MPC of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its August 2025 meeting kept the repo rate unchanged at 5.5%, maintaining a neutral stance. 

About MPC

• Constitution: Section 45ZB of the RBI Act, 1934 (amended in 2016).
• Objective: Determine the policy repo rate to achieve the inflation target.
• Six members: Three from RBI and three appointed by the Central Government.
  • Quorum  is 4 members. 
• Chairperson: RBI Governor (ex officio). 
• Meetings: At least 4 times a year.
• Voting: Each member has one vote, Governor has a casting vote (in case of equality of votes).

Prime Minister dedicated Kartavya Bhawan to the nation which is designed to meet GRiHA-4 green building standards with solar panels, rain water harvesting, etc.

• Kartavya Bhawan is part of the Common Central Secretariat buildings to house the bureaucracy, under the Central Vista project.

About GRiHA

• GRiHA is an acronym for Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment. 
  • It is a rating tool that helps people assess the performance of their building against certain nationally acceptable benchmarks. 
  • It was developed by TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) and later adopted as the national rating system in 2007.

Union Minister informed that BharatGen AI initiative will cover all 22 scheduled Indian languages by 2026.

• It currently supports 9 languages. 

About BharatGen AI

• About: India’s first-of-its-kind, indigenously developed, Artificial Intelligence (AI) based, government-funded, Multimodal Large Language Model (LLM) for Indian language spanning text, speech, and vision-language systems.
• Implementation: Under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) of the Department of Science and Technology.
  • Led by the Technology Innovation Hub (TIH) for IoT and IoE at IIT Bombay.

UN highlighted grim picture of world’s worst humanitarian crisis in the refugee camps in Sudan.

Refugee Camps in Sudan

• Zamzam Camp: Located south of El Fasher town, the state capital of North Darfur, Sudan. 
• Abu Shouk Camp (“Naivasha Camp”): Situated north-west of El Fasher town. 

Open AI released two open-weight language models that excel in advanced reasoning and are optimised to run on laptops. 

About Open Weight Reasoning Models

• Meaning: Refers to releasing only the pretrained parameters or weights of the neural network model allowing users to use the model for inference and fine-tuning.
  • Unlike the Open source models,  the training code, original dataset, model architecture details, and training methodology is not provided. 
• Significance: Supports decentralised AI usage (people can run them locally) enhanced privacy, flexibility, and accessibility.

Recently, Government informed the Lok Sabha that more than 85% of Software Technology Parks of India (STPIs) have been established in Tier 2 and 3 cities and have contributed to 2.98 lakh jobs in non-metro cities.

About STPI (HQ - New Delhi ) 

• Established in 1991, it is an S&T organization under Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
• Role - To promote IT Industry, innovation, R&D, start-ups, product/IP creation in the field of emerging technologies like IoT, Blockchain, AI, etc.
• Its’ Vision aligns with National Policy on Software Products (NPSP), 2019.
• Objectives
  • To promote development and export of software and software services
  • To promote MSMEs by creating conducive environment
  • To provide services to the exporters by implementing Software Technology Park/ Electronics and Hardware Technology Park Schemes.

It is a Benefit scheme where companies offer employees the option (not obligation) to buy shares at a predetermined price after a specific period.

• Employees must stay in the company for that specified period to exercise the option and once purchased they can sell the shares in the open market.
• Purpose: Reward employees, improve motivation and retention, promote ownership culture, etc. 
• Regulation
  • SEBI (Share Based Employee Benefits and Sweat Equity) Regulations, 2021 for listed companies.
  • Companies Act, 2013 for unlisted companies.
  • Income Tax Act, 1961.

Scientists are now focusing on modern tools like environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis for biodiversity conservation.

• DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) serves as the genetic material in most organisms, storing and transmitting hereditary information.

About Environmental DNA

• It is the genetic material left by organisms in the environment (e.g., water, soil, Air, etc.).
• It includes DNA from cells, tissues, fluids, and excrement.
• Application: Mapping species presence and distribution, tracking Ecosystems, etc.
• Significance:
  • It is a non-invasive and highly sensitive biodiversity monitoring method.
  • It is rapid and cost-effective compared to other biomonitoring methods.