Okay, let's get started. So the next talk is by Bart Janssen on the Julia programming language and the integration they have done with the Trilino's Application take it away Bart. Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone So before starting the actual talk, let me give you a bit of information about my background so I work at the Royal Military Academy here in Brussels, which is The University, let's say of the Defense Department in Belgium and So why did I get involved with Julia language? Well, my background is mainly in Computational fluid dynamics for which I have written lots of C++ code Which I find myself a lot of fun to do but the problem with C++ code is that even though it is fast it is very difficult to convince others to continue working on it and Especially students doing a master thesis students who typically have a scientific background and no real programming backgrounds they have difficulties working on on a code in a language like C++ and so then I came across Julia which promises to be fast and easy to use so that's why I got started on this and Most of the most of my time using Julia is spent on making it interoperate with large C++ libraries things for solving large linear systems like Trilino's Which of course are not easily written in five seconds in a new programming language So you have to interface with existing libraries. So that's will be the main topic of this talk So just a brief outline first I will introduce the Julia language itself So just to know how many of you have tried the Julia language at some point Okay After introducing Julia, we will look at the integration of Trilino's and MPI so the typical some typical high-performance tools The notebook that I'm presenting here is also available for download on the website. There's a link on the Fosnain website So the first question you might ask is why another programming language And so the specific goal of the Julia language is to eliminate what they call the two language problem Which is typical something that happens in scientific computing the scientist will quickly write something in my club typically Then that will prove that the code works But unfortunately, it will be far too slow for production use and so then someone with more knowledge of computer science will have to rewrite it all in C++ or even Fortran because that's they know they can get a fast result. The idea of Julia is that you can Basically use the same language For both kinds of applications It's the same language, but not necessarily the same code because if you naively write to your codes It can be slower than desired as well, but with a bit of optimization and a bit of tweaking you can get a This prototype code and make it fast So what what are the key features of the language? So it's a high-level programming language high level in the sense that syntax is Quite easy to understand a bit like Python geared at scientific computing, but with potential for Generic programming, let's say general programming It's a dynamic language. So you have basically script like file that you run using the Julia commands unlike Most other dynamic languages it has strong typing and you can define your own types And you can even define generic types like template types in C++ And it is just in time compiled using LLVM The central concept of the language is multiple dispatch, which we will explain in a few moments So let's start with a simple function where we just want to add Two things a and b together So the syntax here is pretty simple, but because it's such a short function. You can also write it in one line Like this also the return here is optional if you just print If you omitted the return it will just return the last value that you have in the function So let's test this and we see that it works correctly So I said it was a strongly typed language So where are these types? You can of everything that you create or Every variable you create in Julia you can request the type using the type of function And here we see it's a 64 bit integer if we just have the literal one If we apply our add function to two integers we see we get an integer back And if we do the same for a floating point Numbers we get a floating point value back So Why is that important? It is important because Julia will compile a new function for every possible combination of types that you supply it So comparing the integer version with the floating point version We can directly look at the machine code using the code native micro in Julia And we see that the the machine code for both these functions is very similar Except for this instruction here, which here is integer addition and here we have floating point addition So it compiles a specialized function for every combination of types that we have So how does that then compare to C++ in C++ we can achieve the same thing the syntax is slightly More verbose so basically if you remove all the green Highlighted keywords you have back again the Julia code, which is just the A plus B But this and C++ achieve the same thing as we just saw in Julia So it's valid for any combination of types A and B It automatically computes the return type and well if you invoke this function C++ compile a new version for every combination of the arguments So in a way C++ can do the same thing as in Julia But the syntax is more verbose and here it is purely a static computation of type only at compile time in C++ In Julia what the multiple dispatch mechanism means is that It will choose based on the types of arguments that you supply to the function It will choose which function to call and it can do this statically just like in C++ template functions at compile time In this case just in time compiles or it can do it dynamically if the type of the argument is not known at compile time It will choose the function to call at runtime a bit like a virtual function in C++ So let's take a brief look at the user defined types We can define a type like this which contains one single field an integer value and We can then create a Value of my number containing the value 2 here for example So how does that work with our add function as you can imagine? I didn't specify any types type limitations on the add function so I can just call the function on it, but of course the plus operator in Julia is not defined for my number type So to fix this error we have two options We can override the plus operator of Julia or we can Specialize the add function directly. I chose the letter here and so you can annotate the function add Create a new version of it Let's say that takes a as a my number and b can be anything and then implement this to return a my number So we see now after executing this that there are no now there's now an add function, but it has two methods So then you might wonder which are those methods and for that we have the methods call and we can see that now We have the two add functions the one we first defined and the one The specialization let's say and now if I call it first with a my number It will call the specialized function and return the