Why in news?

Recently, the Ministry of Home Affairs informed the Lok Sabha that heatwaves and lightning have been added to India's list of notified natural calamities, expanding the total list to 14.

This follows a recommendation by the Sixteenth Finance Commission (FC-XVI) and operational guidelines issued on June 30. Combined with the 2024 amendment to the Disaster Mitigation Fund guidelines, heatwaves are now eligible for the full State Disaster Risk Management Fund pool.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• India's Disaster Finance Architecture
• Heat's Earlier Disadvantage
• India's Growing Heat Exposure
• What States Can Now Fund?
• The Road Ahead: Four Priorities
• Conclusion

India's Disaster Finance Architecture

• Under Article 280 of the Constitution, the Finance Commission recommends arrangements for disaster management funds.
• The FC-XVI recommended ₹2.04 lakh crore for State disaster funds over the five years from 2026-27 to 2030-31 — nearly 28% higher than the previous Commission's allocation.
• This corpus is split into two components:
  • State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) — ₹1.6 lakh crore, meant for immediate response, relief, and reconstruction following a disaster
  • State Disaster Mitigation Fund (SDMF) — the remaining amount, meant to fund longer-term interventions that reduce the risk of a climate event escalating into a disaster
• These funds are available to all States, with inter-State distribution determined by a formula incorporating a disaster risk index (accounting for hazard frequency, intensity, exposure, and vulnerability) along with States' expenditure during the previous Commission's tenure.
• Separately, the FC-XVI recommended ₹79,406 crore for national disaster funds over the same period, which States can access when a disaster's severity exceeds their own resources — as Kerala did following the 2024 Wayanad landslides.

Heat's Earlier Disadvantage

• Heat previously occupied an awkward position in this system.
• States could notify a heatwave only as a "local disaster" and draw on the SDRF — but subject to a cap of just 10% of their annual allocation, and only after establishing separate compensation norms for loss of life or crop damage.
• Other notified disasters like floods and cyclones faced no such ceiling. The new notification removes this asymmetry, placing heatwaves on par with other disasters.

India's Growing Heat Exposure

• India's exposure to extreme heat is rising sharply. Using 35 indicators spanning climate change, exposure, and vulnerability, experts estimate that over 57% of Indian districts — home to roughly three-fourths of the population — face high to very-high heat risk.
• The number of hot days annually has increased, alongside a rise in very warm nights and relative humidity, which reduces the human body's ability to recover after heat exposure.

What States Can Now Fund?

• The National Disaster Management Authority has directed all States, districts, and cities to develop Heat Action Plans (HAPs) that map heat risk and vulnerability and identify short, medium, and long-term interventions.
• So far, 300 cities and districts across 23 heatwave-prone States have HAPs.
• However, implementation has lagged due to limited technical capacity, competing priorities, and inadequate funding — a 2023 review found that 79% of HAPs simply asked city departments to self-allocate funds, without dedicated financing.
• The new Central notification provides two clearer financing routes:
  • Under the SDRF: States can provide relief and compensation for heat-related losses
  • Through the SDMF: States can finance longer-term risk-reduction measures such as cooling shelters and early-warning systems
• State Disaster Management Authorities and State Emergency Operations Centres will serve as the nodal agencies managing both funds.

The Road Ahead: Four Priorities

• Expand heat planning
  • While 12 States have notified heatwaves locally, only about 300 cities and districts have HAPs — leaving roughly 4,800 urban local bodies and 800 districts without one.
  • Heat-specific SDMF guidelines are still awaited, though existing norms require risk and vulnerability assessments before projects can be proposed — precisely the groundwork HAPs are designed to provide.
• Convert plans into fundable projects
  • States need model mitigation proposals tailored to local climate and geography.
  • Since many local bodies lack the technical capacity to prepare such proposals, research institutions, NGOs, and philanthropic organisations could offer technical support and risk capital to help translate plans into appraisable projects.
• Strengthen health surveillance
  • Accurate loss-and-damage data will now determine relief payouts.
  • The Health Ministry's surveillance system, covering over 51,000 reporting units, recorded 4,853 heatstroke cases and 20 confirmed heatstroke deaths between March 1 and July 26 — but it does not capture the broader burden of heart, lung, and kidney conditions aggravated by heat.
• Link heat solutions to other schemes and adopt fast-payout tools
  • States should identify convergence with existing government development programmes and deploy pre-agreed instruments like parametric insurance, which pays out automatically once a set temperature threshold is crossed.
  • Similar tools already exist for other hazards — Nagaland, for instance, operates rainfall insurance that pays out when rainfall crosses a defined threshold.

