Daily Current Affairs- 23rd August 2025

Daily Current Affairs- 23rd August 2025

Kerala Becomes India’s First Fully Digitally Literate State

In the News: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan officially declared Kerala as India’s first fully digitally literate state, capping a statewide “Digi Keralam” campaign that trained millions especially first-time smartphone users—to access online services and transact safely. The announcement followed an earlier briefing by LSGD Minister M. B. Rajesh and marks a national first, with officials noting how rare such full coverage is globally.

Key Points:

• Coverage & Goal: Digital literacy was defined as the ability (age 14–65) to use smartphones, make digital payments, and access government e-services; the drive aimed for universal basic digital skills rather than just one literate person per household.
• Scale & Metrics: A survey of 83.45 lakh households found 21,88,398 people lacking digital skills; 21.87 lakh successfully completed training 99.98% coverage including 15,223 trainees aged 90+.
• Who Made It Happen: 2.57 lakh volunteers—Kudumbashree units, Literacy Mission workers, MGNREGA supervisors, NSS/NCC/NYKS members, students—handled survey, training, and evaluations across all districts.
• Inclusive Training: Modules (15 activities) covered smartphone basics, social media, UPI/online payments, utility bill payments, using OTPs, and digital-fraud awareness; instruction used local languages and last-mile support in remote tribal areas like Edamalakkudi, Attappadi, and Parambikulam.
• Third-Party Verification: Assessments were app-based with multi-level “super-checks”; the Department of Economics & Statistics conducted independent validation confirming full digital literacy.
• E-Governance Backbone: Training emphasised Kerala’s K-SMART platform (Kerala Solutions for Managing Administrative Reformation and Transformation) that unifies local-body services; the state says ~9,000 services are online already.
• Phase-2 Roadmap: Next steps include digitising essential documents for citizens, linking them to DigiLocker, and expanded training on cybercrime prevention and responsible social-media use.
• Grassroots Origin: The model scaled from Pullampara (Thiruvananthapuram), India’s first fully digitally literate panchayat (2021/2022)—to the entire state via Digi Keralam.

National Space Day 2025

In the News: On August 23, 2025, India marked its second National Space Day commemorating Chandrayaan-3’s 2023 lunar soft-landing. The flagship celebration was held at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, alongside nationwide exhibitions and outreach activities. The official theme was “Aryabhatta to Gaganyaan: Ancient Wisdom to Infinite Possibilities.”

Key Points:

• Why August 23: The day honours Chandrayaan-3—Vikram’s soft-landing and Pragyan’s deployment; the site was named “Shiv Shakti Point,” and Aug 23 was designated National Space Day.
• 2025 Theme: “Aryabhatta to Gaganyaan: Ancient Wisdom to Infinite Possibilities” spotlighted India’s journey from classical astronomy to upcoming human spaceflight.
• Venue & Programme: The central event at Bharat Mandapam (New Delhi) featured keynotes, panel discussions, astronaut interactions, and a large public exhibition.
• Policy & Applications Meet (Aug 22): On the eve of Space Day, ISRO hosted National Meet 2025 (NM2.0) on “Leveraging Space Technology and Applications for Viksit Bharat 2047,” bringing ministries, researchers, and industry together in sector-focused breakouts.
• Nationwide Outreach: ISRO centres and partner institutions held open houses (e.g., IISU Thiruvananthapuram on Aug 13–14) and state-level exhibitions/planetarium programmes to engage students and the public.

Centre Forms Rajiv Gauba-Led Panels to Spearhead Next-Gen Reforms and Viksit Bharat Vision

In the News: The Centre constituted two high-powered reform committees chaired by Rajiv Gauba (full-time Member, NITI Aayog; former Cabinet Secretary) to drive next-generation reforms aligned with the Viksit Bharat agenda; both panels held their first meeting on Thursday, August 21 and will work in tandem with ministerial groups chaired by Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh.

