BharatGPT

India's first indigenous GenAI (Large Language Model) 'BharatGPT' was recently unveiled by the CoRover.ai.

• BharatGPT is a revolutionary innovation by CoRover.ai, the Conversational AI Platform.
• CoRover.ai, the world’s first human-centric conversational AI platform being used by 130 crore users which has launched BharatGPT.
• It is the only Indian Indigenous Generative AI platform available across channels in 14+ Indian languages, in Video, Voice & Text.
• It integrates voice modality in more than 12 Indian languages and text modality in 22 languages in collaboration with the National Hub of Language Technology (NHLT).
• The NHLT is a key component of Digital India's efforts, tasked with executing the National Language Translation Mission (NLTM) under the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY).
• It also offers a sandbox environment for real-time API transactions.
• Besides, CoRover’s platform, enriched with BharatGPT it offers a range of features such as:
  • Payment gateway integration,
  • Aadhar-based authentication for KYC and
  • Various AI components like speech-to-text, text-to-speech and sentiment analysis.

Bharat 5G Portal

The Bharat 5G Portal was recently launched by the Department of Telecommunications to provide one-stop solution for start-ups, industry, and academia in the fields of 5G, 6G and quantum.

• The Bharat 5G portal is an integrated portal is a comprehensive platform serving the interests of start-ups, industry and academia in quantum, 6G, IPR and 5G domains.
• It aims to propel India's 5G capabilities, foster innovation, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing within the telecom sector.
• The Portal acts as a one-stop solution for all quantum, IPR, PoCs/Pilot, 5G and 6G-related works, capturing academic R&D developments, industry standards, OEMs, start-ups/MSMEs and subject matter experts.
• Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL) is the implementing agency of the portal.

Snow Leopard Population Assessment in India (SPAI)

• The Snow Leopard Population Assessment in India (SPAI) Program is an initiative of the Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India (WII).
• It has used software and statistical methods to estimate the number of individual cats that are present but not caught on camera and combined them with those caught on camera.
• The Assessment was conducted for the years (2019-2023) and involves the World-Wide Fund for Nature-India and the Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysuru, along with the WII.
• Key findings – According to the report, the highest number of snow leopards are in Ladakh (477).
• It is followed by Uttarakhand (124) and Himachal Pradesh (51).
• Sikkim and Jammu and Kashmir recorded 21 and 9 individuals respectively.
• There are 718 snow leopards in India and only 1/3rd of their habitat is under legal protection.
• Only 34 per cent of the 120,000 square kilometre (sq km) snow leopard habitat in India legally protected.
• The current estimate puts the number of Indian snow leopards from 10-15% of the global population.
• It faces multiple threats including overgrazing, human wildlife conflict, poaching, free-ranging dogs, habitat degradation, and climate change impacts.
• Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India is an autonomous body of the Union Environment Ministry.
• To know more about snow leopard click here.

District Agro-met Units (DAMUs)

The Union government has recently directed to stop the services of the District Agro-met Units (DAMUs) due to financial and administrative issues.

• District Agromet Units (DAMUs) are units established at Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) to provide block level Agro-Met (agrometeorological) Advisory Services (AAS) for farmers.
• They are the only units involved in rendering Agro-met (agrometeorological) advisory services at a district or block level.
• They are established by:
  1. India Meteorological Department (IMD) under the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES)
  2. Indian Institute of Agricultural Research (ICAR) under the agriculture ministry.
• DAMUs were set up in 2018-19 in the premises of Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVK) of ICAR and state agriculture universities, under the Gramin Krishi Mausam Seva (GKMS) scheme.
• They have played an important role in providing value added weather forecast data for the next five days with crop specific weather advisory messages.
• The funding agency is Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) or India Meteorological Department (IMD).
• Till date, 199 District Agro-met Units (DAMUs) have been established at KVKs across the country under ICAR network.
• Financial issues – In the last few years, finance disbursal (especially disbursal of staff salaries) has been stuck on several occasions.
• Salaries were not being given on time and were accumulating.
• This has led to protests and complaints by DAMU employees.
• Agro-met Field Units (AMFU) - AMFUs also issue similar advisories similar to DAMUs, but the shortcoming is that these have less capacity, when compared to DAMUs.
• One AMFU covers 4 to 5 districts on average and will not be able to provide block level information. The two services combined cover around 2.5 million farmers.

Corruption Perceptions Index 2023

• The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is the most widely used global corruption ranking in the world.
• Each country’s score is a combination of at least 3 data sources drawn from 13 different corruption surveys and assessments.
• These data sources are collected by a variety of reputable institutions, including the World Bank and the World Economic Forum.
• A country’s score is the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means very clean.
• A country's rank is its position relative to the other countries in the index. Ranks can change merely if the number of countries included in the index changes.
• India scored 39 and ranked 93, with minimal change from 2022.
• The score of India in the Corruption Perceptions Index 2022 was 40.
• India shares its ranking with Maldives.
• 71% of the countries across Asia and the Pacific have a CPI score below the regional average score of 45.
• Countries with continued high scores, such as New Zealand (3) and Singapore (5), maintain their positions at the top of the index globally.
• The global average score remains stuck at 43 for the 12th year, indicating widespread public sector corruption.
• Over 2/3rd of countries have scores below 50.
• Most transparent such as Denmark (90), Finland (87), New Zealand (85) lead the index.