Conclusion

The formal notification of heatwaves as a natural calamity marks a significant step in aligning India's disaster finance architecture with its growing climate risk profile.

However, expanded funding eligibility alone will not suffice — States must urgently scale up Heat Action Plans, build technical capacity to convert plans into fundable projects, strengthen health surveillance, and adopt innovative instruments like parametric insurance to ensure this financial window translates into effective, on-ground heat resilience.

Why in the News?

• A recent NITI Aayog report on ‘Ease of Doing R&D in India’, along with surveys covering more than 400 institutional leaders and 850 scientists, has highlighted gaps in India's research funding ecosystem.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• About R&D (Definition, Purpose)
• News Summary (Key Findings of NITI Aayog Report)

Research and Development(R&D) in India

• R&D refers to systematic work undertaken to generate new knowledge, develop technologies, improve existing products and processes, and solve scientific and technological problems.
• R&D is important for economic growth because it can improve productivity, technological capabilities, innovation and competitiveness.
• Public funding is particularly important in areas where research involves high risks, long gestation periods or uncertain commercial returns.
• India's public R&D ecosystem includes multiple ministries, departments and agencies that provide grants to universities, research institutions and individual scientists.
• The Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) is the country's flagship research funding body, established to promote research and innovation across universities, colleges, research institutions and laboratories.
• However, effective public funding requires not only adequate financial resources but also the ability to answer basic questions: Who received funding? Which agency provided it? For what research? How much was provided? And has similar research already received public funding elsewhere?

News Summary

• The NITI Aayog report found that close to 80% of funding under the ANRF is concentrated in the IITs.
• This is significant because the ANRF was created with a broader mandate to expand the research base beyond the traditional concentration of public research funding.
• The finding raises questions about whether public R&D funding is reaching a sufficiently broad range of universities and research institutions.
• However, concentration of funding by itself does not necessarily indicate inefficient allocation.
• High-performing institutions may receive larger amounts because of their research capacity, infrastructure and ability to undertake complex projects.
• The larger policy issue is whether capable researchers and institutions outside these established centres have adequate opportunities to access competitive research funding.

Fragmented Research Funding Data

• A major problem identified in the report is the absence of a unified system for tracking public R&D funding.
• Information about publicly funded research is currently spread across numerous government agency databases.
• These databases often use different formats and may contain information as free text rather than structured data.
• This creates difficulties in identifying researchers, institutions and projects across agencies.
• For example, the same researcher may be recorded differently in the databases of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
• Similarly, an institution may appear as "IISc, Bangalore" in one database and "Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru" in another.

Risk of Overlapping Research Funding

• The fragmented nature of the data also creates the possibility that multiple Central agencies may fund similar or overlapping research areas.
• Without a system linking grants, researchers, institutions and research outputs, it becomes difficult for funding agencies to determine whether a particular research proposal is substantially similar to work that has already received public funding.
• This can result in inefficient use of public resources and makes it difficult to assess the overall distribution of research funding across different fields and institutions.

Persistent Digital Identifiers

• The report identifies Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) and metadata infrastructure as a possible solution.
• A PID is a permanent, unique and machine-readable identifier assigned to an entity. The report compares it with a PAN number for a taxpayer or an IMEI number for a mobile phone.
• For research funding, each grant could receive a unique identifier linked to standardised metadata, including:

• Funding agency
• Recipient institution
• Named researcher
• Amount of funding
• Duration of the grant
• Research field

• The grant identifier could then be connected with the research outputs generated from the funding, such as research papers, patents and datasets.
• This would enable funding agencies and independent researchers to analyse how public research money is distributed and what outcomes it produces.

