October 2020

CURRENT AFFAIRS OCTOBER 2020

GS 1 World will have 150 million ‘new extreme poor people’ in 2021

The world will have 88-115 million ‘new extreme poor people’ in 2020 due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, a new World Bank report released said. The number could rise to as many as 150 million by 2021.

This is the first time in 20 years that global poverty rates will go up, according to the biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report.

Highlights

Global extreme poverty rate is projected to rise by around 1.3 percentage points, to 9.2 per cent in 2020. If the pandemic would not have been there, the poverty rate was expected to drop to 7.9 per cent in 2020.

This is nearly twice the number of ‘new extreme poor’ estimated by the World Bank in April 2020. Six months ago, 40-60 million people were estimated to become extremely poor in 2020.

Most of the ‘new extreme poor’ will be in countries that already have high poverty rates. Several middle-income countries will see significant numbers of people slip below the extreme poverty line. About 82 per cent of the total will be in middle-income countries, according to the new World Bank estimates.

Increasing numbers of urban dwellers are expected to fall into extreme poverty, the World Bank said. This even as a majority of the rural areas still share the burden of ‘extreme poverty’.

When 52 million people were lifted out of poverty between 2015 and 2017, the rate of reduction slowed to less than half a percentage point per year between 2015 and 2017.

Global poverty had declined at the rate of around 1 percentage point per year between 1990 and 2015.

In two-and-a-half decades (1990-2015), the extreme poverty rate declined by 26 percentage points. It dropped to 10 per cent from nearly 36 per cent.

While less than a tenth of the world’s population lives on less than $1.90 a day, close to a quarter lives below the $3.20 line and more than 40 per cent — almost 3.3 billion people — live below the $5.50 line

Average income of people is projected to decline and this will hit the poorest the most according to the World Bank estimates. Shared prosperity or growth in income of the poorest 40 per cent of a country’s population will suffer due to the pandemic-led deceleration in economic activity, the report said.

Average global shared prosperity may stagnate or even contract over 2019-2021 due to the reduced growth in average incomes, the report warned.

During 2012-2017, the growth was inclusive and the incomes of the poorest 40 per cent of the population grew. In fact, the average global shared prosperity (growth in the incomes of the bottom 40 per cent) was 2.3 per cent during the period.

Without policy actions, the COVID-19 crisis may lead to an increase in income inequality, resulting in a world that is less inclusive, the World Bank noted. Reservation for women in State Civil Service

Punjab cabinet approved 33 per cent reservation for women in direct recruitment for the Punjab civil services, boards and corporations.

The state Cabinet approved the ‘Punjab Civil Services (Reservation of Posts for Women) Rules, 2020’ to provide such reservation for women for direct recruitment to posts in government, as well as in Boards and Corporations in Group A, B, C and D posts, an official spokesperson said. The state had provided 33 per cent reservation for women in panchayats and local bodies.

The decision makes Punjab the second state to give reservation to women in government jobs. Bihar in 2016 had formally given 35 percent reservation to women in all government jobs in the state. Women has right of residence in ‘shared household’ of in-laws

The progress of any society depends on its ability to protect and promote the rights of its women”, the Supreme Court said recently, while ruling that a woman is entitled to claim right to residence in a “shared household” where she has been living with her husband even if the said premises belongs to his relatives.

A three-judge Bench overruled a 2006 judgement of the court and said “In event, the shared household belongs to any relative of the husband with whom in a domestic relationship the woman has lived, the conditions mentioned in Section 2(s) (of The Protection of Women From Domestic Violence Act, 2005) are satisfied and the said house will become a shared household”.

The observations came in a judgment that held that the relief granting right to residence to a married woman under the domestic violence law by a criminal court was relevant and could be considered even in civil proceedings seeking her eviction from the matrimonial home.

The right of occupation of matrimonial home, which was not so far part of the statutory law in India came to be included in Act, 2005”, the court said and pointed out that such a right exists in the audited kingdom.

 In its 2006 judgement in the case S.R. Batra Vs. Taruna Batra, a two-judge Bench of the court had disallowed the woman involved from claiming any right to live in the said house since it belonged to mother-in-law of the respondent and did not belong to her husband.

Ruling in favour of the women, the SC dwelt on the rights of women and the circumstances meaning to the passing of the 2005 Act which it described “is a milestone for protection of women in this country”.

Women continue to be vulnerable to these crimes because of non-retaliation, coupled with absence of laws addressing their rights and ignorance of the existing statutes. Societal attitude, stigma and conditioning also made women vulnerable to domestic violence, the court said.

It said that till 2005, “the remedies available to a victim of domestic violence were limited. The women either had to go to the civil court for a decree of divorce or initiate prosecution in the criminal court for the offence punishable under Section 498-A of the IPC.

 In both the proceedings, no emergency relief/reliefs is/are available to the victim. Also, the relationships outside the marriage were not recognized. This set of circumstances ensured that a majority of women preferred to suffer in silence, not out of choice but of compulsion. Improving Sex ratio

There is an urgent need to reach young people both for reproductive health education and services as well as to cultivate gender equity norms.

Why is it necessary

Fertility has been declining in India for some time now. The Sample Registration System (SRS) Statistical Report (2018) estimated the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), the number of children a mother would have at the current pattern of fertility during her lifetime, as 2.2 in the year 2018.

Fertility is likely to continue to decline and it is estimated that replacement TFR of 2.1 would soon be reached for India as a whole.

Many people believe that the population would stabilise or begin to reduce in a few years once replacement fertility is reached. This is not so because of the population momentum effect, a result of more people entering the reproductive age group of 15-49 years due to the past high-level of fertility.

 For instance, the replacement fertility level was reached in Kerala around 1990, but its annual population growth rate was 0.7 per cent in 2018, nearly 30 years later. This is the reason why UN Population Division has estimated that India’s population would possibly peak at 161 crore around 2061.

But the most troubling statistics in the SRS report are for sex ratio at birth.

Biologically normal sex ratio at birth is 1,050 males to 1,000 females or 950 females to 1,000 males. The SRS reports show that sex ratio at birth in India, measured as the number of females per 1,000 males, declined marginally from 906 in 2011 to 899 in 2018.

There is considerable son preference in all states, except possibly in Kerala and Chhattisgarh. The UNFPA State of World Population 2020 estimated the sex ratio at birth in India as 910, lower than all the countries in the world except China.

This is a cause for concern because this adverse ratio results in a gross imbalance in the number of men and women and its inevitable impact on marriage systems as well as other harms to women. Thus, much more attention is needed on this issue.

Way ahead

Increasing female education and economic prosperity can help to improve the ratio.

In view of the complexity of son preference resulting in gender-biased sex selection, government actions need to be supplemented by improving women’s status in the society.

There is an urgent need to reach young people both for reproductive health education and services as well as to cultivate gender equity norms. This could reduce the effect of population momentum and accelerate progress towards reaching a more normal sex-ratio at birth. India’s population future depends on it. International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

October 17 is observed as International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. This year it is observed at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has undone years of gains in reducing poverty across the world.

This year’s theme: ‘Acting Together to Achieve Social and Environmental Justice for All’

The world has reported an increase in poverty the first time in a quarter century. More than 90 per cent countries have reported a dip in per capita income. More than 115 million new poor have been added to the world, and their spread is universal, from the rich Europe to the already poor Asia; and from rural to urban areas.

In 2019, according to the World Bank estimate, one out of every 10 people was an extreme poor, or lived with income less than US$ 1.90/day known as the global extreme poverty line.

Poverty has been universal. In Europe, many countries had above 10 per cent poverty while the United States of America had a 15 per cent poverty rate making it the poorest country among the rich ones.

The ecology of poverty

What economists and politicians define as poverty is basically income poverty. A few countries – like India and Nigeria as two prime examples - host the world’s largest number of poor and this have been the case for decades. In these countries, invariably the poor live in very ecologically fragile areas.

Hence, ecological degradation has an impact on level of income, thus, on poverty level. Thus, the income poverty should be termed as the ecological poverty.

 Various estimates say the natural capital accounts for 9 per cent of wealth globally, but it accounts for 47 per cent of the wealth in low income countries. This shows the dependence of people on natural resources in developing and poor countries.

A Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) study shows that more than a billion people are forest-dependent, and most of them survive below the poverty line. Or one in every seven people is a forest dependent person in the world. Most of them are in Africa and Asia.

According to Forests, Trees and the Eradication of Poverty: Potential and Limitations by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations, forestry contributes at least $ 539 billion directly to the world Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

In India, the poorest regions are invariably the forested areas of the country in states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh. These areas in India feature constantly in the poverty map. Some 275 million people in India depend on forest for subsistence. In the country’s poorest regions, forests provide up to 30 per cent of their total income. This is more than agriculture and other sources of income.

The World Bank estimates that “climate change will drive 68 million to 135 million into poverty by 2030”. These new ecological poor will be again in already poor regions like Sub- Saharan Africa and South Asia. Erratic weather conditions would further degrade land, water and forests, the three most important sources of livelihoods for the world’s poorest population.

According to the World Bank’s report titled Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018: Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle’, poverty reduction rate has slowed down.

 During 1990-2015 extreme poverty reduced by an annual 1 per cent, but during 2013-15 reduction slowed down below one per cent for these two years.

But the most worrying takeaway is the dramatic change in the distribution of poor in the world over the last two decades. This change indicates what fragile ecology means to the state of economic well-being.

Poverty in absolute terms is increasing in areas usually associated with the likes of sub- Saharan Africa and South Asia. Now sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia host over 85 per cent of the poor in the world.

 In 1990, half of the world’s poor lived in East Asia and the Pacific. Further, 26 of the world’s 27 poorest countries were in sub-Saharan Africa. This region had just a quarter of the world’s poor in 2002. But by 2015, it has now more poor than the rest of the world combined.

At the global level, just five countries—India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo—account for half of the extreme poor in the world. This is at a time when half of the countries in the world have less than 3 per cent poverty level.

The current geography of the poor has two situational realities.

One is that the poor reside mostly in rural areas. Going by the Bank’s report, three-fourths of the total poor live in rural areas.

Secondly, these places have a highly degraded ecology. Most of the poor depend on natural resources like land, forests and livestock for survival. So for them, economy is all about ecology. Degradation of the ecology, thus, leads to poverty. Indus Valley Civilisation

The year 2020 marks 100 years of discovery of Indus Valley Civilisation, and a new study has shown that dairy products were being produced by the Harappans as far back as 2500 BCE.

By analysing residues on ancient pots, researchers show the earliest direct evidence of dairy product processing, thus throwing fresh light on the rural economy of the civilisation. The studies were carried out on 59 shards of pottery from Kotada Bhadli, a small archeological site in present-day Gujarat.

The team was also able to show which type of animals were being used for dairy production. A preliminary study suggested that most of the cattle and water-buffalo died at an older age, suggesting they could have been raised for milk, whereas the majority of goat/sheep died when they were young, indicating they could have been used for meat.

About Indus Valley Civilisation

The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilisation in the north western regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE.

It flourished in the basins of the Indus River.

The civilisation's cities were noted for their urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems, clusters of large non-residential buildings, and new techniques in handicraft (carnelian products, seal carving) and metallurgy (copper, bronze, lead, and tin). Mars Opposition

Due to an event referred to as “opposition”, which takes place every two years and two months, Mars will outshine Jupiter, becoming the third brightest object (moon and Venus are first and second, respectively) in the night sky during the month of October.

This year, while Mars’ closest approach to Earth was on October 6, the opposition happened on October 13, which will give the planet its “biggest, apparent size of the 2020s, according to NASA.

Mars’s next close approach will happen on December 8, 2022, when the planet will be 62.07 km away from the Earth. The closest approach does not mean that Mars will appear to be the same size as that of the moon.

Opposition

Opposition is the event when the sun, Earth and an outer planet (Mars in this case) are lined up, with the Earth in the middle.

The time of opposition is the point when the outer planet is typically also at its closest distance to the Earth for a given year, and because it is close, the planet appears brighter in the sky.

An opposition can occur anywhere along Mars’ orbit, but when it happens when the planet is also closest to the sun, it is also particularly close to the Earth.

Why is it called opposition?

As per NASA, from an individual’s perspective on the Earth, Mars rises in the east and after staying up all night, it sets in the west just as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

Because from the perspective on Earth, the sun and Mars appear to be on the opposite sides of the sky, Mars is said to be in “opposition”. Essentially, opposition is a reference to “opposing the sun” in the sky. When does opposition happen?

The opposition can happen only for planets that are farther away from the sun than the Earth. In case of Mars, roughly every two years, the Earth passes between sun and Mars, this is when the three are arranged in a straight line. In other words, the Earth, sun and Mars all lie in a straight line, with the Earth in the middle.

As per NASA, Mars made its closest approach to Earth in 2003 in nearly 60,000 years and it won’t be that close to the planet until 2287. This is because the orbits of Earth and Mars are not perfectly circular and their shapes can change slightly because of gravitational tugging by other planets. For instance, Jupiter influences the orbit of Mars.

GS 2 Azerbaijan vs Armenia

Context: Over the last one week, military action in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, has resulted in the death of at least 100 civilians and Armenian combatants. While the two countries have fought over the region for decades, the current conflict is being seen as one of the most serious in recent years. Azerbaijan has not released information on its casualties.

What is Nagorno-Karabakh

Straddling western Asia and Eastern Europe, Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, but most of the region is controlled by Armenian separatists. Nagorno- Karabakh has been part of Azerbaijan territory since the Soviet era. When the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late 1980s, Armenia’s regional parliament voted for the region’s transfer to Armenia; the Soviet authorities turned down the demand.

Years of clashes followed between Azerbaijan forces and Armenian separatists. The violence lasted into the 1990s, leaving tens and thousands dead and displacing hundreds of thousands. In 1994, Russia brokered a ceasefire, by which time ethnic Armenians had taken control of the region.

While the area remains in Azerbaijan, it is today governed by separatist Armenians who have declared it a republic called the “Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast”. While the

Armenian government does not recognise Nagorno-Karabakh as independent, it supports the region politically and militarily.

Even after the 1994 peace deal, the region has been marked by regular exchanges of fire. In 2016, it saw a Four-Day War before Russia mediated peace. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, chaired by France, Russia and the US, has tried to get the two countries to reach a peace agreement for several years.

What is the fresh conflict about?

According to the Warsaw-based Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), the current escalation was “most likely” initiated by Azerbaijan. Media reports have noted that the clashes were possibly a fallout of Azerbaijan’s bid to reclaim some territories occupied by separatist Armenians.

The chairman of Azerbaijan’s National Council has said in a statement that the “military operation of the Azerbaijani army continues to clear the territories occupied by the enemy for almost 30 years”. Strategic significance of the region

The energy-rich Azerbaijan has built several gas and oil pipelines across the Caucasus (the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea) to Turkey and Europe. This includes the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline (with a capacity of transporting 1.2 billion barrels a day), the Western Route Export oil pipeline, the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline and the South Caucasus gas pipeline. Some of these pipelines pass close to the conflict zone (within 16 km of the

border). In an open war between the two countries, the pipelines could be targeted, which would impact energy supplies.

What are the stakes for Russia, and other countries?

The conflict is getting worldwide attention because of the involvement of regional rivals Turkey and Russia. Muslim-majority Turkey backs Azerbaijan, and recently condemned Christian-majority Armenia for not resolving the issue through peaceful negotiations. Turkey recently declared unconditional support to Muslim-majority Azerbaijan.

Russia and Turkey also back opposite sides in the civil wars playing out in Syria and Libya and Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan may be seen as an attempt to counter Russia’s influence in the region of South Caucasus.

Russia’s role is somewhat opaque since it supplies arms to both countries and is in a military alliance with Armenia called the Collective Security Treaty Organisation. But Armenia is more dependent on Russia than the energy-rich, ambitious Azerbaijan. Russia also has a military base in Armenia. But Moscow, at least publicly, is trying to strike a balance between the two. Like in the 1990s, its best interest would be in mediating a ceasefire between the warring sides.

Other countries, including the US, have limited their participation to appeals for maintaining peace so far. For all countries, the region is an important transit route for the supply of oil and natural gas to the European Union. COVID-19 vaccine testing

The Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), has been chosen by the international non-profit, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), as one of the ‘Global network of Laboratories for centralized assessment of COVID-19 Vaccines’.

