Rongali Bihu, marking the Assamese New Year, is being celebrated across Assam with vibrant music, dance, and rituals. It symbolizes the arrival of spring and the hope for a good harvest season.

• Misuse of history for political ends can worsen social unrest and increase hostility.

Historical Lessons from a Weaponized Past

• Religious wars in Europe during the 16th–17th centuries were driven by attempts to reclaim power based on old grievances.
• These conflicts resulted in millions of deaths and economic ruin.
• Referencing the past to justify violence today repeats the mistakes that led to suffering.

Modern Examples of Dangerous Revisionism

• In the 20th century, a European power’s desire to rewrite peace treaties and revive past dominance led to World War II and the Holocaust.
• India’s 1947 Partition saw history manipulated to fuel communal hatred, causing mass displacement.
• In regions like the Middle East and Eastern Europe, trying to reclaim historical territories continues to cause conflict.

Way Forward:

• History should offer lessons to avoid past mistakes not serve as a guide to repeat them.
• Building the future requires moving forward, not recreating a glorified past.
• Misusing history for revenge or political gain leads only to more suffering.
• A mature, respectful, and forward-looking approach to history is essential for peace and is expected to address women’s participation seriously.

• Sections on the Mughal courts and rulers were removed from the NCERT textbook Themes of Indian History – Part II.
• Now, every institution is expected to address women’s participation seriously.
• However, this mainstream acceptance has also made critical dialogue more difficult, as opposing views may be labelled as anti-feminist.

Two Levels of Gender Inequality

• Gender issues exist on two levels:

1. Structural – like patriarchy in laws, customs, and workplaces.
2. Personal – like family relations based on care, compromise, and emotions.

• Focusing only on structural issues may ignore the Emotional depth of real relationships.

Complex Gender Roles in Daily Life

• Many men make silent sacrifices for their families and are not always part of patriarchy willingly.
• Relationships often mix traditional roles with support and love.
• These are not always oppressive — they show the complex balance of gender duties and emotional bonds.

Change Must Happen on Many Fronts

• Not all male actions come from misogyny; some reflect inherited roles.

Background of the Discovery

• Although the recent confirmation is new, the initial evidence dates back to 2004–2007, when the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii captured hints of faint satellites near Saturn.
• At the time, scientists couldn’t track their exact orbits due to limited data.
• Over the last five years, researchers used the Canada-France Telescope to closely follow these objects and confirmed them as moons.

Challenges in Detecting Faint Moons

• Detecting tiny moons is very complex—a single image isn’t enough.
• Scientists take multiple images and stack them using special software to track motion and bring dim objects into view.
• The effort is compared to spotting candlelight on the Moon from Earth, requiring years of observation and analysis.

Saturn’s Moons: Insights into Its Past

• Most of Saturn’s new moons are very small—just a few kilometers wide.
• Their presence points to violent past events, such as collisions between larger objects that broke into smaller fragments.
• This suggests that Saturn has experienced more impacts or was more efficient in capturing space debris than Jupiter.

Signs of Recent Collisions

Many of the moons are found in clusters, indicating they may have come from the same parent body.

Background of the Study

• The study analysed data from land-holding farmers in eight Indian states: Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and Jharkhand.
• It used data collected between 2010 to 2014 by the Village Dynamics in South Asia Project of ICRISAT.

How Efficiency Was Measured

• Researchers applied a technique called Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA).
• DEA helps compare how efficiently inputs (like labour) are used, without needing to know each farm’s exact production process.
• The focus was specifically on labour use efficiency on farms.

Major Findings

• Non-farm work (like wage jobs or small businesses) or migration gave farmers new skills and exposure, which they later applied to agriculture.
• After sowing crops, many farmers had spare During this period, farm duties were managed by other family members or hired labourers.
• Farmers with larger landholdings and more financial resources could afford to hire extra labour, making their absence less disruptive.

Key Implications

• Non-agricultural work offers farmers a chance to earn extra income and invest in their farms.
• Learning from outside work environments helps farmers adopt modern techniques and better planning.
• Diversification into off-farm work is becoming more common due to the uncertainties in agriculture such as climate change, market price Fluctuations, and seasonal risks.
• This technology is particularly important for data centres and supercomputers, which need to process huge volumes of information.

Challenges in Creating On-Chip Lasers

• Silicon, the most common chip material, doesn’t naturally emit light, making it unsuitable for producing lasers directly.
• This limitation has delayed progress in fully optical chips.

Breakthrough Using Gallium Arsenide

• Scientists overcame this barrier by introducing gallium arsenide, a light-emitting material.
• They grew gallium arsenide in microscopic trenches etched into the silicon.
• This method trapped defects at the trench base, allowing high-quality light-emitting crystals to grow above.
• These structures served as working lasers on the chip.

Key Highlights of the Discovery

• Over 300 functional lasers were integrated onto a single silicon wafer.
• The entire process used standard CMOS manufacturing techniques, making it compatible with existing chip production systems.
• The innovation can drastically enhance data speed and reduce energy consumption in large-scale computing.

Remaining Challenges

• The technology still needs improvements to maintain performance under high temperatures, which is essential for commercial viability.

Conclusion:

This invention brings us closer to high-speed, low-energy optical computing. With further development, it could transform future data processing technologies.