International Models

• The international non-profit organisation Crossref operates a Grant Linking System that connects research funding information using several identifiers. These include:
  • Funder ID - identifies the funding agency
  • ROR ID - identifies the research organisation
  • ORCID - identifies individual researchers
  • Grant DOI - provides a permanent identifier for the grant itself
• According to the experts, more than 2 lakh grants have been registered through this system worldwide.
• Such a system can help answer questions about duplicate funding, concentration of research resources and allocation across research fields.

Two Broad Options for India

• A New National System
  • India could develop a completely independent sovereign national grant registry.
  • The advantage would be greater control over the system and the ability to incorporate India's specific institutional structure, including research schemes operated by State governments.
• Integration with Existing Global Infrastructure
  • The second option would be for Indian funding agencies to join and consistently contribute data to existing international infrastructure such as the Crossref ecosystem.
  • This could be implemented more quickly because technical standards and governance mechanisms already exist.

A Hybrid Approach

• Experts propose a possible middle path combining national ownership with international compatibility.
• Countries such as the United Kingdom and the European Union have developed government-owned research portals while ensuring that their identifiers remain compatible with global standards.
• For India, the proposed Unified Project Management System (UPMS) could perform a similar function. Under this approach:
  • UPMS could act as a single national portal.
  • Central and State funding agencies could use the system.
  • Grants could receive Crossref-compatible identifiers.
  • Research institutions could be linked through ROR IDs.
  • Individual researchers could be linked through ORCID.
• Such interoperability could make it easier to identify duplicate funding, examine concentration of resources and track research outcomes.

Significance

• A unified research funding database would improve transparency, coordination and evidence-based policymaking in India's R&D ecosystem.
• It could help policymakers determine whether public research funding is adequately distributed across institutions and disciplines, identify duplication, evaluate outcomes and make better decisions regarding future funding priorities.
• For researchers, standardised identifiers could also make their research and funding history easier to track across institutions and agencies.

Why in News?

• India and China have agreed to accelerate discussions on an “Early and Substantial Harvest” in boundary delimitation and border management, while strengthening military-to-military communication along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
• The decisions emerged from the 25th round of Special Representative (SR)-level talks between National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing.
• The eight-point consensus seeks to consolidate the relative stabilisation of India-China ties by preventing border incidents from escalating and creating conditions for broader bilateral engagement.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• India-China Boundary Dispute
• Towards an “Early and Substantial Harvest” on the Boundary
• Strengthening Military Communication
• Border Trade, Pilgrimage and People-to-People Engagement
• Trans-Border Rivers and the Brahmaputra
• Institutionalising the Peace Process
• Conclusion

India-China Boundary Dispute:

• It covers an approximately 3,488-km contested frontier and involves differing perceptions of the LAC, where both nations claim overlapping territories rooted in British colonial-era agreements.
• Key sectors of the dispute:
  • Western sector (Aksai Chin): China controls roughly 38,000 square kilometers of land that India claims as part of Ladakh.
  • Eastern sector (Arunachal Pradesh): China claims nearly 90,000 square kilometers of territory, referring to the region as Zangnan or Southern Tibet, based on its rejection of the 1914 McMahon Line.
  • Central sector: A smaller overlapping segment spanning Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand where differences are relatively minor.
• The 2020 eastern Ladakh crisis significantly disrupted bilateral relations, making restoration of peace and tranquillity a prerequisite for normalisation.

Towards an “Early and Substantial Harvest” on the Boundary:

• Both sides reaffirmed their commitment to negotiations for a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement of the boundary question.
• This must be guided by the 2005 Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles and subsequent SR-level consensus.
• Two mechanisms under the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) will advance the process -
  • Expert Group on Boundary Delimitation – to discuss an early harvest in boundary delimitation (Delimitation determines the alignment of the boundary, while demarcation involves physically marking an already agreed boundary).
  • Working Group on Border Management – to improve management of the disputed frontier.
• Their immediate task is to finalise their respective Terms of Reference (ToR). The current discussions do not amount to a final boundary settlement.