The CEPI network will initially involve six labs, one each in Canada, Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Bangladesh and India. All the labs would use the same reagents and follow a common set of protocols to measure the immune response of multiple vaccine candidates under development and trial.

This will greatly harmonise the vaccine trial process and allow different vaccine candidates to be compared and speed up the selection of the most effective candidate.

The Ind-CEPI mission for the establishment of BSL-3 (Bio-safety level 3) facility, is a translational laboratory for platform technologies and a Bioassay laboratory for development of assays to measure clinical immunogenicity. The mandate of the bioassay laboratory at the THSTI is to provide validated assays for vaccine development on a par with global standards.

About CEPI

CEPI is a global partnership launched in 2017 to develop vaccines to stop future epidemics.

CEPI was founded in Davos (Switzerland) by the governments of Norway and India, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the World Economic Forum.

Child should learn mother tongue: SC

A child has to learn his mother tongue to gain a foundation, the Supreme Court accosted Jagan Mohan Reddy-led Andhra government’s logic that children, without learning English, get ‘isolated’.

Chief Justice of India S A Bobde said that it is “important that a child learns in the mother tongue” to build the “foundation”, and disagreed with submissions that lawyers who studied in vernacular languages find it difficult to argue in Supreme Court.

The Andhra Pradesh government has approached the Supreme Court challenging its State High Court decision to strike down a government order of November 2019 which made English medium education compulsory from classes I to VI in primary, upper primary and high schools under all managements from 2020-21. It was to be gradually extended to each further class from the consequent academic years.

Appearing for the state, senior counsel K V Viswanathan submitted that lack of proficiency in the language limits opportunities and creates “islands of exclusion”. He also argued that English as the medium of learning has not been imposed on children. The choice of their parents would prevail. The government order is a “progressive measure”.

Centre’s response

The Union Ministry of Education has already informed the Supreme Court that it is fully backing a push for “mother tongue” as medium of instruction in schools. The use of “home language” for learning will bridge the gap between the intelligentsia and the masses.

It said an order was issued last month to academic authorities, including CBSE, NCERT and NCTE, to initiate the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP), which was approved by the Union Cabinet in July 2020, to promote ‘mutlingualism’ and use of “home language” as a mode of instruction.

The Centre’s affidavit had come in response to the Supreme Court’s inclination to examine whether imposing English on a multitude of school children, whose language of instruction was their mother tongue, would amount to depriving them of an effective education guaranteed to them under Article 21A (fundamental right to education) of the Constitution.

TRP system

Mumbai Police Commissioner recently said that police are looking into a scam about manipulation of TRPs (Television Rating Points) by rigging the devices used by the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India, which has the mandate to measure television audience in India.

About TRP

In simple terms, TRPs represent how many people, from which socio-economic categories, watched which channels for how much time during a particular period. This could be for an hour, a day, or even a week; India follows the international standard of one minute. The data is usually made public every week.

A consultation paper about television audience measurement and ratings in India floated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in 2018 defined its importance as: “On the basis of audience measurement data, ratings are assigned to various programmes on television.

Television ratings in turn influence programmes produced for the viewers. Better ratings would promote a programme while poor ratings will discourage a programme.

Incorrect ratings will lead to production of programmes which may not be really popular while good programmes may be left out.

BARC

It is an industry body jointly owned by advertisers, ad agencies, and broadcasting companies, represented by The Indian Society of Advertisers, the Indian Broadcasting Foundation and the Advertising Agencies Association of India.

Though it was created in 2010, the I&B Ministry notified the Policy Guidelines for Television Rating Agencies in India on January 10, 2014 and registered BARC in July 2015 under these guidelines, to carry out television ratings in India. Nobel Peace Prize 2020

The Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize 2020 to the United Nation’s (UN) World Food Programme (WFP) for its efforts to combat hunger and for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for preventing the use of hunger being weaponised in war and conflict.

About the Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded since 1901 and was not awarded on 19 occasions including 1914-1916, 1918, 1939-1943 among some other years.

Overall, the prize has been awarded to 135 laureates, including 107 individuals and 28 organisations. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been awarded the prize twice.

The youngest laureate is Malala Yousafzai, who was 17 years old when she won in 2014 and the oldest recipient was Joseph Rotblat who was given the award at the age of 87 in 1995.

UN WFP and Nobel Peace prize

The WFP, which was established in 1961 at the behest of the US president Dwight Eisenhower, is the world’s largest humanitarian organisation (certified as the largest by the Guinness World Records in 2002) committed towards its global goal of ending hunger by the year 2030.

The WFP is headquartered in Rome, Italy. It is governed by an Executive Board, which consists of 36 member states. It is headed by an Executive Director, who is appointed jointly by the UN Secretary-General and the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The Executive Director is appointed for fixed five-year terms.

In 2015, eradication of world hunger became one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and WFP is the UN’s primary instrument in achieving that goal. Other UN agencies that work towards providing food security include the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

WFP was awarded the peace prize “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.”

The WFP is the 28th organisation awarded the Nobel Peace Prize since its inception in 1901.

WFP runs entirely on public donations and was able to raise over $8 billion last year. Its donors include governments, corporations and individuals.

How does WFP help people?

WFP provides food assistance in two ways, either by way of providing food or by meeting people’s food-needs by providing cash-based transfers. The cash-based transfers were launched for the first time in 2005 in response to the tsunami in Sri Lanka.

In 2019, WFP provided assistance to close to 100 million people spread across 88 countries by supplying them with over 4.2 million metric tonnes of food and $1.2 billion in cash and vouchers.

In 1962, the WFP undertook its first emergency operation after an earthquake in Iran killed over 12,000 people; in 1963, the organisation launched its first development programme in Sudan.

In 1989, WFP staged the largest humanitarian airdrop in history involving 20 cargo aircraft when it launched “Operation Lifeline Sudan” to provide assistance to millions of people affected by the civil war that played out in the southern part of the country.

More recently, the organisation has provided food aid to over 4.5 million victims of the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, in 2011 to millions of people affected by the Syrian conflict, in 2014 to people affected by the Ebola outbreak and in 2015 to the Nepal earthquake survivors.

WFP measuring hunger

The organisation estimates hunger by the prevalence of undernourishment. The UN defines undernourished or food-deprived people as those individuals whose food intake falls below the minimum level of dietary energy requirements.

These dietary energy requirements are set by sex and age groups in consultation between the FAO, UN and WHO. The energy requirement is the amount of energy from food required to balance energy expenditure in order to maintain body-weight, body composition and a level of necessary and desirable physical activity that is consistent with long-term good health, as per the UN.

According to current estimates, about 8.9 per cent of the world’s population or about 690 million people are hungry and as per WFP if the current trends continue, by 2030 there will be 840 million hungry people.

Further, about 135 million suffer from acute hunger mainly as a result of man-made conflicts, climate change and economic downturns. WFP estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic could possibly double that figure.

WFP works in India

WFP has been working in India since 1963 and has transitioned from food distribution to providing technical assistance as India became self-sufficient in cereal production.

One-fourth of the world’s undernourished population is in India and about 21 percent of the population live on less than $1.90 a day.

At the moment, WFP is working to improve the government’s targeted public distribution system (TPDS) to ensure that food reaches those that need it the most. It is also working with the government to improve the nutritional value of the Midday Meal programme and is using its own software called the Vulnerability and Analysis Mapping to identify the most food insecure groups in the country.

Recently, WFP has partnered with the government of Uttar Pradesh to set up over 200 supplementary nutrition production units to support distribution under the government’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme that provides nutrition services to children below the age of six. Special court to try cases ‘against legislators’

Context: The Delhi Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court’s decision to seek higher judicial opinion on whether it has jurisdiction to hear the defamation suit by former Union minister M J Akbar against journalist Priya Ramani cites an order under which the court was set up in 2018 to try pending criminal cases or offences “against” sitting and former legislators following a Supreme Court order.

Details

Hearing a 2016 petition filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, with the larger objective of checking criminalisation of politics, the top court had in 2017 given the go- ahead for setting up 12 special courts to try “criminal cases/offences involving political persons” that are pending.

The court also used the expression “elected representatives” in its various orders.

 The 2017 order approved the government scheme to set up these courts, saying that once the special courts are set up, “the High Court(s), acting through the various trial courts, will trace out from the case records the particular case(s) pending in files of the respective judicial officers under the jurisdiction of the High Court(s) which are required to be dealt with by the special courts under the scheme”.  Thereafter, the court said, these cases should be transferred to “such special courts(s) for adjudication”.

In 2018, the SC was informed that two special courts — one sessions court and one magisterial court — have been set up in Delhi.

In the plea, Upadhyay had sought a direction to the Centre “to provide adequate infrastructure to setup special courts to decide criminal cases related to people’s representatives, public servants and members of judiciary within one year, and to debar the convicted persons from Legislature, Executive and Judiciary for life uniformly. Pandemic and Mental Health

For the World Mental Health Day (October 10, 2020), the World Health Organisation (WHO) again advised countries to increase investments in treatment and rehabilitation of patients.

Details

Survey after survey have indicated that the pandemic is increasing mental health problems. Half the respondents from seven countries in a survey by non-profit International Society for the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement reported negative effects on mental health.

In India, experienced increased stress and anxiety were noted among 39 per cent professionals in a survey by social network LinkedIn.

Practo, an integrated health care company, reported a 665 per cent jump in the number of mental health queries (from a year ago); more than two-thirds of the queries were from those aged 21-40. Anxiety, stress and panic attacks were some of the most commonly discussed topics.

The impacts were already visible in the initial months of the pandemic. In the United States, more than 90 per cent respondents to a survey by researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of North Carolina School of Medicine reported increased worry, frustration, boredom or anxiety in July.

Similarly, findings of a survey published in PLoS One from 64 cities in India showed that approximately a third of respondents experienced significant psychological impact. People in younger age, female gender and those with co-morbidities reported more psychological impact.

The pandemic has increased isolation and loss of income which are well known triggers of mental health conditions. The disease itself has been reported to lead to neurological and mental complications such as delirium, agitation and stroke.

A report published in The Lancet Psychiatry in February 2020 indicates that in 2017, there were 197.3 million people with mental disorders in India. The top mental illnesses were depressive disorder (45.7 million) and anxiety disorder (44.9 million). The contribution of mental disorders to the total DALYs in India increased from 2.5 per cent in 1990 to 4.7 per cent in 2017. Depressive disorder and anxiety disorder contributed the most to the total mental disorders DALYs.

WHO findings

In October, WHO released the findings of a survey carried out in 130 countries which showed that the pandemic had disrupted or halted mental health services in 93 per cent of the countries.

Though the problem is huge, sufficient funding is not available. Early this year, WHO had also pointed out that countries were spending less than 2 per cent of their health budget on mental health.

The global economic cost of mental illness is expected to be more than $16 trillion over the next 20 years, which is more than the cost of any other non-communicable disease.

Pakistan re-elected to United Nations Human Rights Councils

Pakistan has been re-elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council despite opposition from activist groups over its abysmal human rights records.

In a secret-ballot voting in the 193-member UN General Assembly on that race, Pakistan secured 169 votes, Uzbekistan received 164, Nepal 150, China 139 and Saudi Arabia lost the race with just 90 votes.

Under the Human Rights Council’s rules, seats are allocated to regions to ensure geographical representation. Except for the Asia-Pacific contest, the election of 15 members to the 47-member Human Rights Council was all but decided in advance because all the other regional groups had uncontested slates.

Pakistan is currently serving on the HRC since January 1, 2018. With its re-election, Pakistan will continue as a member for another three-year term commencing on January 1, 2021.

Since the HRC’s establishment in 2006, this is the fifth time that Pakistan has been elected to the United Nations’ premier body on human rights.

India and Bangladesh are also a member of the council last elected in 2018 to the term starting in 2019 and running out at the end of next year.

United Nations Human Rights Council

The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system made up of 47 States responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe.

It has the ability to discuss all thematic human rights issues and situations that require its attention throughout the year. It meets at the UN Office at Geneva. Boundary issues in the Northeast

Over the last one week, residents of Assam and Mizoram have clashed twice over territory, injuring at least eight people and torching a few huts and small shops. It spotlights the long- standing inter-state boundary issues in the Northeast, particularly between Assam and the states that were carved out of it.

The boundary dispute between the two states has been simmering since the formation of Mizoram as a separate state in the 1980s. According to an agreement between governments of Assam and Mizoram some years ago, status quo should be maintained in

no-man’s land in the border area. However, clashes have erupted from time to time over the issue.

Other boundary issues in the Northeast

During British rule, Assam included present-day Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya besides Mizoram, which became separate state one by one. Today, Assam has boundary problems with each of them.

Nagaland shares a 500-km boundary with Assam. According to a 2008 research paper from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, violent clashes and armed conflicts, marked by killings, have occurred on the Assam-Nagaland border since 1965. The boundary dispute is now in the Supreme Court.

On the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh boundary (over 800 km), clashes were first reported in 1992, according to the same research paper. Since then, there have been several accusations of illegal encroachment from both sides, and intermittent clashes. This boundary issue too is being heard by the Supreme Court.

The 884-km Assam-Meghalaya boundary, too, witnesses flare-ups frequently. As per Meghalaya government statements, today there are 12 areas of dispute between the two states. Rationalisation of Autonomous Institutions

The Finance Ministry has recommended that the Ministry of Environment Forests (MoEF) and Climate Change “disengage” from five autonomous institutions working under it and merge two others, thus reducing the 16 autonomous organisations under the ministry to nine.

The committee has recommended that MoEF disengage from five autonomous bodies: IIFM, WII, Indian Council of Forest Research and Education, Indian Plywood Industries Research and Training Institute, CPR Environmental Education Centre, and the Centre of Environment Education.

The recommendation is a part of an exercise carried out by the Finance Ministry for rationalisation of autonomous institutions that function under different ministries, and was sent to the Cabinet Secretary on September 30.

It has recommended that the environment ministry disengage from both in terms of financial support and administrative control.’

It recommended that the Society of Integrated Coastal Management be merged with the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management, as both “perform similar roles of promoting coastal management to avoid duplication of activities and attain economies of scale’’.

It recommended merging of Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, which receives Rs 14 crore annually from MoEF, to merge with the ministry.

It also recommended that the Indian Council for Forest and Research Education, GB Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment and Sustainable Development and statutory bodies such as Central Pollution Control Board, Central Zoo Authority (CZA), National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), National Biodiversity Authority continue to function under and with the financial support of MoEF. The Chronic battle with Malnourishment

India has been ranked 94 on the 2020 Global Hunger Index (GHI), lower than neighbours like Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The GHI showed that nearly 690 million people in the world are undernourished; 144 million children suffer from stunting, a sign of chronic undernutrition; 47 million children suffer from wasting, also a sign of acute undernutrition.

The number of young children in India who are very short and thin, reflecting severe undernutrition, puts it alongside the poorest African nations, with some indicators showing actual declines over the last five years.

About Global Hunger Index

The GHI is an annual peer-reviewed publication by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe. It aims to track hunger at global, regional and national levels. It uses four parameters to calculate its scores.

One third of the score comes from the level of undernourishment in a country, which is the share of the population with insufficient caloric intake and uses Food and Agriculture Organization data.

The other three parameters are based on children under the age of five years.

A third of the score comes from child mortality rate, which often reflects the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments.

The remaining third of the score is based on child wasting, which is the share of children who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition, and child stunting, which is the share of children who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition.

These parameters use information from the World Health Organization, the World Bank and the United Nations, although all these international organisations draw from national data, which, in India’s case, includes the National Family Health Surveys (NFHS).

This results in a 100-point scale, with zero meaning no hunger at all. Countries scoring 9.9 and less are classified as having a low severity. A score between 10 and 19.9 is considered moderate, that from 20 to 34.9 is serious, and a score of 35 or more is alarming.

India’s Performance

In 2020, India falls in the ‘serious’ category on the Index, with a total score of 27.2. This is a definite improvement from the situation two decades ago, when it scored 38.9 and fell into the ‘alarming’ category.

