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Raisina Dialogue-2021

Context: 6th edition of the Raisina Dialogue.

Details

• The conference is being hosted by the think tank Observer Research Foundation in partnership with the Ministry of External Affairs.
• The 6th edition of the prestigious conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics is being held in the virtual mode owing to the pandemic.
• The theme for the 2021 conference is “#ViralWorld: Outbreaks, Outliers and Out of Control”.
• During the four-day event, talks will be based on five subjects namely, WHOse multilateralism? Reconstructing the UN and beyond; Securing and diversifying supply chains; Global ‘Public Bads’: Holding actors and nations to account; Infodemic: Navigating a ‘No-Truth’ world in the age of Big Brother; and The Green stimulus: Investing in gender, growth, and development.
• 150 speakers from 50 countries and multilateral organisations will attend the event virtually.
• The event will feature the Prime Minister of Denmark and the President of Rwanda as chief guests in the inaugural session. Subsequent sessions will see the participation of the Australian PM, European Council President, foreign ministers of Portugal, Japan and Singapore. A few former heads of government of various countries will also take part in India’s flagship conference on geopolitics & geoeconomics.

About the Raisina Dialogue

• Started in 2016, the Raisina Dialogue has grown to emerge as a leading global conference on international affairs.
• It invites leaders from politics, business, media and the civil society to hold discussions on the state of the world and explore opportunities for cooperation on several contemporary matters.

Overview of Raisina Dialogue

The Raisina Dialogue is designed as a multi-delegate, discussion platform which is attended by a wide range of global policymakers including, cabinet ministers, heads of state, private corporations executives etc. Members of the media and academia are also invited to to attend the Raisina Dialogue.
It was structured on the lines of the Shangri-La Dialogue.
As far as India is concerned, the objective of the Raisina Dialogue are as follows:

• To explore future opportunities for Asian integration and further advancement of Asia’s integration with the world at large.
• The Raisina Dialogue also asserts the crucial role played by India in the Indian Ocean Region and how it can build a stable regional/ world order with its partners.

Raisina Dialogues 2016 – 2020

The agenda and themes of the Raisina Dialogue from 2016 to 2020. The 2021 edition of Raisina Dialogue will take place from April 13 – 15.

• Raisina Dialogue 2016: In the first Raisina Dialogue held from March 1 – 3, 2016, over 100 speakers from 35 nations spoke on the theme: “Asia” Regional and Global Connectivity”. The emphasis was on Asia’s physical, economic, and digital connectivity. The dignitaries spoke at length on exploring opportunities and resolving challenges for the region to manage its resources and the need to develop the Asian region further along 21st century lines
• Raisina Dialogue 2017: The theme of the 2017 Raisina Dialogue was “The New Normal: Multilateralism and Multipolarity”. It was held from January 17 – 19, inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Key speakers of the dialogue included Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, the Diplomatic Adviser to the President of France, Jacques Audibert; Commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Europe and Africa, Admiral Michelle Howard and the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), General Bipin Rawat.
• Raisina Dialogue 2018: The theme of the Raisina Dialogue of 2018 was “Managing Disruptive Transition: ideas, Institution and Idioms”. In this conference, the changes within the global world order, emerging partnerships, challenges to the idea of sovereignty and power were discussed at length. Further discussions on the role of institutions and successful response to modern developments were also carried out.
  Some of the prominent speakers of Raisina Dialogue 2018 were as follows:
  • Smt. Sushma Swaraj, Foreign Minister of India
  • Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel
  • Konstantin Kosachev, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council
  • Stavros N. Yiannouka, CEO, World Innovation Summit for Education
  • Vyacheslav Nikonov, Member of the State Duma, Russia.
• Raisina Dialogue 2019: The theme of the 2019 Raisina Dialogue was “New Geometrics, Fluid Partnerships, Uncertain Outcomes.” It was held from January 08–10. Admiral Christophe Prazuck, Chief of the Naval Staff, French Navy was one of the keynote speakers at the conference. Departing from the usual progression from the previous dialogues, the conference focused on how to manage disruptions and transitions.
• Raisina Dialogue 2020: The 5th Raisina Dialogue (January 14-16) involved discussion around the theme “Navigating the Alpha Centuries”. Foreign Minister of Australia, Maris Payne, was the keynote speaker at this conference.

