UPSC Daily Current Affairs- 25th February 2024 | Current Affairs & Hindu Analysis: Daily, Weekly & Monthly PDF Download

GS-I

Ancient Chalukyan Temples and Inscription Found

Subject: Art and Culture

Why in News?

Recent archaeological findings in Mudimanikyam village, Nalgonda district, unveiled two Badami Chalukya temples dating back 1,300-1,500 years and a label inscription from the 8th or 9th century AD.

• These discoveries shed light on the rich historical heritage of the region.

Ancient Mudimanikyam Temples

• Dating: The two temples, constructed between 543 AD and 750 AD, exhibit the distinctive Kadamba Nagara style in the Rekha Nagara format, a rarity in Telangana.
• Architectural Significance: Research emphasizes the importance of these temples as testimonies to the Badami Chalukya period. With minimal restoration, they can serve as valuable relics of ancient architecture in Telangana.
• Comparison: Apart from the Badami Chalukya temples at Alampur, these temples stand out as exceptional examples of architectural prowess from that era.

Details of Label Inscription

• Discovery: The label inscription, found on a pillar of a group of five temples in the village, dates back to the 8th or 9th century AD.
• Meaning: While the exact meaning of the inscription, ‘Gandaloranru,’ remains unclear, ASI suggests it may denote a heroic title, with ‘Ganda’ in Kannada meaning ‘hero.’
• Historical Context: The presence of the inscription indicates the existence of five temples, known as Panchakuta, during the late Badami Chalukya period. However, these temples are no longer in use, with one missing the Shivalinga and another containing a Vishnu idol.

Badami Chalukyas: Legacy and Achievements

• Establishment: Pulakeshin I founded the Chalukya dynasty in 550, establishing Badami (Vatapi) in present-day Karnataka as the capital.
• Extent of Empire: The Badami Chalukyas ruled over territories encompassing modern Karnataka and large parts of Andhra Pradesh.
• Pulakesi II’s Reign:
  1. Notable Conquests: Pulakeshin II expanded the empire northwards, halting Harsha’s advance and defeating the Vishnukundins in the southeastern Deccan.
  2. Diplomatic Relations: His reign saw diplomatic exchanges with Chinese and Persian empires, highlighting the dynasty’s international stature.
• Vikramaditya Dynasty: The dynasty experienced resurgence under Vikramaditya I, who expelled the Pallavas from Badami, and reached its zenith under Vikramaditya II, who conquered Kanchipuram from the Pallavas.
• Decline and End: The Rashtrakuta Dantidurga dethroned the last Badami Chalukya king, Kirtivarman I, in 753, ending the dynasty’s rule.

Cultural Feats

• Art and Architecture: The era witnessed the emergence of Vesara architecture, blending South Indian and North Indian styles, epitomized by monuments like the rock-cut temples of Pattadakal, Badami, and Aihole.
• Coinage: Unique Coinage: Chalukya coins bore legends in Nagari and Kannada scripts, featuring symbols like temples, lions, and lotuses.
• Religious Patronage: Initially adherents of Vedic Hinduism, the Chalukyas later embraced Shaivism, fostering sects like Pashupata, Kapalikas, and Kalamukhas, while also promoting Jainism.

Government and Administration:

• Military Prowess: The Chalukya army, comprising infantry, cavalry, and a formidable navy, employed innovative strategies, including intoxicating elephants before battle.
• Administrative Structure: The empire was divided into provinces, districts, and smaller administrative units, with feudal lords governing autonomous regions.

Source: The Hindu

GS-II

With Open Book Exams, India goes back to its traditional roots — and closer to being a vishwaguru

Subject: Governance

Why in News?

The article discusses the recent reforms in India’s education system, particularly the introduction of open-book exams by the CBSE and the shift towards a more holistic approach to learning as outlined in the National Education Policy (NEP) of 2022. It reflects on the historical origins of education in India, the impact of the pandemic on traditional learning methods, and the need for a more dynamic and flexible educational framework.

GS-III

Operation AMRITH (Antimicrobial Resistance Intervention for Total Health)

Subject: Science and Technology

Why in News?

Despite a decade since the H1 rule’s announcement, no State government had adopted it until Kerala recently initiated Operation AMRITH (Antimicrobial Resistance Intervention for Total Health).