Its scores are abysmal when compared to its peers in the BRICS countries. China and Brazil both scored under five and are considered to have very low levels of hunger. South Africa is ranked 60 with a score of 13.5, indicating moderate levels of hunger.

In the serious category, India stands with some of the poorest African nations, as well as its own South Asian neighbours, all of whom have better scores except Afghanistan. India is tied at the 94th rank out of 107 countries, sharing the rank with Sudan.

In terms of overall undernourishment, 14% of India’s population does not get enough calories, an improvement from almost 20% in 2005-07. The child mortality rate is 3.7%, a significant drop from 9.2% in 2000. Many countries fare worse than India on these two parameters.

India’s poor score comes almost entirely from the child stunting and wasting parameters. Almost 35% of Indian children are stunted, and although this is much better than the 54.2% rate of 2000, it is still among the world’s worst.

Also, 17.3% of Indian children under five are wasted, which is the highest prevalence of child wasting in the world. There is no change from two decades ago, when it was 17.1%. In fact, the situation improved to 15% in the 2010-14 data period but worsened again by 2015-19.

Experts say this decline may also be partially due to vagaries in data collection. Hunger is a seasonal phenomenon in many parts of the country, with families dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods, facing lean periods based on the sowing and harvesting cycle.

 There are seasonality differences between NFHS’s third and fourth rounds, meaning that higher levels of wasting may have been seen in the fourth round, on which the latest scores are based, because field data was collected after a lean period.

Considered Reasons

Food insecurity, poor sanitation, inadequate housing, limited access to healthcare — all result in maternal distress that leads to the kind of slow, chronic wasting seen in Indian children.

Almost 42% of adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 have a low body mass index (BMI), while 54% have anaemia. Almost 27% of girls are married before they reach the legal age of 18 years,

and 8% of adolescents have begun child bearing in their teens. Almost half of all women have no access to any sort of contraception. These poor indicators of maternal health have dire consequences for the child’s health as well.

Poor sanitation, leading to diarrhoea, is another major cause of child wasting and stunting. At the time of the last NFHS, almost 40% of households were still practising open defecation. Only 36% of households disposed of children’s stools in a safe manner. One in ten children under the age of five suffer from diarrhoea. India becomes chair of ILO governing body

India assumed the role of chair of the International Labour Organisation’s governing body for the period of October 2020 till June 2021. It is taking up the role after a gap of 35 years.

 Labour Secretary Apurva Chandra will preside over the upcoming meeting of the governing body in November.

It will also provide a platform to apprise participants of the transformational initiative taken by the government in removing the rigidities of the labour market, besides making intention clear about the universalisation of social security to all workers in the organised or unorganised sector.

The ILO’s governing body is its apex executive body that decides on matters of policy, agenda and budget as well as elects the Director-General. It meets thrice a year, in March, June and November.

International Labour Organisation (ILO)

The ILO was founded in 1919, in the wake of a destructive war, to pursue a vision based on the premise that universal, lasting peace can be established only if it is based on social justice. The ILO became the first specialized agency of the UN in 1946.

The only tripartite U.N. agency, since 1919 the ILO brings together governments, employers and workers of 187 member States , to set labour standards, develop policies and devise programmes promoting decent work for all women and men.

The ILO has four strategic objectives

 Promote and realize standards and fundamental principles and rights at work  Create greater opportunities for women and men to decent employment and income  Enhance the coverage and effectiveness of social protection for all, and  Strengthen tripartism and social dialogue

Live Stream of Judicial Proceedings

In a landmark initiative, the Gujarat High Court became the first to live stream judicial proceedings on YouTube channel.

Though it’s on “experimental basis”, the move is being seen as a major measure towards transparency in judicial proceedings.

 The YouTube link is available on the homepage of the High Court and has been welcomed by lawyers, law students and the public at large besides litigants.

The court has decided that the proceedings of the Division Bench No 1 [First Court] will be telecast live and the “aspect of continuing with or adapting the modality of live court proceedings will be decided based on the outcome of this trial”.

Earlier the High Court had formed a committee of judges regarding the live streaming. While disposing of a PIL in this regard, the two judge-committee comprising Chief Justice Vikram Nath and Justice JB Pardiwala had said: “To observe the requirement of an open court proceedings, the members of the public should be allowed to view the hearings conducted through the video conferencing, except the proceedings ordered for the reasons recorded in writing to be conducted in camera.”

In its 2018 judgment in Swapnil Tripathi v Supreme Court of India, the Court recommended that proceedings be broadcast live. The lead petition was brought by a law student who found himself unable to access SC courtrooms to watch proceedings in person.

 It was held that live streaming proceedings is part of the right to access justice under Article 21 of the Constitution.  Further, publishing court proceedings is an aspect of Article 129, per which the Supreme  Court is a court of record. Journalists, young lawyers, civil society activists and academics would all benefit from live streaming, the Court opined.  Open courts help foster public confidence in the judiciary.

Global Scenario

In Australia, proceedings are recorded and posted on the high court’s website. Proceedings of the Supreme Courts of Brazil, Canada, England and Germany are broadcast live.

The Supreme Court of the US does not permit video recording, but oral arguments are recorded, transcribed, and available publicly.

In China, court proceedings are live streamed from trial courts up to the Supreme People’s Court of China.

New Abortion law in Poland

Over the last four days, thousands of women have stormed the streets of Poland, protesting a recent court ruling that drastically restricts their right to access safe and legal abortions.

Human rights activists and groups across the world, including Amnesty International, have widely condemned the Polish court’s ruling, calling it an attack on women’s basic human rights.

Polish court’s ruling on abortions

The Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal ruled that an existing law allowing abortions of malformed foetuses was unconstitutional, immediately provoking an outcry from women and pro-choice activists across the country.

In the ruling, the tribunal said that permitting abortions in the case of foetal deformities legalised “eugenic practices with regard to an unborn child, thus denying it the respect and protection of human dignity.

Poland’s abortion laws were already considered some of the strictest in Europe. Now, once the court’s decision is enacted, abortions will only be permitted in cases of rape, incest, or if there is a threat to the mother’s life.

Implication of the court’s decision

Fewer than 2,000 legal abortions are carried out in Poland each year, a majority of which are due to foetal defects, according to reports. Abortions in cases of rape, incest or where there is a threat to the mother’s life account for merely 2 per cent of all legal terminations. So the court’s ruling essentially translates to a near complete ban on abortions in the country.

An estimated 80,000 to 120,000 Polish women either go abroad or seek illegal abortions every year due to the country’s strict abortion laws.

 Activists in Poland fear that the number could surge even further if terminations due to malformed foetuses are outlawed.

Background

This is not the first-time people in Poland have protested the country’s abortion laws.

In 2016, thousands of women went on strike in protest against a proposal for a complete ban on abortions. They all dressed in black to signify that they were mourning the death of their reproductive rights.

The draft law was proposed by an anti-abortion citizens’ group and was initially supported by the Catholic Church. However, the Church later backed out when bishops said they could not support the proposal to jail women who underwent an abortion. World Polio Day

October 24 is observed as World Polio Day every year in order to call on countries to stay vigilant in their fight against the disease. As per the WHO, since 1980, the cases of wild poliovirus have decreased by over 99.9 per cent as a result of vaccination efforts made around the world.

World Polio Day was established by Rotary International over a decade ago to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, who led the first team to develop the vaccine against the disease.

In the last three decades, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), led by national governments and the WHO, has been monitoring the disease situation globally.

About polio

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Polio is a crippling and potentially deadly disease that affects the nervous system.

Most people with polio do not feel sick. Some people have only minor symptoms, such as fever, tiredness, nausea, headache, nasal congestion, sore throat, cough, stiffness in the neck and back, and pain in the arms and legs.

In rare cases, polio infection causes permanent loss of muscle function (paralysis). Polio can be fatal if the muscles used for breathing are paralyzed or if there is an infection of the brain.”

The virus multiplies in the intestine, from where it can invade the nervous system and can cause paralysis. Once that happens, the patient is crippled for life because there is no treatment for the affliction. Polio infection, however, can be easily prevented by a vaccine.

There are three variants of the poliovirus, numbered 1 to 3. For a country to be declared polio-free, the wild transmission of all three kinds has to be stopped. For eradication, cases of both wild and vaccine-derived polio infection have to be reduced to zero.

Recent Outbreaks

In 2019, polio outbreaks were recorded in the Philippines, Malaysia, Ghana, Myanmar, China, Cameroon, Indonesia and Iran, which were mostly vaccine-derived (a rare strain of the virus genetically mutated from the strain in the vaccine).

According to the WHO, if the oral vaccine-virus is excreted and allowed to circulate in an un- or under-immunised population for at least 12 months, it can mutate to cause infections.

As per the CDC, Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two countries that are the last stronghold of the wild poliovirus. In Pakistan, the number of reported wild poliovirus cases has increased in 2020.

Recently in August, the African Region was certified as wild poliovirus free. As per the CDC, as of October 7, there were more than 440 cases of poliovirus around the world, as compared with 378 and 71 cases globally in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

What is India’s situation with regard to the disease?

India was declared polio-free in January 2014, after three years of zero cases, an achievement widely believed to have been spurred by the successful pulse polio campaign in which all children were administered polio drops. The last case due to wild poliovirus in the country was detected on January 13, 2011. India-U.S 2+2 dialogue

Recently, India and the USA have concluded the 3rd India-USA 2+2 dialogue in New Delhi.

In the 2+2 dialogue, the two sides deliberated on a host of critical issues including ways to further expand the already close relationship between the militaries of the two countries as well as broader issues of mutual interest in the Indo-Pacific region.

Highlights

Both the countries signed the crucial Indo-US Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA), which pertains to geo-spatial intelligence, sharing information on maps and satellite images for defence purposes.

Apart from BECA, India and the U.S. also sealed an MoU on Technical Cooperation in Earth Observations and Earth Sciences, and an agreement to extend duration of the MoU regarding the Global Center for Nuclear Energy Partnership.

The two sides also signed an agreement on electronic exchange of customs data and a letter of intent regarding cooperation in traditional Indian medicines.

A Joint Statement issued following the conclusion of the visit highlighted shared Indo-U.S. goals in the Asia-Pacific region and “emphasised that the Code of Conduct in the South China sea should not prejudice the legitimate rights and interests of any nation in accordance with international law”.

The two sides also decided to expand joint capacity building activities with partner countries in the Indo-Pacific region.

Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA)

BECA will help India get real-time access to American geospatial intelligence that will enhance the accuracy of automated systems and weapons like missiles and armed drones. Through the sharing of information on maps and satellite images, it will help India access topographical and aeronautical data, and advanced products that will aid in navigation and targeting.

This could be key to Air Force-to-Air Force cooperation between India and the US. Just as your radio cab (or the GPS in your smartphone) helps you zero in on the path to your destination and helps you reach it quickly and efficiently, BECA will provide Indian military systems with a high-quality GPS to navigate missiles with real-time intelligence to precisely target the adversary.

Besides the sailing of ships, flying of aircraft, fighting of wars, and location of targets, geospatial intelligence is also critical to the response to natural disasters.

The signing of BECA flows from the commitment in the joint statement during President Donald Trump’s visit in February this year, when the two sides said they looked forward to an “early conclusion” of BECA.

BECA is one of the four foundational military communication agreements between the two countries. The other three are:

 General Security of Military Information Agreement.  Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement.  Communications and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement.

Significance

These conversations facilitated information-sharing between the security, military, and intelligence agencies of the two countries, including the sharing of high-end satellite images, telephone intercepts, and data on Chinese troops and weapons deployment along the LAC.

Amid the ongoing standoff on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh — the longest and most serious in three decades — India and the US intensified under-the-radar intelligence and military cooperation at an unprecedented level, especially since June.

GSMIA: It allows the sharing of classified information from the U.S. government and American companies with the Government of India and Defense Public Sector Undertakings (DPSU) but not with Indian private companies.

LEMOA: The Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement was signed between India and the US in August 2016. It allows the military of each country to replenish from the other’s bases: access supplies, spare parts and services from the other country’s land facilities, air bases, and ports, which can then be reimbursed. This is extremely useful for Navy-to-Navy cooperation, since the US and India are cooperating closely in the Indo-

Pacific.

COMCASA: The Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement was signed in September 2018, after the first 2+2 dialogue in which then External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met visiting US Secretary of State Michael R Pompeo and then Secretary of Defence James Mattis. It allows the US to provide India with its encrypted communications equipment and systems so that Indian and US military commanders, aircraft and ships can communicate through secure networks in peace and war.

 COMCASA paved the way for transfer of communication security equipment from the US to India to facilitate “interoperability” between their forces — and potentially with other militaries that use US-origin systems for secure data links.

India-Central Asia Dialogue

Recently, the second India-Central Asia Dialogue was held virtually, where the leaders reviewed the relations between India and Central Asian countries.

India-Central Asia Dialogue is a ministerial-level dialogue between India and the Central Asian countries namely Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Highlights

The ministers strongly condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and reaffirmed the determination of their countries to combat this menace by destroying terrorist safe-havens, networks, infrastructure and funding channels.

They also underlined the need for every country to ensure that its territory is not used to launch terrorist attacks against other countries.

The second meeting of the India-Central Asia Dialogue jointly expressed support for the peace negotiations in Afghanistan, which is expected to usher in a new age for the war-torn country.

Among the key takeaways from the meeting was the announcement of an additional $1 billion Line of Credit by India for the Central Asian countries.

They also appreciated India’s “efforts to modernise the infrastructure of the Chabahar port in Iran, which could become an important link in trade and transport communications between the markets of Central and South Asia”.

The meeting also led to the announcement of grant financing by India for high-impact community development projects in the countries.

It also led to the establishment of working groups by India Central Asia Business Council comprising the key Chambers of all participating countries. 20% rural students lack books: ASER survey

ASER is a nationwide survey of rural education and learning outcomes in terms of reading and arithmetic skills that has been conducted by the NGO Pratham for the last 15 years.

The ASER survey provides a glimpse into the levels of learning loss that students in rural India are suffering, with varying levels of access to technology, school and family resources, resulting in a digital divide in education.

Key highlights

About 20% of rural children have no textbooks at home, according to the Annual State of Education Report (ASER) survey conducted in September, the sixth month of school closures due to COVID-19 across the country.

In Andhra Pradesh, less than 35% of children had textbooks, and only 60% had textbooks in Rajasthan. More than 98% had textbooks in West Bengal, Nagaland and Assam.

In the week of the survey, about one in three rural children had done no learning activity at all. About two in three had no learning material or activity given by their school that week, and only one in 10 had access to live online classes.

It is important to note that the levels of smartphone ownership have almost doubled from 2018, but a third of children with smartphone access still did not receive any learning materials.

It found that 5.3% of rural children aged 6-10 years had not yet enrolled in school this year, in comparison to just 1.8% in 2018.

 This seems to indicate that due to the disruptions caused by the pandemic, families are waiting for the physical opening of schools to enrol their youngest children, with about 10% of six-year-olds not in school.

Among 15-16-year-olds enrolment levels are actually slightly higher than in 2018. Enrolment patterns also show a slight shift toward government schools, with private schools seeing a drop-in enrolment in all age groups.

In 2018, ASER surveyors found that about 36% of rural households with school-going children had smartphones. By 2020, that figure had spiked to 62%. About 11% of families bought a new phone after the lockdown, of which 80% were smartphones.

 This may indicate why WhatsApp was by far the most popular mode of transmitting learning materials to students, with 75% of students who got some input receiving it via the app. About a quarter of those who got input had personal contact with a teacher.

ASER 2020 was conducted in 26 states and four Union Territories. A total of 52,227 households and 59,251 children in the 5-16 age group were surveyed. New Zealand’s euthanasia or assisted dying act

As per preliminary referendum results, a majority of voters in New Zealand have voted in favour of the End of Life Choice Act 2019.

As people voted in the general elections, they also had the option to vote in two referendums. One of the referendums was on cannabis legalisation and control and the second referendum asked the public to vote on whether the End of Life Choice Act 2019 should come into force.

End of Life Choice Act 2019

The act is meant to give certain terminally ill people the option of requesting medical assistance to end their lives and to establish a lawful process for assisting eligible persons who are able to exercise that option.

