UPSC Essentials | Key terms of past week with MCQs: April 17 to April 23

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Essential key terms from the last week’s news headlines or between the lines categorised as per the relevance to the UPSC-CSE syllabus along with the MCQs followed.

National Quantum Mission 

WHY IN NEWS?

— The Union Cabinet approved the National Quantum Mission (NQM) in a bid to aid scientific and industrial research and development in quantum technology.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

— The mission involves a cost of Rs 6,003.65 crore from 2023-24 to 2030-31, and aims to put India among the top six leading nations involved in the research and development in quantum technologies.

— NQM will mainly work towards strengthening India’s research and development in the quantum arena alongside indigenously building quantum-based (physical qubit) computers which are far more powerful and are able to perform the most complex problems in a highly secure manner.

— It will target developing intermediate scale quantum computers with 50-1000 physical qubits in eight years in various platforms like superconducting and photonic technology.

— Satellite based secure quantum communications between ground stations over a range of 2000 kilometres within India, long distance secure quantum communications with other countries, inter-city quantum key distribution over 2000 km as well as multi-node Quantum network with quantum memories are among the other objectives of the mission.

— The mission will help develop magnetometers with high sensitivity in atomic systems and Atomic Clocks for precision timing, communications and navigation.

— It will also support design and synthesis of quantum materials such as superconductors, novel semiconductor structures and topological materials for fabrication of quantum devices. Single photon sources/detectors, entangled photon sources will also be developed for quantum communications, sensing and metrological applications.

— Four ‘Thematic Hubs’ (T-Hubs) will be set up in top academic and national R&D institutes in the domains of quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum sensing and metrology, and quantum materials and devices. The hubs will focus on generation of new knowledge through basic and applied research as well as promote R&D.

— Addressing a press conference, Jitendra Singh, Minister (Independent charge), Department of Science and Technology (DST), said, “ The National Quantum Mission will help India take a quantum leap in this area of research. It will have wide-scale applications ranging from healthcare and diagnostics, defence, energy and data security.”

DST will lead this national mission, supported by other departments. Presently, R&D works in quantum technologies are underway in the US, Canada, France, Finland, China and Austria.

(Source: Govt green flags National Quantum Mission to aid R&D in quantum tech)

Point to ponder: Can India secure its cyberspace from quantum techniques?

1. MCQ:

With reference to National Quantum Mission, consider the following statements:

1. India has joined research and development works in quantum technologies which are underway in six nations US, Canada, France, Finland, China and Austria.

2. Indian Institute of Science will lead this national mission focusing on four broad themes — Quantum Computing, Quantum Communication , Quantum Sensing and Metrology and Quantum Material and Devices.

Which of the above statements are not correct?

(a) Only 1

(b) Only 2

(c) Both 1 and 2

(d) Neither 1 nor 2

Hakki Pikki

WHY IN NEWS?

— More than 181 members of the Hakki Pikki tribal community from Karnataka are stuck in violence-hit Sudan, even as the government is making efforts to bring them back.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Kiran Parashar Explains:

Who are the Hakki Pikki?

— The Hakki Pikki is a tribe that lives in several states in west and south India, especially near forest areas. Hakki Pikkis (Hakki in Kannada means ‘bird’ and Pikki means ‘catchers’) are a semi-nomadic tribe, traditionally of bird catchers and hunters.

— According to the 2011 census, the Hakki Pikki population in Karnataka is 11,892, and they live majorly in Davangere, Mysuru, Kolar, Hassan and Shivmogga districts. In different regions, they are known by different names, such as Mel-Shikari in northern Karnataka and Maharashtra.

— MR Gangadhar, Vice Chancellor of Chamarajanagar University and an anthropologist who has conducted a study on the tribe, said, “The Hakki Pikki move in groups from place to place in search of livelihood. They are divided into four clans, called Gujaratia, Panwar, Kaliwala and Mewaras. These clans can be equated with castes in the traditional Hindu society. In the olden days, there was a hierarchy among the clans, with the Gujaratia at the top and the Mewaras at the bottom. The forest is the main natural resource of the Hakki Pikki.”

Where do they live?

— Hakki Pikki people are believed to hail originally from the bordering districts of Gujarat and Rajasthan. According to Gangadhar, they came to the south in search of game. “To Karnataka, they seem to have arrived via Andhra Pradesh, as they still remember a place called Jalapally near Hyderabad as their ancestral home, where their forefathers lived for a considerable period. They are now spread across south India,” he said.