About AMR:

• Definition: Antimicrobials, such as antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, and anti-parasitics, are medicinal agents utilized for preventing and treating infections across human, animal, and plant domains.
• AMR Definition: AMR emerges when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites adapt over time, rendering them unresponsive to medication, thereby developing drug resistance.
• Consequences of AMR: This resistance escalates the difficulty or impossibility of treating infections, heightening the risks of disease transmission, severe illness, and mortality.
• Spread and Impact of AMR:
  • Transmission: AMR can disseminate through various routes, including person-to-person and between humans and animals, with food of animal origin serving as a potential vector.
  • Global Concern: The rapid dissemination of multi and pan-drug resistant bacteria, commonly referred to as "superbugs," poses a significant global threat.
  • WHO Recognition: Recognizing the severity of the situation, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recently designated AMR as a major public health peril.

The main drivers of AMR include:

• The misuse and overuse of antimicrobials;
• Lack of access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) for both humans and animals;
• Poor infection and disease prevention and control in health-care facilities and farms;
• Poor access to quality, affordable medicines, vaccines and diagnostics;
• Lack of awareness and knowledge; and
• Lack of enforcement of legislation.
• Issue of antibiotic prescriptions by doctors in India:
  • It is critical to acknowledge that over 50-70% of antibiotic prescriptions by doctors are deemed unnecessary and irrational.
  • One of the main reasons for unnecessary antibiotic usage is the unavailability of laboratory facilities to make a correct diagnosis of bacterial infections.
  • The other main reason for unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions by doctors is the pressure from patients to receive antibiotics.
    • Patients wrongly believe that a course of antibiotics is a quick remedy for a fever episode of any cause.

What Needs to be Done to Curb AMR?

• Infrastructure Enhancement: Improving public health infrastructure, sanitation facilities, and governance is crucial for reducing infection transmission and lessening reliance on antibiotics.
• Prescription Reforms: Reforming physicians' prescribing practices and mandating hospitals to report healthcare-associated infection rates are essential steps.
• Infection Prevention Standards: Healthcare facilities must adhere to appropriate standards for infection prevention to curb the spread of infections.
• Data Transparency: Implementing a system where all hospitals report rates of hospital-acquired infections to State governments, with the data made publicly available, is vital for informed decision-making.
• Rational Antibiotic Use: Rationalizing antibiotic use in hospitals and banning the growth-promotional use of antibiotics in agriculture are critical measures.
• Patient Education: Educating patients about the limitations of antibiotics and discouraging unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions are key to reducing misuse and overuse.

What are the H1 Rules and Their Implementation?

• In 2011, the Indian government introduced the H1 rule to prohibit the over-the-counter (OTC) sales of antibiotics without a prescription, responding to the growing concern over AMR.
• However, due to the healthcare system’s heterogeneity across the country, the implementation of this rule faced significant challenges.
• In 2013, following the Chennai Declaration document and initiative by medical societies in India, the Indian government modified the rule to limit the OTC restriction to second-and third-line antibiotics.
• This modification was aimed to ensure that life-saving antibiotics remained accessible to the public, especially in remote areas of the country where doctors might not be readily available.
• However, strictly enforcing the OTC regulation without addressing the other issues, which are major drivers of antimicrobial resistance, may not help the cause.

What is AMRITH and What Facilitates its Implementation in Kerala?

• Kerala’s high doctor-patient ratio (even in villages), high literacy rate facilitates the enforcement of this rule.
• An informed populace is more likely to understand the importance of regulations and adhere to them, facilitating smoother execution and compliance.
• Kerala will do well if
  • It demands hospitals to disclose the incidence of hospital-acquired infections.
  • It supports and promotes the development of new antibiotics, diagnostics, and vaccines by entrepreneurs.
  • Karnataka and Maharashtra-based startups have achieved remarkable progress in this domain.
• While it is highly commendable that Kerala is implementing the H1 rule to rein in AMR, it is unlikely to have a significant impact on drug-resistant infections in the immediate future.
• The effects of this initiative may take several years to manifest. However, it will foster a culture of respecting antibiotics and encourage further actions to combat AMR.'

Source: The Hindu

BharatGPT group unveils ‘Hanooman’

Subject: Science and Technology

Why in News?

The BharatGPT group — led by IIT Bombay along with seven other elite Indian engineering institutes — announced that it would launch its first ChatGPT-like service next month.

Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs)

• Introduction to GPTs:
  • Definition: GPTs, or Generative Pre-trained Transformers, are a class of Large Language Models (LLMs) that excel at generating human-like text.
  • Training Data: They are trained on vast amounts of unlabeled text data from the internet, which enables them to comprehend and produce coherent and contextually relevant text.
• Capabilities and Applications:
  • Customization: GPTs can be fine-tuned for specific tasks, including language generation, sentiment analysis, language modeling, machine translation, and text classification.
  • Versatility: They possess the ability to adapt to various NLP tasks, making them highly versatile tools for natural language processing.
• Key Mechanisms:
  • Self-Attention: GPTs employ self-attention mechanisms, allowing them to focus on different segments of input text during processing.
  • Contextual Understanding: This mechanism enables GPT models to capture extensive context, thereby enhancing their performance on NLP tasks.
• Role in NLP Advancement:
  • NLP Definition: NLP refers to the computer's ability to comprehend human language, both spoken and written, often termed as natural language.
  • GPT Contribution: GPTs play a crucial role in advancing NLP by facilitating tasks like language understanding, text generation, and sentiment analysis with high accuracy and fluency.

