2 October 2023

• Gandhi at 154: October 2 is the 154th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and the birth anniversary of Lal Bahadur Shastri. The UN marks it as the International Day of Non-Violence.
• Aadhaar scrutiny: a Moody's report flagged data-breach risks in India's Aadhaar-based welfare delivery; MGNREGA and pension payments affected by biometric failures.
• IGMS 2.0: the government launched an AI-driven upgrade of the CPGRAMS public grievance portal, developed with IIT Kanpur.
• Space: the OSIRIS-REx mission returned its sample capsule from asteroid Bennu to Earth, prompting discussion of the Yarkovsky Effect that shifts asteroid orbits over time.

GS area: History (Modern India), Society

October 2 is the birthday of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (born 1869) and of Lal Bahadur Shastri (born 1904). The United Nations declared October 2 the International Day of Non-Violence through General Assembly resolution A/RES/61/271 in 2007.

Key facts about Gandhi's South African phase that examiners test:

• Tolstoy Farm (1910): a self-supporting agricultural commune Gandhi established near Johannesburg. It served as a laboratory for brahmacharya, dietary experiments, and nature cure. Johann Christoph Arnold helped fund it.
• Passive Resistance Association: formed against registration certificates requiring fingerprints under the Asiatic Registration Act (1906). This was the first organised satyagraha.
• Three-pound poll tax: levied on ex-indentured Indians in Natal. Gandhi's campaign against it in 1913 led to mass strikes by Indian mine workers. The tax was a central grievance until the Indians Relief Act (1914) abolished it.
• Duration: Gandhi was in South Africa from 1893 to 1914. He returned to India in January 1915.
• Lal Bahadur Shastri: resigned twice on grounds of moral responsibility over rail accidents. His "Jai Jawan Jai Kisan" slogan framed the twin pillars of national security and food self-reliance.

Static linkage: Modern India history, Indian national movement.

GS area: Governance, Economy

A Moody's Analytics report raised concerns about India's Aadhaar-based welfare delivery.

• Data-breach risk: concentration of biometric and demographic data in a centralised system creates a single point of failure. Any breach exposes data on over 1.3 billion enrolled persons.
• Biometric failures: manual labourers in hot and humid conditions often have degraded fingerprints. Biometric authentication fails disproportionately for this group, causing denial of MGNREGA wages.
• MGNREGA seeding: the government clarified that MGNREGA Aadhaar seeding does not require biometric authentication at the point of payment. Wages reach accounts that are Aadhaar-seeded.
• CAG findings: an earlier CAG audit noted inadequate archiving policy for Aadhaar data and vulnerabilities in the Aadhaar Payment Bridge System (AePS). A "scholarship scam" in Jharkhand used AePS to divert funds.
• Recommended reforms: restrict mandatory Aadhaar to permissible purposes; provide viable alternatives when authentication fails; easier enrolment and update at the block level; amend the Aadhaar Act to establish an independent oversight committee.
• IMF and World Bank position: both praised Aadhaar's design and its role in JAM (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile) architecture for direct benefit transfer.

Static linkage: Governance and social welfare, Digital India.

GS area: Governance

The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), under the Ministry of Personnel, launched IGMS 2.0 in collaboration with IIT Kanpur.

• CPGRAMS: the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System. It is the government's 24/7 online platform for citizens to lodge grievances against service delivery failures. It connects all central ministries, departments, and states.
• Scale: CPGRAMS receives close to 20 lakh grievances annually. Citizens get a unique registration ID and can appeal if unsatisfied with the Grievance Officer's resolution.
• IGMS 2.0 upgrade: adds AI-based categorisation, sentiment analysis, and automatic routing of grievances to the correct ministry. Available in 22 scheduled languages.
• Special Campaign 3.0: running alongside, promoting an eOffice culture and clearing physical file backlogs.
• Two-source check: DARPG is the nodal body; it sits under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions (not the Ministry of Electronics and IT, which handles some digital governance platforms).

Static linkage: Governance, administrative reforms.