Strengthening Military Communication:

• The two countries agreed to -
  • Establish two additional meeting points for General/Senior Highest Military Commander-level interactions.
  • Create two additional military hotlines in the Eastern and Middle Sectors.
  • Address ground situations promptly through diplomatic and military channels, including the WMCC and local commander-level meetings.
• The objective is to prevent misunderstanding, miscalculation and escalation arising from localised incidents along the LAC.

Border Trade, Pilgrimage and People-to-People Engagement:

• Both sides welcomed the reopening of three designated border trading points and agreed to strengthen cooperation in border trade, pilgrimage, and other exchanges in border areas.
• India also appreciated China's efforts to increase the number of batches for the Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra.
• These measures indicate an attempt to shift border areas from being exclusively security-centric towards dialogue, consultation and cooperation.

Trans-Border Rivers and the Brahmaputra:

• India and China agreed to hold the next meeting of the Expert-Level Mechanism on Trans-border Rivers in September.
• Discussions will cover hydrological data sharing, renewal of relevant MoUs, and cooperation on trans-border river management.
• This is particularly important for the Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo), whose upper reaches originate in Tibet before flowing into India and Bangladesh.
• India's concerns include downstream ecological impacts, flood management, sediment flows and the implications of Chinese hydropower projects in the Brahmaputra's upper basin.
• Reliable and timely hydrological data is therefore crucial for disaster preparedness and water security.

Institutionalising the Peace Process:

• The talks reaffirmed the importance of maintaining peace and tranquillity along the border as the foundation for stable bilateral relations.
• The two countries also agreed to hold the 26th round of Special Representatives' talks in India in 2027.
• Significance for India:
  • The latest understanding is important because it moves beyond crisis management towards institutionalised border management.
  • Strengthens confidence-building measures (CBMs) and military communication.
  • Keeps the long-term goal of boundary settlement alive.
  • Creates space for restoration of broader bilateral engagement.
  • Reduces the risk of accidental escalation along the LAC.
  • Provides a framework for cooperation on trans-border rivers, trade and pilgrimage.

Conclusion:

• India must pursue a dual-track approach—maintaining military preparedness and infrastructure along the LAC while sustaining diplomatic engagement.
• Progress on delimitation should be incremental, verifiable and based on established agreements.

Context

• From dependence on food aid in the 1960s, India has become a major food producer, built substantial buffer stocks, and established a legal entitlement to subsidised food grains for nearly 800 million people under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013.
• This transformation was supported by sustained public investment in improved seeds, irrigation, procurement, storage, price support and the Public Distribution System (PDS).
• However, the challenge has now changed; India must ensure affordable, nutritious and sustainable food security for 1.4 billion people amid rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, extreme weather and growing water scarcity.

Climate Risks Across the Food System

• Heat stress can reduce wheat yields, while erratic monsoons may produce floods and droughts within the same agricultural season.
• Groundwater depletion weakens irrigation buffers, while extreme weather can damage storage, roads and transportation.
• Such disruptions can increase food-price volatility and restrict access to nutritious food.

Steps Required to Tackle the Challenge

• Diversifying the Procurement System
  • The traditional rice-wheat system played a crucial role in achieving food security, but excessive concentration in particular crops and regions has created environmental and climate risks.
  • Several major procurement regions are already facing serious groundwater stress.
  • India need not abandon rice and wheat, but it should gradually diversify procurement across crops and regions.
  • Greater support for millets, pulses, oilseeds and other nutri-cereals can reduce risk concentration, conserve water and improve dietary diversity.
  • The PDS can similarly incorporate locally suitable millets and pulses, creating a stronger connection between food security, nutrition, water conservation and climate adaptation.
• Better Monitoring and Early Warning
  • The NFSA monitoring framework should track not only coverage and food grain offtake but also heat stress, water availability, storage vulnerability and supply-chain resilience.
  • Such indicators can help governments anticipate shortages and respond before climate shocks become food crises.
• Supporting Farmers
  • Farmers need practical tools to manage increasing climatic uncertainty.
  • Climate-resilient seeds, micro-irrigation, watershed development, precision farming, digital advisories and weather-indexed insurance can reduce production risks and improve decision-making.
  • Public-private partnerships can accelerate research, certification and delivery of these technologies, while strong public safety nets can protect smallholders and climate-vulnerable regions.