Large Language Models (LLMs)

• Large language models use deep learning techniques to process large amounts of text.
• They work by processing vast amounts of text, understanding the structure and meaning, and learning from it.
• LLMs are trained to identify meanings and relationships between words.
• The greater the amount of training data a model is fed, the smarter it gets at understanding and producing text.
  • The training data is usually large datasets, such as Wikipedia, OpenWebText, and the Common Crawl Corpus.
  • These contain large amounts of text data, which the models use to understand and generate natural language.

What is ChatGPT?

• ChatGPT is a state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) model developed by OpenAI.
• It is a variant of the popular GPT-3 (Generative Pertained Transformer 3) model, which has been trained on a massive amount of text data to generate human-like responses to a given input.
• The answers provided by this chatbot are intended to be technical and free of jargon.
• It can provide responses that sound like human speech, enabling natural dialogue between the user and the virtual assistant.

Hanooman

• Introduction to Hanooman:
  • Description: Hanooman is a collection of large language models (LLMs) tailored to operate in 11 Indian languages such as Hindi, Tamil, and Marathi.
  • Expansion Plans: Efforts are underway to broaden its language capabilities to encompass over 20 languages.
• Targeted Fields:
  • Scope: Hanooman is designed to serve four specific sectors: healthcare, governance, financial services, and education.
• Multimodal Functionality:
  • Diverse Capabilities: It transcends the typical chatbot functionality, instead functioning as a multimodal AI tool.
  • Features: This includes the generation of text, speech, videos, and more across multiple Indian languages.
• Customized Versions:
  • Specialized Model: One notable variant within the Hanooman series is VizzhyGPT, a customized AI model tailored for healthcare applications.
  • Data Utilization: VizzhyGPT leverages extensive medical data to refine its performance within the healthcare domain.
• Model Sizes:
  • Parameter Range: The Hanooman series comprises models with varying sizes, spanning from 1.5 billion to an impressive 40 billion parameters.
  • Versatility: This extensive parameter range equips the models to effectively process and generate content across multiple languages and domains.

Source: Indian Express

Super Pollutants

Subject: Environment and Ecology

Why in News?

The Climate and Clean Air Conference 2024 highlighted the critical importance of international collaboration in combating short-lived climate pollutants, commonly known as “Super Pollutants.”

What are Super Pollutants?

• Overview: Super pollutants, or short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), have a shorter atmospheric lifespan compared to CO2 but significantly impact climate change and air quality.
• Main Super Pollutants: Methane (CH4), black carbon (soot), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and tropospheric ozone (O3).

Impacts of Super Pollutants

[1] Methane (CH4):

• Characteristics: Potent greenhouse gas emitted from various sources such as livestock and fossil fuel production.
• Impact: Traps heat in the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change.

[2] Black Carbon (Soot):

• Characteristics: Fine particulate matter from incomplete combustion of fuels.
• Impact: Absorbs sunlight, heats the atmosphere, and accelerates melting of snow and ice.

[3] Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs):

• Characteristics: Synthetic greenhouse gases used in refrigeration.
• Impact: High global warming potential despite short atmospheric lifespan.

[4] Tropospheric Ozone (O3):

• Characteristics: Secondary pollutant formed from VOCs and NOx.
• Impact: Contributes to smog, adverse health effects, acts as a greenhouse gas.

Significance of Addressing Super Pollutants

• Immediate and Long-Term Impact: Super-pollutants affect both short-term air quality and long-term climate change.
• Immediate Benefits: Mitigation of super-pollutants leads to immediate improvements in air quality, public health, and slows warming.
• Complementary Strategy: While reducing CO2 emissions is crucial for long-term goals, addressing super-pollutants offers immediate benefits.

Source: Deccan Chronicle

Changing the growth paradigm

Subject: Economy

Why in News?

The central idea of the article is that traditional measures of economic growth, like GDP, are inadequate indicators of a nation’s well-being and development. Instead, the focus should shift towards inclusive and sustainable growth that prioritizes the welfare of citizens, particularly in countries like India where economic progress has not translated into improved living standards for all.