The Act was passed in November 2019 but requires that it gets at least 50 per cent of the votes in the 2020 referendum to be effective.

 One of the most significant cases that shaped the debate around assisted suicide in New Zealand was of a lawyer Lecretia Seales who was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2011. After Seales’ options of getting treated were exhausted, she reviewed her end of life alternatives and believed that she wanted physician-assisted suicide.

Opposition

The opponents of the Act such as the Euthanasia Free-NZ group maintain that it lacks oversight and safeguards and have pointed out issues with the eligibility criteria such as the age limit of 18 years and the “arbitrary” nature of the 6-month prognosis. Assisted dying

As per the Act, assisted dying means when a person’s doctor or nurse gives them medication to relieve their suffering by bringing on death or when a person takes the medication themselves.

The act interprets assisted dying as referring to both euthanasia and assisted suicide. While the former refers to the act of deliberately ending a person’s life to end their suffering, the latter refers to assisting a person to kill themselves.

In some countries such as in the UK, both euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal. In the UK, while euthanasia is regarded as manslaughter or murder, assisted suicide is punishable by up to 14 years in prison. However, trying to kill yourself is not an illegal act in the country.

As per New Zealand’s act, the provisions of the law are limited to terminally ill people and are subject to the fulfillment of various criteria.

In order to be eligible for assisted dying, the individual must be 18 years or older, be a citizen or permanent resident of New Zealand, suffer from a terminal illness that is likely to end their life in less than six months, have a significant and ongoing decline in physical capability, experience unbearable suffering that cannot be eased and they should be able to make an informed decision about assisted dying. The individual should meet all of the criteria to be eligible.

There are four methods of assisted dying as per the Act. These include ingestion, intravenous delivery, ingestion through a tube or injection. At the chosen time of receiving the medication, the person can either say no or delay the process.

Assisted dying is legal in parts of Australia, Canada, Colombia, Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Switzerland and some states in the US. Bulk Drug Park

Himachal Pradesh is one of the states vying for the allotment of a bulk drug park under a central government scheme announced earlier this year for setting up three such parks across the country.

About bulk drugs or APIs

A bulk drug, also called an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), is the key ingredient of a drug or medicine, which lends it the desired therapeutic effect or produces the intended pharmacological activity.

For example, paracetamol is a bulk drug, which acts against pain. It is mixed with binding agents or solvents to prepare the finished pharmaceutical product, ie a paracetamol tablet, capsule or syrup, which is consumed by the patient.

KSMs and DIs

APIs are prepared from multiple reactions involving chemicals and solvents. The primary chemical or the basic raw material which undergoes reactions to form an API is called the key starting material, or KSM.

Chemical compounds formed during the intermediate stages during these reactions are called drug intermediates or DIs.

Why is India promoting bulk drug parks

India has one of the largest pharmaceutical industries in the world (third largest by volume) but this industry largely depends on other countries, particularly China, for importing APIs, DIs and KSMs.

This year, drug manufacturers in India suffered repeated setbacks due to disruption in imports.

 In January, factories in China shut down when the country went into a lockdown, and later, international supply chains were affected as the Covid pandemic gripped the entire world.  The border conflict between India and China exacerbated the situation.

All these factors pushed the Indian government to call for greater self-reliance across all industries, and in June, the department of pharmaceuticals announced a scheme for the promotion of three bulk drug parks in the country.

About Bulk drug park

A bulk drug park will have a designated contiguous area of land with common infrastructure facilities for the exclusive manufacture of APIs, DIs or KSMs, and also a common waste management system.

These parks are expected to bring down manufacturing costs of bulk drugs in the country and increase competitiveness in the domestic bulk drug industry.

The Centre’s scheme will support three selected parks in the country by providing a one- time grant-in-aid for the creation of common infrastructure facilities.

The grant-in-aid will be 70 per cent of the cost of the common facilities but in the case of Himachal Pradesh and other hill states, it will be 90 per cent. The Centre will provide a maximum of Rs 1,000 crore per park.

GS 3 China’s Climate Commitment

Recently, speaking at the UN General Assembly, Chinese President Xi Jinping made two promises that came as a welcome surprise to climate change watchers.

China’s announcement

First, China would become carbon net-zero by the year 2060.

 Net-zero is a state in which a country’s emissions are compensated by absorptions and removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.  Absorption can be increased by creating more carbon sinks such as forests, while removal involves application of technologies such as carbon capture and storage.

Second, announced a small but important change in China’s already committed target for letting its emissions “peak”, from “by 2030” to “before 2030”.

 means China would not allow its greenhouse gas emissions to grow beyond that point.

Net-zero as an important target

For the last couple of years, there has been a concerted campaign to get countries, especially the big emitters, to commit themselves to achieve “climate neutrality” by 2050. This is sometimes referred to as the state of net-zero emissions that would require countries to significantly reduce their emissions, while increasing land or forest sinks that would absorb the emissions that do take place.

If the sinks are not adequate, countries can commit themselves to deploying technologies that physically remove carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Most of such carbon dioxide removal technologies are still unproven and extremely expensive.

Scientists and climate change campaign groups say global carbon neutrality by 2050 is the only way to achieve the Paris Agreement target of keeping global temperatures from rising beyond 2°C compared to pre-industrial times. At the current rate of emissions, the world is headed for a 3° to 4°C rise in temperatures by 2100.

Significance of China’s commitment

China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. It accounts for almost 30% of global emissions, more than the combined emissions in the United States, the European Union and India, the three next biggest emitters.

The European Union was the only big emitter to have committed itself to a net-zero emission status by 2050. More than 70 other countries have also made similar commitments but most of them have relatively low emissions because of which their net- zero status would not help the planet’s cause in a big way.

The real heavyweights whose climate actions are crucial to achieving the Paris Agreement targets are the Big Four — China, the US, the European Union and India — who together account for more than half the global emissions, followed by countries such as Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Japan and Australia.

A week earlier, South Africa declared its intention to become carbon-neutral by 2050, but other countries have been holding back. The United States, under the Donald Trump administration, has walked out of the Paris Agreement.

India’s commitment

India has resisted pressure to make a long-term commitment, citing the fact that developed countries had utterly failed in keeping their past promises, and never delivered on the commitments they made earlier. India has also been arguing that the climate change actions it has been taking are, in relative terms, far more robust than those of the developed countries.

China’s decision is a big shot in the arm for the success of Paris Agreement. According to Climate Action Tracker, a global group that offers scientific analysis on actions being taken by countries, the Chinese goal, if realised, would lower global warming projections for 2100 by about 0.2° to 0.3°C, the most impactful single action ever taken by any country.

Implications of China’s commitment for India

The Chinese announcement is naturally expected to increase pressure on India to follow suit and agree to some long-term commitment even if it was not exactly 2050 net-zero goal.

Viewing at the pledges that have been made in the Paris Agreement, India is the only G20 country whose actions are on track to meet the 2° goal. The other developed countries actually have to make efforts towards a 1.5° world, but they are failing even to do enough to meet the 2° target.

Earlier this year, India was in the process of formulating a long-term climate policy for itself, but that effort seems to have been shelved as of now.

Another side-effect of the Chinese decision could be an increased divergence in the positions of India and China at the climate negotiations. China might now have fewer grounds to align itself with India as a developing country. SMART system

Recently, India successfully conducted the flight test of a Supersonic Missile Assisted Release of Torpedo (SMART) system developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

SMART system

Torpedoes, self-propelled weapons that travel underwater to hit a target, are limited by their range. In the mid-2010s, DRDO undertook a project to build capacity to launch torpedoes assisted by missiles; the recent test was the first known flight test of the system.

This SMART system comprises a mechanism by which the torpedo is launched from a supersonic missile system with modifications that would take the torpedo to a far longer range than its own.

 For example, a torpedo with a range of a few kilometres can be sent a distance to the tune of 1000 km by the missile system from where the torpedo is launched.

The system also gives flexibility in terms of the missie system’s launch platform. Significance

SMART is considered a game-changing technology demonstration in anti-submarine warfare. India’s anti-submarine warfare capacity building is crucial in light of China’s growing influence in the Indian Ocean region.

Assets of such warfare consist of deployment of submarines, specialised anti-submarine ships, air assets and state-of-the-art reconnaissance and detection mechanisms.

In January, DRDO conducted two successful tests of the K Family’s K-4 missiles. The capability of launching nuclear weapons from submarine platforms has great strategic importance in light of the “no first use” policy of India.

 These submarines can not only survive a first strike by an adversary but also can launch a strike in retaliation.

The nuclear-powered Arihant submarine and its class members in the pipeline are assets capable of launching missiles with nuclear warheads. A proposed road tunnel beneath Western Ghats in Kerala

Recently, Kerala Chief Minister “launched” a tunnel road project that would connect Kozhikode with Wayanad.

The launch actually meant the beginning of a survey and fixing the final alignment ahead of the detailed project report, which should be followed by steps such as technical sanction, environmental impact assessment report, and seeking mandatory clearance from various agencies including the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC).

Kozhikode-Wayanad tunnel road

The 7-km tunnel, being described as the third-longest in the country, is part of an 8-km road cutting through sensitive forests and hills of the Western Ghats. Its endpoints are at Maripuzha in Thiruvambady village panchayat (Kozhikode) and Kalladi in Meppadi panchayat (Wayanad).

At present, Wayanad plateau is linked to the rest of Kerala via four roads, all with hilly sections, the longest being the 13-km Thamarassery Ghat Road along the Kozhikode-Mysuru NH 766.

The tunnel road is an outcome of a decades-long campaign for an alternative road as the Thamarassery Ghat Road is congested and gets blocked by landslides during heavy monsoon. A proposal for widening the road has been pending clearance from the MoEFCC.

Two alternative routes have been suggested connecting different parts of Kozhikode district to Wayanad, but those proposals did not make much headway either, mainly because of forest patches that would need to be cleared.

Impact on the ecology

The Forest Department has identified the proposed route as a highly sensitive patch comprising evergreen and semi-evergreen forests, marsh lands and shola tracts. This region is part of an elephant corridor spread between Wayanad and Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu.

Two major rivers, Chaliyar and Kabani that flows to Karnataka, originate from these hills in Wayanad. Eruvazhanjipuzha, a tributary of Chaliyar and the lifeline of settlements in Malappuram and Kozhikode, begins in the other side of the hills.

 The region, known for torrential rain during monsoon, has witnessed several landslides, including in 2019 at Kavalappura near Nilambur and at Puthumala, Meppadi in Wayanad.

Proponents of the project have been stressing that the tunnel will not destroy forest (trees).

The MoEFCC guidelines state that the Forest Act would apply not only to surface area, but the entire underground area beneath the trees. For tunnel projects, conditions relating to underground mining would be applicable.

As the proposed tunnel is 7 km long, it will require emergency exit points and air ventilation wells among other measures, which would impact the forest further. India’s K missile

A successful trial of the nuclear capable Shaurya missile was conducted by India.

Shaurya is a land-based parallel of the submarine launched K-15 missile. It is a land variant of short range SLBM K-15 Sagarika, which has a range of at least 750 kilometers.

The K Family of missiles

The K family of missiles are primarily Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs), which have been indigenously developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and are named after Dr Kalam, the centre figure in India’s missile and space programmes who also served as the 11th President of India.

The development of these naval platform launched missiles began in the late 1990s as a step towards completing India’s nuclear triad — the capability of launching nuclear weapons from land, sea and air based assets.

Because these missiles are to be launched from submarines, they are lighter, smaller and stealthier than their land-based counterparts, the Agni series of missiles which are medium and intercontinental range nuclear capable ballistic missiles.

While K family are primarily submarine-fired missiles to be fired from India’s Arihant class nuclear powered platforms, the land and air variants of some of its members have also been developed by the DRDO.

India has also developed and successfully tested multiple times the K-4 missiles from the family which has a range of 3500 km. It is reported that more members of K-family — reportedly to have been codenamed K-5 and K-6 — with ranges of 5000 and 6000 km are also under development. The early development trials of K-15 and K-4 missiles had begun in the early 2010s.

The strategic importance of SLBMs

The capability of being able to launch nuclear weapons submarine platforms has great strategic importance in context of achieving a nuclear triad, especially in the light of ‘no first use’ policy of India.

The sea-based underwater nuclear capable assets significantly increases the second strike capability of a country and thus boosts its nuclear deterrence. These submarines can not only survive a first strike by the adversary but also can launch a strike in retaliation thus achieving Credible Nuclear Deterrence.

The 2016 commissioned nuclear powered Arihant submarine and its class members which in the pipeline, are the assets capable of launching missiles with nuclear warheads.

The development of these capabilities is important in light of India’s relations with the two neighbours China and Pakistan. With China having deployed many of its submarines, including some which are nuclear powered and nuclear capable, this capacity building is crucial for India’s nuclear deterrence. Air emergency measures from Oct 15

A Supreme Court-appointed pollution monitoring body has directed Delhi and neighbouring States to implement air pollution control measures under “very poor” and “severe” category air quality of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) from October 15.

Diesel generator sets will be banned October 15 onwards in Delhi and neighbouring National Capital Region towns with the implementation of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) to check worsening air pollution.

 GRAP is a plan to tackle air pollution in the NCR, which was notified by the Union environment ministry in 2017. It lists the measures that need to be taken by authorities based on the region’s air quality. Details

Directions were issued to the chief secretaries of Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan on implementing pollution control measures under GRAP by the Supreme Court- mandated Environment Pollution (Prevention & Control) Authority (EPCA).

The winter period sees worsening air quality because there is less dispersion, and lower temperatures trap pollutants close to the ground. It is, therefore, necessary to ensure that the levels do not rise further.

A GRAP taskforce, led by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), has advised EPCA that the NCR has slipped into ‘poor’ air category as weather conditions were turning adverse.a

From October 15 onwards, some measures under ‘Very Poor/Severe’ air category will come into force, and the taskforce and EPCA will direct for additional measures to be taken if the need arises.

Large construction projects, including highways and Metro, and industries, particularly in the red and orange categories, will be required to give an undertaking to state pollution control boards to ensure adherence to dust management norms, and in case of industries, using only authorised fuel and operating with prescribed pollution control measures.

States have been asked to take these actions in addition to those that EPCA has already directed them to take. These include enforcement of action plans for controlling emissions in air pollution hotspots, mechanised sweeping of roads both at day and night, sprinkling of water on roads to control dust, night patrolling to check waste burning and dust emissions, and ensuring long-term solutions to solid waste dumping.

If weather conditions and air pollution levels turn adverse, more measures would be directed, including closure of power plants that do not adhere to 2017 emission norms, restrain on use of private transport and ban on construction activities.

Prescribed measures under GRAP

For ‘moderate’ to ‘poor’ air

1. Stop garbage burning in landfills 2. Periodic mechanised sweeping on roads with heavy traffic. Water sprinkling on unpaved roads every two days 3. Stop plying of visibly polluting vehicles 4. Enforce dust control in construction activities

‘Very poor’ air

1. Stop use of diesel generator sets 2. Enhance parking fee by 3-4 times 3. Increase bus and Metro services 4. Stop use of coal/firewood in hotels and open eateries

‘Severe’ air

1. Close brick kilns, hot mix plants, stone crushers 2. Maximise generation of power from natural gas-based plants, reduce operation of coal- based power plants 3. Increase public transport services 4. Increase frequency of mechanised cleaning of roads and sprinkling of water on roads

‘Severe+’ or ‘emergency’ air

1. Stop entry of all trucks, except essential commodities, into Delhi 2. Stop construction activities 3. Introduce odd-even scheme for vehicles 4. Task force to take decision on additional steps, including shutting down schools

Measures in place from Oct 15

1. Ban on DG sets in NCR 2. Large construction projects to comply with dust control measures 3. Industries to use only authorised fuels 4. Night patrolling to check waste burning, industrial and dust emissions 5. Mechanised sweeping of roads day and night, and water sprinkling to control dust War room to monitor air pollution, stubble burning

Delhi Environment Minister launched a war room to monitor air pollution levels in real-time and stubble burning in neighbouring states.

A 10-member expert team will operate from the war room under two senior scientists of the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC).