correct value for this kind of thing And this way it's very easy to build a complex system using your own types and overriding the necessary functions That makes for a very flexible code in the end So the next topic is about interoperability. So natively Julia is made to be Let's say in terms of memory layout compatible with C and it also provides Nice interface for calling C functions directly out of the box and then there are many packages that's Help when you need to call C++ or Python or are Matlab There is a whole series of them So calling C functions happens through the C call primitive It's not really a function, but it does something at the LLVM level directly and so we can call The fabs function so to get the absolute value using the standard math library Here of the value minus one and it returns one as expected Using the benchmark tools package we can get an idea of the overhead that this induces so calling the C function here takes about 3.6 nanoseconds and We can also compare this with the native absolute value function in Julia and we see that Considering that this is such a small function. The overhead is really small Next is the integration of MPI. So Using this C call primitive where we can call C functions. We can of course also call the MPI C functions and then if we write a Julia program using these wrapped MPI function we can just run this using MPI run Julia and then the script that we created so you'll compare a bit between C and Julia using a simple MPI reduce So this is the the C code where you have all the variable declarations in the beginning the MPI initialization And then to sum so the idea is that we will in parallel calculate the sum of the elements of an array So we allocate Our array and fill it with the value equal to the rank plus one and then we want to time the sum So an MPI all of this code will be executed on each Process and so every process sums together. It's part of the array and then it will call MPI reduce to some all the sums calculated by each process and then once the MPI reduces finished we stop the timer and Show how long this took So then in Julia the code looks pretty much the same Except that all the stuff about memory allocation and so on is much simpler using the native Julia arrays so we just create our Array using this line of code here To keep similarity with the C code. I manually wrote the sum here Of course, you have a sum function that if you call it on an array it will calculate the sum But then you might think I called an optimized sum and so I was cheating So here is just a basic for loop as we wrote in in the C codes and we call the reduce on that note that the MPI package Puts around some nice these around this reduced call so We can replace the MPI sum with a plus and it just returns the value instead of putting it in a reference argument and so this gives us the The same result as in the C codes Actually, this runs in the notebook on the slide on one CPU because I have the MPI package installed And that's the the timings that you see here on one CPU Running on my home computer on four cores we get in the C code The timing was a bit unstable, but I got between 0.022 seconds and 0.065 and then on Julia We see we get equivalent timings So for this kind of low-level loop, we see that we are at equivalent speed of C. So that's It's really showing that Julia makes good on on this promise. So Maybe I'll go over this a bit more quickly, but Cxxwrap.jl basically works in the same way as boost.pyton. So it allows you to write an Interface code in C++ that will automatically generate Julia functions to call from the Julia side And so that's what I've used to wrap the Trillinus library large matrix library Some comparisons showing The overhead so if we loop over 50 million elements and doing multiplication of two floating points numbers We get this time in Julia and directly in C++ this timing So again a low-level loop will run as fast in Julia as it will in C++ However, if we do the multiplication by C calling a function from C++, we see that the difference Is not that great. So there is little overhead in calling external functions So the Trillinus library, who here is familiar with the Trillinus library? Not that many. Okay. So it's basically it's a library that allows you to Solve large linear systems on a compute cluster The example that we will use here is the 2D Laplace equation. So you solve this differential equation On a grid of in this case one thousand by one thousand nodes and you will get this kind of To the parabolic surface as a result. So it's just a benchmarking problem now part of the code that this performance critical is the Assembly of the linear system. So filling in the matrix with all the elements This is the C++ code in Trillinus. So the core of this algorithm is a loop Over all the elements of the matrix that are on the current process. So that's really a low-level loop and in that loop You will fill out the elements. The values of these elements is basically where The link with the physics of a problem is so understanding where these values come from is Basically the job of the scientist. So we see that we have very close proximity here between a Scientific value and a very technical loop over the elements here The code in Julia looks basically the same because of course you keep the same names and so on when wrapping a library And so running these two things and comparing the performance shows that it is very favorable. So I learned this on multiple computers until I found one where Julia was slightly faster, but you can You can get the the opposite result also but the main point is that this is a very basic example where there is very little mathematical heavy computation going on and Most of what you measure is overhead. So if it already is this close you can Safely assume that you will get no real performance loss from doing this in Julia So these are just the different steps of the algorithm that I consider to be performance critical And basically this result is what motivated me to continue using Julia because even for performance critical parts of the code You can Rely on the fact that Julia will not impose performance bottleneck that you will not be able to get around At a later time with the advantage that the code will be understandable by a scientist in the end So that brings me to the conclusions so Julia is a fast high-level language as we've seen and we can Interoperate with existing work, which may be very extensive such as is the case of the Trillinos library And it really delivers on the performance of matching the C C plus plus performance There is much more that I didn't have time to mention in this brief presentation Also good reasons to choose for Julia. So the types you can have generic types a bit like template types in C plus plus there is of course support for parallel programming We have seen seen how we can reuse MPI But Julia also has its own system for parallel programming and the two can in fact also work together A Very important aspect is the meta programming so you can take any Julia