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Retired army officer and Shaurya Chakra awardee Colonel Vembu Shankar’s penchant for the Indian Army began in his childhood. His decision to begin ‘Project Sambandh’ - a one-man philanthropic initiative. to connect the Next of Kin (NoK) of ‘physical casualties’ in the Army - was made in 2017 as he was nearing 20 years of service.
Project Sambandh, which Col. Shankar refers to as his calling, was initially started as a 1,000-day endeavour to reach out to families of army officers who lost their lives under ‘non-operational circumstances’ such as physical ailments, accidents, and suicides.
A few years in, he realised that it would take more than a thousand days to collect information on the NoKs and help them reconcile the loss of their loved one.
“Project Sambandh has identified that the NoKs, particularly young widows and children of the army personnel, face three kinds of challenges - financial, emotional, and social,” said Col. Shankar.
While the financial aspect was because of losing the primary breadwinner of the family, social challenges could be brought about by the stigma that the NoKs had to face within the society.
If there are about 100 army personnel killed in the battlefield every year, over a thousand die due to non-operational reasons and for these families entitlements, grants and schemes are vastly different from those of the battle casualties.
Although the Indian Army assisted the NoKs in the initial years after an officer’s death, the connection was lost in the subsequent years, he said.
Over the last five years, he mapped over 15,000 NoKs and connected them to authorities. This had helped in delivery of more than ₹1 crore financial assistance.
Moreover, many families had also been put in touch with the units and regiments their husband, son, or father had served.
The main intent of the project was to bring awareness about the challenges the NoK of the physical casualties faced and assist them in connecting them to the Directorate of Indian Army Veterans, which provided several educational and social schemes to children and the widows of slain army personnel.
Editorial
Avoid further delay in conducting the Census (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 1, Social Issues)
In February 1961, I was in primary school. I still remember the visit of the Census enumerator to our house. Fondly called Pachu Pillai, he was a teacher in our school and a family friend.
Since many teachers were on Census duty, we (though not the entire school) got a couple of days off. Next year I waited for the Census enumerator to visit our house and was told that the exercise takes place every 10 years.
Recently, this newspaper reported that the freezing of administrative boundaries that precedes the Census would be done with effect from July 1, 2023.
Such a freezing is necessary as State governments are in the habit of creating new districts and tehsils or reorganising existing ones. If such changes happen during a Census, there would be chaos in the field as to who should oversee such areas and a likelihood of some areas being left out of the Census.
House-listing operations take about a month, but were traditionally taken up in various States at different points of time between March and September of the year prior to the Census.
It is not clear whether the government is planning to synchronise the house-listing operations to reduce the interval between the freezing of boundaries and the actual Census enumeration. There is no official statement yet about when the Census would be conducted.
When restrictions were imposed to contain the pandemic in March 2020, several States in the country were on the threshold of starting house-listing operations.
Enumerators were appointed and trained, questionnaires were printed, mobile applications were ready for use by willing enumerators and other logistic arrangements were in place.
But the pandemic ensured that the house-listing and, consequently, the population enumeration phase were postponed. Two years have been lost. There is no reason for a further postponement.
The Constitution talks about the use of Census data for delimitation of constituencies and for determining the quantum of reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
Explainer
Can foreign universities set up campuses in India now? (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Education)
Foreign universities and educational institutions could soon be allowed to set up campuses in India as per the draft regulations made public by the University Grants Commission.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) announced the draft regulations for ‘Setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions in India’ and invited feedback from stakeholders.
The proposal allows a foreign university among the top 500 global rankings or a foreign educational institution of repute in its home jurisdiction to apply to the UGC to set up a campus in India.
Such a campus can evolve their own admission process and criteria to admit domestic and foreign students. It will also have autonomy to decide its fee structure, and will face no caps that are imposed on Indian institutions.
The fee should be “reasonable and transparent”. It will also have autonomy to recruit faculty and staff from India and abroad. However, such universities and colleges cannot “offer any such programme of study which jeopardises the national interest of India or the standards of higher education in India.” They will also be allowed cross-border movement of funds.
There have been several moves towards bringing in foreign universities in the past, which failed. In 2010, the UPA-II government brought the Foreign Educational Institutions Bill, which was not passed as the BJP, the Samajwadi Partyand left parties opposed for multiple reasons including concerns of Western influence on Indian ethos.
This is an excellent move and will pave the way for India to become a global destination for education, says FICCI’s co-chair for higher education and Pro Chancellor of Symbiosis International University, Vidya Yeravdekar.
Text & context
The potential of generative AI: creating media with simple text prompts (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Generative AI is a cutting-edge technological advancement that utilises machine learning and artificial intelligence to create new forms of media, such as text, audio, video, and animation.
With the advent of advanced machine learning capabilities like large language models, neural translation, information understanding, and reinforcement learning, it is now possible to generate new and creative short and long-form content, synthetic media, and even deepfakes with simple text, also known as prompts.
Top technology companies, like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and others, have commercial AI labs researching and publishing academic papers to accelerate these AI innovations.
In recent years, we have seen investments in GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks), LLMs (Large Language Models), GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformers), and Image Generation to experiment and, in some cases, create commercial offerings like DALL-E for image generation and ChatGPT for text generation. For example, ChatGPT can write blogs, computer code, and marketing copies and even generate results for search queries.
Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that involves creating new, original content or data using machine learning algorithms.
It can be used to generate text, images, music, or other types of media. Generative AI works by training a model on a large dataset and then using that model to generate new, previously unseen content that is similar to the training data.
This can be done through techniques such as neural machine translation, image generation, and music generation. Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize many industries by automating the creation of content and enabling the generation of new ideas and concepts.
However, it also raises ethical concerns about the potential for biased or inaccurate content to be generated and disseminated. It is important for developers and users of generative AI to consider the potential impacts and ensure that the technology is used ethically and responsibly.
News
Jaishankar hails the role of centers of faith abroad (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Addressing the Youth PravasiBharatiya Divas 2023 which is the first event of the 17 th PravasiBharatiya Divas Convention in Indore, Mr. Jaishankar said the young members of the Indian diaspora can learn values and traditions from such institutions to stay connected to their Indian roots.
Many of our embassies, in fact I think most of them today now offer yoga, dance and music classes. We ask them also to support and facilitate community functions and collective activities.
It is a matter of pride for us that centres of faith are growing abroad,” said Mr. Jaishankar making a special mention of “the one in Abu Dhabi” in the United Arab Emirates.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the construction of the Hindu temple project in Abu Dhabi on February 11, 2018 and the construction of the structure is expected to be completed soon.
The first traditional temple in Abu Dhabi will act as a catalyst for the flourishment of humanitarian values and harmony between the two countries. The temple will become a medium for India’s identity.
The centres of faith are growing abroad because they also serve to inculcate values, promote culture and nurture traditions. The youth living abroad today, therefore have many more opportunities than before to stay connected. He also mentioned the New Education Policy will “create more pathways for deeper involvement of the diaspora.
Mr. Jaishankar conveyed the government’s commitment to ensure “more secure travelling experience abroad” and “non-discriminatory treatment” for Indians in foreign countries.
In this regard he mentioned the recent agreements on “migration and mobility” that India has concluded with multiple countries like Austria.
. The 17 th PravasiBharatiya Divas Convention is a three-day event that is taking place between January 8 and 10. ZanetaMascarenhas, Member of Parliament of Australia, was the Guest of Honour at the Youth PravasiBharatiya Divas held on Sunday.