26 April 2023

DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS ANALYSIS

1 – SCO: GS II – International Relations

Context:

• India pleaded with the members of the Shanghai collaboration Organisation Interbank Consortium (SCO IBC) on April 26 to increase coordination and collaboration.
• During the 19th SCO IBC meeting in South Goa district, the managing director of the India Infrastructure Finance Company Limited (IIFCL), Padmanabhan Raja Jaishankar, said there was still a great deal of untapped potential for cooperation among the banks of the member countries.

About:

• The SCO is a long-standing multinational intergovernmental institution.
• This Eurasian political, economic, and military organization’s primary objective is to maintain the peace, security, and stability in the region.
• It was established in 2001.
• The SCO Charter was signed in 2002 and went into force in 2003.

Genesis:

• Prior to the creation of the SCO in 2001, the Shanghai Five, which comprised Tajikistan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Russia, existed.
• The Shanghai Five (1996) was the outcome of numerous border demarcation and demilitarisation talks between China and the four former Soviet republics in order to maintain peace along the borders.
• Uzbekistan joined the Shanghai Five in 2001, and the organization later adopted the name SCO.
• India and Pakistan joined in 2017.
• According to rumours, Iran will become a full member of the SCO on September 17, 2021.

Objectives:

• fostering a sense of collaboration and neighbourliness among the member states.
• promoting effective cooperation in the areas of trade, the economy, research, and culture.
• developing ties in industries like tourism, energy, transportation, and environmental protection.
• defend and preserve the peace, security, and stability of the region.
• the establishment of a new, democratic, equitable, and rational world political and economic order.

Membership:

• Iran, China, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Uzbekistan are the other countries mentioned.
• Structure: The Heads of State Council, the SCO’s highest body, makes decisions about how the organisation will function internally, interact with other States and international organisations, and address global challenges.
• The Heads of Government Council discusses issues pertaining to the interaction of economic sectors within the SCO and approves the budget.
• ponders issues pertaining to day-to-day operations in the Council of Foreign Ministers.
• The Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) was established to combat terrorism, separatism, and extremism.

Source The  Hindu

2 – Operation Kaveri: GS II – International Relations

Context:

• As India’s “Operation Kaveri,” launched to evacuate Indians trapped within war-torn Sudan, is underway, the government is making the most of a 72-hour ceasefire window to evacuate around 3,000 citizens. The Indian Navy and Air Force are both involved in the operation, which is under the direction of the Ministry of External Affairs. Due to the fierce fighting in Khartoum between forces loyal to General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, who also commands the Sudanese Armed Forces, and his former deputy, Gen. Mohammed ‘Hemeti’ Hamdan Dagalo of the paramilitary group, RSF, the majority of civilians are being transported by road to Port Sudan, a hazardous journey, in order to be evacuated by air and sea. India has been cooperating with other countries that have the most population and resources in Sudan, such as the US, UK, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, in order to coordinate logistics, timing the evacuation operations, and even deploy Saudi and French planes.

What is Operation Kaveri?

• Operation Kaveri was an effort by India to evacuate its citizens who were trapped in Sudan during violent fighting between the army and a competing paramilitary force there.
• The Indian Navy’s stealth offshore patrol ship INS Sumedha and two C-130J special operations aircraft from the Indian Air Force are both on standby at Jeddah for the mission.
• Over 2,800 Indian nationals as well as a 1,200-person permanent Indian community can be found in Sudan.

What is the current Sudanese crisis?

Background:

• Omar al-Bashir, the long-serving president of Sudan, was deposed by the generals in April 2019 as a result of fierce protests.
• A deal was reached between the military and the protesters as a result, and the Sovereignty Council, a body that shares authority, was established to direct Sudan towards elections by the end of 2023.
• However, in October 2021, the military overthrew the interim government led by Abdalla Hamdok and replaced it with Burhan and Dagalo as the de facto leaders.

Army and RSF at odds:

• Soon after the coup in 2021, a power struggle between two military (SAF) and paramilitary (RSF) generals derailed a proposal to hold elections.
• In December 2021, a provisional agreement on a political transition was reached, but because of timetable issues and changes in the security sector, negotiations to integrate the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) came to a standstill.
• Rising tensions over resource management and RSF integration led to conflicts.
• On who should be in charge of integrating the 10,000-member RSF into the army, there was disagreement.
• Additionally, the army predicted that integration would take place in the next two years despite Dagalo (the RSF commander) intending to delay it for ten years.