Key Highlights:

• Limitations of GDP Growth: Relying solely on GDP growth as a measure of economic progress overlooks important factors such as income distribution and overall well-being of citizens. While GDP growth may indicate economic activity, it does not guarantee improvements in living standards for all segments of society.
• Inequality and Unequal Growth: Despite significant GDP growth, India continues to grapple with high levels of inequality, suggesting that the benefits of economic growth are not evenly distributed. This highlights the need for policies that promote more equitable distribution of wealth and opportunities.
• Call for a New Development Paradigm: The article advocates for a shift towards inclusive and environmentally sustainable development models. In light of global challenges like climate change, there is a growing recognition of the need to prioritize sustainability and social inclusivity in economic development efforts.
• Dependency on Fossil Fuels: India's reliance on fossil fuels for essential materials and energy production presents challenges, particularly in the context of environmental degradation and climate change. Transitioning away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy sources is essential for long-term sustainability.
• Importance of Local Solutions: The article underscores the significance of community-driven, locally tailored solutions over blindly following Western development models. Leveraging India's unique strengths and resources can lead to more sustainable and resilient development outcomes.

Key Challenges:

• Overcoming entrenched economic paradigms: Shifting away from GDP-centric models towards more inclusive and sustainable development approaches requires challenging existing economic frameworks and ideologies.
• Addressing inequality: Tackling the deep-rooted inequalities in India’s economy presents a significant challenge, especially given the historical focus on GDP growth.
• Transitioning from fossil fuels: Moving away from fossil fuel dependency poses technological, economic, and social challenges, particularly in sectors like agriculture and transportation.
• Balancing urbanization and rural development: Reconciling the push for urbanization with the need for rural development and sustainable agriculture presents complex policy dilemmas.
• Overcoming resistance to change: Convincing policymakers and society at large to embrace alternative development paradigms may face resistance from entrenched interests and ideologies.

Main Terms:

• GDP: Gross Domestic Product, a measure of the total value of goods and services produced within a country’s borders.
• Inclusive growth: Economic growth that benefits all segments of society, particularly the marginalized and vulnerable.
• Sustainable development: Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
• Fossil fuels: Non-renewable energy sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas, formed from the remains of prehistoric plants and animals.
• Urbanization: The process of population concentration in urban areas, often accompanied by industrialization and economic development.

Important Phrases:

• “Increase the size of the pie before its redistribution”: Reflects the emphasis on GDP growth over equitable distribution of wealth.
• “One path for all”: Criticizes the uniform approach to development that privileges industrialization and urbanization over other forms of progress.
• “Gandhian solution”: Refers to community-driven, localized approaches to development advocated by Mahatma Gandhi.
• “Rural Bharat”: Signifies the rural heartland of India, highlighting the importance of rural communities in the country’s development.

Quotes:

• “More GDP does not improve the well-being of citizens if it does not put more income in their pockets.”
• “India must find a new paradigm of progress, for itself and for the world, for more inclusive and environmentally sustainable growth.”
• “The time has come to go back to old solutions to go to the future.”

Useful Statements:

• “Critics argue that GDP growth alone does not necessarily lead to improved living standards for citizens, particularly in countries like India where inequality persists.”
• “Transitioning away from fossil fuels presents significant challenges, but it is essential for addressing climate change and ensuring long-term sustainability.”
• “Local, community-driven solutions have the potential to address global challenges like climate change and inequitable economic growth.”

Examples and References:

• The article cites India’s experience of impressive GDP growth alongside persistent inequality as evidence of the limitations of traditional development models.
• Reference is made to the work of Vaclav Smil on the role of fossil fuels in modern economies, providing a scientific basis for understanding the challenges of transitioning to renewable energy sources.

Facts and Data:

• India’s GDP grew at 7.2% per year during both the United Progressive Alliance and National Democratic Alliance governments, yet structural conditions leading to inequitable growth remained unchanged.
• Sixty-four per cent of Indian citizens live in rural areas, highlighting the importance of rural development in India’s economic and social progress.

Critical Analysis:

The article provides a compelling critique of the prevailing GDP-centric approach to economic development, highlighting its failure to address inequality and environmental concerns. By advocating for inclusive and sustainable growth models, the article offers a nuanced perspective on the challenges facing countries like India in the 21st century. However, it could benefit from further exploration of specific policy recommendations and case studies demonstrating successful alternative development strategies.

Way Forward:

• Embrace inclusive and sustainable development models that prioritize the well-being of all citizens.
• Invest in renewable energy sources and sustainable agriculture to reduce dependency on fossil fuels and mitigate climate change.
• Empower local communities to drive development initiatives tailored to their unique needs and challenges.
• Reform economic policies to prioritize equitable distribution of wealth and opportunities.
• Foster international cooperation to address global challenges like climate change and inequality.

Source: The Hindu