🗒 UPSC Editorial Notes — Daily Current Affairs

🔍 The Story So Far — Tamil Nadu Context

• TVK (Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam) emerged as single largest party in 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections
• Governor Rajendra Arlekar refused to swear in TVK president C. Joseph Vijay as new CM for several days
• Lok Bhavan insisted Vijay must prove majority by handing over physical letters of support from at least 118 MLAs in the 234-seat assembly
• Vijay met Governor four times and staked claim to form government; scheduled to take oath at 10 a.m. on Sunday
• Writ petition filed in SC arguing Governor is "duty-bound" to invite Mr. Vijay to form new government, swear him in, and immediately subject his claim to a trust vote

📜 Governor's Role in Formation of New Government — Article 164

• Article 164 of the Constitution — Governor appoints the Chief Minister
• Constitution does not provide a settled procedure for a Governor to choose a CM in a hung Assembly
• Constitutional conventions dictate Governor's actions must be guided by sobriety
• Primary objective: ensure formation of a stable government
• To this end: Sarkaria Commission (1988); five-member Committee of Governors (appointed by President, Conference of Governors, New Delhi, November 1970); and conventions evolved through successive SC rulings
• Governor must proceed legally and explore all possibilities with political parties, groups, and independent MLAs within a reasonable time

📋 Hierarchy of Preference — Sarkaria Commission (1988)

🗳 When is a Floor Test Required?

• SR Bommai (1994): Nine-judge Bench — Constitution does not create obligation that political party forming government must necessarily have majority in Assembly at the time of swearing in
• "Majority governments are not unknown. What is necessary is that the government should enjoy the confidence of the House" — Supreme Court
• Floor test = most objective and transparent way to ascertain majority
• Governor cannot be the judge of majority — House, not Lok Bhavan, is the place where democracy is in action
• Governor cannot remain in limbo — neither able to appoint a government nor exercise the power of dissolution
• SC interpreted in BK Kapur (2001) and Rameshwar Prasad (2006): Governor can dissolve LA under Article 174(2)(b) even before the first meeting of the State Legislature — but only to avoid a breakdown of constitutional machinery due to parties' inability to form a government of requisite strength

🏛 Has the Floor Test Been an Objective Means?

• Governor Arlekar's insistence on physical letters of support = sole reason for deadlock — criticised widely
• SC has consistently relied on the floor test as most objective and transparent way to ascertain majority
• Fate of electorate's mandate must NOT be left to personal discretion of Governor
• Test of confidence should normally be left to a vote in the Assembly
• 2017: Court declined to stay swearing-in of Manohar Parrikar as Goa CM at head of post-poll alliance; reduced 15-day window to prove majority over Congress to 48 hours
• Karnataka: Governor invited Yediyurappa; 15 days to prove majority; reduced to 24 hours on live camera and not by secret ballot; Yediyurappa resigned before trust vote

🔑 Key Terms

🔍 What Happened on the Ship?

• MV Hondius — Dutch expedition cruise ship — travelling from Ushuaia (Argentina) across South Atlantic toward Cape Verde and Canary Islands
• WHO said 147 passengers and crew were onboard; 34 had previously disembarked
• As of May 8 — eight cases (six confirmed, two probable); three died after contracting the Andes strain of hantavirus
• Several hospitalised with symptoms including fever and breathing difficulties
• After confirmed and suspected cases identified — health authorities in Singapore, Switzerland, South Africa, Spain, and USA began tracking and monitoring passengers

🐀 What is Hantavirus?

• Hantaviruses = a group of viruses mainly carried by rodents such as rats and mice
• Humans get infected after coming into contact with infected rodent urine, saliva, or droppings — especially while cleaning or disturbing contaminated areas, which can release virus particles into the air
• Can affect either the lungs or the kidneys
• Some strains cause Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) — severe respiratory illness
• Others lead to Haemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome (HFRS) — affecting kidneys and blood vessels
• WHO: Even though most hantaviruses do not spread from person to person, the Andes virus strain (South America) has shown some human-to-human transmission — usually among close contacts

⚠️ Why Are Health Agencies Concerned?

