DAILY NEWS ANALYSIS

Prime Minister will inaugurate the Ram temple in Ayodhya, 73 years ago; the President of India inaugurated another temple in a grand ceremony.

• Located in - Prabhas Patan, Veraval, in Gujarat.

• Significance - It is the holy place of the first Aadi Jyotirling Shree Somnath Mahadev, among the twelve Jyotirlinga shrines of Shiva.
• It is also the place where Lord Shri Krishna took his last journey.
• Built by - In 1782, Maratha queen Ahalyabai Holkar built a small temple at the site.
• Other names - The Somnath temple, also called Soman?tha temple or Deo Patan.

The temple faced several attacks from raiders, with the most damaging by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1026 CE.

• Under Mughals - In the sixteenth century, Akbar permitted the worship of the linga in the Somanatha temple and appointed desais /officers to administer it.
• Three generations after Akbar, Aurangzeb gave orders for its destruction.
• He subsequently issued an order for its destruction and its conversion into a mosque in 1706 just before he died.
• After Independence - Those ruins were demolished and the present Somnath temple was reconstructed in the Maru-Gurjara style of Hindu temple architecture.

The contemporary Somnath temple's reconstruction was started under the orders of the first Home Minister of India Vallabhbhai Patel and completed in May 1951 after his death.

Maru-Gurjara Style

• It is also known as Sola?ki style is the style of West Indian temple architecture.
• The style originated in Gujarat and Rajasthan from the 11th to 13th centuries, under the Chaulukya dynasty.
• The Chaulukya dynasty is also called the Sola?ki dynasty.
• Although originating as a regional style in Hindu temple architecture, it became especially popular in Jain temples, and mainly under Jain patronage later spread across India.

Over 24.8 crore people moved out of poverty in India in nine years: NITI report.

The Index

• Released by - Niti Aayog, which is the nodal agency to release Multidimensional Poverty (MDP) report for States and Union Territories.
• Purpose - Plays a role in assessing advancements towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1.2.

SDG 1.2. - By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to regional definitions.

Multidimensional Poverty - Poverty – According to the World Bank, those who are unable to earn 2.15 dollar per day are living in extreme poverty.

• As per UNDP, it is the measure of poverty that considers various deprivations experienced by people in their daily lives including poor health, insufficient education and low standard of living.
• It is a means to capture the complexity of poverty that considers dimensions of well-being beyond just monetary poverty.

Indicators of National MPI - India’s national MPI has 3 equally weighted dimensions, which are then represented by 12 other indicators.

• 1. Health
  2. Education
  3. Standard of living
• These 12 include nutrition, child and adolescent mortality, maternal health, years of schooling, school attendance, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets, and bank accounts.

• Sub-indices of National MPI:
  1. Headcount ratio (H): How many are poor?
  2. Intensity of poor (I): How poor are the poor?
• Formula - MPI= H*I
• If the deprivation score (sum of the weighted status of all the indicators) for an individual is more than 0.33, then an individual is considered multidimensionaly poor.

Global MPI Report - It is jointly published by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

• It is based on the Alkire-Foster (AF) methodology that captures overlapping deprivations in health, education, and living standards.

Findings

• Report based on - The report said the recent National MPI was based on National Family Health Surveys 4 (2015-16) and 5 (2019-21).
• As many as 24.82 crore people moved out of multidimensional poverty in nine years to 2022-23, with Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh registering the largest decline.
• At the State level, Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 5.94 crore people escaping poverty followed by Bihar at 3.77 crore and Madhya Pradesh at 2.30 crore.
• The rate of decline of multidimensional poverty has accelerated during the period 2013-14 to 2022-23.
• All 12 indicators of MPS have shown remarkable improvement during this period.

A 9-member panel headed by the former principal scientific advisor to the government Prof. Vijay Raghavan have submitted its report.

Aim of the committee - To review the functioning of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

Reasons - Several projects of DRDO suffer from huge delays and cost overruns.

• According to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, 23 of DRDO’s 55 mission mode projects could not be completed in time.
• According to CAG report, 67% of the 178 projects scrutinised by it had failed to adhere to their initially proposed timelines.

Ministry of Defence (MoD) has set an ambitious defence exports target of Rs 35,000 crore by 2025.

Recommendations of the committee

• Focus on research - The DRDO should focus on its original goal of research and development for defence.
• It should refrain from involving itself in productization, production cycles, and product management, tasks that are more suitable for the private sector.
• Defence Technology Council - The committee has also suggested a Defence Technology Council (DTC) chaired by the Prime Minister, with the defence minister and the National Security Advisor as its Vice Presidents.
• It will also have an executive committee chaired by the Chief of Defence Staff (CoDS).
• It will include representation from academia and industry, with two members from each sector.
• The Council will determine the country’s defence technology roadmap and decide on major projects and their execution.

The Defence Acquisition Coucil (DAC) is an apex body for clearing major capital acquisitions for defence and it has been headed by the Union Defence Minister.

• Separate Department - The panel has also suggested the creation of the Department of Defence Science, Technology, and Innovation under the Defence Ministry.
• This department will be headed by a technocrat and it will serve as the secretariat for the Defence Tech Council (DTC).
• Centralized Laboratory - The committee has recommended the setting up of close to 10 national-level laboratory facilities instead of the existing 40 or more DRDO labs across the nation.

Earlier in 2008, Dr P Rama Rao Committee was constituted to review the functioning of the DRDO and all the recommendations by the Committee were accepted by the DRDO except the creation of a Board of Research for Advanced Defence Sciences (BRADS).

• The Kerala Drug Control Department launched Operation Amrith (AMRITH - Anti Microbial Resistance Intervention for Total Health) recently.
• It is a strategy launched to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

The initiative aims to reduce the use of antibiotics by conducting surprise raids on retail medical shops to detect the sale of antibiotics without a prescription.

• PM to participate in programme marking Parakram Diwas (Day of Valor) at Red Fort.
• The programme will commemorate the legacy of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and the Azad Hind Fauj.

January 23, 2024 was commemorated as the 126^th birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

• Exercise Cyclone is a joint military exercise between India and Egypt.
• The exercise aims to strengthen the bond between the two armies and develop bilateral military cooperation.

The exercise focuses on desert operations and includes 3 phases.