expression and manipulate it in Julia itself And you can write macros And generated functions that leverage this expression tree to do for example loop unrolling automatically so you can take an expression and If it has a for loop you can rewrite this expression to just execute the expressions in sequence instead of having a loop A very interesting package is CUDA native Where you can write and video CUDA kernels write in the Julia language and you can make this Interoperate with Julia types with Julia areas and you get Very intuitive code, but it is running on the GPU and you don't have all the all the mess with Dealing with the NVCC compiler and so on and of course there is a Very large and expanding ecosystem of excellent packages also for machine learning and so on Differential equations. There are a lot of cool packages that allow you to already Dive in and use it for real-world world problems So this concludes my presentation. Thank you You can very much but any questions for Bart? Yes So when calling him to see your C++ code in practice how tedious it is to convert between Julia types and see your C++ types Yes, so in the case of straight C code you can like the the struct I wrote here so this The layout of this track is the same as in C So you can reuse C structs and the typical way of doing it is to write a C Julia struct that mirrors the C struct. So if you have to do that manually, it's a bit tedious what I do in CXX wrap basically the C++ class is just a pointer in Julia and you wrap all the methods and functions of the class to be a Julia function and So that way there is no real data conversion and everything happens at the function level and And then this CXX.jl, which allows you to in fact directly Intermix C++ code with Julia codes Because this works at the LLVM level and so it will actually compile the C++ code using the same LLVM as Julia runs on but I haven't used it myself that much another question Related to the previous question. How do you enforce boundary checks with C strings or arrays? So There are a few special types in the C call interface such as C string if you say So here you specify the types of the arguments So for example, if you put C string here, it will know that it's no terminated C string Okay, but you so you treat the C strings the same way as C does it you just But the native Julia strings are different native Julia strings are different and so if you put C string here it will and you put the Julia string there It will do the conversion automatically. Yeah Julia sucks when you're doing plots it takes a long time to do the first plot. Yeah, that's that's absolutely true So I myself I used to have Python plotting and I still use Python lot for plotting If you have the habit of typing Python my scripts my data In Julia, that's slower So you have to launch Julia and then call a plotting function every time that makes it fast But I think it's a temporary problem. I hope So is there a package manager to install packages from a repository. Yes You just call the command pkg.add and then the name of your package Anymore questions? Does the package manager have trilliness in it? Not yet anymore in the back Gonna have to run all over Hi Is there any scope in? Writing and executable in Julia for openform And using the C++ class libraries from openform I think you could interface openform using cxx.jl or Cxx.wrap.jl Or the other way around you can From Julia get a C function pointer to a Julia function and call that from openform That's a possibility too. Do you think there will be any performance benefit or? It can never be really faster than C or C++ because basically it's just LLVM compiling code in the end so the basic performance that you The maximum performance that you can get is the same in both languages. Okay. Thanks Okay, thank you very much Bart. Thank you


A very good evening viewers and aspirants, welcome to the Indian News Analysis brought to you by Shankar Eise Academy for the date 24th of November 2021. These are the list of news articles that I have taken for discussion today. Today, we are going to discuss about one editorial and one data point. This editorial is based on the recent India-U.S. Trade Policy Forum. And in this discussion, we are going to discuss about the central sector scheme called as Prashad. And then in this next discussion, we are going to discuss about a new scheme announced by the government in the railway sector. And finally, we are going to discuss about a new bank that was established by the government in 2021. So along with that, we have the practice problems questions discussion. In this discussion, I also have a quiz question. So pay attention to the discussions today. The quiz question has been framed on today's discussion. And finally, we have a main question discussion also. So with this introduction, let us move on to first news article discussion. So today, we are going to start our news article analysis with the hot topic of the day, which is the India-U.S. Trade Policy Forum. See these two news articles, that is one is this news article from the front page and this editorial, both these talk about this trade policy forum that was convened yesterday. This trade policy forum has been revived after four years. And remember, this trade policy forum is co-chaired by Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry, along with the United States Trade Representative. This trade policy forum serves as a primary bilateral mechanism for pursuing India-U.S. shared trade and investment objectives. So it is an important forum in the India-U.S. trade relations. In this regard, let us discuss about the decisions taken at this trade policy forum that is mentioned in these two articles. And along with this, we'll also see the trends of India-U.S. trade relations over the years. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. So first, let us see the India-U.S. trade relations over the years. Now, if you look at this representation or this graph, it shows us India-U.S. trade relations. And as you can see here, it mentions about the exports, imports, etc. And you can find that India has surplus trade with USA. So when we say surplus trade, it means we are exporting more than what we are importing from that particular country. So if we have surplus trade with USA, it means we are exporting more to the U.S. than what India is importing from USA. You can see here, the exports is given in the blue bar and imports is red bar and the trade surplus is green bar. This is another representation. Here also you can see how the trade between India and U.S. has grown over two decades. And you can see that the trade from India to U.S. is more compared to the trade from U.S. to India. So in this manner, you should remember that U.S. is the top destination for Indian exports. It contributes to about 16% of total exports from India. And in case of imports, U.S. is the second largest after China. U.S. contributes 7% of imports. So both of these make the U.S. the largest trading partner for India. And it shows that there is more potential