— Till a few years ago, women used to wear the ghagra (skirt) common in Rajasthan, although now they wear saris and other garments.

What were their traditional jobs, and what do they do now?

— Traditionally, Hakki Pikkis lived in forest areas, leading a nomadic life for nine months a year and coming back to their permanent camps for three. Locals in Pakshirajapura, a Hakki Pikki village in Mysuru district The Indian Express visited, said earlier, men of the tribe would hunt while women begged in villages. But as the wildlife protection laws became stricter, the Hakki Pikkis in Karnataka started selling spices, herbal oils, and plastic flowers in local temple fairs.

— P S Nanjunda Swamy, state president of the Karnataka Adivasi Budakattu Hakki Pikki Jananga, an organisation that works for members of the tribe, said that the community moved to villages from the forests in the 1950s. “Earlier, we killed animals to make a living. But then some of our community members were booked and jailed under wildlife laws. So we shifted to selling herbal oils and other materials in villages and towns.”

— The herbal oil business took off, and now the tribe members go to many places across the globe to sell their products.

— According to Nanjunda Swamy, the Hakki Pikkis in Tamil Nadu travelled to Singapore, Thailand and other places about 20-25 years ago to sell some marbles, in the process discovering there was a huge demand for Ayurvedic products in the African continent. They started selling their products in Africa, and Karnataka Hakki Pikkis followed them. People from the state have been traveling to African countries for the past 20 years now.

— Education levels among the Hakki Pikkis are still low. For example, in the 2,000-strong population of Pakshirajapura, only eight people have completed graduation-level courses and one person works as a police constable.

What are their rituals and customs?

— Hakki Pikkis in Karnataka follow Hindu traditions and celebrate all Hindu festivals. They are non-vegetarians. The eldest son in a family is not supposed to cut his hair so that he can be identified easily.

— The tribe prefers cross-cousin marriages. According to locals, the usual age of marriage is 18 for women and 22 for men. The society is matriarchal, where the groom gives dowry to the bride’s family. Devaraj, 28, a Pakshirajapura resident, said he paid Rs 50,000 to his in-laws as dowry to get married to his wife. Monogamy is the norm.

(Source: Hakki Pikkis caught in Sudan conflict – Why this tribe of bird catchers travels to Africa from Karnataka by Kiran Parashar)

Point to ponder: Why Sudan’s latest conflict has led to concern among so many countries across the world?

2. MCQ:

With reference to ‘Hakki Pikki’, consider the following statements:

1. It is a tribe traditionally of bird catchers and hunters that lives in several states in north-eastern India.

2. Recently seen in news because many members of this community are stuck in violence-hit Sudan.

Which of the above statements is/are true?

(a) Only 1

(b) Only 2

(c) Both 1 and 2

(d) Neither 1 nor 2

Plants ‘cry’ and Bose

WHY IN NEWS?

—  Late last month, a group of researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel reported that they had been able to pick up distress noises made by plants. The researchers said these plants had been making very distinct, high-pitched sounds in the ultrasonic range when faced with some kind of stress, like when they were in need of water.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Amitabh Sinha Explains:

—  This was the first time that plants had been caught making any kind of noise, and the breakthrough research findings made global headlines. But many Indians just had a sense of déjà vu. Several previous generations of Indians had grown up hearing that Jagadish Chandra Bose had shown, more than a century ago, that plants experienced sensations and were able to feel pleasure and pain just like animals. Children were often advised not to pluck leaves, flowers or twigs because that could cause pain to the plants or trees. The discovery that plants ‘cry’ in distress, therefore, did not come as much of a surprise to them. It seemed just a logical extension of J C Bose’s work.

—  A physicist-turned-biologist, Bose, who lived between 1858 and 1937, made pioneering contributions in both the fields and was the first Indian to have made a powerful impact on modern science, much before Srinivasa Ramanujan, C V Raman, or Satyendra Nath Bose, a student of Jagadish, arrived on the scene.

—  J C Bose could — many believe he deservedly should — very well have been India’s first Nobel Prize winner, ahead of his life-long friend and confidant Rabindranath Tagore, with whom he used to have a prolific, and often poetic, correspondence.

What do we know of Bose’s science?

—  Jagadish Chandra Bose is remembered for two things — his work on wireless transmission of signals, and on the physiology of plants. He is also credited as one of the first contributors to solid state physics. Sir Neville Mott, Nobel Prize winner in 1977, is said to have remarked that Bose was “at least 60 years ahead of his time and he had anticipated the p-type and n-type semiconductors”, according to an account in ‘Remembering J C Bose’, a 2009 publication by D P Sen Gupta, M H Engineer and V A Shepherd.

