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- Why in News?
- The Congress-led Telangana government’s call for a CBI probe into alleged irregularities in the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project has exposed a deep rift within the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) family.
- Key Provisions:-
- Former Chief Minister and party patriarch K. Chandrashekar Rao, ousted by the Congress in 2023, now faces political uncertainty. His daughter, K. Kavitha, publicly accused her cousins — senior leader T. Harish Rao and ex-MP J. Santosh Kumar — of contributing to his downfall. Despite being made an MLC after the electoral loss, Kavitha felt sidelined and, after her outburst, was suspended from the party. She has since resigned.
- Her rebellion mirrors the BRS’s own miscalculations — notably Rao’s rebranding of the TRS into a “national” party despite its regional base. The move backfired, leaving the party weakened amid corruption charges. Kavitha’s exit underlines a crisis in a once-promising regional force that traded governance potential for internal power struggles.
- Why in News?
- India is pushing to secure a strong foothold in the USD 1 trillion global semiconductor market projected for 2030, moving from policy approvals to tangible production milestones. SEMICON India 2025, co-organised by the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) and SEMI, will bring together global industry leaders, innovators, academia, policymakers, and the electronics ecosystem to shape the country’s semiconductor future.
- Key Provisions:-
- A key highlight is the Vikram3201 processor — an advanced, fully “Make-in-India” 32-bit microprocessor designed by ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre with the Semiconductor Laboratory, Chandigarh. It builds on the VIKRAM1601, which has powered ISRO launch vehicle avionics since 2009, and features a custom Instruction Set Architecture with floating-point computation, qualified for harsh space conditions.
- Government support includes the India Semiconductor Mission (2021) to create a globally competitive manufacturing ecosystem and a revamped Design-Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme to boost indigenous semiconductor design and intellectual property development.
- Why in News?
- The Solow Paradox, introduced by Nobel Laureate Robert Solow in 1987, refers to the puzzling gap between technological advancement and measurable productivity growth. Despite the rapid spread of computers in that era, productivity statistics showed little improvement. Solow captured this irony with his well-known observation: “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”
- Key Provisions:-
- This paradox gradually faded during the 1990s as sectors such as banking, retail, and manufacturing began to leverage information technology and process innovations, translating digital tools into tangible efficiency gains.
- Today, a similar challenge is unfolding with the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). While AI promises transformative potential across industries, many organizations struggle to capture consistent value from their investments. Just as with earlier technologies, the benefits of AI may depend not only on deployment but also on rethinking workflows, processes, and organizational strategies to unlock its true productivity impact.