to grow. So in this context only, the trade policy forum that was convened yesterday is important. And mainly this forum resolved to take necessary steps to take India to the next highest level on the trade front. So initially we saw that the trade policy forum is meeting after four years, right? So in these four years, a lot of matters relating to trade has happened between India and USA. And in a way, we can say that this recent trade policy forum has also stepped on certain measures to overturn some of the events that happened in those four years. So let us see what happened in these four years first. And then we'll see the decisions taken at this forum. See first, we should address that in these four years, USA was under Mr. Trump's administration. And at that time initially, India-U.S. were set to incur free trade agreement. But due to a failure of trade talks, both the countries were not even able to conclude a mini-trade deal at the end of Trump administration. So this was the first issue. And then there was also the issue of increased import tariffs. See what happened was, under the Trump administration, new tariffs were applied in 2018 on steel and aluminium imports from dozens of countries. And India was also one among them. And this was done under a national security exemption in U.S. trade law. Now in response to this new tariff, India also imposed retaliatory tariffs for U.S. products like almonds, walnuts, cashews, apples, chickpeas, wheat and peas, etc. And India filed these retaliatory tariffs with the World Trade Organization. So that means there were tariffs from both the ends. And then comes the issue of GSP, that is Generalized System of Preferences of USA. The issue was that USA withdrew benefits to Indian exports under its GSP. That is USA suspended GSP eligibility to India. So what is this GSP? It is a U.S. trade program. This trade program was instituted on 1976 by U.S. Trade Act of 1974. This GSP is designed to promote development in developing countries. To help in development, this GSP offers a preferential duty-free entry for up to 4800 products. So that means to these products, there is duty-free entry. So these products in the U.S. market will have lesser price compared to the products from other countries that do not get this preferential status. So that means through this GSP, the developing countries can competitively access the U.S. market and it helps to boost their exports also. But as we saw, the Trump administration removed India from GSP program. So the Indian exporters were worried that their products won't stay competitive in the U.S. market. Then finally came the recent developments like the exit of major American businesses. For example, recently Ford exited India. Before that Harley-Davidson exited from Indian market. So even though this is not directly linked to the U.S. trade policies, but their exit has not helped the India-U.S. relations, rather it has strained these relations. So these are some of the major events that happened in the last four years when the trade policy forum was not active. So in this backdrop only, the TPF, that is the trade policy forum, has been revived. So now let us see the decisions taken at this trade policy forum. So first of all, it has decided to forge an agreement to facilitate U.S. market access to certain products from India. These products are the agricultural producers like mangoes, grapes and pomegranate. And on the other hand, India also has to reciprocate with similar access to Indian market to the products from the USA. And these products includes cherries, pork and alfalfa hay for animal feed. And apart from this, it was also agreed that discussion will be held on resolving market access concerns for water buffalo meat and wild caught shrimp from India. Then next discussion was with respect to the GSP, that is Generalized System of Preferences. See in the post COVID world, USA looks at India as a key partner in rebuilding USA's supply chain. Along with this, USA is also seeking to reduce its over dependence on China. So in this way, India can play a significant role. So stating such facts, Indian site has proposed the restoration of GSP. India claimed that this restoration will not only benefit India, but it will also benefit USA and industries from both the sites, because they will be able to integrate their supply chain efficiently by then. Then the forum also agreed on the significance of negotiating a social security totalization agreement. This was considered in the interest of workers from both sides. See this social security totalization agreement is an international tax treaty. Actually USA has entered into this agreement with several nations for the purpose of avoiding double taxation of income with respect to social security taxes. In simple terms, we can say that this agreement seeks to remove dual taxation. Now this agreement between India and USA has been in discussion for over a decade and now the discussions are continuing and now they have agreed on the significance of this negotiation. Now when finally this agreement is implemented, then it will help workers from both the countries. Then apart from that, regarding the pharmaceutical sector also certain decisions and concerns were discussed. For example, we know that Indian pharma exports account for 40% of the USA's generic drug supply. But however, there was a delay in US regulatory inspection of pharma units in India. So this delayed India's pharma exports and has been a concern for Indian pharma companies. And this delay in inspection from the side of USA was due to the complication created by pandemic and therefore in this trade policy forum, this concern of India was acknowledged by the United States Trade Representative and the US chair has pledged to pursue constructive dialogue on this matter. Both sides also underlined the importance of India-US trade and economic partnership in addressing global challenges also. So on those lines, both the sides agreed to work closely and constructively in relevant multilateral trade bodies, including the World Trade Organization and the G20 Forum. This will help in enhancing the bilateral trade relationship of both the countries. And both sides also agreed to work for achieving a shared vision of transparent rules-based global trading system among the market economies and democracies. Then USA also noted its support for India's ambitious goal regarding climate change. This goal was with respect to ethanol blending petrol. We know that India has a goal of reaching 20% ethanol blending petrol by 2025. And on these lines, USA has expressed an interest in supplying ethanol to India for fuel purposes. Both sides agreed to explore ways for enhancing collaboration for the implementation of their respective ethanol blending programs also. So this support by USA will be of great help to India to reduce its carbon intensity of Indian economy. So if you remember, in the COP26 that was concluded very recently, our Prime Minister told that by the year 2030, India will reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by 