INS Arihant
- INS Arihant is India’s only operational ship submersible ballistic nuclear (SSBN) asset.
- It is its most dependable platform for a second-strike.
- This is because the other options, land-based and air-launched, are easier to detect.
- Arihant has been immobilised after ‘accident’ 10 months ago
- It can stay undetected deep underwater for long periods and ranges far and wide.
- INS Arihant and other nuclear launch platforms are operationally handled by the Strategic Forces Command.
- They report to the Nuclear Command Authority chaired by the Prime Minister.
- However, over 100 nuclear warheads are not mated with missiles or bombs and remain in civilian custody of the Atomic Energy Department and the DRDO.
Nuclear Command Authority (NCA)
- It is responsible for command, control and operational decisions regarding India's nuclear weapons programme.
- Organisational structure of NCA includes Political Council and Executive Council.
- Executive Council is headed by National Security Advisor and Political Council is headed by Prime Minister.
- The Executive Council gives its opinion to the Political Council, which authorises a nuclear attack when deemed necessary.
- This kind of organisational structure is created to prevent the accidental or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons.
- Strategic Forces Command is a part of Nuclear Command Authority, responsible to operationalize the directives of NCA and for the management and administration of the country’s tactical and strategic nuclear weapons stockpile.
- SFC is headed by Commander-in-chief of the rank of Air Marshal.
- It will have the sole responsibility of initiating the process of delivering nuclear weapons and warheads, after acquiring explicit approval from the NCA.
Mankidia Tribe
- Mankidia is one of the 13 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG) in Odisha.
- They critically depends on making rope with siali fibre that’s richly available in Similipal Tiger Reserve (STR).
- They were denied habitat rights inside the STR under Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006.
- So they would now be deprived of the non-timber forest produce.
- This is because the State Forest Department has objected on grounds that tribals could be attacked by wild animals.
- Had it been approved, the Mankidia would have been the first PVTG to have habitat rights.
- In Odisha, processes have been initiated for according habitat rights to PVTGs such as Bondas, Didai, Hill Khadia and Paudi Bhuyan.
- “‘Habitat’ as defined under the FRA includes the area comprising the customary habitat and such other habitats in reserved forests and protected forests of primitive tribal groups and pre-agricultural communities and other forest dwelling STs.
Pratyush
- Pratyush is an array of computers recently unveiled in India.
- It can deliver a peak power of 6.8 petaflops.
- One petaflop is a million billion floating point operations per second and is a reflection of the computing capacity of a system.
- The machines will be installed at two government institutes: 4.0 petaflops HPC facility at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune & 2.8 petaflops facility at the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast, Noida.
- Pratyush is also the fourth fastest supercomputer in the world dedicated for weather and climate research.
- A key function of the machine’s computing power would be monsoon forecasting using a dynamical model.
- With the new system, it would be possible to map regions in India at a resolution of 3 km and the globe at 12 km.
Web portal to accept online abuse cases
- The Ministry of Home Affairs is set to launch a web portal where people who have faced online abuse can register complaints on a real-time basis.
- It includes victims of cybercrimes like financial frauds.
- The Centre also plans to give access rights to banks on the portal to address cases of fraudulent transactions online.
- According to India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), there was a 21% increase per year in incidents of cybercrime.
- The portal has also been readied on the directives of a committee appointed by the Supreme Court to check circulation of child pornography and sexual violence videos on the Internet.
Source: PIB, The Hindu