—  Bose is widely believed to be the first one to generate electromagnetic signals in the microwave range. In 1895, just a year after he began his active research, he demonstrated, before an audience in Kolkata, how microwaves could be used, wirelessly, to ring an electric bell on the other side of a building.

—  He was the first one to come up with radio receivers, which enabled wireless telegraphy.

—  And yet, Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian scientist who carried out the first transmission of signals across the Atlantic in 1901, is recognised as the sole inventor of the radio. Marconi, along with another colleague, was awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize for work that Bose is known to have accomplished earlier.

—  It was not just bias, but as several accounts put it, a reluctance on Bose’s part to obtain patents for his work, that deprived him of the Nobel. As mentioned in the publication ‘Remembering J C Bose’, he wrote to Tagore about being approached by a big businessman in Europe with the offer to get his work patented.

—  Bose not just rejected the offer, he felt disgusted at the idea of making money from science. “If only Tagore would witness the country’s (England’s) greed for money,” Bose wrote to Tagore. “What a dreadful, all-consuming disease it was”.

What do we know about his work on plants?

— Bose, rather abruptly, changed tack in the initial years of the 20th century and began to focus his attention on plants. But as Professor A S Raghavendra from the University of Hyderabad explained, Bose’s work was not as disjoined as it seems.

“J C Bose was extremely talented at picking electric signals. The other thing he was extremely creative at was making instruments. Bose was working with rudimentary facilities and, yet, was able to build some remarkably sensitive instruments. He used these instruments to try and detect the faintest signals from the plants. He was carrying over his skills from physics to probe the world of biology,” Raghavendra, a former J C Bose National Fellow, who has written extensively on Bose’s work, told The Indian Express.

“His (Bose’s) contributions to the communication systems in biology as well as physics are amazing. He devoted strong attention to studies on the biology of movements, feelings and nervous system. The word ‘feelings’ was used for plants, but clearly this is a matter of semantics; plants react both chemically and physically to touch, but to use the word ‘feeling’ or ‘sensation’ as we know it is quite different. The simple experiments of Bose revealed a high degree of similarity in the responses of plant and animal tissues to external stimuli. This principle was amply demonstrated later by biophysicists, using highly sophisticated instruments,” Raghavendra wrote in a 2010 paper.

— In a way, Bose was possibly the world’s first biophysicist. But some of his work became controversial as well, particularly when he claimed that not just plants, even inanimate inorganic matter could respond to stimulus, and that there was actually no sharp demarcation between living and non-living worlds.

— Such “mental leaps” have sometimes been attributed to Bose’s “deep convictions in Indian philosophy” and his “faith in universalism”. Bose regarded plants to be the “intermediates in a continuum that extended between animals and the non-living materials”, according to the authors of ‘Remembering J C Bose’.

— His work on plants, too, was also not easily digested. Bose himself records the opposition he faced. In a letter to Tagore, he mentioned a lecture he was delivering in Europe. “When I commented during my lecture at the Royal Society that plants which come between the living and the non-living will provide similar response, (John) Burden Sanderson (a leading physiologist of his time) told me that he had worked all his life with plants. Only mimosa (touch-me-not) responds to touch. That ordinary plants should give electrical response is simply impossible. It cannot be”.

— Over the years, much of Bose’s work has been confirmed, though his genius is not always acknowledged. “He was much ahead of his times, no doubt. Many of his contemporaries did not fully understand him,” Raghavendra said, adding that the recent discovery of distress noise from plants could lead to some exciting research in the field. “We cannot lose sight of the fact that it was Bose who started it all”.

(Source: New study says plants ‘cry out’ when distressed: Recalling Jagadish Chandra Bose’s work on this a century ago by Amitabh Sinha)

Point to ponder: Reflect on Jagdish Chandra Bose’s as one of India’s first modern scientists.

3. MCQ

Offsets: compensation for environmental damage

WHY IN NEWS?

— Offsets have come under fire as a way for companies to compensate for carbon emissions through eco projects elsewhere.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Deutsche Welle writes:

How does offsetting work?

— Buying offsets is a way to “compensate” for environmental damage. Companies make a financial contribution to projects that reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and in exchange can keep polluting themselves.

— Examples of projects include planting trees and rewetting peatlands — which store huge amounts of carbon in their soil. By this logic, it is possible to take “carbon neutral” flights with German airline Lufthansa. Even the FIFA World Cup in Qatar billed itself as climate-neutral.