45%. So this support from USA will help India in achieving this particular goal. Then apart from all these matters, the delegates also exchanged views on harnessing the vast potential of digital trade to boost economic growth and innovation. Both sides also pledged to deepen bilateral engagement for promoting digital economy. They also said they would explore the adoption of joint principles that would ensure that Internet remains open for free exchange of ideas, goods and services. And finally, both the sides agreed to further engage for finding a mutually agreed solution or solutions on the outstanding World Trade Organization disputes that is existing between the countries. So we can say that this is a welcome step because the dispute in WTO between India and USA is a major problem in India-U.S. trade relations. So if they agree to find mutually agreed solutions, then it will be a step further in enhancing this trade relationship of both countries. So these were some of the matters and concerns in various sectors that were discussed in the Trade Policy Forum and with this we have come to the end of this discussion. In today's discussion, we understood about the Trade Policy Forum and we saw what were the events that occurred in the past four years when the Trade Policy Forum was not active. Then we saw the discussions in the forum related to market access, GSP issue, Social Security Totalization Agreement, we saw issues in pharma sector and we understood that both the sides have agreed to involve in a constructive dialogue to solve these issues. So now let us move on to the next discussion. This discussion is based on this news article which talks about a particular scheme. Let us see what the news is first. The news is about a criticism on the development plan in Karnataka that has been framed under the Prashat scheme of central government. See this development plan is for the Chamundi Hills that is situated in Mysuru and the Chamundi Hills is proposed to be developed under this Prashat scheme. Now the critics argue that such development plan is environmentally unsustainable because the plan aims to build architecture using concrete and other unsustainable materials and they also fear that such development plan will increase the footfall in the Chamundi Hills and it will increase the anthropogenic pressure. So now why such a development plan has been proposed for Chamundi Hills? Now to understand this we need to understand this Prashat scheme and then we will see some details regarding the Chamundi Hills also. Now first of all note that the full name of the scheme is National Mission on Pilgrimage Regimination and Spiritual Heritage Augmentation Drive. It is a central sector scheme that means the scheme is fully financed by the Government of India. Now this scheme was launched by the Ministry of Tourism in the year 2014-15. Now the objective of the scheme is integrated development of identified pilgrimage and heritage destinations. So under this objective the scheme aims at providing well-planned tourism infrastructure and such tourism infrastructure focuses on enabling tourist convenience, accessibility, security, cleanliness, tourist experience etc. And therefore the overall aim is to provide a complete religious tourism experience as well as boosting the economic growth and sustainable development of those destinations. Now this in turn will give boost to the employment generation for the local communities in that region. So what are all the infrastructure development taken up under this scheme? The infrastructure developments include entry points then it provides last mile connectivity then basic tourism facilities like information and interpretation centres are built under this scheme. When ATM machines or money exchange centres are also set up in these areas then along with the sparking, drinking water, toilets, waiting room, first aid centres all these are set up as part of infrastructure development in the destination regions. But why is such a scheme is necessary? Why there is a need to focus on infrastructure development? See we know that India is blessed with rich and diverse cultural and spiritual heritage because India is a land of many regions and therefore we also have many centres of pilgrimage for various faiths. Now to experience such heritage millions of tourists from the domestic regions and also from international places come to India. So such cultural and spiritual heritage destinations provide a tourism potential. Now to tap this tourism potential there was a need for integrated development of selected pilgrimage destinations and then integrated development of the heritage cities and in this manner this Prashad scheme offers a tremendous opportunity to undertake infrastructure developments in such sites because infrastructure is important to boost tourism. And under this scheme central finance assistance is given to the state governments or European Territory administrations or even to the central agencies for development of these infrastructure particularly infrastructure related to pilgrimage tourism and heritage tourism. So we can see that there are two components of this scheme. One is the development of pilgrimage tourism and another is the development of heritage tourism. Now how these destinations are selected? See the pilgrimage destinations are selected on the basis of pilgrimage lineage and also based on the pilgrimage footfall. See here footfall is important because it gives an idea about the number of tourists who are visiting that particular destination and in case of pilgrimage it also provides us about the importance of that pilgrimage on the national pilgrimage map. Now coming to the selection of heritage cities there are many criterias considered under this also. For example they are selected on the basis of high heritage values of the city then based on the tourist footfall then also based on number of monuments and their accreditation. See here also tourist footfall is important because as we saw it gives an idea about the number of tourists visiting that particular destination and tells us how popular that city is. And now number of monuments is important because heritage value of that city depends on the availability of tangible heritage assets and intangible heritage resources in that region. Now coming to the accreditation part we know that the historic destinations and monuments in our country are accredited internationally and also nationally. Here it is accredited by UNESCO and nationally it is done by Archaeological Survey of India. So this criteria helps us to prioritize one heritage city over the other. So now these are the criterias based on which the heritage cities and the pilgrimage destinations are chosen. Now after their selection their respective states and urine territories they prepare an integrated plan. Now this integrated plan is submitted to the National Integrated Plan Approval Committee in short IPAC. This national IPAC is a committee chaired by the Secretary of Ministry of Tourism. So therefore this national IPAC is