Jallianwala Bagh massacre

Context: PM pays tribute to martyrs of Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

What is the story of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre?

• The situation in Punjab was alarming as there were riots and protests against the Rowlatt Act.
• Punjab was put under martial law, which meant that it became unlawful for more than 4 people to assemble at a place.
• The Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab at that time was Michael O’Dwyer. Lord Chelmsford was India’s Viceroy.
• On the day of the festival of Baisakhi on 13th April 1919 in Jallianwala Bagh, a public garden in Amritsar, a crowd of non-violent protestors had gathered. Also, among the crowd were pilgrims who had come to celebrate Baisakhi.
• General Dyer came there with his troops and blocked the only narrow entrance to the garden.
• Then, without warning, he ordered his troops to fire at the unarmed crowd, which included children as well.
• The indiscriminate firing went on for about 10 minutes until the 1650 rounds of ammunition were exhausted. This resulted in the deaths of at least 1000 people and injured more than 1500 people.
• This tragedy came as a rude shock to Indians and totally destroyed their faith in the British system of justice.
• National leaders condemned the act and Dyer unequivocally.
• However, Dyer was appreciated by many in Britain and the British in India, although some people in the British government were quick to criticize it. Those who criticized his actions included Winston Churchill and former Prime Minister H.H Asquith.
• The government set up the Hunter Commission to inquire into the massacre. Although the commission condemned the act by Dyer, it did not impose any disciplinary action against him.
• He was relieved of his duties in the army in 1920.
• In protest against the massacre and the British failure to give due justice to the victims, Rabindranath Tagore gave up his knighthood and Gandhiji relinquished his title ‘Kaiser-e-hind’ bestowed on him by the British for his services during the Boer War in South Africa.
• Michael O’Dwyer, the then Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, who had approved the actions of Brigadier-General Dyer, was assassinated by Udham Singh in London in 1940 as revenge against the massacre. Udham Singh is believed to have witnessed the massacre as a child.

e-SANTA

Context: Union Minister inaugurates e-SANTA.

What is e-SANTA?

• E-Santa is an electronic marketplace providing a platform to connect aqua farmers and buyers.
• The term e-SANTA was coined for the web portal, meaning Electronic Solution for Augmenting NaCSA farmers’ Trade in Aquaculture.
  • National Centre for Sustainable Aquaculture (NaCSA) is an extension arm of the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), Govt. of India, Ministry of Commerce & Industry.
• e-SANTA is a Digital Bridge to end the market divide and will act as an alternative marketing tool between farmers & buyers by eliminating middlemen.
• It will revolutionize traditional aquafarming by providing cashless, contactless and paperless electronic trade platform between farmers and exporters.
• The farmers have the freedom to list their produce and quote their price while the exporters have the freedom to list their requirements and also to choose the products based on their requirements such as desired size, location, harvest dates, etc.

How it works?

• The platform provides detailed specification of each product listing and it is backed by an end to end electronic payment system with NaCSA as an Escrow agent.
• After crop listing and online negotiation, a deal is struck, advance payment is made and an estimated invoice is generated.
• Once the harvest date is fixed, the buyer goes to the farm gate and the produce is harvested in his presence.
• Once the harvest is completed, the final count, quantity of material is verified, the final amount is decided and delivery challan is issued.
• Once the material reaches the processing plant, the final invoice is generated and the exporter makes the balance payment.
• This payment is reflected in the escrow account. NaCSA verifies it and accordingly releases the payment to farmers.