— In recent years, the carbon offset industry has boomed. It is worth $2 billion (€1.87 billion) annually and is expected to grow five times that size by the end of the decade.

— After the concept’s invention in 1987, some international treaties such as the Kyoto protocol have let industrialized countries use carbon credits, each of which is worth one ton of carbon, to keep within emissions limits. That market where carbon credits are traded to meet government regulations — is much bigger, about $261 billion a year.

— However, experts have warned most of the credits on the voluntary carbon market aren’t effective.

What are the problems with offsetting?

— Recent analysis by British news outlet the Guardian, German newspaper Die Zeit and the investigative site SourceMaterial, found more than 90 per cent of rainforest carbon offsets by Verra, the world’s biggest certifier, are likely to be “phantom credits”, meaning they do not represent genuine carbon reductions. Verra has strongly disputed the findings of their investigation.

— Forrest Fleischman, environmental and natural resource policy professor at Minnesota University, argued that corporate claims of being “climate positive” cannot solely rely on offsets. “There isn’t enough room on the planet to absorb all the carbon emissions through trees,” he said. “So while this might look good for one company, it’s not a practical strategy globally.”

— According to Reprisk, a Switzerland-based data science firm that analyses companies’ environmental, social and governance practices, one in five ESG risks are linked to carbon offsets and misleading communications — rising to one in three for the food and beverage sector.

— “If a company claims to be carbon neutral, consumers would think the company doesn’t harm the environment, but the reality is that changing your business model is costly and time-consuming,” explained Alexandra Mihailescu Cichon, Reprisk’s executive vice-president.

— The cost of credits — starting from $4.24 (€4) a ton — is often much less than the projected cost of reducing corporations’ own emissions in the first place. She also warned that lack of regulation means standards in the market are still hugely erratic.

How are offset projects categorised?

— Offset projects can be broadly split into two categories: removals and avoidances. Removal describes actions which actively take carbon out of the air and store it permanently, such as by planting trees or direct air capture — which is not a technology available at scale. Currently carbon dioxide removal represents just a small percentage of the carbon credits in circulation.

— Avoidance offsets are from projects that stop the release of greenhouse gases, such as protecting trees from being logged. For example, the asset management arm of the US bank JP Morgan Chase has bought 250,000 acres of forest for more than $500 million “for carbon capture and timber.” As such, the bank has paid timberland owners to not cut the trees down, thereby allowing them to absorb carbon from the atmosphere, and in turn, itself profits by generating potential carbon credits for investors.

— Alternative investment firm Oak Hill Advisors LP is also cashing in on timberland for carbon offset deals, spending $1.8 bn on US forests.

— Some critics have accused JP Morgan of greenwashing. They argue that while it is good the trees are not being cut down, it is tricky to prove if — and by how much — that results in a net removal of carbon from the atmosphere. This test is known as “additionality”, and measures whether the funding from the carbon credit made any positive difference to the climate.

— Another measure used to certify offset projects is the “permanence” of the activity. Finally, there is the potential for “leakage” – if one area of forest is saved from exploitation, but the overall pressure to exploit forests has not gone down, will that demand for deforestation just be redirected somewhere else, say, to another forest?

Alternative approaches

— Observers are raising these questions out of concern that the carbon impact of avoidance emissions — which can only ever be an estimate — is being heavily overstated by those who stand to gain financially.

— But tighter scrutiny of offsetting claims could come soon. The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, an independent governance organization, is defining standards that purchasers could use to sort the good from the bad, and filter out low-quality carbon credits.

— Nature-based solutions could also offer answers. A study by the We Mean Business Coalition, a global group of seven non-profit climate-focused organisations, showed that if the world’s 1,700 biggest emitters compensated each year for just 10 per cent of the emissions they have not yet cut, through investments in nature, it would mitigate nearly 30 gigatons of emissions and mobilise up to $1 trillion in climate finance by 2030.

(Source: It’s not easy being green – Offsets explained by Deutsche Welle)

Point to ponder: In our efforts to be green, we must not greenwash. Discuss.

4. MCQ

With reference to offset projects, consider the following statements:

1. Removal offset describes actions which actively take carbon out of the air and store it permanently, such as by planting trees or direct air capture — which is not a technology available at scale.

2. Avoidance offsets are from projects that stop the release of greenhouse gases, such as protecting trees from being logged.

Which of the above statements are correct?

