11 July 2023

• Space: Chandrayaan-3 was in final preparation for its July 14 launch.
• Health: India's palliative care system reaches fewer than 2 per cent of those who need it.
• Energy: India's EV sales crossed the 1 million mark with two-wheelers driving 60 per cent of the total.
• Science: IceCube Observatory in Antarctica produced the first neutrino-based image of the Milky Way.
• Economy: China's export controls on gallium and germanium threatened global chip supply chains and created a diversification opportunity for India.

GS area: Science and Technology

ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 was poised for a July 14 launch. The mission aims to demonstrate India's capability for safe and soft lunar landing and rover operations.

• Components: Propulsion Module, Lander Module (Vikram), and Rover (Pragyan, housed inside the lander).
• Launch vehicle: LVM3 (Launch Vehicle Mark-3), which can carry payloads up to 8,000 kg to geosynchronous transfer orbit.
• Why the south pole? Permanently shadowed craters at the lunar south pole are believed to contain water ice. This ice could support future human exploration and yield insights into the early solar system.
• Scientific context: A Mars-sized object (Theia) is believed to have collided with the young Earth about 4.5 billion years ago, and the resulting debris formed the Moon. The south pole's ice preserves ancient records of this and subsequent processes.
• Previous mission: Chandrayaan-2 (2019) successfully inserted an orbiter and conducted reconnaissance, but the Vikram lander crashed during its final descent phase.

Static linkage: ISRO, space missions, lunar geography.

GS area: Health, Society

An estimated 7 to 10 million Indians need palliative care, but fewer than 1 to 2 per cent actually access it.

• Financial burden: Catastrophic health expenditures push approximately 55 million people below the poverty line annually in India. Palliative care reduces this burden by managing symptoms in community settings rather than hospitals.
• Cancer as driver: About 1.4 million new cancer diagnoses occur annually in India. Terminal cancer is the most commonly cited need for palliative care.
• Policy gap: The National Programme for Palliative Care (NPPC), announced in 2012, lacks a dedicated budget allocation. The government's revised guidelines for non-communicable diseases still limit palliative care to cancer patients, excluding 19 other qualifying conditions.
• Missing services: No home-based palliative care services are provided under the guidelines. Paediatric palliative care is absent.

Static linkage: Health policy, social security, NCD burden.

GS area: Economy, Environment, Technology

India's EV sales crossed the 1 million mark across a recent three-year period, with two-wheelers accounting for 60 per cent.

• Government target: 30 per cent of all private cars, 70 per cent of commercial vehicles, and 80 per cent of two- and three-wheelers to be electric by 2030.
• Charging gap: Only approximately 2,000 public charging stations are operational across India, well short of what the 2030 target requires.
• Grid dependency: India's electricity grid is still about 73 per cent coal-fed, limiting the emissions benefit of EVs unless grid decarbonisation accelerates.
• Import vulnerability: India depends on Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Australia, and China for lithium, the core battery material. Domestic lithium has been identified in Jammu and Kashmir (6 million tonnes).
• Alternatives: Hybrids, flex-fuel vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells, and synthetic fuels are all being explored as complements to pure EVs.

Static linkage: Climate change, energy transition, mineral resources.

GS area: Economy, International Relations, Science and Technology

China announced export controls on gallium and germanium, two critical metals essential to semiconductor and advanced electronics manufacturing.

• Gallium uses: Semiconductor compound semiconductors, LED components, solar cells, and telecommunication equipment.
• Germanium uses: Transistors, diodes, infrared optics, fibre optics, and solar cells.
• China's dominance: China produces the large majority of the world's gallium and germanium at the refining stage.
• Trigger: China's action was widely read as retaliation for US and allied technology export restrictions targeting China's chip manufacturing.
• India's opportunity: The move creates an incentive for supply-chain diversification. India's critical mineral mapping and the India-US iCET framework are relevant here.

Static linkage: Critical minerals, semiconductor supply chains, India-China-US technology rivalry.

GS area: Science and Technology

Scientists using data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica produced the first image of the Milky Way using high-energy neutrinos rather than light.

• What neutrinos are: Elementary particles with almost no mass and no electric charge, often called "ghost particles." They pass through almost all matter without interaction.
• IceCube: A detector buried deep in the Antarctic ice, using a cubic kilometre of ice as the detection medium. Sensors detect the rare flashes of light produced when a neutrino collides with an ice molecule.
• Data analysed: Ten years of IceCube data, identifying nearly 60,000 neutrino events. About 7 per cent were traced to astrophysical sources within the Milky Way.
• Significance: Opens a new "messenger" for observing the universe, complementing electromagnetic radiation and gravitational waves.

Static linkage: Science and technology, space science, particle physics.

GS area: Governance, Education

The PGI-D 2.0 evaluates the school education system at the district level across India.

• Six assessment categories: Outcomes, classroom transaction, infrastructure and facilities, safety and child protection, digital learning, and governance and management.
• Grade scale: 10 grades from "Daksh" (highest) to "Akanshi-3" (lowest). No district achieved the top two grades.
• Purpose: Identifies gaps and tracks improvement in school education quality at the sub-state level. Designed to incentivise competitive improvement across districts.

Static linkage: Education, governance, National Education Policy 2020.

• Nari Adalats: Women-only dispute resolution courts at the village level, piloted in 50 villages each in Assam and Jammu and Kashmir from August 2023. Each consists of 7 to 9 members, half elected from gram panchayats and half nominated. Part of Mission Shakti's Sambal sub-scheme.
• India joins Global Crisis Response Group: India joined the champions group of the UN Global Crisis Response Group on food, energy, and finance. This body addresses the development fallout of the Ukraine conflict and related supply disruptions.
• Bedaquiline access: Johnson and Johnson agreed with the Global Drug Facility to allow generic manufacturers in India to supply bedaquiline, a key drug for drug-resistant tuberculosis, at 80 per cent lower cost to low- and middle-income countries.
• Drug-resistant fungus in Delhi dogs: The first live culture of Candida auris was isolated from dog ear canals in Delhi. Candida auris is a persistent, drug-resistant hospital infection concern.