About PM-SURAJ Portal:

• Pradhan Mantri Samajik Utthan evam Rozgar Adharit Jankalyan (PM-SURAJ) portal was launched by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in 2024.
• Objective: To provide credit support to entrepreneurs from disadvantaged sections of society virtually.
• It is a centralised platform where individuals from underprivileged backgrounds can apply for and track the progress of all available loans and credit schemes.
• Only those intending to establish a new business can apply on this portal, as this platform provides loans exclusively for business startups.
• Business loans up to Rs 15 lakh are available at low interest rateS through this portal, which are transferred directly to your bank account through banks, NBFC-MFIs, and other financial institutions.
• It is run by government bodies like the National Scheduled Castes Finance and Development Corporation (NSFDC), the National Safai Karamcharis Finance & Development Corporation (NSKFDC), and the National Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation (NBCFDC).
• It is designed to uplift the most marginalized segments of society, such as the backward classes, scheduled castes, tribes, and other disadvantaged sections, and extend credit assistance to one lakh entrepreneurs from disadvantaged communities.

About Wajid Ali Shah:

• Nawab Wajid Ali Shah (1822-1887) belonged to the princely kingdom of Awadh (Oudh) in Uttar Pradesh.
• He succeeded his father, Nawab Amjad Ali Shah, to become the province’s tenth and last nawab.
• His deposition and the annexation of Awadh became one of the major causes of the Revolt of 1857.
• He was a poet, playwright, dancer, and profound patron of arts.
• His works included numerous poems, prose, ragas, playwrights, and ghazals under his pen name of ‘Qaisar’.
• The Ishqnamah (Book of Love) is a youthful autobiography written in Urdu verse by Wajid Ali Shah.
• He is also credited for contributing to the revival of the Indian dance form Kathak.
• He was also greatly interested in architecture. He started building the Qaiser bagh palace complex as soon as he came to the throne.
• Besides the Nawab’s immense contributions to India, one of his wives, Begum Hazrat Mahal, was known to be a great Indian freedom fighter who played a major role during India’s First War of Independence (1857-58) against the British.

About Wet Dress Rehearsal:

• It is the final practice run for a high-stakes rocket launch.
• The “wet” in the name refers to the loading of cryogenic fuel (typically liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for large rockets) into the rocket’s massive tanks.
• It is a rigorous demonstration of ground team preparedness.
• Wet rehearsals are important because only they can reveal events that happen in cryogenic conditions, e.g., leaks in seals or in the connections between the rocket and ground equipment.

What is a Dry Dress Rehearsal?

• It practices the countdown and important operations without loading cryogenic propellants into the rocket.
• Instead, the team power up vehicle and ground systems, verify its communications equipment, simulate critical events, and validate decision-making and handoffs between launch control, engineering, range safety, and, if applicable, crew operations.
• Many of the testing steps use simulated sensor inputs.
• These rehearsals are useful to reveal logical problems in the flow of events without risking fuel leaks.

Key Facts about Artemis II Mission:

• It is the second scheduled flight of NASA's Artemis program and the first crewed Artemis mission.
• It will be the first mission to carry humans to the moon’s vicinity since 1972.
• It is the first to fly astronauts aboard the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft.
• While Artemis 1 successfully flew Orion around the moon without astronauts in 2022, Artemis 2 will be the first time that humans will travel aboard the spacecraft and venture beyond Low Earth Orbit.
• The astronauts and mission controllers will collect data on Orion and the crew’s performance to assess how ready the Artemis program is to send people to the moon’s surface.

About Gilbert Hill:

• It is located in Maharashtra.
• The hill has a sheer vertical face and is one of the oldest basalt rock formations in the world.
• According to geological records, only three such columnar basalt formations exist in the world. The other two are:
  • Devil’s Tower (USA)
  • Giant’s Causeway (Northern Ireland)
• It was declared a National Park and is categorized by the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation as a Grade II heritage structure. 

About Public Financial Management System:

• It is a web-based online transaction system for fund management and e-payment to implementing agencies and other beneficiaries.
• It is a Centralized Transaction System & Platform, providing end to end financial management services to all stakeholders.
• It is developed and implemented by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA), Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India.
• Function: To facilitate sound Public Financial Management System for Government of India by establishing an efficient fund flow system as well as a payment cum accounting network.
• Key Features of Public Financial Management System:
  • It tracks funds released under all plan schemes of Government of India, and real time reporting of expenditure at all levels of Programme implementation.
  • Government has mandated PFMS as a single platform for payment, accounting & reconciliation of government transactions and DBT.
  • Cash management modules: It has been introduced on PFMS for better fund management like Single Nodal Agency (SNA), Treasury Single Account (TSA), Central Nodal Agency (CNA) and Single Nodal Agency Samyochit Pranali Ekikrit Shighra Hastantaran (SNA SPARSH).
  • Grievance Redressal System: PFMS has introduced the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, to strengthen the grievance redressal mechanism for PFMS users/ beneficiaries.