Highlights

The room is equipped with high-end technology and has three large screens on which concentrations of different pollutants, the status of 13 air pollution hotspots in Delhi, and satellite images from NASA and ISRO of stubble burning will be monitored in real-time.

It will also monitor complaints filed by the people through the Green Delhi application, which the Chief Minister will launch in the coming days. It will also monitor road sweeping

and water sprinkling work done by the MCDs through GPS. Daily reports will be sent to the CM, myself, and the Environment Secretary.

The 24-hour average air quality index (AQI) of Delhi was ‘poor’ for a second consecutive day on Thursday with a reading of 208, as per the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). On Wednesday, the AQI was 215.

The concentration of PM 2.5, emitted through combustion activities, was 89.6 micrograms per cubic metre air (µg/m3) as of 5 pm in Delhi-NCR. Concentration of PM 10, comprising dust and smoke, was 224.3 µg/m3. India’s GDP likely to shirk 9.6%

India’s GDP is estimated to contract by 9.6 per cent in 2020-21, a sharp cut from the June forecast of 3.2 per cent contraction due to the impact of the national lockdown against the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the income shock experienced by households and small urban service firms, The World Bank said in its recently released South Asia Economic Focus report.

Highlights

The Bank said that India’s growth is estimated to rebound 5.4 per cent in 2021-22, mainly reflecting base effects and assuming that COVID-related restrictions will be completely lifted by 2022.

The slowdown in India is expected to depress manufacturing and exporting industries, and the construction sector (which relies on Indian migrant workers) is also likely to experience a protracted slowdown due to a limited pipeline of public sector infrastructure projects,” the report said.

The entire South Asia region is set to plunge into its worst-ever recession, with regional growth estimated to contract by 7.7 percent in 2020, after topping 6 percent annually in the past five years.

South Asia’s growth is projected to rebound to 4.5 percent in 2021.

Among other south Asian countries, Maldives is estimated to record a 19.5 per cent contraction and Sri Lanka is estimated to clock a 6.7 per cent contraction in calendar year 2020, it said. Pakistan’s economy is estimated to grow 0.5 per cent in 2020-21, Bangladesh at 1.6 per cent and Bhutan at 1.8 per cent (all estimates for July-June).

Highlighting the difference in this pandemic-induced recession from previous recessions, The World Bank said that the earlier downturns were mainly due to falling investment and exports but this time, private consumption - traditionally the backbone of demand in South Asia and a core indicator of economic welfare will decline by more than 10 percent, further spiking poverty rates.

A decline in remittances is also expected to accelerate loss of livelihoods for the poorest in some countries.

While the poor have faced rising food prices and suffered severely, the COVID-19 crisis has dealt a further blow to many informal workers in the middle of the income distribution who experienced sharp drops in earnings, it said.

The Bank urged governments to design universal social protection as well as policies that support greater productivity, skills development, and human capital. Anti-radiation missile

India’s first indigenous anti-radiation missile, Rudram, developed for the Indian Air Force, was successfully flight-tested from a Sukhoi-30 MKI jet off the east coast.

About Anti-radiation missile

Rudram is an air-to-surface missile, designed and developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

Anti-radiation missiles are designed to detect, track and neutralise the adversary’s radar, communication assets and other radio frequency sources, which are generally part of their air defence systems.

Such a missile’s navigation mechanism comprises an inertial navigation system — a computerised mechanism that uses changes in the object’s own position — coupled with GPS, which is satellite-based.

For guidance, it has a “passive homing head” — a system that can detect, classify and engage targets (radio frequency sources in this case) over a wide band of frequencies as programmed.

Once the Rudram missile locks on the target, it is capable of striking accurately even if the radiation source switches off in between.

The missile has an operational range of more than 100 km, based on the launch parameters from the fighter jet.

Significance

Rudram has been developed for the IAF’s requirement to enhance its Suppression of Enemy Air Defence (SEAD) capability.

As one of the many aspects of SEAD tactics, anti-radiation missiles are used mainly in the initial part of air conflict to strike at the air defence assets of the enemy, and also in later parts, leading to higher survivability to a country’s own aircraft.

Neutralising or disrupting the operations of the adversary’s early warning radars, command and control systems, surveillance systems that use radio frequencies and give inputs for anti-aircraft weaponry, can be very crucial. Tree Transplantation Policy

The Delhi Cabinet approved the ‘Tree Transplantation Policy’ for the preservation of trees in the Capital. The Cabinet also gave its nod for the installation of the second smog tower in the world at Connaught Place within ten months.

Highlights

A minimum of 80% of trees affected by a development or construction project will be transplanted and as much 80% of the transplanted trees must survive after transplantation.

The Delhi government will form a panel of agencies for tree transplantation and the government departments concerned will contact these agencies. The process involves uprooting a tree from a particular spot, lifting it, and planting it at another spot.

A dedicated Tree Transplantation Cell will also be formed by the Delhi government and local committees, which will include government officials, citizens, RWAs to monitor the transplanted trees and to certify that the task has been done with due diligence.

Smog tower

A smog tower will also be installed in Delhi that will be the second smog tower in the world. The first smog tower in the world was set up in China.

The technology used in the smog tower installed by the Delhi government is different from the technology used in China. In China, the smog tower sucks the polluted air from below and releases clean air from above. Our smog tower will suck the polluted air from above and release clean air from the bottom. Climate change driving Butterflies, Moths higher up Himalayas: Study

Rising average temperatures in the Himalayan region have driven several dozen species of butterfly and moth to habitats higher up the mountains, a new study commissioned by the government has found.

Details

The survey, funded by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and carried out by the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), identified at least 49 species of moth and 17

species of butterfly that have shown “considerable new upward altitude records”, with a difference of more than 1,000 metres between their current and previously recorded mean habitat altitudes.

Seven species in particular have started to inhabit altitudes more than 2,000 metres higher than the previous mean.

 The Common Map and Tailless Bushblue butterflies were previously found at 2,500 m, during the survey were recorded at 3,577 m at the Ascott wildlife sanctuary in Uttarakhand.  In Ladakh, the Indian Red Admiral butterfly was historically found at 3,900 m; it is now found at 4,853 m, an altitudinal increase of 950 m.  The study found that eight moth species, including the mulberry silkworm moth and tiger moth, which would historically be found at 2,000 m, are now typically found at 3,500 m or higher altitudes.

The findings of the study will be used as a baseline indicator to track the impact of climate change on animal species over the coming decade. The Himalayas are home to more than 35 per cent of Lepidoptera — the order of insects that includes butterflies and moths – species found in India.

The extension of the range of Lepidoptera due to climate change has been observed all over the world. The data and evidence-based study (in India) confirms this trend, and shows us which species are moving, and how. This will be the baseline by which we can track changes in biodiversity due to climate change over the years.

The study identified two species richness hotspots – one in West Bengal’s Darjeeling hills, where more than 400 species records were documented, and another in Kumaon, Uttarakhand, where more than 600 species records were found. In Himachal Pradesh, two high diversity areas were identified – Dharamshala and Shimla.

The study revealed an increase in the richness of Lepidoptera biodiversity from the Western to the Eastern Himalayas – it found 211 species of butterfly in the West, and 354 in the East. Reasons of the new trend

Butterflies are sensitive species that are extremely susceptible to changes in climate. They are, therefore, good indicators of long-term change in climatic conditions.

But the Lepidoptera habitat is shrinking. The ZSI predicts a decline of as much as 91 per cent for example, in the suitable area for the Notodontidae family of moths in J&K, Himachal, and Uttarakhand by 2050.

 Receding ice caps and glaciers leading to a scarcity of water in the Himalayas has been a major reason for the altitudinal shift of the Lepidoptera.

 The increase in average temperature has also resulted in an altitudinal shift in vegetation – trees, shrubs, and plants that once grew at lower altitudes in the Himalayas are now found only higher up in the mountains.  Increasing human habitation too, has contributed to the shift. IIT-D flags toxic ultrafine particles

Ultrafine particles suspended in the air constitute more than 50% of the total particulate matter of 2.5 micrometres (PM2.5) size around the year in Delhi and are associated with higher cytotoxicity in human lung cells, a new study from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi shows.

Highlights of the study

Data from the study sheds light on the necessity of routine monitoring of ultrafine particles that are below PM2.5 micrometres in size, and particularly PM size lower than 0.25, which is linked with more cytotoxicity — the quality of being toxic to the body’s cells.

The study also found that PM2.5 levels have no relation to PM<0.25 levels; i.e, a decrease in total PM2.5 levels may not be associated with a decrease in PM<0.25 levels.

While the adverse impact on health from chronic exposure to PM2.5 is well established — including stroke, lung cancer, and other heart and lung related problems — different size fractions within PM2.5 have not been well studied, the study states.

It adds that the National Ambient Air Quality Standard has fixed a threshold for PM2.5 at 60 µg/m3 for 24 hours and 40 µg/m3 annually, but it does not have specific policies for ultrafine particles.

Considering that PM2.5 levels in some developing countries, such as India, reach to over 15- fold higher than the recommended limit, the absolute concentration of different sizes of particles within PM2.5 may be very high and is worthy of further investigation, the IIT study states.

The observed high levels of PM in the post-monsoon and winter months may be partially explained by celebration of Diwali, agricultural residue burning in neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana, and secondary formation of particles due to favourable meteorological conditions.

The low temperature and high humidity during winter nights enhance the fog-smog-fog cycle and result in 2-3-fold increase in PM concentration compared to pre-monsoon and South-West monsoon season,” the study said.

Findings also show particulate matter of below 0.25 micrometres constituted the highest share in the composition of PM2.5 around the year as compared to particles of other sizes.

Exposure to ultrafine particles of below 0.25 micrometres was also associated with over two-fold higher cytotoxicity, as compared to exposure to other sizes, the study states. New LTC scheme

Recently, Finance Minister announced two sets of measures to generate consumption demand and boost capital spending in the economy.

 The measures announced by the government, along with participation of states and the private sectors, are, according to the government, projected to create “additional demand” of Rs 1 lakh crore in the economy.

The ministry has decided to allow government and private sector employees to use their Leave Travel Concession tax-free benefit for various types of purchases subject to certain conditions while an interest-free festival advance of Rs 10,000 is being given to government employees. Measures have been announced to step up capital expenditure by the Centre and the states.

LTC benefit and its impacts

The government announced that Central Government employees will be provided tax benefits on LTC component without them having to actually travel. These employees would be required to spend three times of the LTC fare component for purchasing items that attract 12 per cent or more GST.

 It means that if your fare component of LTC is Rs 40,000, you need to spend Rs 1.2 lakh on goods that fall in 12% or more GST slab in order to save tax on Rs 40,000.

On the other hand, if you don’t spend that amount, you may have to pay tax as per your marginal tax rate on the LTC component.

 if you fall in 10% tax slab, you will have to pay additional tax of Rs 4,000 and if you fall in 30% tax slab, you will have to pay additional tax of around Rs 12,000 on the LTC fare amount of Rs 40,000.

As for the leave encashment component of LTC, the employee will have to spend an equivalent amount towards the purchase of goods that attract GST of 12 per cent or more.

Benefit to the economy

Through the LTC consumption boost plan, the government expects a demand generation of Rs 28,000 crore in the economy.

While it expects additional demand creation of around Rs 19,000 crore on account of demand from central government employees, it expects additional demand generation of another Rs 9,000 crore from state government employees.

Besides, the government has said that the same benefits will be available to private-sector employees if the employers decide to offer the scheme to their employees and they decide to avail it.

Benefit to the government’s revenue

While GST collections have been severely impacted in the first half of the fiscal due to Covid- 19 pandemic, a consumption boost from LTC component of the salary of central and state government employees will lift GST collections in the second half of the year as the scheme calls for expenditure to be done till March 31, 2021. If private sector employees also participate, it may lead to a significant jump in overall consumption and rise in GST collections.

The special festival advance scheme

The government has restored festival advance, which was abolished in line with recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission, for one time till March 31, 2021.

Under this, all central government employees will get interest-free advance of Rs 10,000 that the government will recover in 10 instalments. It will be given in the form of a pre- loaded Rupay card of the advance value and the government expects to disburse Rs 4,000 crore under the scheme.

According to the finance ministry, if all states provide similar advance, another Rs. 8,000 crores is likely to be disbursed. This is expected to generate consumption demand ahead of festivals like Diwali.

Measures to boost capital expenditure and their impact

Special assistance will be provided to states in the form of interest-free 50-year loans of Rs 12,000 crore with certain conditions.

States have been categorised among three groups:

 Group 1 having north-eastern states (Rs 1,600 crore) and Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh (Rs 900 crore),  Group 2 having other states which will get Rs 7,500 crore in proportion of their share as per Finance Commission devolution, and  Group 3 having states which will get total Rs 2,000 crore if they meet three out of four reforms including One Nation One Ration, outlined in the government’s Atma Nirbhar package announced earlier in May.

The funds, which need to be spent by March 31, 2021, can be used by states for ongoing and new projects and settling contractors’ bills on such projects.

The funds provided to states will be over and about their borrowing ceilings.

For its part, the Centre has proposed an additional budget of Rs 25,000 crore for capital expenditure on roads, defence infrastructure, water supply, urban development, allocations for which will be made to various ministries in the upcoming discussions for formulating revised estimates. Climate change to blame for doubling of disasters

The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction said 7,348 major disaster events had occurred between 2000 and 2019, claiming 1.23 lives, affecting 4.2 billion people and costing the global economy some $2.97 trillion. Of this, China (577 events) and the United States of America (U.S.) (467 events) reported the highest number of disaster events, followed by India (321 events).

Climate change is to be blamed for the doubling of natural disasters in the past 20 years says the report.

The figure far outstrips the 4,212 major natural disasters recorded between 1980 and 1999, the UN office said in a new report entitled “The Human Cost of Disasters 2000-2019”.

The sharp increase was largely attributable to a rise in climate-related disasters, including extreme weather events like floods, drought and storms, the report said.

UNDRR report published to mark the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction on October 13, 2020, confirms how extreme weather events have come to dominate the disaster landscape in the 21st century.

The report showed 6,681 climate-linked events had been recorded since the turn of the century, up from 3,656 during the previous 20-year-period.

While major floods had more than doubled to 3,254, there had been 2,034 major storms up from 1,457 in the prior period.

The report relied on statistics from the Emergency Events Database, which records all disasters that kill 10 or more people, affect 100 or more people or result in a state of emergency declaration.

The data showed that Asia has suffered the highest number of disasters in the past 20 years with 3,068 such events, followed by the Americas with 1,756 and Africa with 1,192.

While a warming climate appeared to be driving the number and severity of such disasters, there had also been an increase in geophysical events like earthquakes and tsunamis that are not related to climate but are particularly deadly.

The deadliest single disaster in the past 20 years was the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, with 226,400 deaths, followed by the Haiti earthquake in 2010, which claimed some 222,000 lives. Anti-pollution campaign in Delhi

Every year, Diwali fireworks blanket Delhi in a haze, compounding air pollution’s health risks, particularly to children, the elderly and those with underlying illnesses. With air pollution returning to pre-COVID levels, it is opportune that the Delhi administration has launched a major anti-pollution campaign this month.

The campaign is rightly focused on cutting the deadly smoke from thermal plants and brick kilns in the National Capital Region as well as on chemical treatment of stubble burning from nearby States. Delhi’s long-term solution will depend importantly also on abating emissions from transportation.

This agenda could cut air pollution from all sources combined by one-quarter to one-third by 2025, which, if sustained, could extend people’s lives by two-three years, ameliorating respiratory complications from COVID-19.

Air pollution before COVID-19 was worse. Particulate matter, PM2.5 and PM10, exceed national standards and the more stringent World Health Organization limits. Delhi’s toxic air also contains high doses of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. The lack of wind worsens the pollutant concentration.

Delhi needs a 65% reduction to meet the national standards for PM2.5. Vehicles, including trucks and two-wheelers, contribute 20%-40% of the PM2.5 concentrations. Tackling vehicle emissions would be one part of the agenda, as in comparable situations in Bangkok, Beijing, and Mexico City. A three-part action comprises emissions standards, public transport, and electric vehicles.

Emission Control

The first part is stricter enforcement of emission controls — and a willingness to impose tougher penalties.

