NITI Aayog
Atal Innovation Mission join hands with CIPS for innovations in public systems
Relevance IN - Prelims (about AIM + about CIPS) + Mains (GS II government policies and interventions)
What's the NEWS

• The Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog, and Centre for Innovations in Public Systems (CIPS) announced collaboration to reinforce the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in India by developing a database of innovations in public systems for improving public services, amongst other things

Know! the Statement of Intent (SoI) between AIM & CIPS.

• The purpose of SoI is to jointly work to promote innovation and entrepreneurship especially in the area of public systems by leveraging the knowledge and experience of AIM as well as the reach of CIPS.
• Collaboration between AIM and CIPS will help startups to access and promote their innovations to grassroot levels by synergizing with the local administration.
• The challenges faced by the local administration in delivering the services to the citizens can be addressed through the start-ups by drafting a plan of action with the support of CIPS mentors.
• AIM and CIPS will jointly organize round tables involving the district and local level administration officials to create awareness about innovative products and solutions and help them understand standard processes and policies around procurement so that procurement and implementation of relevant innovative solutions can be expedited.
• The need of the hour is to ensure capacity building of teachers/mentors at grassroot levels to promote innovative learning among the students.
• This can be achieved by jointly creating an Innovation Learning Management System (iLMS).
• The partnership will also help promote the programs launched by AIM at state and district level and liaison with the states.
• It will strengthen the AIM Mentor of Change program through larger participation of government officers at district level.

Centre for Innovations in Public Systems

• Centre for Innovations in Public Systems was set up in 2010 with funding from Govt. of India at Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), Hyderabad in terms of the recommendations of the 13th Finance Commission.
• The mandate of this Centre is to actively promote and disseminate among States those practices which have enhanced service delivery, increased efficiency and ensured cost reduction.
• The Advisory Council, comprising of all the Chief Secretaries of State Governments/UTs apart from Central Government Representatives and Independent Experts, monitor the implementation of CIPS work programme.
• The Steering Committee, headed by Director General, ASCI provides the forum for giving shape and driving the work programme of the Centre.
• The Centre has been established for identifying, documenting, disseminating and replicating innovative practices for enhancing public service delivery in a cost effective manner.
• CIPS activities are presently spread in four sectors namely Health, Education, Urban Governance and e-governance.
• CIPS conducts workshops and training programmes across the country to showcase innovative/ best practices.
• CIPS also conducts ‘Capacity Building Programs of Best Practices' under the Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) of State Governments and Govt. of India.

Atal Innovative Mission

• AIM is the Government of India's flagship initiative to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in the country.
• AIM's objective is to develop new programmes and policies for fostering innovation in different sectors of the economy, provide platform and collaboration opportunities for different stakeholders, create awareness and create an umbrella structure to oversee innovation ecosystem of the country.

Six major initiatives of AIM:

• Atal Tinkering Labs-Creating problem-solving mindset across schools in India.
• Atal Incubation Centers-Fostering world class start-ups and adding a new dimension to the incubator model.
• Atal New India Challenges-Fostering product innovations and aligning them to the needs of various sectors/ministries.
• Mentor India Campaign- A national Mentor network in collaboration with public sector, corporates and institutions, to support all the initiatives of the mission.
• Atal Community Innovation Centre- To stimulate community centric innovation and ideas in the unserved /underserved regions of the country including Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
• ARISE-To stimulate innovation and research in the MSME industry.

Finance
India hosts First Meeting of BRICS Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors

Relevance IN - Prelims ( about BRICS Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting highlights + about NDB) + Mains ( GS II international organisations + regional grouping)
What's the NEWS

• India hosted a Meeting of BRICS Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors virtually today on April 6, 2021.
• The meeting was jointly Chaired by Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs, and Governor, Reserve Bank of India,
• Participants included Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors of the BRICS countries.
• As 2021 BRICS Chair, India's approach is focused on strengthening intra-BRICS cooperation based on Continuity, Consolidation and Consensus.
• This was the first meeting of the BRICS Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors under India Chairship in 2021.

Know! the highlights

• BRICS Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors discussed financial cooperation agenda set by India for 2021 - Global Economic Outlook and Response to COVID-19 pandemic, New Development Bank (NDB) Activities, Social Infrastructure Financing and Use of Digital Technologies, Cooperation on Customs related issues, IMF reforms, Fintech for SMEs and Financial Inclusion, BRICS Rapid Information Security channel and BRICS Bond Fund.
• The Finance Minister emphasised the importance of BRICS in responding to the COVID-19 crisis through policy support and enhancing international coordination.
• The Finance Minister talked about thematic priorities for New Development Bank for discussion during 2021 and the issues of membership expansion.