The Way Forward Down the Line

• Resilient Infrastructure
  • Investment in flood-resilient warehouses, heat-resistant storage, cold chains and robust transport networks is essential to protect both grains and perishables.
  • This becomes even more important as India diversifies its food basket.
  • Adaptation measures should therefore cover procurement, storage, logistics and market stabilisation, rather than focusing exclusively on farm production.
• Financing Climate Resilience
  • The transition will require substantial investment through green bonds, adaptation finance, insurance and resilient agricultural value chains.
  • Integrating food systems into India’s net-zero pathway can coordinate action across agriculture, water, energy, transport and nutrition while encouraging measurable targets for emission reduction, carbon sequestration and resilience.
• Building a Climate Buffer
  • India’s traditional buffer-stock system provides a useful model for the future.
  • A broader climate buffer could combine diversified crops and procurement regions with resilient infrastructure, climate information, insurance and improved water management.
  • Just as grain reserves reduce the risk of poor harvests, such a diversified system can reduce the systemic risks created by an unpredictable climate.
• From Food Security to Sustainable Food Security
  • India’s next agricultural transformation should involve a shift from conventional food security towards sustainable food security.
  • Climate risk must become a first-order consideration in NFSA planning, procurement, agricultural policy and food-system management.
  • This does not require abandoning the institutions that made India food secure. Instead, their strengths should be adapted to changing climatic realities.
  • A diversified food basket, climate-smart agriculture, resilient infrastructure, improved water management and stronger risk-financing mechanisms can make the food system more secure and sustainable.

Conclusion

• India has already demonstrated that sustained public investment and institutional coordination can overcome major food-security challenges.
• The next challenge is to ensure that these achievements remain secure under a changing climate.
• By combining crop diversification, climate-resilient agriculture, better forecasting, resilient infrastructure, sustainable water management and innovative financing, India can build a food system capable of withstanding future shocks.
• Climate-resilient food security is not a departure from India’s agricultural journey; it is the logical next phase of it.

Context

• India’s healthcare system faces a difficult contradiction: private investment is essential for expanding capacity, yet excessive commercialisation can make medical care unaffordable and distort clinical priorities.
• The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare’s 176th Report brings this tension into sharp focus.
• With private hospitalisation costing far more than treatment in government facilities, the challenge is to create a healthcare system that attracts capital without allowing financial incentives to override medical necessity.

The High Cost of Private Healthcare

• The average cost of hospitalisation is ₹50,508 in private facilities, compared with ₹6,631 in government facilities.
• The disparity is similarly striking in childbirth, where average out-of-pocket expenditure is ₹37,630 in private facilities, against ₹2,299 in public facilities.
• The Committee has made 368 recommendations, including standardised package rates, mandatory pre-treatment cost estimates and greater transparency in hospital billing.
• It has also proposed regulating room tariffs and encouraging large corporate hospitals to cross-subsidise poorer patients and provide beds to AB-PMJAY beneficiaries at regulated rates.
• These proposals recognise that healthcare cannot be treated like an ordinary consumer market.
• A patient often lacks the expertise to determine whether a costly diagnostic test, prolonged admission or invasive procedure is genuinely necessary.

The Investment-Regulation Contradiction

• Hospitals require enormous expenditure on land, medical equipment, ICUs, laboratories, digital infrastructure and skilled personnel.
• Public hospitals alone cannot currently satisfy the country's demand for secondary and tertiary care.
• Foreign investors and private-equity funds can contribute capital, technology, managerial expertise and expansion capacity, particularly in Tier-2, Tier-3 and rural markets.
• Restrictive or unpredictable regulation could discourage investment and slow the creation of desperately needed infrastructure.
• The answer, therefore, is not to reject private capital but to distinguish between productive investment and potentially harmful concentration.
• Policymakers should ask whether an investment creates new capacity or merely acquires existing hospitals, whether it increases competition or promotes consolidation, and whether publicly supported hospitals have enforceable obligations towards poorer patients.

