194th birth anniversary of Savitribai Phule

• Prime Minister paid tributes to Savitribai Phule on her birth anniversary, recalling her lifelong commitment to education, equality, and social transformation.

About Savitribai Phule:

• Savitribai Phule (1831–1897) was a pioneering social reformer, poet, and educator, widely regarded as the first female teacher of modern India and a foundational figure of Indian feminism.
• Born in Naigaon (present-day Maharashtra), she was married in childhood to Jyotirao Phule and later moved to Pune.
  Her early exposure to learning ignited a lifelong mission to reform society through education.
• Encouraged by Jyotirao Phule, she learned to read and write and undertook teacher training at institutions in Ahmednagar and Pune, becoming a qualified teacher in 1847—an extraordinary achievement for women of that era.

Key contributions

• Pioneer of girls’ education: In 1848, she co-founded India’s first girls’ school at Bhidewada, Pune, and went on to help establish 18 schools for girls and marginalized communities.
  Social reform for the oppressed: Opened shelters for widows, destitute women, and child brides (1854; expanded in 1864); campaigned against child marriage, caste discrimination, and untouchability.
  Institution building: Played a central role in nurturing the Satyashodhak Samaj, which fought caste hierarchy and promoted equality; popularized Satyashodhak marriages without priests or dowry.
  Public service with courage: Defied social hostility—often facing abuse on her way to school—and served plague victims during the 1897 epidemic, sacrificing her life in the process.

Significance

• Savitribai Phule’s life symbolizes education as a tool of emancipation, laying the groundwork for women’s rights, social justice, and inclusive reform in India.
• Her legacy endures in institutions like Savitribai Phule Pune University, national commemorations, and continued relevance to debates on equality and access to education.
   

Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation (PRAGATI)

• Land acquisition has emerged as the single largest bottleneck in infrastructure development, accounting for 35% of project delays, the Cabinet Secretary said after the 50th PRAGATI meeting.

About Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation (PRAGATI):

• PRAGATI is a centralised, ICT-enabled governance platform for grievance redressal, programme implementation, and project monitoring, enabling real-time review of projects of national importance.
• Established in: Launched on 25 March 2015 by the Government of India, under the Prime Minister’s leadership.

Aim:

1. Ensure timely implementation of infrastructure and development projects.
2. Resolve inter-ministerial and Centre–State coordination issues.
3. Promote e-transparency, accountability, and outcome-based governance.

Key features

• Three-tier architecture: Links PMO, Union Secretaries, and State Chief Secretaries on one platform, enabling direct coordination, faster decisions, and clear accountability across governance levels.
• Monthly PM-chaired reviews: Provides high-level political oversight through regular video-conference meetings, ensuring time-bound resolution of critical project delays.
• Digital-GIS integration: Uses real-time data, geo-spatial mapping, and live visuals to objectively track project progress and identify ground-level bottlenecks.
• Unified data sourcing: Integrates CPGRAMS, PMG, and MoSPI databases to create a single monitoring dashboard, reducing silos and improving policy coordination.
• Escalation framework: Allows unresolved issues to move from ministries to higher institutional and PM-level review, ensuring decisive inter-ministerial action.
• Digital follow-up: Tracks all directions electronically until closure, ensuring sustained monitoring, accountability, and outcome delivery.

Significance

• Reviewed 3,300+ projects worth ₹85 lakh crore with 7,156 issues resolved so far.
• Accelerated completion of legacy projects pending since the 1990s.
• Strengthens cooperative federalism by bringing Centre, States, and local governments onto one platform.

Digital Land Governance Initiatives Launched

• The Minister of State for Rural Development and Communications launched the ‘Land Stack’ portal and the ‘Glossary of Revenue Terms’ (GoRT).
• These initiatives promote modern, transparent, citizen-focused land governance and improve “Ease of Living” for citizens.

Land Stack Portal

• It is an integrated Geographic Information System (GIS)-based platform launched under the Digital India Land Record Modernisation Programme (DILRMP).
• The portal provides citizens and government agencies with consolidated land and property data through a unified digital interface.
• It is modelled on land governance practices followed in Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Finland.
• The portal has been formally launched in the pilot locations of Chandigarh and Tamil Nadu.

Glossary of Revenue Terms (GoRT)

• GoRT provides meanings of various land-related revenue terms in the Vernacular, Hindi, English, and Roman scripts.
• Objective: To address linguistic diversity in land administration and ensure nationwide data interoperability without replacing state-specific terminology.
• Development: By the Department of Land Resources (DoLR) in collaboration with the Centre of Excellence in Land Administration and Management (CoE-LAM) at YASHADA, Pune.

