Daily Current Affairs

India reiterates its position as a resilient economy with a strong leadership providing stable policy to the global investors at the World Economic Forum (WEF) (GS Paper 3, Economy)

Why in news?

• In line with WEF theme 2023, “Cooperation in a Fragmented World”, India has reiterated its position as a resilient economy with a strong leadership providing stable policy to the global investors at the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos.

 

Details:

• India’s focus areas at WEF in 2023 are investment opportunities, infrastructural landscape and its inclusive & sustainable growth story. 
• Taking forward the strategy and presence of India during WEF Annual Meeting in May 2022, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has taken the initiative to further strengthen India’s presence through three lounges with focus on investment opportunity, sustainability and inclusive approach to compliment economic growth. 

 

India Lounge at Promenade 68

• The India lounge is the focal point of all business engagements taking place on the side-lines of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023.
• In line with the Government of India’s priorities, the India Lounge has organized sessions, roundtables & fireside chats on India’s growth wave, energy transition, the transforming infrastructure landscape, rising digitalization, fintech, healthcare, electronic & semiconductor supply chain & startup ecosystem. 
• There is a digital showcase of key manufacturing sectors, Startups, India’s G20 presidency and India’s focus on infrastructure. Complementing this, the lounge has curated authentic Indian One District One Product (ODOP) souvenirs along with Indian food showcasing India’s heritage and culture. 

 

India Inclusivity Lounge at Promenade 63:

• The Inclusivity lounge at Promenade 63 at World Economic Forum redefines the Davos narrative with the vision of the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi for inclusivity. Traditionally only select few big businesses were present at Davos.
• In 2023, India at Davos has a special lounge that represents the voice of the smaller enterprises, individual artisans, women self-help groups, specially abled etc. The lounge showcases hand-made products that represent years of rich Indian heritage and cultural history and generations of craftsmanship. 
• The products represent all States and Union Territories of India, ranging from coconut cutlery from Andaman to  Khurja pottery from Uttar Pradesh. They span across all sectors from textiles to handicrafts to social empowerment. 

 

India Sustainability Lounge at Promenade 49: 

• Through this lounge, India showcases new and emerging technologies that are set to address the climate change issues faced round the world.
• It also shows leadership in combating climate change and meeting the Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDGs), as is reflected in many of its developmental schemes. India would be showcasing these technologies through five broad themes which are mentioned below: 

1. Energy Sector
2. Natural Resource Management
3. Sustainable infrastructure and Mobility 
4. Food and Nutritional Security 
5. Circular Economy

 

India’s journey to Net Zero:

• Along with this the lounge is enabling collaboration and cooperation with businesses and industry bodies from across the world to be part of India’s journey to Net Zero. 
• The lounge showcases automated manual scavenging robot along with 12 startup prototypes. Interactive screen with a carbon calculator along with information on the innovation world in the realm of sustainability are also showcased at the lounge.

Fourth industrial revolution: ‘4IR critical for India’

(GS Paper 3, Economy)

Why in news?

• The Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in India (C4IR) was established in October 2018 to focus on the role of emerging technologies across different sectors and to plug the challenges that will emanate.

Three pillars:

1. The first is the 4IR technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things, blockchain and others.
2. The second focus is on public-private cooperation. India recently announced drone services, an area where it with the Centre and several state governments.
3. The third pillar is a multi-stakeholder partnership. The role of technology in various sectors, include government, industries, start-ups, civil society, and consumers for inclusiveness. The overall focus is to bring in greater social good by leveraging technologies.

 

Colorations:

• It have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Telangana and Karnataka governments.
• It have a taskforce working with the Meghalaya government, and talks are underway with the Arunachal Pradesh government.
• It is also working with Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu on specific sectors, including agriculture.

 

Significance:

• The role of technology is going to be significant in a country like India, which is resource crunched. The country is fast adopting 4IR technologies, compared to many developed countries.
• The Centre has developed a data ecosystem through a platform approach such as UPI (Unified Payments Interface) and Aadhaar. There are upcoming platforms as well, such as the one on logistics announced in the budget.
• India is well placed because of its position in the services sector. Within the skills part, India has a substantial young population and an education system capable of producing the required skill sets.

 

Way Forward:

• There is also the intent to make it really big in terms of scale. It is working closely to address the concerns around safety, security and biases.
• It is one-of-a-kind facility which is developing ways to make technologies in various industries more ethical and responsible.

 

Viral nutrition: new study reveals microbes nourished by consuming viruses

(GS Paper 2, Health)

Why in news?

• A new study by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have reported that a particular genus of plankton can consume viruses as well as “grow and divide given only viruses to eat”.
• They already know of other cells that can ‘consume’ viruses in an effort to destroy them such as the macrophage cells of the human immune system.
• The difference lies in being able to ‘eat’ viruses to fulfil one’s biological imperatives. 

Background:

• At various peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic, viruses have had a reputation as destroyers of public health systems and human lives.
• They have a peculiar biology, while inert outside a living body, but inside, they hijack the cellular machinery to feed, replicate and spread.
• This association with disease and death has come to define their form in the public imagination, redeemed not even by the fact that there are other microbes that destroy viruses.

 

Genus Halteria:

• Plankton of the genus Halteria, they claim to have found, can each consume 10,000 to a million virus particles a day, increase their population using the metabolised energy, and provide more food for the zooplanktons that consume the Halteria. This could be significant for the marine food chain.

 

What are plankton?

• Plankton are microscopic organisms that can only move with a current. They don’t have any facilities to actively propel themselves.
• Halteria plankton are ciliates, meaning they have hair-like structures called cilia on their surface.
• Sometimes they can beat some of these cilia to jump short distances, but not often as it they can’t do this often because it requires too much energy.

 

What do plankton do in the food chain?

• A type of plankton is found nearer the surface of many water bodies. It is an autotroph, which means it can make its own food which it does by consuming carbon dioxide, among other compounds, through photosynthesis.
• Small fish and larger plankton called zooplankton eat phytoplankton for their nutrition; they are in turn eaten by larger fish, and so forth.
• When phytoplankton die, they drift around where they are, becoming part of a coastal nutrient cycle, or they drift down towards the seafloor, where they decompose. Their constituents then become available for microbes or are sequestered into the seafloor.
• So, phytoplankton bring carbon and other nutrients from the atmosphere and sea surface down to the seafloor and help replenish the food chain (and also ‘trap’ carbon into their own bodies and as sediments). They are joined by bacteria that make their own food by oxidising sulphur, iron or hydrogen, in a process called chemosynthesis.

 

The role of Halteria:

• Halteria plankton are found in large numbers in freshwater bodies. They are heterotrophs meaning they can’t produce their own food. Instead, they are well-known bacterivores, they consume bacteria to power themselves.
• By also consuming viruses for nutrition, Halteria plankton can recover the nutrients lost in the viral shunt and bring them back into the food chain.
• This flow would depend on virion size and nutritional content, which varies among strains, but it is already clear that viruses of a wide range of sizes can be taken up.
• In the new study, the researchers found that Halteria plankton reduced the population of chloroviruses ‘fed’ to them while growing their own numbers whereas Paramecium ciliates consumed the chloroviruses but didn’t proliferate.
• They don’t yet know how Halteria feeding on viruses could have affected viral evolution.