intensive, requiring several billions of dollars. 

• Critical dependency on China: Being a Quad member, India is engaged in talks with the US, Japan and Australia for together working in the field of semiconductor chips production and if leading advanced semiconductor countries wants to adopt India under its China plus One strategy, India needs to be in the Chinese good books also to get a regular uninterrupted supply of Gallium and Germanium.
• Alternatives: To avoid Chinese imports for these critical raw materials supply, India and partner countries need to find alternate sources of Gallium and Germanium. Until then, India and other partner countries will be critically dependent on China.
• Late Entry: India missed early opportunities to establish itself in the semiconductor industry. This delay has made it challenging to catch up with countries that started developing their semiconductor industries decades ago, such as Taiwan??.

How India is attracting companies to establish semiconductors fabs?

• Incentives: India is offering an array of financial and other incentives, including infrastructure development and streamlined regulations, to attract global companies to establish semiconductor fabs in the country.
• Financial support (50%): India will extend financial support equal to 50% of a fab construction project cost "to applicants who are found eligible and have the technology as well as capacity to execute such highly capital and resource intensive projects.
• Notable initiatives in this endeavor include the:
  • National Policy on Electronics (NPE) 2019
  • Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for Large Scale Electronics Manufacturing
  • Scheme for Promotion of Manufacturing of Electronic Components and Semiconductors (SPECS) 
  • Semicon India Programme

Significance of the move

• By promoting local manufacturing, India can reduce its dependence on imports and increase its ability to withstand global supply chain disruptions.
  • The pandemic caused chip supply disruptions, which led to a global semiconductor shortage and a hike in prices.
• This can also generate employment opportunities and promote economic growth.
• The Industrial Revolution 5.0 would not be here without the semiconductor chips.

The 14th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS COP14) concluded in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. 

What is the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals?

• Also known as the Bonn Convention, it is an environmental treaty under the aegis of the United Nations Environment Programme. 
• It was signed in Bonn, Germany, on 23 June 1979.
• It provides a global platform for the conservation and sustainable use of migratory animals and their habitats. 
• CMS has two Appendices. 
  • Appendix I: It lists endangered migratory species and includes prohibitions regarding the take of these species.
  • Appendix II: It lists species that have an ‘unfavourable conservation status’ (as per the conditions set out in the Convention) and encourages range states to draft range-wide agreements for conservation and management of these species.
• CMS COP14: It was the first major intergovernmental biodiversity meeting since the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2022.
  • The theme of this conference is “Wildlife Knows No Borders.”

Key-Takeaways of the Conference

• CMS Appendices: The parties agreed to adopt listing proposals for 14 migratory species and several other resolutions for global wildlife.
  • The 14 species are Eurasian lynx, Peruvian pelican, Pallas’s cat, guanaco, Laulao catfish, Balkan lynx, Lahille’s bottlenose dolphin, harbour porpoise, Magellanic plover, bearded vulture, Blackchin guitarfish, Bull ray, Lusitanian cownose ray and Gilded catfish.
• The State of Migratory Species Report 2024identified 399 species that could be listed in either the Appendices of the CMS-listed species. 
• The Parties also extended ongoing efforts to safeguard species already included in concerted actions, such as the giraffe, antipodean albatross, Atlantic humpback dolphin and others. 
• Central Asian Flyway for migratory birds: After two decades of efforts, the COP14 played a key role in giving recognition to the Central Asian Flyway for migratory birdsthat stretches from Siberia all the way to the Maldives. 

• Insects: Observing the insect decline and its potential threats to migratory insectivorous animals, the COP14 also endorsed a new scientific report on the same. 
• Samarkand Strategic Plan: A new, science-based Samarkand Strategic Plan for Migratory Species for the period 2024-2032. The SPMS Vision Statement sets out Six Goals: improvement of the conservation status of migratory species; maintaianing and restoring the habitats and ranges of migratory species; and eliminating or “significantly” reducing threats affecting migratory species.
• Bycatch and illegal taking of meat: The meeting of the Parties also saw the strengthening of the mandate to take bycatch and aquatic wild meat. The bycatch and illegal taking of meat is a major concern for small cetaceans such as dolphins, sharks, marine turtles and seabirds.
• Action plan for aquatic species: The COP also introduced three action plans for aquatic species, such as Hawksbill turtle, Angelshark, Atlantic humpback dolphin were also adopted.
• Terrestrial species: In case of terrestrial species, new species specific ranges were table such as the transboundary jaguar initiative and the Sahelo-Saharan megafauna, based on the successful initiatives under the CMS Central Asian Mammals Initiative. Action Plans for critically endangered migratory species such as dama gazelle and addax were also included. 
• Cheetah introduction: Uzbekistan also announced plans to introduce cheetahs in the country. 
• Zoonotic disease: To address the concerns about zoonotic diseases — diseases transmissible to humans from animal contact — from the COP14, under the leadership of International Union for Conservation of Nature, saw the launch of One Health Central Asia project. 
• Light pollution: The CMS COP14 also saw new guidelines presented for mitigating the impacts of light pollution on migratory species. It also strengthened measures for illegal and unsustainable killing of migratory species and resolutions and endorsements on climate change and its effects on migratory wildlife. 
• Global Partnership on Ecological Connectivity: To address the destruction, degradation and fragmentation of natural habitats among wild life, the COP14 took an initiative — Global Partnership on Ecological Connectivity (GPEC) — to “protect and connect natural areas” to ensure that key areas of migratory species are identified, protected and connected. 

International Relations

Alexei Navalny (1976-2024)

Alexei Navalny, Russia's most prominent opposition leader, died recently after collapsing and losing consciousness at the penal colony north of the Arctic Circle where he was serving a long jail term.

Who was Navalny?

• Navalny, 47, became the leadingfigure among Russia's splintered opposition.
• Supporters cast him as a Russian version of South Africa's Nelson Mandela who would one day be freed from jail to lead the country.
• Rose to prominence: A former lawyer, Navalny rose to prominence with blogs which exposed what he said was vast corruption across the Russian elite, describing Russia as ruled by "crooks and thieves".
• The US can announce a major package of sanctions against Russia over the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalnyand the two-year Ukraine war.

What is India’s stand?

• India is standing by its close relationship with Russia.
• As a nation, Russia has supported India and India, in turn, has supported Russia. India has also been very clear vocal in the G20 declaration and before that at every summit.
• India is “on the side of peace".

Polity & Governance

SC invokes Article 142

The Supreme Court, using Article 142, declared Aam Aadmi (AAP) party councillor as elected to the post of Chandigarh mayor, upon finding that the presiding officer deliberately defaced eight votes cast in his favour.

What is Article 142?

• Article 142 of the Indian constitution is a provision that empowers the Supreme Court to pass any decree or order necessary for doing complete justice in any case or matter pending before it.
• It also makes such decree or order enforceable throughout the territory of India.
• Article 142 is supported by several other provisions, including
  • Article 32 (which ensures the right to constitutional remedies)
  • Article 141 (mandating that all courts within India must abide by the Supreme Court's decisions)
  • Article 136 (which allows for the Special Leave Petition)
  • This collective framework is known by the term "judicial activism”.

Environment (GS-III)

Micro- and nano-plastics in water

A litre of bottled water can contain more than one lakh particles of micro- and nano-plastics, with 90% of those being the latter, a new study has reported.

• Nanoplastics are minute, with dimensions ranging from 1 nanometre to 1 micrometre.
• The prefix ‘micro’ means one-millionth; ‘nano’ means one-billionth.