                                                                                                                                                                                              Source - (PIB)

Government Launches Twin Credit Support Measures For Exporters

• The Government of India launched the Interest Subvention Scheme and the Collateral Support Scheme under the Niryat Protsahan sub-scheme of the Export Promotion Mission (EPM).
• Policy Aim: The two components aim to lower borrowing costs and address collateral constraints faced by MSME exporters.

Interest Subvention Scheme

• Interest Support: It is a central sector scheme that offers a 2.75% interest subsidy on rupee export credit.
• Objective: Aims to reduce borrowing costs for MSME exporters and enhance the price competitiveness of Indian goods.
• Implementing Bodies: Jointly Implemented by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) and the Reserve Bank of India.
• Budget Allocation: The government earmarked ₹5,181 crore over six years, from FY 2025 to FY 2030.
• Loan Coverage: This applies to both pre-shipment (during production) and post-shipment (from shipment until payment is received) rupee export credit.
• Product Scope: The scheme covers about 75% of tariff lines, with significant MSME participation.
• Exclusions List: Restricted items, waste or scrap, and products covered under overlapping incentive schemes like PLI are excluded.
• Benefit Ceiling: The maximum annual interest subvention is capped at ₹50 lakh per firm.
• Rate Review: Subvention rates will remain floating and will be reviewed twice a year, depending on repo rates and global benchmarks.

Collateral Support Scheme

• Credit Guarantee: The scheme offers government-backed credit guarantees to improve MSME exporters’ access to bank finance.
• Objective: To ease collateral constraints for MSME exporters and expand access to export-linked working capital credit.
• Implementing Body: The Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE) is implementing it on a pilot basis.
• Coverage Scope: This applies only to export-linked working capital loans extended by scheduled commercial banks and other eligible lenders.
• Guarantee Extent: Guarantee coverage varies by enterprise size, up to 85% for micro and small exporters and 65% for medium exporters.
• Exposure Cap: The maximum guaranteed outstanding exposure per exporter is limited to ₹10 crore in a financial year.
• Exclusions List: Restricted items, waste or scrap, and products covered under overlapping export incentive schemes are excluded.

Export Promotion Mission (EPM)

• The Export Promotion Mission is a flagship central-sector scheme of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to improve export competitiveness.
• Nodal Agency: Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) serves as the primary implementing and coordinating authority
• Export Targets: The mission aims to achieve USD 2 trillion in total exports by 2030 and increase the export-to-GDP ratio to 15%.
• Scheme Integration: It consolidates fragmented export schemes, such as the Interest Equalisation Scheme (IES) and the Market Access Initiative (MAI), into a unified framework.
• Operational Structure: EPM operates through two coordinated sub-schemes, NIRYAT PROTSAHAN and NIRYAT DISHA.
• NIRYAT PROTSAHAN: Expands exporters’ access to affordable trade finance and lowers overall borrowing costs.
• NIRYAT DISHA: Provides non-financial support to strengthen exporters’ market preparedness and trade competitiveness

India’s Agrarian Suicide Crisis

• A 28-year analysis of NCRB data (1995–2023) shows persistent and regionally concentrated farmer suicides, with a sharp resurgence in 2023 after a decade of decline.

Status of India’s Agrarian Suicide

1. Scale And Long-Term Trends

• Cumulative Burden: Between 1995 and 2023, ~3.94 lakh farmers and agricultural labourers died by suicide, averaging ~13,600 deaths annually.
• Crisis Peak: The worst phase was 2000–2009, with ~1.54 lakh suicides, and 2002 alone recorded 17,971 deaths, the highest on record.
• Recent Spike: In 2023, farmer suicides rose to 10,786, a ~75% increase over 2022.
• Changing Profile: Of 10,786 suicides, 6,096 were agricultural labourers and 4,690 cultivators.

2. Regional Concentration

• Epicentre States: Maharashtra reported 4,151 suicides and Karnataka 2,423, the highest in the country.
• Regional Share: Southern and western India account for ~72.5% of all farmer suicides since 1995.
• Other Hotspots: Andhra Pradesh and Telangana together have seen ~1.7 lakh suicides over 28 years.

3. Role Of Welfare Interventions

• MGNREGA Impact: From around 2010 onwards, suicides declined steadily, coinciding with expanded MGNREGA wage employment.
• State Turnarounds: Kerala reduced farmer suicides from 1,118 (2005) to 105 (2014), while West Bengal reported zero cases by 2012.