Key Points:

• Two distinct mandates: One panel is tasked with operationalising Viksit Bharat goals; the second focuses on non-financial sector regulatory reforms (licenses, certifications, permissions, compliance rationalisation).
• Composition (Govt + Industry): Members include Secretaries of DPIIT, Expenditure, MSME, Power and the Director-Generals of CII, FICCI, Assocham; industry experts such as Pawan Goenka, Manish Sabharwal, and Janmejaya Sinha (BCG India Chair) are also on board.
• Coordination architecture: The Gauba panels will coordinate with informal ministerial panels led by the Home and Defence Ministers to fast-track decisions and remove bottlenecks.
• Linked reform stream: In parallel, a separate committee chaired by Cabinet Secretary T. V. Somanathan will push state-level deregulation, aligning Centre-State efforts.
• Budget 2025 backdrop: The non-financial regulatory clean-up flows from the Union Budget (Feb 1, 2025) announcement of a High-Level Committee for Regulatory Reforms to review and recommend changes within a year—now getting operational traction via these panels.
• Trigger & timeline: The move follows the PM’s Independence Day push for “next-gen reforms” and his Aug 18 high-level meeting with ministers and economists to shape the roadmap.
• Expected outcomes: Streamlined approvals and trust-based governance, faster ease-of-doing-business improvements beyond finance, and a consolidated reform pipeline toward Viksit Bharat 2047.

Haryana Government  Defines ‘Forests’

In the News: Haryana notified, for the first time, what will count as a “forest (as per dictionary meaning)”, via a gazette dated August 18, 2025. The move follows Supreme Court directions to states to spell out criteria and survey such areas for protection under the Forest (Conservation) Act.

Key Points:

• Core Criteria: A land patch qualifies as “forest (dictionary meaning)” if it has ≥ 40% canopy density and is ≥ 5 hectares when isolated, or ≥ 2 hectares if contiguous with a government-notified forest.
• Explicit Exclusions: Linear/compact/agro-forestry plantations and orchards outside notified forests do not count as “forest” under the new definition.
• Compliance Architecture: The state has set up district-level committees (chaired by the DC) to propose areas, and a state-level committee (under the ACS, Environment, Forest & Wildlife) to vet them; after notification, the Chief Secretary will file an affidavit in the Supreme Court.
• SC Backdrop & Timeline: The definition comes after the Supreme Court’s March 4, 2025 directives to all states/UTs to define “forest,” conduct GIS-based mapping per the 2011 Lafarge guidelines, and report back; the matter is listed again in September 2025.
• Impact on Aravallis (Concerns): Experts warn the 40% canopy and 2–5 ha thresholds could exclude large tracts of scrub/open forests in the Aravallis, weakening protection and enabling urbanisation/mining pressures; the government says the definition adds clarity and aligns with judicial expectations.
• What Counts (Ownership-Neutral): Areas meeting the criteria can be private, community or panchayat lands and will be regulated under the Forest (Conservation) Act) once identified and notified.

NASA’s Surya AI (Heliophysics Foundation Model)

In the News: NASA and IBM unveiled Surya, an open-source AI foundation model trained on Solar Dynamics Observatory data to forecast solar weather and improve protection for satellites, aviation, power grids, and communications. NASA highlighted the release the next day.

Key Points:

• What it is: A heliophysics foundation model (~366 million parameters) that learns general solar patterns and supports multiple downstream tasks.
• Data backbone: Trained on 9 years of full-resolution, multi-instrument SDO (AIA & HMI) observations—over 200 TB of imagery harmonized for AI training.
• Open-source release: Available on GitHub and Hugging Face to spur research and operational adoption.
• What it predicts: Solar flares, solar wind, irradiance, active-region segmentation, and EUV spectra—enabling faster, broader space-weather forecasting.
• Performance gains: Early results report up to ~16% improvement over prior techniques; short-term visual forecasts up to ~2 hours ahead.
• Why it matters: Better lead times help operators safeguard astronauts, satellites, aviation, power grids, and global communications from solar storms.
• Notable behavior learned: The model self-discovers solar dynamics such as the Sun’s uneven (differential) rotation, indicating strong representation learning.
• Name & scope: “Surya” (Sanskrit for “Sun”) reflects its focus on solar physics and global, collaborative development.
• Who’s behind it: A joint effort led by NASA (including the IMPACT program) and IBM Research, with a technical roadmap and benchmarks (SuryaBench) published alongside the model.