Monetary Policy Committee (MPC)
MPC of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its August 2025 meeting kept the repo rate unchanged at 5.5%, maintaining a neutral stance.
About MPC
- Constitution: Section 45ZB of the RBI Act, 1934 (amended in 2016).
- Objective: Determine the policy repo rate to achieve the inflation target.
- Six members: Three from RBI and three appointed by the Central Government.
- Quorum is 4 members.
- Chairperson: RBI Governor (ex officio).
- Meetings: At least 4 times a year.
- Voting: Each member has one vote, Governor has a casting vote (in case of equality of votes).
- Tags :
- Repo Rate
- MPC
GRiHA Rating
Prime Minister dedicated Kartavya Bhawan to the nation which is designed to meet GRiHA-4 green building standards with solar panels, rain water harvesting, etc.
- Kartavya Bhawan is part of the Common Central Secretariat buildings to house the bureaucracy, under the Central Vista project.
About GRiHA
- GRiHA is an acronym for Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment.
- It is a rating tool that helps people assess the performance of their building against certain nationally acceptable benchmarks.
- It was developed by TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) and later adopted as the national rating system in 2007.
- Tags :
- GRiHA Ratings
- Central Vista Project
Articles Sources
BharatGen AI
Union Minister informed that BharatGen AI initiative will cover all 22 scheduled Indian languages by 2026.
- It currently supports 9 languages.
About BharatGen AI
- About: India’s first-of-its-kind, indigenously developed, Artificial Intelligence (AI) based, government-funded, Multimodal Large Language Model (LLM) for Indian language spanning text, speech, and vision-language systems.
- Implementation: Under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) of the Department of Science and Technology.
- Led by the Technology Innovation Hub (TIH) for IoT and IoE at IIT Bombay.
- Tags :
- NM-ICPS
- LLM
- BharatGen
Refugee Camps in Sudan
UN highlighted grim picture of world’s worst humanitarian crisis in the refugee camps in Sudan.
Refugee Camps in Sudan
- Zamzam Camp: Located south of El Fasher town, the state capital of North Darfur, Sudan.
- Abu Shouk Camp (“Naivasha Camp”): Situated north-west of El Fasher town.
- Tags :
- Sudan
- Zamzam Camp
- Abu Shouk Camp
Articles Sources
Open Weight Reasoning Models
Open AI released two open-weight language models that excel in advanced reasoning and are optimised to run on laptops.
About Open Weight Reasoning Models
- Meaning: Refers to releasing only the pretrained parameters or weights of the neural network model allowing users to use the model for inference and fine-tuning.
- Unlike the Open source models, the training code, original dataset, model architecture details, and training methodology is not provided.
- Significance: Supports decentralised AI usage (people can run them locally) enhanced privacy, flexibility, and accessibility.
- Tags :
- Large Language Models
- Open Source
- Open Weight
Software Technology Park of India
Recently, Government informed the Lok Sabha that more than 85% of Software Technology Parks of India (STPIs) have been established in Tier 2 and 3 cities and have contributed to 2.98 lakh jobs in non-metro cities.
About STPI (HQ - New Delhi )
- Established in 1991, it is an S&T organization under Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
- Role - To promote IT Industry, innovation, R&D, start-ups, product/IP creation in the field of emerging technologies like IoT, Blockchain, AI, etc.
- Its’ Vision aligns with National Policy on Software Products (NPSP), 2019.
- Objectives
- To promote development and export of software and software services
- To promote MSMEs by creating conducive environment
- To provide services to the exporters by implementing Software Technology Park/ Electronics and Hardware Technology Park Schemes.
- Tags :
- National Policy on Software Products
Articles Sources
Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP)
It is a Benefit scheme where companies offer employees the option (not obligation) to buy shares at a predetermined price after a specific period.
- Employees must stay in the company for that specified period to exercise the option and once purchased they can sell the shares in the open market.
- Purpose: Reward employees, improve motivation and retention, promote ownership culture, etc.
- Regulation
- SEBI (Share Based Employee Benefits and Sweat Equity) Regulations, 2021 for listed companies.
- Companies Act, 2013 for unlisted companies.
- Income Tax Act, 1961.
- Tags :
- SEBI
- Employee Stock Option Plan
Environmental DNA
Scientists are now focusing on modern tools like environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis for biodiversity conservation.
- DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) serves as the genetic material in most organisms, storing and transmitting hereditary information.
About Environmental DNA
- It is the genetic material left by organisms in the environment (e.g., water, soil, Air, etc.).
- It includes DNA from cells, tissues, fluids, and excrement.
- Application: Mapping species presence and distribution, tracking Ecosystems, etc.
- Significance:
- It is a non-invasive and highly sensitive biodiversity monitoring method.
- It is rapid and cost-effective compared to other biomonitoring methods.
- Tags :
- e-DNA