(a) Only 1

(b) Only 2

(c) Both 1 and 2

(d) Neither 1 nor 2

Two Singapore satellites

WHY IN NEWS?

— ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) Saturday successfully placed two Singapore satellites into their intended orbits.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

— The satellites are part of the order secured by NewSpace India Ltd, the commercial arm of ISRO, reported PTI. At the end of a 22.5-hour countdown, the 44.4-metre-tall rocket lifted off at the scheduled time of 2.19 pm from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

— “The PSLV in its 57th mission has once again demonstrated its high reliability and its suitability for commercial missions of such class,” ISRO Chief S Somanath said from the Mission Control Center, as reported by PTI.

— The PSLV is one of ISRO’s most reliable vehicles, having launched hundreds of satellites with only three failures or partial failures since 1993. Over the years, various improvements have been made to it, making it a stand-out satellite carrier.

— Launch vehicles are meant only to deposit satellites into space, after which they become useless. They either burn up in space or add to the ever-increasing concern of space debris. The PSLV, however, is now technologically advanced enough to have one component that can stay on in space to carry out the research after it has delivered its satellite. The current mission includes this component, POEM-2, which stands for PSLV Orbital Experimental Module.

What was PSLV’s most recent mission?

— The rocket launched on Saturday carried TeLEOS-2 as the primary satellite and Lumelite-4 as a co-passenger satellite, ISRO said in a statement. While TeLEOS-2 will “be used to support the satellite imagery requirements of various agencies within the Government of Singapore”, Lumelite-4 “aims to augment Singapore’s e-navigation maritime safety and benefit the global shipping community”, the space agency said.

— POEM-2, meanwhile, will “be utilised as an orbital platform to carry out scientific experiments through non-separating payloads. The payloads belong to ISRO/Department of Space, Bellatrix, Dhruva Space, and Indian Institute of Astrophysics,” ISRO said.

Why do satellites need launch vehicles?

— The launch vehicle rockets have powerful propulsion systems that generate the huge amount of energy required to lift heavy objects like satellites into space, overcoming the gravitational pull of the earth. Satellites, or payloads as they are often called, sit inside the rocket and are ejected once they reach near their intended orbit in space. Most satellites have small propulsion systems and carry small amounts of fuel, because they encounter very little drag, or force, in outer space. What they do carry are the instruments needed for the scientific work for which they are being sent into space.

What is PSLV?

— PSLV is the most reliable rocket used by ISRO to date. Its first launch was in 1994, and it has been ISRO’s main rocket ever since.

— Apart from Indian satellites, it also carries satellites from other nations into space, like in the current mission, where it carried payloads from Singapore. The reason for this is that apart from being reliable, the PSLV is also more affordable than the launch vehicles of many other countries.

— According to ISRO’s website, “After its first successful launch in October 1994, PSLV emerged as a reliable and versatile workhorse launch vehicle of India. The vehicle has launched numerous Indian and foreign customer satellites. Besides, the vehicle successfully launched two spacecraft, Chandrayaan-1 in 2008 and Mars Orbiter Spacecraft in 2013, that later travelled to Moon and Mars respectively. Chandrayaan-1 and MOM were feathers in the hat of PSLV. PSLV earned its title ‘the workhorse of ISRO’ through consistently delivering various satellites into low earth orbits.”

What are the various components of PSLV?

— Rockets have several detachable energy-providing parts. They burn different kinds of fuels to power the rocket. Once their fuel is exhausted, they detach from the rocket and fall off, often burning off in the atmosphere due to air-friction, and getting destroyed. Only a small part of the original rocket goes till the intended destination of the satellite. Once the satellite is finally ejected, this last part of the rocket either becomes part of space debris, or once again burns off after falling into the atmosphere.

— PSLV has four parts — PS1, a solid rocket motor augmented by 6 solid strap-on boosters; PS2, a storable liquid rocket engine, known as the Vikas engine; PS3, a solid rocket motor that provides the upper stages high thrust after the atmospheric phase of the launch; and PS4, the uppermost stage consisting of two Earth storable liquid engines.

— As technology evolves, the effort is to make the various parts of a rocket reusable. PSLV’s PS4 has been able to achieve this.

— As part of POEM, PS4, instead of being discarded, is now utilised as a “stabilised platform” to perform experiments.

— POEM has a dedicated Navigation Guidance and Control (NGC) system for attitude stabilisation, which stands for controlling the orientation of any aerospace vehicle within permitted limits. The NGC acts as the platform’s brain to stabilise it with specified accuracy. It derives its power from solar panels mounted around the PS4 tank, and a Li-Ion battery.