About National Large Solar Telescope:

• It will be established in the Merak region near the Pangong Tso Lake.
• Purpose: It is meant to study the sun
• It will operate in the visible and near-infrared wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum.
• It will help to study the fundamental solar dynamics and magnetism, energetic solar events, and map various space-weather processes having a direct bearing on the Earth and national space assets, like satellites and space launches.
• It will serve as India’s third ground-based solar observatory.
  • Currently, the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory (in Tamil Nadu, established 1899) and the Udaipur Solar Observatory (in Rajasthan, established 1975) are operational.

Key Facts about National Large Optical-Near Infrared Telescope

• It will be built in Hanle. 
  • In a segmented-mirror telescope, a larger primary mirror comprises highly complex, smaller hexagonal mirror segments.
• It will be one of the world’s largest telescopes operating in the electromagnetic spectrum’s optical-infrared wavelengths.
• Objective: Frontier research on exoplanets, stellar and galactic evolution, and supernovae will be possible, besides looking for clues to trace the origins of the universe. 

About Hollongapar Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary:

• Location: It is located in Assam.
• It is the only sanctuary in India named after a gibbon due to its distinction for containing the densest gibbon populations in Assam.
• River: The Bhogdoi River creates a waterlogged region dominated by semi-hydrophytic plants along the border of the sanctuary.
• Flora:
  • The upper canopy of the forest is dominated by the Hollong tree, while the Nahar dominates the middle canopy.
  • The lower canopy consists of evergreen shrubs and herbs.
• Fauna: It hosts gibbons; the hoolock gibbons, and Northeastern India’s only nocturnal primate–the Bengal slow loris.
  • It also has Indian elephants, tigers, leopards, jungle cats, wild boar, three types of civet, four types of squirrels, stump-tailed macaque, northern pig-tailed macaque, etc.

About Lymphatic Filariasis:

• It is commonly known as elephantiasis (Haatipaon) which is a neglected tropical disease.
• It is a vector-borne disease transmitted by the female Culex mosquito.
• Cause: It is caused by infection with parasites classified as nematodes (roundworms) of the family Filariodidea. There are 3 types of these thread-like filarial worms:
  • Wuchereria bancrofti, which is responsible for 90% of the cases
  • Brugia malayi, which causes most of the remainder of the cases
  • Brugia timori, which also causes the disease
• Transmission Cycle: Adult worms nest in the lymphatic vessels and disrupt the normal function of the lymphatic system where they produce millions of microfilariae (immature larvae) that circulate in the blood.
• Infection occurs when filarial parasites are transmitted to humans through mosquitoes.
• Symptoms: The majority of infections are asymptomatic but in chronic conditions it leads to lymphoedema (tissue swelling) or elephantiasis (skin/tissue thickening) of limbs and hydrocele (scrotal swelling). 
• Treatment:
  • Elimination of lymphatic filariasis is possible by stopping the spread of the infection through preventive chemotherapy.
  • WHO-recommended preventive chemotherapy strategy for lymphatic filariasis elimination is mass drug administration (MDA).
  • MDA involves administering an annual dose of medicines to the entire at-risk population.

About Network Readiness Index:

• It maps how economies leverage information and communication technologies to support growth, innovation and social development.
• Methodology used: It maps the network-based readiness landscape based on their performance in four pillars:
  • Technology
  • People
  • Governance
  • Impact
• The report has been prepared by the Portulans Institute, an independent, non-profit research and educational institute based in Washington DC.

Key Highlights of Network Readiness Index Report 2025:

• India improved its score from 53.63 out of 100 in 2024 to 43 out of 100 in 2025.
• India secured 1st rank in “Annual investment in telecommunication services”, “AI scientific publications”, “ICT services exports” and “E-commerce legislation”.
  • 2nd rank in “FTTH/Building Internet subscriptions”, “Mobile broadband internet traffic within the country” and “International Internet bandwidth”, and 3rd rank in “Domestic market scale” and “Income Inequality”.
• India is ranked 2nd in the group of lower-middle-income countries.