E.V. Ramasamy
Syllabus: GS1/History
Context
- Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Vijay paid floral tributes on the 147th birth anniversary of social reformer E.V. Ramasamy in Chennai.
About E.V. Ramasamy (1879-1973)
- E.V. Ramasamy, popularly known as “Periyar” (the Great One), was born on September 17, 1879, in Erode, Tamil Nadu.
- He was an Indian social activist and politician who started the Self-Respect Movement in 1925 to challenge caste hierarchy and promote social equality, rationalism and self-respect.
- Periyar started his political career as a Congress worker in his hometown Erode. However, over the question of separate dining for Brahmin and non-Brahmin students at Gurukkulam, a Congress-sponsored school, he resigned from the party in 1925.
- Periyar’s fame spread beyond the Tamil region during the Vaikom Satyagraha (1924–25), a mass movement demanding that lower-caste persons be allowed to use public roads around the famous Vaikom temple.
- In the 1940s, he envisaged a Dravida homeland of Dravida Nadu, and launched a political party, Dravidar Kazhagam (DK).
- Journal: Kudi Arasu
Do you know?
- In 2021, then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin announced that Periyar’s birth anniversary, September 17, would be observed every year as “Social Justice Day.”
Source: AIR
India Deep Tech Alliance
Syllabus: GS3/Scinece and Tech/Economy
In News
- The India Deep Tech Alliance (IDTA) members invested ₹2,170 crore in 56 Indian deep-tech firms over the past year, signalling growing private investment in strategic technologies.
India Deep Tech Alliance
- It was launched in September 2025 and it has worked to mobilise long-term capital and ecosystem support for India’s deep tech founders.
- It is an industry-led consortium of investors, corporates, technology partners, and ecosystem stakeholders.
- It include individual and corporate investors from India and abroad,
- It is focused on accelerating India’s deep tech companies across AI, semiconductors, advanced computing, robotics, biotech, and more.
- It convenes capital access, technical mentorship, market linkages, and policy engagement to help founders build globally competitive technology companies from India.
Source: TH
India Rejects Pakistan-China Boundary Joint Commission
Syllabus: GS2/IR
Context
- India has rejected the so-called Pakistan-China Boundary Joint Commission, saying Pakistan has no locus standi to enter into arrangements concerning Indian territory under its illegal and forcible occupation.
About
- India maintained that the so-called ‘China-Pakistan Boundary Agreement’ that was signed in 1963 to demarcate the border between Xinjiang and Pakistan-occupied Gilgit-Baltistan is “illegal” and “invalid”.
- Pakistan-China Boundary Joint Commission: The commission has its origins in the 2013 Agreement on the Boundary Management System signed during the visit of then Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to Islamabad.
- The agreement provides for establishment of the joint commission to oversee implementation of the border management arrangements.
Pakistan and China’s Border Agreement
- Historically, the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was formed after the signing of the Treaty of Amritsar of 1846 between the British East India Company and the Dogra ruler Maharaja Gulab Singh.
- It included Gilgit-Baltistan, PoK, Jammu, Ladakh, Kashmir and the Trans-Karakoram Tract.
- The 1963 agreement came at a time when the China-Pakistan relationship was deepening.
- Around that time, Pakistan ceded Shaksgam Valley, or the Trans Karakoram Tract, to China.
- It is part of the Hunza-Gilgit region occupied by Pakistan and lies to the north of the Siachen glacier.
- Spread over more than 5,000 sq km, its terrain and climatic conditions make it difficult for human habitation.
- India has been consistently maintaining that Pakistan’s handing over certain territories of India such as Shaksgam Valley to China in 1963 was illegal and unacceptable.
Source: AIR
Himalayan Monal
Syllabus: GS3/Species in News
In News
- Recently, it has been found that the Himalayan monal changes its sounds according to the surrounding noise level.
Himalayan monal
- It is a striking landfowl found across the Himalayan mountains, including in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Sikkim.
- It is the state bird of Uttarakhand.
- It is classified as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.
Source :IE
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