the final approval authority for the integrated plans for the pilgrimage destinations and integrated developments of heritage cities. Now in this manner only recently in October the Karnataka government got in principle approval for the rejuvenation of Chamundi Hills in Mysore under this Prashad scheme. So that means this place is considered as a place of heritage and pilgrimage importance. Let us see why. See mainly because it has many pilgrimage centers atop the hill. For example we can find the Chamundi Shri temple which is situated on the top of this Chamundi hill. This temple is dedicated to Goddess Shri Chamundi Shri. So we can understand that this hill got the name from this temple only. Note that Krishnaraja Vodaya III built a Gopura to this temple with gold finials. As we know Vodaya dynasty ruled Mysore before and after Tipu Sultan. Now apart from this Chamundi Shri temple we can also find another important temple which is the Shri Mahabaleshwara temple and it is said that this temple was built before the beginning of Hoysala rule in Mysore. Then another attraction in the Chamundi hill is a Nandi statue. We know that Nandi is a mythological figure based on Hindu mythology and is considered as Lord Shiva's vehicle. Now this Nandi statue situated on the Chamundi hill is a huge Nandi and it is one of the largest in India. It is about 16 feet tall at the front and 25 feet in the length. And it is said that Dota Devaraja Vodaya was responsible for the creation of this colossal bull. So because of these heritage, cultural and spiritual importance, Chamundi hills was chosen as a place for rejuvenation under the Prasad scheme and it also got in principle approvals from the central government recently. And that is why now critics are saying that this place might come under anthropogenic pressure if this development continues in the manner it is proposed to. So let us wait and see what decision is taken by the Kanataka government and the central government. So in this discussion, we saw about an important scheme that focuses on boosting the pilgrimage and heritage tourism in our country and we also saw some of the important details about the Chamundi hills in Mysore. Now let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is going to be based on this data point which provides us with certain data based on the Assar report that is the annual status of education report that was released for the year 2021. This report was released recently and it covered various dimensions about the schooling status of children across rural India. I note that this particular data point focuses on one major dimension that was highlighted in the report. This dimension is the trends of private coaching during the pandemic times. So in this discussion, we are going to discuss about this Assar report and also the findings related to this private coaching during the pandemic times. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. First of all, Assar stands for annual status of education report. It is a citizen-led household survey. This report is released by an organization called Pratham Foundation every year. This report focuses on children's schooling and learning status. I note that under this report, schooling status is recorded for children in the age group of 3 to 16 years and for the children in the age group of 5 to 16 years, they are tested for their ability to read simple text and do basic arithmetic. Another important fact to be remembered about this report is that it is a rural survey. So urban areas are not covered. I note that this report has been published since 2005 except for the year 2015. And this time, the survey was conducted in 25 states, 3 union territories and overall 581 districts. So in this manner, this report explores various areas in education such as children's enrollment, paid tuition classes, smart phones, learning support at home, access to and availability of learning materials, and it also deals with some additional areas like engagement and challenges in learning, COVID prevention measures, etc. But as we already said, this data point focuses on one particular dimension, which is the private coaching during pandemic. See, this dimension includes the data on the paid academic tuition, which were taken by children who are between the age of 5 to 16. And this dimension has taken into consideration both the online tuition and also in-person private tuition, but it has excluded the tuition classes on dance, music, sports, etc. So according to the findings of this report, overall the incidence of tuition has increased across almost all states. But why this sudden increase? There are certain reasons for this. Let us see these reasons first, then we will see the data related to it. See the first reason is that private tuition is a natural response to the prolonged school closure. See children, they have to learn some way. So many parents opt for private tuition and one of the main reasons for this is the second reason, which is the fact that parents from rural areas are less educated or sometimes they are illiterate in most cases. So they rely on private tuitions for the education of their child. And third reason is that parents were only able to access tuition classes because the economic disruptions caused by the pandemic have moved children out of the private schools. So even though the private schools were able to conduct online classes, the parents were not in a position to pay for those private schools. So they were able to pay for private tuitions and they enrolled their children in government schools in many cases. Now the final reason is that the parents were able to pay to the private tuitions due to the fact that the tuition classes are a local phenomenon. So the payment for these classes may be adjusted flexibly and quickly based on the demand and supply and such payment could be negotiated between the tutor and the family. But this kind of negotiation is not possible with a private school. So because of these reasons, overall the incidence of tuition has increased across almost all states. So let us see some data related to these facts. See first of all, if you look at this representation, here we can find the percentage of children taking tuition. And we can see that there is an increase in 2021 compared to 2018 and 2020 levels in all grades. And this increase was even present in students from both the government and private schools. As you can see here, there is a significant amount of increase in 2021 levels compared to 2018 and 2020 levels among the children who are enrolled in government and private schools. And then if we take the gender aspect, here also we can find that there is an upward trend. We can see that there is a significant increase in the number of boys and girls who are enrolled in tuition in the year 2021 compared to 2018 and 2020. But this trend of increase in private pay tuition is found to come down with the reopening of schools. That is, the students were found to be more engaged in private tuitions when the schools remained closed. But when the schools