 The first order of business is to implement the national standards. Emission testing of vehicles under Delhi’s Pollution Under Control Policy was only 25%.

The second prong is reducing private vehicles on the road by strengthening public transport.

 Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems in Mexico City, Bogota, Istanbul, and Johannesburg show how the sizeable investment cost is more than offset by the benefits, and that financing pays off. Delhi has lessons from its BRT experience in designating better BRT lanes, improving the ticketing system and synchronising with the Metro.

 The Supreme Court’s ruling to increase Delhi’s bus fleet and align it with the Metro network must be carried out.  The ‘odd-even’ number plate policy can help, but the system should reduce exemptions, allow a longer implementation period, and complement it with other measures.

The third prong involves electric vehicles (EVs).

 Subsidies and investment will be needed to ensure that EVs are used to a meaningful scale, without fossil fuels for charging them.  The Delhi government’s three-year policy aims to make EVs account for a quarter of the new vehicles registered in the capital by 2024. EVs will gain from purchase incentives, scrappage benefits on older vehicles, loans at favourable interest and a waiver of road taxes.

Technical solutions need to be underpinned by coordination and transparency across Central, State, and local governments. Public opinion matters.

Citizen participation and the media are vital for sharing the message on pollution and health, using data such as those from the Central Pollution Control Board. Parasitic Infections in Rhinos

In conservation efforts for the greater one-horned rhinoceros population in India, the latest strategy is an examination of rhino dung to understand health issues of the animal.

Since 2017, the Rhino Task Force of Assam and World Wildlife Fund India (WWF India) have been undertaking steps to study pathogens found in fresh rhino dung samples in Assam, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.

WWF India has recently published preliminary reports — ‘Prevalence of Endoparasitic Infections in Free-Ranging Greater One-Horned Rhinoceros’ — for Assam and West Bengal.

The main objective of this initiative is to start a systematic disease investigation process for the rhino.

Importance of the project

While poaching is believed to be the main cause of death in rhinos, rhinos also die of natural causes which have not been studied in great detail. There may be multiple reasons for a natural death but it is rarely investigated thoroughly.

According to the researchers, habitat degradation can lead to an increased exposure to pathogens. Due to increasing livestock pressure on protected areas, there is a possible threat of pathogens getting transferred from domestic animals to wild animals.

Diseases linked to habitat degradation are invisible causes of rhino death. For example, a rhino might not get its regular feed, compelling it to instead feed on weeds etc. This may cause problem in their health.

Till date, there has been no systematic study on the prevalence of disease-causing parasites and diseases caused by these in the rhino population in India. In order to address this knowledge gap, the present study is a part of a series that involves screening of pathogens through a non-invasive method of dung sample analysis.

What are the findings?

From the samples from Assam and West Bengal, the study concluded that parasites from four genera were present in an estimated 68% of India’s rhino population.

The overall prevalence of endoparasites was 58.57% in Assam and 88.46% in West Bengal; results from UP are pending.

The endoparasites in Assam belonged to four genera: Amphistome spp, Strongyle spp, Bivitellobilharzia nairii and Spirurid spp, while West Bengal reported the prevalence of only Strongyle spp, Assam reported all four.

When comparing the study, finding show that the rhino population in West Bengal has a higher prevalence rate of infection, but the occurrence of different parasites were higher in Assam. Holographic imaging to detect viruses and antibodies

Scientists have developed a method using holographic imaging to detect both viruses and antibodies.

 If fully realised, this proposed test could be done in under 30 minutes, is highly accurate, and can be performed by minimally trained personnel, the researchers said.

Developed by scientists from New York University, the method uses laser beams to record holograms of their test beads. The surfaces of the beads are activated with biochemical binding sites that attract either antibodies or virus particles, depending on the intended test. Binding antibodies or viruses causes the beads to grow by a few billionth parts of a metre.

Researchers have shown they can detect this growth through changes in the beads’ holograms. The test can analyse a dozen beads per second. This can mean cutting the time for a reliable thousand-bead diagnostic test to 20 minutes.

The holographic video microscopy is performed by an instrument, xSight, created by Spheryx. The comparison between India, Bangladesh per capita GDP

In the IMF’s estimation, in 2020, growth of India’s gross domestic product (GDP) will witness a contraction of over 10%. This more than doubles the level of contraction — from 4.5% — that the IMF had projected for India just a few months ago.

The estimation also shows that the per capita income of an average Bangladeshi citizen would be more than the per capita income of an average Indian citizen.

How did this happen?

Typically, countries are compared on the basis of GDP growth rate, or on absolute GDP. For the most part since Independence, on both these counts, India’s economy has been better than Bangladesh’s.

India’s economy has mostly been over 10 times the size of Bangladesh, and grown faster every year.

The per capita income also involves another variable — the overall population — and is arrived at by dividing the total GDP by the total population.

As a result, there are three reasons why India’s per capita income has fallen below Bangladesh this year.

 The first thing is that Bangladesh’s economy has been clocking rapid GDP growth rates since 2004. India grew even faster than Bangladesh. But since 2017 onwards India’s growth rate has decelerated sharply while Bangladesh’s has become even faster.

 Secondly, over the same 15-year period, India’s population grew faster (around 21%) than Bangladesh’s population (just under 18%).

 Lastly, the most immediate factor was the relative impact of Covid-19 on the two economies in 2020. While India’s GDP is set to reduce by 10%, Bangladesh’s is expected to grow by almost 4%.

It is not the first time this is happening, in 1991, when India was undergoing a severe crisis and grew by just above 1%, Bangladesh’s per capita GDP surged ahead of India’s. Since then, India again took the lead.

The IMF’s projections show that India is likely to grow faster next year and, in all likelihood, again surge ahead. But, given Bangladesh’s lower population growth and faster economic growth, India and Bangladesh are likely to be neck and neck for the foreseeable future in terms of per capita income.

How has Bangladesh managed to grow so fast and so robustly?

In the initial years of its independence with Pakistan, Bangladesh struggled to grow fast. However, moving away from Pakistan also gave the country a chance to start afresh on its economic and political identity.

A key driver of growth was the garment industry where women workers gave Bangladesh the edge to corner the global export markets from which China retreated.

 Its labour laws were not as stringent and its economy increasingly involved women in its labour force. This can be seen in higher female participation in the labour force.

It also helps that the structure of Bangladesh’s economy is such that its GDP is led by the industrial sector, followed by the services sector. Both these sectors create a lot of jobs and are more remunerative than agriculture. India, on the other hand, has struggled to boost its industrial sector and has far too many people still dependent on agriculture.

Beyond the economics, a big reason for Bangladesh’s progressively faster growth rate is that, especially over the past two decades, it improved on several social and political metrics such as health, sanitation, financial inclusion, and women’s political representation.

 For instance, despite a lower proportion of its population having access to basic sanitation, the mortality rate attributed to unsafe water and sanitation in Bangladesh is much lower than in India.

On financial inclusion, according to the World Bank’s Global Findex database, while a smaller proportion of its population has bank accounts, the proportion of dormant bank accounts is quite small when compared to India.

Bangladesh is also far ahead of India in the latest gender parity rankings. This measures differences in the political and economic opportunities as well as the educational attainment and health of men and women. Out of 154 countries mapped for it, Bangladesh is in the top 50 while India languishes at 112.

Challenges Bangladesh face

Its level of poverty is still much higher than India’s. In fact, according to the World Bank, “Poverty is expected to increase substantially in the short term, with the highest impact on daily and self-employed workers in the non-agricultural sector and salaried workers in the manufacturing sector.”

Moreover, it still trails India in basic education parameters and that is what explains its lower rank in the Human Development Index.

The bigger threat to its prospects emerges from its everyday politics. Its everyday public life is riddled with corruption. In the 2019 edition of Transparency International’s rankings, Bangladesh ranks a low 146 out of 198 countries (India is at 80th rank). In India, air pollution and high blood pressure among top risk factor for death: Lancet

In 2019, the top five risk factors for death in India were air pollution (contributing to an estimated 1.67 million deaths), high blood pressure (1.47 million), tobacco use (1.23 million), poor diet (1.18 million), and high blood sugar (1.12 million).

Latest disease estimates are part of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study. Researchers have analysed 286 causes of death, 369 diseases and injuries, and 87 risk factors in 204 countries and the latest estimates indicate how vulnerable countries were to the Covid-19.

Interaction of Covid-19 with continued global rise in chronic illness and related risk factors, including obesity, high blood sugar, and outdoor air pollution over the past 30 years has created a perfect storm, fuelling Covid deaths, said researchers in The Lancet.

The leading non-communicable cause of death in India in 2019 was ischemic heart disease with 1.52 million deaths, followed by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (8,98,000), stroke (6,99,000), diabetes (2,73,000) and cirrhosis and other chronic liver diseases (2,70,000). The leading risk factor for total health loss in India in 2019 was child and maternal malnutrition while the second leading risk factor was air pollution.

According to the report, 58 per cent of the total disease burden is due to non- communicable diseases (NCD) — up from 29 per cent in 1990 — while premature deaths due to NCDs have more than doubled from 22 to 50 per cent.

India has gained more than a decade of life expectancy since 1990, rising from 59.6 years to 70.8 years in 2019 — ranging from 77.3 years in Kerala to 66.9 years in UP. The increase in healthy life expectancy in India (60.5 years in 2019), however, has not been as dramatic as growth of life expectancy, so people are living more years with illness and disability.

Since 1990, India has made substantial gains in health, but child and maternal malnutrition is still the top risk factor for illness and death in India, contributing to more than 20 per cent of the total disease burden in several states in northern India (Bihar and UP).

Bhutan, Nepal, and Bangladesh have seen the proportion of total health loss (DALYs) caused by the rise of NCDs by more than 150 per cent since 1990. NCDs now contribute to more

than half of all DALYs in the region that was dominated by infectious, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases 30 years ago. SC upholds Madras HC order affirming animals right of passage

The Supreme Court (SC) upheld a 2011 order of the Madras High Court (HC) on the Nilgiris elephant corridor, affirming the right of passage of the animals and the closure of resorts in the area.

The Madras HC had, in July 2011, declared that the Tamil Nadu government was fully empowered under the 'Project Elephant' of the Union government as well as Article 51 A (g) of the Constitution to notify the elephant corridor in the state’s Nilgiris district.

The elephant corridor is situated in the Masinagudi area near the Mudumalai National Park in the Nilgris district.

The court also allowed the formation of a committee led by a retired HC judge and two other persons to hear the individual objections of resort owners and private land owners within the corridor space.

Many petitioners argued they had due permissions to operate their resorts and were inhabitants of the area living in residential spaces.

The Supreme Court, in August 2018, had directed the Tamil Nadu government to seal or close 11 hotels and resorts constructed on the elephant corridor in the Nilgiri Hills in violation of the law, within the next 48 hours. The court had taken the decision after hearing another petition on the same issue.

A bench headed had also directed that resorts and hotels with valid permits would have to produce their papers to the district collector within 24 hours. Nitrous Oxide human emissions increased 30% in 36 yrs: Report

Human emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) — a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2) — increased by 30 per cent between 1980 and 2016, according to a research paper published recently.

Nitrous oxide is a dangerous gas for the sustainable existence of humans on Earth. It has the third-highest concentration — after CO2 and methane — in our atmosphere among greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

N2O can live in the atmosphere for up to 125 years.

Its global concentration levels increased from 270 parts per billion (ppb) in 1750 to 331 ppb in 2018 — a jump of 20 per cent. The growth has been the quickest in the past five decades because of human emissions.

The research was conducted through an international collaboration between the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI) and the Global Carbon Project of Future Earth, a partner of the World Climate Research Programme. It involved 57 scientists from 48 institutions in 14 countries.

The study, which analysed 21 natural and human sources of N2O, found that 43 per cent of the total emissions came from human sources.

The increase in its emissions means that the climatic burden on the atmosphere is increasing from non-carbon sources as well, while the major focus of global climate change negotiations is currently centred on carbon, its emissions and mitigation.

The paper also brought to the fore the dichotomy of the climate crisis and global food security: It found that a major proportion of the N2O emissions in the last four decades came from the agricultural sector, mainly because of the use nitrogen-based fertilisers.

The growing demand for food and feed for animals will further increase global nitrous oxide emissions. There is a conflict between the way we are feeding people and stabilising the climate.

Most N2O emissions have come from emerging countries like India, China and Brazil.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions also has the co-benefits of reduced air and water pollution.

India had led the first-ever nitrogen resolution adopted in the fourth UN Environment Assembly with the help of INI. It is possible to slow down N2O emissions if countries implement the 2019 United Nations resolution on sustainable nitrogen management. Air Pollution

Air pollution in Delhi and the whole of the Indo Gangetic Plains is a complex phenomenon that is dependent on a variety of factors. The first and foremost is the input of pollutants, followed by weather and local conditions.

Why does air pollution rise in October each year?

October usually marks the withdrawal of monsoons in Northwest India. During monsoons, the prevalent direction of wind is easterly. These winds, which travel from over the Bay of Bengal, carry moisture and bring rains to this part of the country.

Once monsoon withdraws, the predominant direction of winds changes to north westerly. During summers, too, the direction of wind is north westerly and storms carrying dust from Rajasthan and sometimes Pakistan and Afghanistan.

According to a peer reviewed study conducted by scientists at the National Physical Laboratory, 72 per cent of Delhi’s wind in winters comes from the northwest, while the remaining 28 per cent comes from the Indo-Gangetic plains.

In 2017, a storm that originated in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait led to a drastic dip in Delhi’s air quality in a couple of days.

Along with the change in wind direction, the dip in temperatures is also behind the increased pollution levels.

 As temperature dips, the inversion height — which is the layer beyond which pollutants cannot disperse into the upper layer of the atmosphere – is lowered. The concentration of pollutants in the air increases when this happens.

Also, high-speed winds are very effective at dispersing pollutants, but winters bring a dip in wind speed over all as compared to in summers. The combination of these meteorological

factors makes the region prone to pollution. When factors such as farm fires and dust storms are added to the already high base pollution levels in the city, air quality dips further.

Role of farm fires

Farm fires have been an easy way to get rid of paddy stubble quickly and at low cost for several years. With the use of combine harvesters, the practice became more common as the harvester leaves behind tall stalks, which have to be removed before replanting.

But the practice gained widespread acceptance starting 2009, when the governments of Punjab and Haryana passed laws delaying the sowing of paddy. The aim of passing this law was to conserve groundwater as the new sowing cycle would coincide with monsoons and less water would be extracted.

This resulted in leaving very little time for farmers to harvest paddy, clear fields and sow wheat for the next cycle. The paddy straw and stalks have high silica content and are not used to feed livestock. The easiest, but the least productive, way to get rid of it is to set it on fire.

Over the past 11 years, the practice has thrived despite efforts made by the Centre and state governments primarily because the alternatives, like the happy seeder machine which helps mulch the residue, are seen as unavailable, and money and time consuming by smaller farmers.

A 2015 source-apportionment study on Delhi’s air pollution conducted by IIT-Kanpur also states that 17-26% of all particulate matter in Delhi in winters is because of biomass burning. Over the years, the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) has developed a system to calculate the contribution of stubble burning to Delhi’s pollution.

Last year, during peak stubble burning incidents, its contribution rose to 40%. Over the past few days, it has been 2%-4%, indicating that a variety of factors, not just stubble burning, are responsible for the dip in quality. As November draws closer, the percentage contribution is set to go up.

The stubble burning season is around 45 days long. Air in Delhi, however, remains polluted till February.

Other big sources of pollution in Delhi

Dust and vehicular pollution are the two biggest causes of dipping air quality in Delhi in winters.

Dry cold weather means dust is prevalent in the entire region, which does not see many rainy days between October and June.

Dust pollution contributes to 56% of PM 10 and and the PM2.5 load at 59 t/d, the top contributors being road 38 % of PM 2.5 concentration, the IIT Kanpur study said.

Vehicular pollution is the second biggest cause of pollution in winters. According to the IIT Kanpur study, 20 % of PM 2.5 in winters comes from vehicular pollution.