Benefits of the portal

• e-SANTA can become a tool to advertise collectively the kind of products the buyers, fishermen & fish producing organisations are harvesting, so people in India & internationally can know what is available & in the future, it can become an auction platform.
• The platform is available in many languages, which will help the local population.
• It enables the farmers and buyers to have greater control over the trade and enables them to make informed decisions.
• It will raise income, lifestyle, self-reliance, quality levels, traceability, and provide new options for aqua farmers.

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC)

Context: 34th Foundation Day of C-DAC.

Details

• On the occasion of 34th foundation day, three novel innovative technologies – Cyber Security Operation Centre (CSoC) as a service and C-DAC’s indigenous High-Performance Computing software solutions – Parallel Development Environment (ParaDE) and Automatic Parallelizing Compiler (CAPC) were launched by C-DAC.
• Another App based system called MANAS, Mental health And Normalcy Augmentation System is also being earmarked separately by the Principal Scientific Advisor to Govt. of India.
  • MANAS is a comprehensive, scalable, national digital wellbeing platform to augment mental well-being of Indian citizens and aimed to ‘reach the unreached’ through Digital India initiatives.

About C-DAC

• C-DAC is the premier R&D organization of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) for carrying out R&D in IT, Electronics and associated areas.
• The setting up of C-DAC in 1988 itself was to build supercomputers in the context of the denial of import of supercomputers by the USA.
• Since then, C-DAC has been undertaking building of multiple generations of supercomputers starting from PARAM with 1 GF in 1988.
• Today, C-DAC is working towards strengthening national technological capabilities in the context of global developments in the field and responding to changes in the market need in selected foundation areas.
• Its products and services cover the following domains:
  • High Performance, Grid and Cloud Computing (HGCC)
  • Multilingual Computing & Heritage Computing
  • Professional Electronics, VLSI & Embedded Systems
  • Software Technologies including FOSS
  • Cybersecurity
  • Health Informatics
  • Education and Training
  • Services:
    • e-Hastakshar: On-Line Digital Signing Service
    • e-Pramaan: A National e-Authentication Service
    • Mobile Seva: Citizen Services on Mobile Phones
    • Cyber Forensic Analysis, Training and Laboratory Development
    • e-Raktkosh: National Portal for Blood Bank Management System
    • e-Aushadhi: National Drugs and Vaccine Distributed Management System
    • Vulnerability Assessment & Penetration Testing (VAPT): Security Audit/Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing
    • Data Centre Services
    • Process Automation for Competitive Examinations (PACE)
    • OBjective Responses Image based Capture (OBRIC): web-based system for processing of objective type tests conducted using specially designed answer sheets.

With a corporate office in Pune, C-DAC has centres in several Indian cities.

Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxy

What’s in News?

• Astronomers have discovered a new active galaxy identified as the farthest gamma-ray emitting galaxy that has so far been stumbled upon.
• This active galaxy called the Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxy, which is about 31 billion light-years away, opens up avenues to explore more such gamma-ray emitting galaxies.
• Scientists from ARIES, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India, in collaboration with researchers from other institutions, studied around 25,000 luminous Active galactic nuclei (AGN) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and found a unique object that emits high-energy gamma rays located at a high redshift (more than 1). They identified it as a gamma-ray emitting NLS1 galaxy, which is a rare entity in space.
  • SDSS is a major optical imaging and spectroscopic survey of astronomical objects in-operation for the last 20 years. It was founded by the University of Chicago.

Significance

• The detection of gamma-ray emission from NLS1 challenges the idea of how relativistic jets are formed because NLS1s are a unique class of AGN that are powered by black hole of low mass and hosted in spiral galaxy.
• As of today, gamma-ray emission has been detected in about a dozen NLS1 galaxies, which are a separate class of AGN identified four decades ago.
• All of them are at redshifts lesser than one, and no method was present till date to find NLS1 at redshifts larger than one.
• This discovery opens up a new way to find gamma-ray emitting NLS1 galaxies in the early Universe.