started reopening, then the number of students engaging in private tuitions have come down. This could be interpreted from this table. There is a significant decrease. And then the report also has data on the percentage of students who have opted for private tuitions based on their parents' education. So in this data, you can see that it has considered parents' education in three levels, that is low level, medium and high level. Low parental education includes families where both parents have completed standard five or less and high parental education category comprises families where both parents have completed at least class nine and all their parents are in the medium category. So we can see that the share of children who are taking tuitions are found to be more among the high parental education category compared to the low and medium parental education category. So this goes against our reasoning that the children of parents who have less education or who are illiterate, they opt for private tuitions. And this trend is consistent even in 2018 and 2020. That means the children of parents who are in the high category of education, they are enrolled in tuitions, that is private tuitions. So these are the trends we can see relating to private tuitions. Now if you take the overall trend or the statewide trend, then we can see that in many states, the share of children in private tuitions is more than the all India average. For example, it is more in Anachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Jharkhand, Odisha, Bihar, Manipur, West Bengal, et cetera. But comparatively, this is less in states like Telangana, Chattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Rajasthan, et cetera. Now we know that Kerala is a state having the highest literacy rate in our country. And maybe because of this, students enrolled in private tuitions is low in this state and it could also be found that among all the surveyed states, Kerala was the only state where the share of students using private coaching fell in the survey period. It has reduced by 9.4% each from 2018 into 2021. So these are some of the important facts that you need to know with respect to pay tuitions. These facts will be important for you in your essay writing regarding any questions on education, especially how pandemic has affected the education sector. So now let us move on to the next discussion. Now our next discussion is going to be based on this news article, which talks about the Bharat Gaurav scheme. See the Ministry of Railways has announced this Bharat Gaurav scheme. So today let us see a few facts related to the scheme. And we'll also see the benefit of such a scheme. So first of all, what is this Bharat Gaurav scheme? See it is a scheme under which theme-based tourist circuit trains are to be run by private or state-owned operators. So these tourist circuit trains will be on the lines of Ramayana Express. You know that this Ramayana Express covers a distance of more than 7,500 kilometers. And it takes pilgrims to places such as Ayodhya, Prayag, Nandi Gram, Janapur, Hampi, Rameshwaram, et cetera. So these tourist circuit trains that are to be run under Bharat Gaurav scheme will be on the lines of Ramayana Express. So there are certain conditions under this scheme. Let us see these conditions now. First of all, who will be the service provider under this scheme? See it can be an individual, company, society, trust, joint venture, or consortium. Any of these could be the service providers under this scheme. And the service providers have the discretion to decide the theme of the circuit trains. For example, Guru Kripa train will be covering the important places of Sikh culture. So like this, the service providers can decide on the theme. Along with this, the service providers can also offer all inclusive packages to the tourists. Like they can provide rail travel, hotel accommodation, sightseeing arrangement, visit to historical sites or heritage sites. They can provide tour guides, et cetera. And then full flexibility is also given for the service providers to decide on the package cost based on level of services that is being offered in such trains. And then the service providers are also free to design and furnish the interior of coaches based on the theme. And it is said that they can use the inside and the outside of the train for branding and advertisement. And also the service providers have a choice in selecting the coaches for addressing different segments like luxury and budget. And according to the scheme, the train composition will be of 14 to 20 coaches including two guard vans. The guard van is the small railway carriage that is usually at the back of the train in which the guard travels. So these are the conditions under the scheme. Now along with this, the strength of professionals of the tourism sector will also be used for the scheme. They will be used to identify and develop the tourist circuits. And they will also be used to run these theme based trains so as to tap the vast tourism potential of our country. And further along with the passenger segment and the good segment of the railways, a third segment of tourism, Bharat Gaurav trains will also be included. And these Bharat Gaurav trains will not be regular trains that will run as per the timetable, but they will be more like the Ramayana Express that is being currently run by the IRCTC. And note that currently the railway ministry has allocated more than 3,000 coaches or 150 trains for Bharat Gaurav scheme. And the ministry is taking applications from today onwards. Now the ministry will also set up customer support units for the smooth implementation of this scheme. So now, what are the benefits of this scheme? First of all, it will help to unleash India's tourism potential. See, this scheme will showcase India's rich cultural heritage and magnificent historical places to the people of India and to the people from around the world. And then we saw that it allows the hands of both government and private players into the scheme. So that means the scheme will aid in increase in competition. And therefore the services offered to the customers will be comparatively good and they will be provided at competitive cost. And then under the scheme, tourism professionals will also be involved. So this will help the industry experts to fully understand the potential of the sector and to help the railways in developing profitable circuits. So like this, this scheme could be milled for its benefits. And this is again another scheme from the side of the government for boosting the tourism sector. In this discussion, we briefly understood about the Bharat Gaurav scheme that has been announced by the railway ministry recently. And we saw some of the conditions under the scheme and what are the benefits of such a scheme? Now let us move on to the next discussion. Now our last discussion for the day is going to be based on this news article from the business page. This article talks about NABFID, that is the National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development. So