Over the years, governments have taken several steps to address pollution from vehicles. The introduction of BS VI (cleaner) fuel, push for electric vehicles, Odd-Even as an emergency measure, and construction of the Eastern and Western Peripheral Expressways are all part of the effort to reduce vehicular pollution. Naval Version of BrahMos

A Naval version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile was successfully test-fired from the Navy’s indigenously built stealth destroyer INS Chennai, hitting a target in the Arabian Sea.

It is expected that the BrahMos as the “prime strike weapon” will ensure the warship’s “invincibility” by engaging naval surface targets at long range and making the destroyer a lethal platform.

While versions of the missile have been in India’s arsenal for long, the weapon system is continuously upgraded and updated with new hardware and software systems. These upgrades necessitate periodic tests.

The present supersonic version could reach a speed of 2.8 times that of sound (2.8 Mach) and hit a target at the range of around 450 km, and a hypersonic version of the missile, capable of reaching a speed of 5 Mach was being developed.

BrahMos as a ‘standoff range weapon’

CRUISE MISSILES like the BrahMos are a type of system known as “standoff range weapons”, which are fired from a range sufficient to allow the attacker to evade defensive fire from the adversary. These weapons are in the arsenals of most major militaries in the world. BrahMos Aerospace was set up in 1998 with the aim to build such missiles.

Commissioned in 2016, the indigenously designed Kolkata-class stealth-guided missile destroyer, the INS Chennai is designed to carry the BrahMos surface-to-surface missile system, thus giving the ship the capability to strike at shore-based and naval surface targets.

An amalgamation of the names of Brahmaputra and Moskva rivers, the BrahMos is designed, developed and produced by BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture company set up by DRDO and Mashinostroyenia of Russia.

Various versions of the BrahMos, including those that can be fired from land, warships, submarines and Sukhoi-30 fighter jets, have already been developed and successfully tested in the past. Chinese Pink Dolphin

Chinese pink dolphins are making a comeback in the Pearl river estuary, one of the most heavily industrialised areas on Earth.

The Pearl River estuary includes Hong Kong, Macau as well as the mainland Chinese cities of Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Dongguan. Some 22 million people live in the area.

Pink dolphins have seen a decline in their numbers in the past 15 years by 70-80 per cent. Dolphins use echolocation to find their way in water. The estuary is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

Ships often disturb the dolphins in finding their way and even kill them.

But dolphin numbers in the waters between Hong Kong and Macau have seen a rebound this year because the novel coronavirus disease pandemic has stopped ferries for the time being, according to the AFP report. The number of pink dolphins in the waters has roughly increased by a third according to scientists quoted in the report.

Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins

Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins are also known as Chinese white dolphins or pink dolphins, reflecting the colour of their skin.

Global conservation status:

 Vulnerable (IUCN Red List of Threated Species)  Listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendix I.  Listed in the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) Appendix II.

Major threats:

 Habitat loss from coastal development  Water pollution  Underwater noise pollution  Vessel collision  Over-fishing Skinks of India

A recent publication by the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) reveals that India is home to 62 species of skinks and says about 57% of all the skinks found in India (33 species) are endemic.

It is the first monograph on this group of lizards, which are found in all kinds of habitats in the country, from the Himalayas to the coasts and from dense forests to the deserts

The publication is a result of four years of work and study of over 4,000 specimens in all 16 regional centres of ZSI and also at the Bombay Natural History Society, Indian Institute of Science, Wildlife Institute of India, and the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology & Natural History.

It also makes an attempt to ‘redescribe’ all the 62 species with their taxonomic identification keys, distributional maps, habits, habitat and breeding biology.

The Western Ghats are home to 24 species of which 18 are endemic to the region. The Deccan Peninsular region is home to 19 species of which 13 are endemic. There are records of 14 skink species from the northeast of which two species are endemic.

With 1,602 species of skinks across the world, making it the largest family of lizards, their occurrence in India is less than 4 % of the global diversity.

Of the 16 genera of skinks found in India, four genera are endemic.  Sepsophis (with one species) and Barkudia (with two species) are limbless skinks found in the hills and coastal plains of the eastern coast.  Barkudia insularisis believed to be found only in the Barkud Island in Chilka lake in Odisha.  Barkudia melanosticta is endemic to Visakhapatnam.  Sepsophis punctatus is endemic to the northern part of Eastern Ghats.

Skinks are highly alert, agile and fast moving and actively forage for a variety of insects and small invertebrates. The reduced limbs of certain skink species or the complete lack of them make their slithering movements resemble those of snakes, leading people to have incorrect notion that they are venomous. This results in several of these harmless creatures being killed. Unemployment rate in urban areas at 8.4% in July-Sept 2019

Unemployment rate in urban areas moderated to 8.4 per cent in July-September 2019 from 8.9 per cent in April-June 2019 and 9.7 per cent in July-September 2018, the quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) showed.

Details

Urban unemployment in the age group 15-29 years was 20.6 per cent in July-September 2019, lower than 21.6 per cent in the previous quarter and 23.1 per cent in the same period previous year.

Female unemployment rate eased to 9.7 per cent in July-September, lower than 11.3 per cent in April-June 2019 and 12.7 per cent in July-September 2018, while unemployment rate for males stood at 8.0 per cent in July-September, as against 8.7 per cent in the previous quarter and 8.9 per cent in July-September 2018.

Labour force participation rate rose to 36.8 per cent from 36.2 per cent in the previous quarter and 36.1 per cent in the same period in the previous year, the data showed.

State-wise breakup showed that urban unemployment rate was higher than the national average in Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.

Unemployment data for urban areas is released quarterly. This dataset differs from the Annual Report of Periodic Labour Force Survey, which covers both rural and urban areas and gives estimates of employment and unemployment in both usual status (ps+ss) and CWS.

The sample size for this survey was lower covering 1.76 lakh people and 44,471 households in July-September 2019 compared with 1.79 lakh people and 45,288 households in April- June 2019. Fertiliser Subsidy

Farmers buy fertilisers at MRPs (maximum retail price) below their normal supply-and- demand-based market rates or what it costs to produce/import them.

The MRP of neem-coated urea, for instance, is fixed by the government at Rs 5,922.22 per tonne, whereas its average cost-plus price payable to domestic manufacturers and importers comes to around Rs 17,000 and Rs 23,000 per tonne, respectively. The difference, which varies according to plant-wise production cost and import price, is footed by the Centre as subsidy.

The MRPs of non-urea fertilisers are decontrolled or fixed by the companies. The Centre, however, pays a flat per-tonne subsidy on these nutrients to ensure they are priced at “reasonable levels”.

Decontrolled fertilisers, thus, retail way above urea, while they also attract lower subsidy.

Payment of subsidy

The subsidy goes to fertiliser companies, although its ultimate beneficiary is the farmer who pays MRPs less than the market-determined rates. Companies, until recently, were paid

after their bagged material had been dispatched and received at a district’s railhead point or approved godown.

From March 2018, a new so-called direct benefit transfer (DBT) system was introduced, wherein subsidy payment to the companies would happen only after actual sales to farmers by retailers.

Each retailer now has a point-of-sale (PoS) machine linked to the Department of Fertilisers’ e-Urvarak DBT portal. Anybody buying subsidised fertilisers is required to furnish his/her Aadhaar unique identity or Kisan Credit Card number.

The quantities of the individual fertilisers purchased, along with the buyer’s name and biometric authentication, have to be captured on the PoS device. Only upon the sale getting registered on the e-Urvarak platform can a company claim subsidy, with these being processed on a weekly basis and payments remitted electronically to its bank account.

The main motive of the new payment system is to curb diversion.

Way forward

The time has come to seriously consider paying farmers a flat per-acre cash subsidy that they can use to purchase any fertiliser. The amount could vary, depending on the number of crops grown and whether the land is irrigated or not. This will help to prevent diversion and also encourage judicious application of fertilisers, with the right nutrient (macro and micro) combination based on proper soil testing and crop-specific requirements. State of Global Air 2020(SoGA 2020)

The first-ever comprehensive analysis of air pollution’s global impact on newborns has found that high particulate matter contributed to the deaths of more than 116,000 Indian infants who did not survive their first month, according to a new global study, State of Global Air 2020 (SoGA 2020).

The report was published by Health Effects Institute (HEI1), an independent, nonprofit research institute funded jointly by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and others.

India was followed by Nepal, Niger, Qatar and Nigeria in high PM 2.5 exposures. This means people in India are exposed to the highest PM 2.5 concentrations globally.

The report also said that India has been recording an increase in PM 2.5 pollution since 2010 contrary to Centre’s claims that annual air pollution levels in the country are coming down.

Out of the 20 most populous countries, 14 have recorded a gradual improvement in air quality but India, Bangladesh, Niger, Pakistan and Japan are among those that have recorded a modest increase in air pollution levels.

More than half of these deaths were associated with outdoor PM2.5 and others were linked to use of solid fuels such as charcoal, wood, and animal dung for cooking.

Long-term exposure to outdoor and household air pollution contributed to over 1.67 million annual deaths from stroke, heart attack, diabetes, lung cancer, chronic lung diseases, and neonatal diseases, in India in 2019.

In infants, most deaths were related to complications from low birth weight and preterm birth. Overall, air pollution is now the biggest risk factor for death among others, according to the SoGA 2020 report.

Out of 87 health risk factors based on total number of deaths caused in 2019 assessed by the team, air pollution has the fourth highest risk globally preceded by high systolic blood pressure, tobacco and dietary risks. But in India, air pollution is the highest risk factor because of the huge burden of premature deaths it contributes to.

India is also among the top ten countries with highest ozone (O3) exposure in 2019. Qatar recorded the highest O3 exposure followed by Nepal and India. Among the 20 most populous countries, India recorded the highest increase (17%) in O3 concentrations in the past ten years.

On average, global exposure to ozone increased from about 47.3 parts per billion (ppb) in 2010 to 49.5 ppb in 2019.

O3 is a major respiratory irritant which is not released directly into the air but is formed in a complex chemical interaction between nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the presence of sunlight.

 NOx is emitted from the burning of fossil fuels (oil, gas, and coal) in motor vehicles, power plants, industrial boilers, and home heating systems.  Volatile organic compounds are also emitted by motor vehicles, as well as by oil and gas extraction and processing and other industrial activities.

This report comes as COVID-19 — an infection that puts people with heart and lung disease at high risk of death — has claimed more than 110,000 lives in India. Although the link between air pollution and COVID-19 is not completely established, there is clear evidence linking air pollution and increased heart and lung disease.

 There is growing concern that exposure to high levels of air pollution during winter months in South Asian countries and East Asia could exacerbate the effects of COVID-19.

Significance of the Study

Addressing impacts of air pollution on adverse pregnancy outcomes and newborn health is important for low- and middle-income countries, not only because of the high prevalence of

low birth weight, preterm birth, and child growth deficits but because it allows the design of strategic interventions that can be directed at these vulnerable groups. Kaleshwaram Project

Recently, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) has declared that the environmental clearance (EC) granted to the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project in Telangana was ex post facto (i.e. granted after completion of substantial work) and illegal.

Details

The Principal Bench of the National Green Tribunal, New Delhi, ruled that the Environmental Clearance given to the project in December 2017 was void as the Telangana government subsequently changed the design of the project to increase its capacity.

The NGT observed that by increasing its capacity to pump 3 TMC water from 2 TMC, which was originally planned, major changes were made in the project due to which large tracts of forest land and other land was taken over and massive infrastructure was built causing adverse impact on the environment.

The Telangana Government’s argument that the expansion of the project to extract 3 TMC instead of 2 TMC did not involve any infrastructural changes and therefore a fresh EC was not required, was not accepted by the NGT.

Extraction of more water certainly requires more storage capacity and also affects hydrology and riverine ecology of Godavari River. Such issues may have to be examined by the statutory authorities concerned, the NGT observed in its order.

It also added that it was difficult to accept the plea that enhancement of capacity by one third will not require any infrastructural changes. In any case, this aspect needs to be evaluated by the statutory expert Committees before the expansion is undertaken.

The NGT also directed the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change to constitute a seven-member Expert Committee within a month to assess the extent of damage caused in going ahead with the project’s expansion and identify the restoration measures necessary. The Expert Committee will complete its exercise within six months.

The NGT directed the Telangana Government to stop all work except the drinking water component and obtain a Forest Clearance from the Centre before going ahead with the project.

Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project

The Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation System is considered to be one of the world’s largest multi- purpose projects.

It is designed to provide water for irrigation and drinking purposes to about 45 lakh acres in 20 of the 31 districts in Telangana, apart from Hyderabad and Secunderabad.

The cost of the project is Rs 80,000 crore but is expected to rise to Rs 1 lakh crore by the time it is completely constructed by the end of 2020.

This project is unique because Telangana will harness water at the confluence of two rivers with Godavari by constructing a barrage at Medigadda in Jayashankar Bhupalpally district and reverse pump the water into the main Godavari River and divert it through lifts and pumps into a huge and complex system of reservoirs, water tunnels, pipelines and canals.

Importance of KLIS to Telangana

Kaleshwaram will transform Telangana into an agricultural powerhouse. The project will enable farmers in Telangana to reap multiple crops with a year-round supply of water wherein earlier they were dependent on rains resulting in frequent crop failures.

KLIS covers several districts which used to face rainfall deficit and the groundwater is fluoride-contaminated. Apart from providing water for irrigation to 45 lakh acres, a main component of the project is supply of drinking water to several towns and villages and also to twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad.

Mission Bhagiratha, the Rs 43,000-crore project to supply drinking water to every household in villages, draws a large quantity of water from the KLIS and some quantity from projects on River Krishna. There is a burgeoning fresh water fishing industry in the state as the numerous water bodies created under the project are also being used to grow fish and locals are given rights to fish and sell. OSIRIS-REx

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx — Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer — spacecraft briefly touched asteroid Bennu, from where it is meant to collect samples of dust and pebbles and deliver them back to Earth in 2023.

About OSIRIS-REx mission

This is NASA’s first mission meant to return a sample from the ancient asteroid. The mission is essentially a seven-year-long voyage and will conclude when at least 60 grams of samples are delivered back to the Earth.

As per NASA, the mission promises to bring the largest amount of extraterrestrial material back to our planet since the Apollo era.

The mission was launched in 2016, it reached its target in 2018 and since then, the spacecraft has been trying to match the velocity of the asteroid using small rocket thrusters to rendezvous it.

Recently, the spacecraft’s robotic arm called the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), made an attempt to “TAG” the asteroid at a sample site which was no bigger than a few parking spaces and collected a sample.

The spacecraft contains five instruments meant to explore Bennu including cameras, a spectrometer and a laser altimeter. The departure window for the mission will open up in 2021, after which it will take over two years to reach back to Earth.

Why are scientists studying asteroid Bennu?

Bennu is an asteroid about as tall as the Empire State Building and located at a distance of about 200 million miles away from the Earth.

Scientists study asteroids to look for information about the formation and history of planets and the sun since asteroids were formed at the same time as other objects in the solar system. Another reason for tracking them is to look for asteroids that might be potentially hazardous.

Significantly, Bennu hasn’t undergone drastic changes since its formation over billions of years ago and therefore it contains chemicals and rocks dating back to the birth of the solar system. It is also relatively close to the Earth.

Asteroids

Asteroids are rocky objects that orbit the Sun, much smaller than planets. They are also called minor planets. According to NASA, 994,383 is the count of known asteroids, the remnants from the formation of the solar system over 4.6 billion years ago.

Asteroids are divided into three classes. First, those found in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which is estimated to contain somewhere between 1.1-1.9 million asteroids.

The second group is that of trojans, which are asteroids that share an orbit with a larger planet. NASA reports the presence of Jupiter, Neptune and Mars trojans. In 2011, they reported an Earth trojan as well.

The third classification is Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA), which have orbits that pass close by the Earth. Those that cross the Earth’s orbit are called Earth-crossers. More than 10,000 such asteroids are known, out of which over 1,400 are classified as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs). Forex reserves touch high of $ 555.1 bn

The country’s foreign exchange reserves touched a life time high of $555.12 billion after it surged by $3.615 billion in the week ended October 16, according to RBI data.

During the latest reporting week, the rise in total reserves was due to a sharp rise in Foreign Currency Assets (FCAs), a major component of the overall reserves. FCA jumped by $3.539 billion to $512.322 billion, the data showed.