4. Structural Drivers of Distress

• Rainfed Vulnerability: Agrarian distress is concentrated in rainfed belts; E.g., ~52% of India’s net sown area remains rainfed, but accounts for a disproportionate share of farmer suicides.
• Debt Trap: Repeated crop failures and price volatility deepened indebtedness; E.g., ~50% of agricultural households are indebted, with average debt exceeding ₹74,000 per household.
• Trade Exposure: Post-1990s liberalisation weakened farm income support; E.g., agricultural subsidies as a share of farm income declined while import competition increased after WTO entry in 1995.
• Input Cost Inflation: Costs rose faster than output prices; E.g., fertiliser, seed and pesticide costs increased by over 300% since the early 2000s, while real farm incomes stagnated.

Way Forward

• Income Assurance: Strengthen predictable farm incomes through price and income support; E.g., expand MSP procurement beyond rice–wheat and pilot price-deficiency payment schemes.
• Risk Protection: Fix crop insurance design to reduce distress from climate and price shocks; E.g., reform PM Fasal Bima Yojana with automatic weather-triggered payouts.
• Rainfed Resilience: Reduce dependence on single rainfed cash crops; E.g., scale integrated farming systems under NICRA combining millets, pulses and livestock in cotton belts.
• Labour Security: Ensure income stability for agricultural labourers; E.g., Kerala’s Ayyankali Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme provides wage support during lean seasons, reducing livelihood shocks.

Amazon’s Stingless Bees Become First Insect with Legal Rights

• Two municipalities in Peru passed an ordinance making Amazonian stingless bees the first insect in the world to be granted legal rights.
• Rights of Nature: The ordinance is part of the Rights of Nature movement, which recognises species as living entities with inherent rights.
• Previous Law: In 2024, Peru enacted a national law recognising stingless bees as a native species of national interest.

Key Rights

The municipal ordinances grant specific legal rights to Amazonian stingless bees to:

1. Exist and thrive within their natural ecological environments.
2. Maintain healthy populations and regenerate natural ecological cycles.
3. Live in pollution-free habitats and within an ecologically stable climate.
4. Be legally represented by humans or organisations filing lawsuits on their behalf.

Amazonian Stingless Bees

• Amazonian stingless bees, belonging to the tribe Meliponini, represent one of the oldest bee lineages.
• Pollination Role: They are keystone pollinators, responsible for pollinating over 80% of the Amazon rainforest flora.
• Defence Mechanism: Despite the name, the bees have a vestigial stinger too weak to pierce human skin. They instead defend themselves with biting, caustic secretions or sticky resins.
• Nest Structure: Unlike honeybees with uniform combs, stingless bees exhibit diverse brood cell arrangements like spirals, layers, or clusters.
• Pot Honey: They produce pot-honey with a unique sweet-sour taste and higher water content. It has anti-inflammatory, antiviral, and antibacterial properties.
• Distribution: Stingless bees occur across tropical and subtropical regions, with the Neotropics (Central and South America) showing the highest species richness.
• About 175 of the 500 recorded stingless bee species are found in Peru alone.
• Social Structure: They are highly eusocial, living in complex, perennial colonies with a single egg-laying queen and a clear division of labour.
• Nesting Habitat: They are cavity nesters, commonly using hollow tree trunks, branches, underground cavities, rock crevices, and abandoned ant or termite nests.
• Major Threats: Deforestation, pesticide exposure, forest fires, overgrazing, global warming, etc.

Key Roles Played by Amazonian Stingless Bees

• Crop Pollination: They are highly efficient pollinators of Neotropical crops, including coffee, cacao, avocado, and açaí berries.
• Traditional Medicine: Indigenous communities use their pot-honey for respiratory ailments, cataracts, and wound healing.
• Unique Sugar: Some species produce honey containing trehalulose, a rare sugar with a very low glycaemic index.
• Cultural Significance: For many Amazonian tribes, stingless bees play central roles in creation myths and spiritual practices.

Bomb Cyclone

• A powerful ‘bomb cyclone’ recently struck the northern United States, causing severe winter weather, power outages, and significant travel disruptions.
• A bomb cyclone, or weather bomb, is an intense mid-latitude storm that undergoes bombogenesis.
• Bombogenesis is a rapid atmospheric pressure drop of at least 24 millibars in 24 hours, which sharply increases pressure gradients and wind strength.
• These storms usually develop in winter when cold Arctic air collides with warm, oceanic air.
• The collision causes warm air to rise rapidly, creating a vacuum effect that triggers explosive intensification of wind and precipitation.
• Impacts: These storms cause hurricane-like winds (up to 95 mph), heavy rain, blizzards, and rapid temperature drops of 40–50°F within a few hours.
• Global Hotspots: Northwest Atlantic influenced by the Gulf Stream, Northwest Pacific, influenced by the Kuroshio Current, and along the eastern coasts of Australia and South America.