here the news is that this institution is likely to begin its lending operations and it will be lending to 190 to 200 big infrastructure projects in various sectors like railways, roads and energy. So in this regard, it is important for us to know about this bank. See, it is a new development financial institution. It was established in the month of March 2021 by an Act of Parliament. The Act is the National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development Act and its head office is in Mumbai. Now this institution is set up as a corporate body and it is given an authorized share capital of 100,000 rupees. And note that initially the central government will own 100% shares of this institution but this share will be reduced up to 26% age subsequently. So now what are the objectives of this institution? See, it has two kinds of objectives. One is developmental and the other one is financial. Now when we talk about the developmental objectives, it includes the role of this bank to facilitate relevant institutions to support the development of long-term non-recourse infrastructure financing in our country. That is, it will be facilitating the development of market for bonds, loans and derivatives for the infrastructure financing. Now we are saying non-recourse infrastructure because the infrastructure projects are characterized by non-recourse or limited-recourse financing. This means that lenders can only be repaid from the revenues generated by this project and it will be long-term financing because the gestation period for the projects under this sector is much longer. Now the financial objective is that it is directed to lend or invest either directly or indirectly and it is also directed to attract investment from private sector investors and institutional investors and they can invest in the infrastructure projects which are located in India or which are located partly in India and partly outside India. So now what about its management? See, this institution will be governed by a board of directors and the chairperson of this board will be appointed by the central government in consultation with the Reserve Bank of India. So now why do we need such a bank? What is its significance? See, mainly such a body will help in catalyzing the investments in the fund-starved infrastructure sector of our country and then it will also facilitate major plans of the government in the infrastructure sector. For example, this institution will start by looking at the projects under national infrastructure pipeline which are about 1000 crore each. So that means setting up of this bank is a turning point in building India infrastructure for the next few decades because as we already said, infrastructure sector is fund-starved. That is there is perennial shortage of infrastructure capital. So even if we take the example of a national infrastructure pipeline it has also got concerns about the existence of fiscal constraints but now such critical gap of financing will be addressed through the financing by this institution. So the major benefit of this bank is that it will boost the infrastructure sector. So these are some of the points that you need to know about national bank for financing infrastructure and development. So with this discussion we are moving to the next session which is the practice questions discussion session. Now look at this first question. It is a pair based question. The question says, consider the following sites identified under the Prasad scheme. So on one side, sites are given and on the other side, corresponding states are given. We have to choose the correctly matched pairs. First pair is Khamakya Arnachal Pradesh. So this is a temple, Khamakya temple and it is not situated in Arnachal Pradesh but it is in Assam. So this pair is incorrect. Now the second pair, Parshuramkund Uttarakhand. This pair is also not correct because Parshuramkund is in the lower district of Arnachal Pradesh. Now the next pair is Velangani Tamil Nadu. Now this is a correctly matched pair. It is situated in Tamil Nadu. See this place is famous for the Velangani church which is a Christian pilgrim shrine and the name of the place is also Velangani. It is situated in Nagapadnam district of Tamil Nadu. Now let us not go into details about just know in which states these sites belong to. So totally under the Prashad scheme 41 sites in 25 states have been identified. Here is the list of these sites. Just know the sites and the states to which they belong to. So the correct answer to this question is option D3 only. Now this next question is based on IACTC. Consider the following statements regarding Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation. First statement, this wholly owned subsidiary of Government of India through Indian Railways. So this statement is incorrect because now IACTC is not a wholly owned subsidiary of Government of India. Initially it was so but in 2019 IACTC was listed on the National Stock Exchange and after that Government of India's holdings in IACTC was reduced and currently it is 67 percentage. So first statement is incorrect. The moment you know this you can easily avoid the correct answer which is option B2 and 3 only. Now let us see the second statement. It is a Mini Ratna Category 1 company. This statement is correct. This Mini Ratna Category 1 status was conferred on IACTC in 2008. Now let us look at the third statement. Its four business segments are internet ticketing, catering, packaged drinking water and travel and tourism. This statement is also correct. These are the four business segments of IACTC and additionally know that IACTC operates several trains as a private player in India. These trains include the Lucknow New Delhi Tejas Express then we have the Ahmedabad, Mumbai Central Tejas Express then we have the Kashi Mahakal Hamsapar Express which is running between Indore and Varanasi. So the correct answer is option B. Now with these problems practice question I have this quiz question for you. This question has been framed based on the National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development discussion of today. It is a three statement question. Read each statement carefully and then you can write the answer to this question in the comment section. I will tell you whether your answer is right or not. Now let us take the main question for today. This question has been framed based on the entire US trade relations. It is a GS2 question. You have to answer this question in 250 words. So here the question also asks you to list the steps that has been taken in the forum. So you can allot a significant part of your answer to this second half of the question. Interest aspirants can write answer to this question and post it in the comment section and whenever we get time we'll review your answer. So viewers I hope you found our discussion helpful. If you like this video don't forget to like, comment and share. And do subscribe to Shankara IS Academy YouTube channel for more updates related to cell services preparation. Thank you.