• MV Hondius drew attention because passengers travelled across several countries before infection was identified — cross-border tracking challenge
• WHO reported cases characterised by fever, gastrointestinal symptoms, pneumonia, respiratory distress, and shock
• Officials from WHO and CDC stressed: hantavirus spreads very differently from COVID-19 — far less transmissible
• WHO has stated: hantavirus does not spread easily between humans like airborne viruses such as influenza or SARS-CoV-2

💊 Treatment and Risk

• Symptoms appear between one and eight weeks after exposure — early symptoms flu-like: fever, muscle aches, fatigue, headache, chills, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, dizziness
• Severe cases: infection affects lungs causing coughing, chest tightness, breathing difficulty, fluid build-up in lungs
• No specific antiviral cure or approved vaccine for hantavirus infection
• Treatment = supportive medical care: oxygen therapy, fluid management, intensive care; some may need mechanical ventilation
• High-risk groups: Farmers, forestry workers, campers, construction workers, people cleaning poorly ventilated or abandoned buildings
• Prevention: Rodent control, proper sanitation, safe cleaning practices in potentially contaminated environments

🌍 Could This Become Another Pandemic?

• Public health agencies say current evidence does NOT suggest a COVID-19-like global pandemic scenario
• WHO: overall risk to wider public remains low; hantavirus does not spread easily between humans
• Outbreak drew attention to zoonotic diseases — infections that spread from animals to humans — and importance of preparedness as global travel and human-animal interactions increase
• WHO and health agencies stressed: stronger surveillance, quicker reporting, testing systems, and coordination between countries are helping health authorities respond effectively

🔑 Key Terms

🔍 What is an Orbital Data Centre?

• A constellation of satellites carrying the same kind of GPUs found in terrestrial data centres
• Can train and run AI models in orbit rather than only relaying data to ground stations
• Can do more demanding work than conventional satellites' low-power "edge" processors — used for tasks like signal compression
• Edge computing on Earth = practice of routing computation close to where data is generated (rather than in centralised cloud); the same logic applied in orbit = what space-based compute promises to extend
• Earth observation satellites generate detailed, heavy image files — expensive to downlink (beam data to ground stations)
• Orbital data centre = process data in orbit; beam only the conclusions to ground — solves the "data gravity" bottleneck

🌏 Why are Global Firms Suddenly Interested?

• Three factors converging in past two years:
• 1. Data centre constraints: Terrestrial data centres limited by energy availability, land, water, and local regulation — all amplified by AI demands
• 2. Solar power advantage: In right orbit, solar power is effectively continuous and offers free electricity — strongest argument for moving computation to space
• 3. Competitive positioning: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in X (2025) — Starlink V3 satellites with high-speed laser links "would work"; SpaceX will be doing this
• Amazon founder Jeff Bezos: "We can four to five times if we can solve the other parts of the equation" — orbital data centres as answer
• Blue Origin, Microsoft Azure, Lonestar Data Holdings have already begun pilot deployments — none has yet produced a commercial-scale orbital data centre

⚡ What are the Challenges?

• Heat management: GPU chips powered by solar panels become hot; space may be cold but vacuum eliminates convection — GPUs in orbit are effectively ovens unable to fan away waste energy
• Only solution: heat pumped through ammonia-filled loops to deployable radiator panels — technology with reminders of how unforgiving this regime can be
• Radiation damage: Long-duration mission flown to date — "bit flips" where bits and bytes of computers randomly change; long-term semiconductor degradation caused by cosmic rays and radiation-hardened chips
• Power required for eclipse periods; maintenance is effectively impossible without robotic servicing — redundancy must be designed in from the start

🤝 What Does the Pixxel-Sarvam Partnership Involve?

• Pathfinder satellite — to be designed, built, launched, and operated by Pixxel; Sarvam will provide the AI backbone with full-stack language models being run on the platform
• Pixxel's hyperspectral camera will be carried on the same platform — use case: imagery captured in orbit can be analysed in orbit, with only conclusions transmitted to Earth
• Pixxel is a 200 kg-class satellite scheduled for orbit in Q4 2025
• Single-satellite demonstrator — designed to test whether ground-level hardware can be made to function reliably in the harsh, low Earth orbit environment
• Pixxel has several experts who worked with ISRO and have experience in thermal management in space
• Sarvam — Indian AI firm; will provide full-stack language models; GPU layer for both training and inference

🔑 Key Terms