(Source: Two Singapore satellites sent to space: What is PSLV, ISRO’s workhorse rocket that can ‘write poems in orbit’)

Point to ponder: What is ISRO’s ‘POEM’ platform?

5. MCQ

With reference to India’s satellite launch  vehicles, consider the following statements:

(1) PSLVs launch satellites useful for Earth resources monitoring whereas GSLVs are designed mainly to launch communication satellites.

(2) Satellites launched by PSLV appear to remain permanently fixed in the same position in the sky, as viewed from a particular location on Earth.

(3) GSLV Mk III is a four-staged launch vehicle with the first and third stages using solid rocket motors; and the second and fourth stages using liquid rocket engines.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct.?

(a) 1 only

(b) 2 and 3

(c) 1 and 2

(d) 3 only

National Civil Services Day

WHY IN NEWS?

— The Government of India commemorates ‘Civil Services Day’ every year on April 21. The day is marked to celebrate the exemplary work done by our civil servants, and as an opportunity for them to recommit themselves to the cause of citizens.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Gargi Nandwana Explains:

— The theme for this year’s Civil Services Day is ‘Viksit Bharat: Empowering Citizens and Reaching the Last Mile’.

— Every year on this day, the Prime Minister confers Prime Minister’s Awards for Excellence in Public Administration to districts/implementing units for priority programme implementation and innovation categories.

— Going by tradition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed civil servants at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi Friday. The Prime Minister also released the e-books ‘Viksit Bharat – Empowering Citizens & Reaching the last mile Volume I and II.’

— “It is the duty of the bureaucracy to analyse whether a political party is making use of taxpayers’ money for the benefit of their own organisation or the nation’s,” the PM said at the event.

— The role of civil servants is crucial as they are responsible for managing the resources given to them by the government, making use of them efficiently and effectively, and ensuring that it reaches people at the grassroots level.

What is the history?

— National Civil Services Day was first celebrated on April 21, 2006. April 21 was chosen because it is on this day that the first Home Minister of Independent India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, 1947 addressed the probationers of Administrative Services Officers at Metcalf House in Delhi. He referred to the civil servants as the “steel frame of India.”

— “The days when the foreigners could be masters are over and the officers must be guided by the real spirit of service in their day-to-day administration, for in no other manner can they be fit in the scheme of things,” Patel said while inaugurating the newly created Indian Administrative Service.

— Patel also exhorted the civil servants to cultivate an esprit de corps. It means to have a shared feeling of pride among team or group members, and without it, “a Service as such has little meaning.” “A civil servant should regard it as a proud privilege to belong to the Service, covenants of which you will sign, and to uphold throughout your service its dignity, integrity and incorruptibility,” he added.

This year’s awards

— As per a press release from the PMO, the Prime Minister’s Awards for Excellence in Public Administration were given for exemplary work done in four identified priority programmes — Promoting Swachh Jal through Har Ghar Jal Yojana; Promoting Swasth Bharat through Health & Wellness Centres; Promoting quality education with an equitable and inclusive classroom environment through Samagra Shiksha; Holistic Development through Aspirational District Programme – overall progress with special focus on saturation approach.

— A total of eight awards were conferred for the above four identified programmes even as seven awards were given for innovations.

— As per another press release by the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, there were a total of 2520 nominations for the awards. Union Minister of State Dr Jitendra Singh, while addressing the 16th Civil Services Day function at Vigyan Bhawan, appreciated the efforts of the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) in ensuring a fair and transparent selection process for the awards.

— “The rigorous evaluation process involves multiple rounds of scrutiny, including on-site visits to the nominated organisations. After the evaluation process, a shortlist of candidates is sent to the Prime Minister’s Office for final selection,” he added.

(Source: National Civil Services Day: What is the history behind the day? by Gargi Nandwana )

Point to ponder: Civil Service has become truly national, shedding its colonial baggage. How?

6. MCQ

With reference to civil services in India, consider the following statements:

1. Following the report of Lee Commission, the concept of a merit based modern Civil Service in India was introduced.

2. April 21 was chosen as Civil Services Day because it is on this day in 1947 that the first Home Minister of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, addressed the probationers of Administrative Services Officers.

Which of the above statements is/are true?

(a) Only 1

(b) Only 2

(c) Both 1 and 2

(d) Neither 1 nor 2

ANSWERS TO MCQs: 1 (b), 2 (b), 3 (c), 4 (c), 5 (a), 6 (b)

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