The New Development Bank (NDB)

• It is a multilateral development bank established by the BRICS states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
• The Bank shall support public or private projects through loans, guarantees, equity participation and other financial instruments.
• The NDB "shall cooperate with international organizations and other financial entities, and provide technical assistance for projects to be supported by the Bank.
• The initial authorized capital of the bank is $100 billion divided into 1 million shares having a par value of $100,000 each.
• The initial subscribed capital of the NDB is $50 billion divided into paid-in shares ($10 billion) and callable shares ($40 billion).
• The initial subscribed capital of the bank was equally distributed among the founding members.
• The Agreement on the NDB specifies that every member will have one vote no one would have any veto powers .

Science & Technology
India emerging a leader in supercomputing

Relevance IN - Prelims ( about National Super Computing Mission (NSM) + supercomputers in India) + Mains ( GS III awareness in the field of science and technology + indigenisation of technology)
What's the NEWS

• India is fast emerging a leader in high power computing with the National Super Computing Mission (NSM) boosting it to meet the increasing computational demands of academia, researchers, MSMEs, and startups in areas like oil exploration, flood prediction as well as genomics and drug discovery.

Know! the steps taken by the government to boost the high power computing infrastructure

• Computing infrastructure has already been installed in four premier institutions and installation work is in rapid progress in 9 more.
• Completion in of Phase II of NSM in September 2021 will take the country's computing power to 16 Petaflops (PF).
• MoUs have been signed with a total of 14 premier institutions of India for establishing Supercomputing Infrastructure with Assembly and Manufacturing in India. These include IITs, NITs, National Labs, and IISERs.
• Infrastructure planned in NSM Phase I has already been installed and much of Phase II will be getting in place soon.
• Phase III, initiated this year, will take the computing speed to around 45 Petaflops. This will include three systems of 3 PF each and one system of 20PF as a national facility.

National Supercomputing Mission

• The National Supercomputing Mission was launched to enhance the research capacities and capabilities in the country by connecting them to form a Supercomputing grid, with National Knowledge Network (NKN) as the backbone.
• The NSM is setting up a grid of supercomputing facilities in academic and research institutions across the country.
• Part of this is being imported from abroad and part built indigenously.
• The Mission is being jointly steered by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and implemented by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.
• PARAM Shivay, the first supercomputer assembled indigenously, was installed in IIT (BHU), followed by PARAM Shakti, PARAM Brahma, PARAM Yukti, PARAM Sanganak at IIT-Kharagpur IISER, Pune, JNCASR, Bengaluru and IIT Kanpur respectively.
• A new dimension has now been added in India's march towards leadership position in supercomputing with the convergence of HPC and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
• A 200 AI PF Artificial Intelligence supercomputing system has been created and installed in C-DAC, which can handle incredibly large-scale AI workloads increasing the speed of computing-related to AI several times.
• PARAM Siddhi - AI, the high-performance computing-artificial intelligence (HPC-AI) supercomputer, has achieved global ranking of 62 in TOP 500 most powerful supercomputer systems in the world, released on 16^th November 2020.
• Powered by the NSM, India's network of research institutions, in collaboration with the industry, is scaling up the technology and manufacturing capability to make more and more parts in India.
• While in Phase I, 30 percent value addition is done in India that has been scaled up to 40 percent in Phase II. India has developed an Indigenous server (Rudra), which can meet the HPC requirements of all governments and PSUs.
• The three phases will provide access to High-Performance Computing (HPC) Facilities to around 75 institutions and more than thousands of active researchers, academicians working through Nation Knowledge Network (NKN) - the backbone for supercomputing systems.

Science & Technology
Wolf-Rayet stars or WR stars.
Relevance IN - Prelims ( about Wolf-Rayet stars or WR stars + about Supernova + Mains ( GS III awareness in the field space)
What's the NEWS

• Indian astronomers have tracked a rare supernova explosion and traced it to one of the hottest kind of stars called Wolf-Rayet stars or WR stars.

Know! about the rare supernova explosion

• The rare Wolf-Rayet stars are highly luminous objects a thousand times that of the Sun and have intrigued astronomers for long.
• They are massive stars and strip their outer hydrogen envelope which is associated with the fusion of Helium and other elements in the massive core.
• Tracking of certain types of massive luminous supernovae explosion can help probe these stars that remain an enigma for scientists.
• A team of astronomers from Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital an autonomous institute under the Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of India with international collaborators have conducted the optical monitoring of one such stripped-envelope supernova called SN 2015dj hosted in the galaxy NGC 7371 which was spotted in 2015.
• They calculated the mass of the star that collapsed to form the supernovae as well as the geometry of its ejection.
• The scientists also found that the original star was a combination of two stars - one of them is a massive WR star and another is a star much less in mass than the Sun.
• Supernovae (SNe) are highly energetic explosions in the Universe releasing an enormous amount of energy.
• Long-term monitoring of these transients opens the door to understand the nature of the exploding star as well as the explosion properties.
• It can also help enumerate the number of massive stars.

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