Source The  Hindu

3 – Quantum Computers: GS III – Science and Technology

Context:

• “Nature isn’t classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you’d better make it quantum mechanical, and by golly it’s a wonderful problem because it doesn’t look so easy,” declared Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman in a 1982 lecture at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Many people think that Feynman’s lecture, which was later published as a paper with the title “Simulating Physics with Computers,” where he proposed developing new, more potent computers by utilising the quantum mechanical properties of matter, was the inspiration for quantum computing.

Meaning:

• Quantum computers, which replicate the behaviour of atoms and subatomic particles, greatly increase computing speed.
• The fascinating phenomenon whereby these particles can exist in multiple states at once is known as quantum superposition.

Important Terms:

• Superfluid: The minimal temperature needed for quantum processors is one hundredth of a degree above absolute zero. To achieve this, we use super-cooled superfluid to create superconductors.
• Superposition: When groups of qubits are superposed, complex, multidimensional computer landscapes can be built. Complex problems can be expressed in creative ways in these contexts.
• Entanglement, a property of quantum mechanics, is the correlation of the actions of two separate things. When two qubits are entangled, modifications to one immediately impact the other. These links are used by quantum algorithms to address complex problems.
• The laws of quantum physics can be interpreted in many different ways:
• The translation from Copenhagen Erwin Schrödinger used a thought experiment to reveal it to the world in 1935.
• According to this argument, probing the volume forces the superposition of the electrons’ states to collapse to one depending on the probability of each state.
• Entanglement: When two particles are entangled and separated by an arbitrary distance (even more than 1,000 km), seeing one particle and causing its superposition to collapse would instantaneously cause the superposition of the other particle to collapse as well.
• This phenomenon seems to refute the notion that the speed of light determines the maximum speed of the universe.

How might a computer make use of superposition?

• The bit is the fundamental component of a conventional computer.
• It has a value of 1 if a connected transistor is active and a value of 0 otherwise.
• The transistor can be in one of two states at once: on or off, allowing a bit to have one of two values, 0 or 1, at any one time.
• The qubit is the foundation of a QC.
• It is typically a tiny particle, such as an electron.
• Google and IBM had previously used transmons, in which paired bound electrons bounce between two superconductors to identify the two states.
• Certain data is directly encoded on the qubit: When an electron’s spin is pointed upward, it implies 1, and below, it means 0.
• However, rather than being either 1 or 0, the information is present in a superposition, such as 45% 0 + 55% 1. In contrast to the two discrete states of 0 and 1, there is a third sort of state.
• One qubit can encode two states. Five qubits can encode 32 states. A computer with N qubits can encode 2 N states, whereas a computer with N transistors can only encode 2 N states.
• A qubit-based computer can access more states in comparison to a transistor-based computer, giving it access to more computational paths and solutions to more challenging problems.

Source The  Hindu

4 – PM Cares Fund: GS II – Government Schemes and Interventions

Context:

• On April 25, the Congress charged that the PM CARES Fund is shrouded in secrecy and questioned why there is no accountability, transparency, or coverage under the Right to Information (RTI) Act while getting 60% of its financing from PSUs.

About:

• The Chairman of the Fund is the Prime Minister. It is a charitable trust that is backed by the public. Additional members include the ministers of defence, home affairs, and finance.
• Many people will be able to donate even the smallest amounts because the Fund accepts micro-donations.
• The Fund will advance research into citizen protection and strengthen emergency response skills.
• PM-CARES Fund Donations Are Considered CSR Expenses
• The Ministry of Corporate Affairs has made it clear that the PM-CARES Fund donations made by companies would count towards their necessary Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) spending.
• The Companies Act of 2013 mandates that companies with a minimum net worth of Rs 500 crore, minimum annual revenue of Rs 1,000 crore, or minimum net profit of Rs 5 crore contribute at least 2% of their yearly earnings to CSR programmes.
• “Corporate social responsibility” (CSR) is the term used to describe a corporate endeavour to assess and take accountability for the company’s impacts on the environment and social welfare.

Source The  Hindu