1) Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards: The awards are given to the artists from the field of Music, Dance, Theatre, Traditional/Folk/Tribal Music/Dance/Theatre, Puppetry and Overall contribution/scholarship in the Performing Arts etc. The Akademi Awards carries purse money of Rs. 1.00 lakh, a Tamrapatra and an Angavastram.
- The Sangeet Natak Akademi is India’s national academy for music, dance and drama.
- It was created by a resolution of the (then) Ministry of Education, Government of India, in 1952 with Dr P.V. Rajamannar as its first Chairman.
- It is presently an Autonomous Body of the Ministry of Culture, Government of India and is fully funded by the Government for implementation of its schemes and programmes.
2) SOCIAL STOCK EXCHANGE: The National Stock Exchange(NSE) has received final approval from SEBI, to set up a Social Stock Exchange (SSE) as a separate segment of the NSE.
- An SSE allows the listing of non-profit or NGOs on stock exchanges, providing them with an alternative fund-raising structure. It may be listed on BSE or NSE. The idea of SSE was first floated by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her 2019-20 Budget speech. Countries like the UK, Canada and Brazil have SSEs.
- The fund-raising is proposed through several instruments such as zero-coupon-zero-principal bonds, social venture funds and mutual funds.
- Corporate foundations, political or religious organisations or activities, professional or trade associations, infrastructure and housing companies, except affordable housing will not be eligible to be identified as a social enterprise.
3) INS Sindhukesari: It has become the first Indian submarine to dock in Indonesia.
- It is a 3,000-tonne Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine.
- It was designed as part of Project 877 and built under a contract between Russia, and the Ministry of Defence (India).
- The Kilo Class is the NATO designation for a naval diesel-electric submarine made in Russia.
4) GREAT BACKYARD BIRD COUNT 2023: It is a community science project in ornithology conducted annually. The event is supported by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. The GBBC was first launched in 1998 in the US
- It was the first online citizen-science project (also referred to as community science) to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real time. Bird Count India organises the GBBC in the country. In 2013, it became a global project after entering data into eBird, the world’s largest biodiversity-related citizen science (community science) project.
- West Bengal reported the highest number of species of birds, followed by Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh. Kerala recorded the highest number of checklists of birds
- The BCI is an informal partnership of organisations and groups working together to increase collective knowledge about bird distributions and populations.
5) Friendshoring: also called “allyshoring”, it is a strategy where a country sources the raw materials, components and even manufactured goods from countries that share its values. The dependence on the countries considered a “threat” to the stability of the supply chains is slowly reduced.
- The purpose of Frienshoring is to insulate countries’ supply chains from less like-minded nations, such as China in case of the US.
