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.