The Problem of Commercial Incentives

• Doctors and hospitals possess far greater knowledge than patients and can influence decisions about tests, procedures and treatment duration.
• This becomes particularly significant when hospitals operate under strong revenue incentives.
• High salaries for specialists, expensive equipment and premium infrastructure create substantial fixed costs.
• Pressure to increase occupancy, revenue per bed and procedure volumes can consequently influence institutional behaviour.
• This does not imply that doctors routinely recommend unnecessary treatment. Rather, systems shape incentives.
• Excessive commercialisation can encourage over-investigation, unnecessary admissions, excessive medication and procedures that may provide limited additional benefit.
• Greater screening can also identify abnormalities that might never have harmed the patient, triggering further tests and interventions.

The Way Forward

• Smarter Regulation, Not Blanket Controls
  • The proposed review of FDI in existing hospitals deserves consideration, but regulation should focus on its effects rather than the nationality of investors.
  • Domestic and foreign investors can both be profit-oriented, while foreign capital can also bring substantial benefits.
  • Similarly, linking hospital room charges to nearby three-star hotels may appear simple but is unlikely to solve the underlying problem.
  • Hospital rooms involve nursing, infection control and emergency support that hotel rooms do not.
  • Capping one component may simply encourage hospitals to increase charges elsewhere.
  • The more effective approach is to regulate the total cost of a treatment episode through transparent estimates, standardised packages, billing rules and audits.
  • Diagnosis-Related Groups (DRGs) provide one possible model by reimbursing hospitals through predetermined payments based on diagnosis and procedures rather than rewarding every individual service.
• Strengthening Public Healthcare
  • If government hospitals remain overcrowded, understaffed and difficult to access, patients will continue to depend heavily on expensive private providers.
  • India therefore needs stronger primary healthcare, preventive care and early diagnosis, alongside better-equipped public hospitals.
  • Public facilities should become a credible alternative rather than merely the destination of those who cannot afford private treatment.
  • Insurance schemes such as AB-PMJAY should also incentivise appropriate treatment rather than simply increasing procedure volumes.
  • Public funding should be linked to measurable standards of affordability, quality and patient outcomes.

Conclusion

• India does not face a choice between private healthcare and public healthcare. It needs both, but with clearly defined responsibilities.
• Private investment can expand capacity, introduce technology and improve services, while public healthcare must guarantee accessibility and provide a competitive alternative.
• The central principle should therefore be simple: capital may shape the capacity of the healthcare system, but medical need must shape its clinical priorities.
• India’s healthcare progress should ultimately be measured not by the volume of investment or the growth of medical tourism, but by whether citizens can enter a hospital with confidence that they will receive what they need, no more and no less.

About UN Mission in South Sudan:

• It is a peacekeeping mission mandated in accordance with Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
• Background
  • It was established on 8 July 2011, under Security Council Resolution 1996 (2011), following the country’s declaration of independence.
  • Following the outbreak of civil conflict in 2013, the Security Council adopted Resolution 2155 (2014), reprioritizing the mission’s core focus toward civilian protection and humanitarian assistance delivery.
• Key Features of UN MISS:
  • It works to protect civilians, facilitate the safe delivery of humanitarian aid, promote human rights, and build durable peace.
  • Peacekeepers help create a secure environment to enable the safe, timely and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance to people in need across the country.
  • UNMISS uses targeted good offices and facilitates dialogue between the parties in support of the peace process and to prevent escalation of political violence.
  • It also monitors and reports on progress on security sector and legal reforms as well as election-related process and transitional justice mechanisms.
  • It monitors, investigates, and reports on violations and abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law. 
  • As of April 2026, India was the top troop contributor to UNMISS, with 1,775 Indian military personnel deployed with the UN mission.