GS area: Science and Technology

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission returned its sample capsule from asteroid Bennu to Utah on September 24, 2023. In October, scientists began analysing the sample. The mission renewed discussion of the Yarkovsky Effect.

• Yarkovsky Effect: asteroids absorb solar radiation and re-emit it as heat. The asymmetric re-emission (warmer afternoon side emits more) creates a tiny thrust that shifts the asteroid's orbit over time. This cumulative effect matters for collision-risk calculations over decades.
• Bennu: a near-Earth asteroid about 500 metres in diameter. OSIRIS-REx tracked its Yarkovsky drift at 284 metres per year. The effect is measurable only on small asteroids; the Sun's gravity dominates on larger bodies.
• Apophis: another near-Earth asteroid where the Yarkovsky Effect is being studied for a 2029 close approach with Earth.
• OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer): launched 2016, arrived at Bennu 2018. It collected over 60 grams of material in a touch-and-go sample collection in October 2020.

Static linkage: Science and technology, space exploration.

GS area: Science and Technology, India and the World

The SASTRA Ramanujan Prize for 2023 was awarded to Ruixiang Zhang, an Assistant Professor at the University of California Berkeley.

• Prize details: established by SASTRA University, Tamil Nadu in 2005 to honour mathematicians under 32 who work in areas influenced by Srinivasa Ramanujan. The prize carries $10,000 and is awarded each December 22 (Ramanujan's birth anniversary) in Kumbakonam.
• Previous laureates: Manjul Bhargava (2005) and Akshay Venkatesh (2008) are the best-known recipients. Both later won the Fields Medal.
• Zhang's work: analytic number theory, combinatorics, Euclidean harmonic analysis, and geometry. His research extends ideas that Ramanujan pioneered in partition theory and number theory.
• Ramanujan background: Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) was a self-taught mathematician from Erode, Tamil Nadu. He went to Cambridge in 1914 and became the first Indian elected Fellow of the Royal Society (1918).

Static linkage: Science and technology, persons in news.

GS area: Agriculture, Science and Technology

Pink Bollworm was found to have overcome the resistance built into Bt cotton seeds in northern Rajasthan, Haryana, and southwestern Punjab.

• Species: Pectinophora gossypiella. Native to Asia; now invasive in most cotton-growing countries. Considered possibly the most destructive pest on cotton worldwide.
• Bt cotton: genetically modified cotton that produces proteins from the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) bacterium to kill bollworms. India approved commercial Bt cotton in 2002. Bt cotton is currently the only GM crop legally approved for commercial cultivation in India.
• Resistance mechanism: the pink bollworm population in these states has evolved to tolerate the Cry1Ac and Cry2Ab proteins in Bt seeds. Without functional resistance, farmers lose crop value.
• Impact: drastic yield reduction; farming becomes economically unviable. Cotton acreage in Punjab has declined sharply.
• Regulatory body: the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) under the Ministry of Environment approves GM crop releases.

Static linkage: Agriculture, biotechnology.

GS area: Environment, International Relations

The UN adopted a Global Framework on Chemicals at a summit in Bonn in late September 2023. The framework came into focus in early October.

• 28 targets: cover the full lifecycle of chemicals and waste to reduce harm to health and the environment by 2030 and 2035.
• Bonn Declaration: adopted alongside the framework. It calls for phasing out the most hazardous chemicals where alternatives exist.
• Goals: prevent exposure to harmful chemicals; promote circular economy transitions; develop substitutes for dangerous chemicals.
• Link to existing treaties: complements the Basel Convention (hazardous waste), Rotterdam Convention (prior informed consent), and Stockholm Convention (persistent organic pollutants). These three are administered by the UN Environment Programme.

Static linkage: Environment and ecology, international environmental agreements.

• Operation Kachchhap: the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence recovered 955 live baby turtles in October. Species included the Indian Tent Turtle, Indian Flapshell Turtle, Crown River Turtle, Black Spotted Turtle, and Brown Roofed Turtle. These are protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.
• Chandrayaan-3 follow-up: the ISRO's lander Vikram attempted to wake up in late September; communication had not been re-established. The rover's findings continued to be published by ISRO.