About Garbhini Mitra Course:

• It is a structured healthcare skill-development programme.
• It is aimed at training personnel to provide health education, lifestyle guidance and community-level support to women during pregnancy and the postnatal period.
• Implementing Body: It is implemented by the All India Institute of Ayurveda (AIIA) an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Ayush.
• Course Design:
  • It is designed as a six-month offline training programme.
  • It is based on traditional Ayurvedic concepts of Garbhini Paricharya (antenatal care), Sutika Paricharya (postnatal care) and Garbhadhana Vidhi (pre-conceptional care).
  • It equips participants with practical skills in trimester-specific dietetics, lifestyle modifications, pregnancy-safe yoga, emotional support during labour, newborn massage, and basic life support protocols.
  • The curriculum also emphasizes infection control, sanitization, biomedical waste management, and workplace safety.
  • It also covers infection control, sanitisation, biomedical waste management and workplace safety.
• Eligibility: Candidates who have passed the Senior Secondary (10+2) examination from any recognised board in India and are at least 18 years old are eligible to apply. Candidates awaiting their Class 12 results can also submit provisional applications.
• After completing the course, candidates can pursue roles such as Garbhini Mitra Assistants, prenatal and postnatal care assistants, antenatal wellness guides and maternal health support workers.

About Black-necked Stork:

• It is a tall long-necked wading bird in the stork family.
• Appearance: Adult black-necked storks have heavy bills and a dramatic combination of white and iridescent black plumage.
• The male and female birds look alike but female is distinguished by its yellow eye.
• Distribution: It is distributed in the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and Australia.
• Habitat: They inhabit wetlands, such as floodplains of rivers with large shallow swamps and pools, and deeper permanent bodies of water.
• Features of Black-necked Stork:
  • It is generally solitary and non-migratory.
  • They can also be highly territorial, particularly when water levels fall and food becomes scarce.
  • Diet: It is a generalist carnivore with a varied diet. It feeds on fish, frogs, water birds, snakes, aquatic insects, crustaceans and mollusks.
• Threats: Habitat destruction, the draining of shallow wetlands, disturbance at nests, overfishing, pollution, collision with electricity wires, and hunting.
• Conservation Status:
  • IUCN status: “Near Threatened”.
  • Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972: Schedule II

About Peppara Wildlife Sanctuary:

• Location: It is located in the Thiruvananthapuram district of Kerala.
• It was declared as wildlife sanctuary in 1983.
• It is bordered on the northeast by Kalakkad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve of Tamil Nadu, on the north by Palode Reserve Forest, south by Neyyar Wildlife Sanctuary.
• Rivers: The sanctuary constitutes the catchments of peppara dam constructed across the Karamana River.
• The major peaks in the sanctuary are Chemmunjimottai and Athirumalai.
• Vegetation: Forest types include tropical evergreen forests, moist mixed deciduous forests and semi-evergreen forest, Myristica swamp forest etc.
• Flora: Common tree species are Terminalia paniculta, T. bellerica, PTEROCARPUS MARSUPIUM, Palaquium ellipticum, Mesua ferrea, Hopea parviflora, Bombax ceiba, etc.
• Fauna: The common mammals found are Tiger, Leopard, Sloth bear, The Asian Elephan, Sambars, Barking deer, Lion-tailed macaque, Nilgiri langur, Nilgiri tahr etc.

About Morocco:

• Location: It is located in the Maghreb region of North America.
• Bordering countries: It is bordered by Western Sahara to the south and Algeria to the east.
• Maritime Border: It has coastlines on the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the north.
• It is the only African country with coastlines on both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
• Capital City: Rabat
• Geographical Features of Morocco:
  • Climate: Most of Morocco north of Western Sahara, particularly along the coasts, experiences a typical Mediterranean climate, with mild wet winters and hot dry summers. 
  • Major River: The Mououya River is the most significant source of water in Morocco. Its source is located in the Atlas Mountains and flows into the Mediterranean Sea.
  • Highest point: Jebel Toubkal is the highest point of Morocco and is also the highest peak of the Atlas Mountains.
  • Natural Resources: It consists of iron ore and coal, barite, manganese, lead, and zinc.