 Expressed in dollar terms, FCAs include the effect of appreciation or depreciation of non-US units like the euro, pound and yen held in the foreign exchange reserves.

Gold reserves were up by $86 million in the reporting week to $36.685 billion.

The special drawing rights with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) remained unchanged at $1.480 billion during the reporting week.

The country’s reserve position with the IMF declined by $11 million to $4.634 billion during the reporting week, as per the data.

Alongside this jump in FDI and FPI inflows, the reserves have been supported by a dip in import bill on account of low crude oil prices, decline in gold and other imports on account of the Covid-19 pandemic.

While rising foreign exchange reserve provide cushion to the economy in terms of covering the import expenditure, it also provides stability to the domestic currency against the dollar.

About Forex Reserve

The Forex reserves of India consist of below four categories:

1. Foreign Currency Assets 2. Gold 3. Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) 4. Reserve Tranche Position

Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)

The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement its member countries’ official reserves.

SDR is often regarded as a 'basket of national currencies' comprising four major currencies of the world - US dollar, Euro, British Pound and Yen (Japan).

Reserve Tranche Position

A reserve tranche is a portion of the required quota of currency each member country must provide to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that can be utilized for its own purposes—without a service fee or economic reform conditions. IMD launches guidance system for South Asia

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) launched the South Asian Flash Flood Guidance System (FFGS), which is aimed at helping disaster management teams and governments make timely evacuation plans ahead of the actual event of flooding.

India is leading a delegation of nations, including Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, in sharing hydrological and meteorological data towards preparing flash flood forecasts. India’s National Disaster Management Authority and the Central Water Commission have also partnered in this system.

Data from World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) suggest that across the world, about 5,000 people die annually due to flash floods. Despite such high mortality, there is no robust forecasting or warning system for flash floods, noted the Asian experts.

Also noted that the frequency of extreme rainfall events has increased due to climate change and South Asia is highly prone to flash floods.

Flash floods are sudden surges in water levels during or following an intense spell of rain, occurring in a short time duration over a localised area. The flood situation worsens in the presence of choked drainage lines or encroachments obstructing the natural flow of water. PM inaugurates three key projects in Gujarat

Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi inaugurated 3 key projects in Gujarat through video conferencing.

 launched the Kisan Suryodaya Yojana for providing 16 hours of power supply to farmers.  inaugurated the Paediatric Heart Hospital attached with U.N Mehta Institute of Cardiology and Research Centre and a Mobile Application for tele-cardiology at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad.  inaugurated the Ropeway at Girnar on the occasion.

Kisan Suryodaya Yojana

To provide day-time power supply for irrigation, the Gujarat Government had recently announced the ‘Kisan Suryodaya Yojana’.

Under this scheme, farmers will be able to avail power supply from 5 AM to 9 PM.

The state government has allocated a budget of Rs.3500 crore for installing transmission infrastructure under this scheme by 2023.

234 ‘66-Kilowatt’ transmission lines, with a total length of 3490 circuit kilometers (CKM) will be established under the project, in addition to 220 KV substations.

Paediatric Heart Hospital attached with the U.N Mehta Institute of Cardiology and Research

Prime Minister also inaugurated the Paediatric Heart Hospital attached with the U.N Mehta Institute of Cardiology and Research Centre and a Mobile Application for tele-cardiology at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad.

The U.N Mehta Institute will now become India’s biggest hospital for cardiology in addition to being one of the select few hospitals in the world with a world-class medical infrastructure and medical facilities.

The Institute will also become the biggest single super speciality cardiac teaching institute in the country and one of the biggest single super speciality cardiac hospitals in the world.

The building is equipped with safety precautions like earthquake proof construction, firefighting hydrant system and fire mist system.

Girnar Ropeway

Gujarat will once again be highlighted on the global tourism map with the inauguration of the Ropeway at Girnar.

A distance of 2.3 kms will now be covered in just 7.5 minutes through the ropeway.

In addition to this, the ropeway will also provide a scenic view of the lush green beauty surrounding the Girnar mountain. Bringing Natural Gas under GST

Global energy majors have called on the government to bring natural gas under the GST regime at the India energy Forum.

Currently petrol, diesel, aviation turbine fuel, natural gas and crude oil fall outside India’s Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime.

Importance

Experts have argued that bringing natural gas under the GST would lead to a reduction in the cascading impact of taxes on industries such as power and steel, which used natural gas as an input.

The inclusion of natural gas under the GST regime would do away with the central excise duty and different value added taxes imposed by states. This would lead to an increase in the adoption of natural gas in line with the government’s stated goal to increase the share of natural gas in the country’s energy basket from 6.3% to 15%. Wildfire season in Western US

Context: Fast-moving wildfires in southern California have seriously injured two firefighters, and have forced over 100,000 people to evacuate in what has been referred to as the worst wildfire season the state has seen on record.

Out of the six largest wildfires in California recorded since 1932, five occurred in 2020. The largest out of these were in August, called the August Complex fires, and burned an area of about 1,032,264 acres, resulting in one death. This year has also seen the most destructive and deadliest wildfires, with the North Complex wildfire coming at number five in both the categories since the records have been maintained.

The fires caused the skies around the San Francisco Bay area and in some parts of Oregon and Washington to turn orange as a result of the smoke and ash, and also affected the air quality in these areas.

Wildfire season in California

Typically, wildfire season in the western US stretches from late spring until seasonal winter rains and snow arrive.

Around the world, wildfires or forest fires occur during hot and dry seasons. Since dry leaves, shrubs, grass and deadwood are easily combustible, they are easy to ignite. Ignition can either happen naturally such as from lightning strikes, or can be triggered accidentally, such as from cigarette stubs.

Sometimes, ignition can be intentional, such as to clear the land or to control an incoming forest fire by removing vegetation that would provide more fuel to it. Such fires typically come to an end when there is no more vegetation to burn or because of rain.

NASA’s Earth Observatory has noted that wildfires were ignited in California in August after an “unprecedented outburst of dry lightning”. One reason could be that climate change is leading to more lightning storms.

As per The New York Times, most wildfires in California are caused by people. The El Dorado fires for instance, that have been mostly contained now, were ignited after a family used a “pyrotechnic device” to announce the gender of their new baby, the report mentions.

Other reasons include power transmission lines or other utility equipment that can ignite fires in remote areas. Once fires are started, they are made worse by strong, dry winds.

According to a paper published in 2017, humans are responsible for 84 per cent of the wildfires.

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) notes that climate change is a “key driver” of this trend, with warmer spring and summer temperatures, reduced snowpack and earlier spring snowmelt, which create longer and more intense dry seasons. These dry seasons have increased the moisture stress on vegetation and have therefore made forests more susceptible to severe wildfires.

A combination of record high temperatures, strong winds and greater number of lightning storms could be contributing to the severity of the current wildfire season in California.

The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was published in 2013, identified a few factors that could influence the way wildfires play out. These include a global increase in average temperatures, global increases in the frequency, intensity and extent of heatwaves (breaching of historically extreme temperature thresholds) and regional increases in the frequency, duration and intensity of droughts. Amur Falcon

From being hunted to become a symbol of hope, faith — Amur falcons have become “Birds of God” in Nagaland.

Every year Amur falcons flew from Siberia and the northern part of China to Southern Africa to spend winters.

The northeast India falls in their migration route, with a smattering of sightings in the northern part of India. Villagers used to lay traps, hunt the birds, and sell them for money.

In 2012 an estimated 120,000 to 140,000 birds were trapped in nets and killed while passing through a remote part of the Indian Nagaland region.

After which, the central government, state authorities, and wildlife experts initiated a conservation project for Amur falcons in Nagaland and Manipur.

About Amur falcons

The Amur Falcon is a migratory raptor. Every year, the small, resilient birds make the daring voyage from breeding grounds in Russia and China to winter in southern Africa.

IUCN Status: Least Concern

Amur Falcon is protected under both the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and Convention on Migratory species

Main Threats

 Over harvesting from trapping  Habitat loss from grassland degradation Dashboard to monitor air quality of Indian cities

A new dashboard launched provides a comprehensive picture of India’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), which come under the National Air Quality Monitoring Programme (NAMP).

The Centre had launched the National Clean Air Programme on January 10, 2019 to address air pollution in 122 cities.

 These cities are referred to as non-attainment cities as they did not meet the national ambient air quality standards for the period of 2011-15 under the National Air Quality Monitoring Programme.

The dashboard, set up by climate and energy news site CarbonCopy in association with Mumbai-based start-up Respirer Living Sciences, presents a comparative picture of particulate matter (PM) for all 122 cities since 2016.

 It establishes a three-year rolling average trend for PM2.5 and PM10 levels across the cities from 2016 to 2018.

Key highlights

 A total of 59 of 122 cities had PM2.5 data available. Noida ranked the worst with 119, followed by Agra, Delhi, Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Muzzaffarpur, Kanpur, Chandigarh, Howrah and Kolkata.  Delhi ranked as the most polluted state on an average of 3 years’ PM10 monitoring data, followed by Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.  Of the 23 states listed in the NCAP with non-attainment cities, only three states or Union Territories—Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab—accounted for above average readings for all three years of PM10 monitoring  West Bengal and Assam were on the margin

Significance

Experts believe that there is a need to study health data in the country by considering air pollution as an important risk factor.

A majority of health models which establish the relationship between air pollution and public health are based on western models due to a lack of health data available in Indian

context. When this data can be made available, it will give a true sense of the burden of respiratory diseases in the country by geographical distribution. Water on the Moon

Scientists have confirmed, for the first time, the presence of water on the sunlit surface of the Moon, a discovery which indicates that water molecules may be distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to the cold, shadowed places as previously thought.

Using NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), the researchers, including those from the University of Hawaii in the US, detected water molecules (H2O) in Clavius Crater -- one of the largest craters visible from the Earth, located in the Moon’s southern hemisphere.

Importance of the discovery

Apart from being a marker of potential life, water is a precious resource in deep space. For astronauts landing on the Moon, water is necessary not only to sustain life but also for purposes such as generating rocket fuel.

NASA’s Artemis programme plans to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon in 2024 and hopes to establish a “sustainable human presence” there by the end of the decade. If space explorers can use the Moon’s resources, it means they need to carry less water from Earth.

Previous Discoveries

Previous Moon studies, including by the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-1 mission, have provided evidence for the existence of water.

 In 2009, the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument aboard Chandrayaan-1 found water molecules in the polar regions.

Based on observations by the Chandrayaan-1 mission, NASA’s Cassini and Deep Impact comet mission, and NASA’s ground-based Infrared Telescope Facility — was whether the detected molecules were water as we know it (H20) or in the form of hydroxyl (OH).

Difference in the new Discovery

Data from the current study revealed that the Clavius Crater region has water in concentrations of 100 to 412 parts per million -- roughly equivalent to a 12-ounce bottle of water -- trapped in a cubic meter of soil spread across the lunar surface.

And it is the first-time water has been detected on the sunlit side, showing it is not restricted to the shadowy regions.

What next?

SOFIA will look for water in additional sunlit locations to learn more about how the water is produced, stored, and moved across the Moon. Meanwhile, NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) will carry out a mission to create the first water resource maps of the Moon.

About SOFIA

SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, is a Boeing 747SP aircraft modified to carry a 2.7-meter (106-inch) reflecting telescope (with an effective diameter of 2.5 meters or 100 inches).

Flying into the stratosphere at 38,000-45,000 feet puts SOFIA above 99 percent of Earth’s infrared-blocking atmosphere, allowing astronomers to study the solar system and beyond in ways that are not possible with ground-based telescopes.

SOFIA is made possible through a partnership between NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

The observatory’s mobility allows researchers to observe from almost anywhere in the world and enables studies of transient events that often take place over oceans where there are no telescopes. For example, astronomers on SOFIA studied eclipse-like events of Pluto, Saturn’s moon Titan, and Kuiper Belt Object MU69, the next flyby target for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, to study the objects’ atmospheres and surroundings. New Panel for New Delhi’s air

With the President signing the Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas Ordinance, 2020, a statutory authority to track and combat air pollution in and around the National Capital Region has come into existence.

The Commission will supersede bodies such as the central and state pollution control boards of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, UP and Rajasthan and will have the powers to issue directions to these state governments on issues pertaining to air pollution.

Comparison with EPCA

The one body with powers similar to the new Commission’s was the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA). It was not a statutory body but drew legitimacy from the Supreme Court, which has been looking at cases of air pollution as part of the judgment in M C Mehta vs Union of India (1988).

The EPCA was not supported by a legal framework in the form of a law. It did have the authority to issue fines or directions and guidelines to the governments in other states. It

had no state representatives, just two permanent members. The Commission, on the other hand, will have representation from the state.

Role of the Commission

The ordinance makes it clear that state as well as central bodies will not have jurisdiction over matters related to air pollution:

The ordinance says the Commission will look at coordination between states, planning and execution of policy and interventions, operations of industry, inspections, research into the causes of pollution etc. Experts say the ordinance means that the power to issue fines may also lie with the new Commission.

Officials said the Commission will, in a way, erase the relevance of start pollution control bodies since they do not have the powers to make any autonomous decisions anymore.

In case the directions issued by a state and the Commission clash, the decision of the Commission will be implemented.

Challenges

According to the Ordinance, the committee has been formed to do away with “ad-hoc measures” and to replace them to “streamline participation” from states and experts.

Improper representation from states. The Commission has a large number of members from the central government, which has not gone down well with the states. states may not get a say with just one member each.

Also, political differences will also now play a part in the functioning of the Commission because states are not happy with the overarching powers being vested in it. Translocation the corals off the coast of Mumbai

Recently, the Mumbai civic body received the green signal from the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife), Nagpur, for translocating the corals off the coast of Mumbai for the Rs 12,700-crore Mumbai Coastal Road Project.

The BMC aims to complete the translocation of 18 coral colonies over two days next month.

The Mumbai coast hosts a tiny population of corals. The corals found across rocky patches along the Mumbai coastline are mostly fast-growing and non-reef building corals.

Translocation of corals

The translocation of corals is at a nascent stage along the Indian coastline.

Pilot projects at the Lakshadweep islands, and off the coast of Kutch and Tamil Nadu have been undertaken to study the survival rate, method and site of translocation, and creation of high heat-resistant coral colonies, etc.

In a three-year-long project in Sindhudurg, corals were cultivated — fragments of corals were taken and attached to concrete frames with the help of nylon threads — and then left on ocean beds at a depth suitable for their growth.

Survival rate of translocated corals: Some experts are of the view that for a high survival rate, it is important to translocate corals in a place with similar environmental characteristics such as depth, current flow, amount of light, and pressure.

About corals

Corals exhibit characteristics of plants but are marine animals that are related to jellyfish and anemones.

Coral polyps are tiny, soft-bodied organisms. At their base is a hard, protective limestone skeleton called a calicle, which forms the structure of coral reefs.

Reefs begin when a polyp attaches itself to a rock on the seafloor, then divides, or buds, into thousands of clones. The polyp calicles connect to one another, creating a colony that acts as a single organism.

As colonies grow over hundreds and thousands of years, they join with other colonies, and become reefs.

There are soft corals as well, which are non-reef-building, and resemble bushes, grasses, trees.

Importance of coral reefs

Coral reefs are like underwater cities that support marine life.

According to the UN Environment programme, they provide at least half a billion people around the world with food security and livelihoods.

Coral reefs also act as ‘wave breaks’ between the sea and the coastline and minimise the impact of sea erosion. In India, they are protected in the same way as the tiger or elephant, under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act (WPA), 1972.

What poses a threat to coral reefs?

Climate change remains one of the biggest threats to corals.

Around the world, this threat has been visible in the “bleaching” of corals — is a process during which corals, under stress from warm weather, expel the algae that give corals their brilliant colours and live in their tissues and produce their food.

The Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia, a UNESCO World Heritage site and home to one of the largest collections of coral reefs on the planet, has suffered six mass bleaching events due to warmer than normal ocean temperatures: in 1998, 2002, 2006, 2016, 2017, and now 2020.

Experts have documented bleaching of the corals along Mumbai’s coastline as well. NITI Aayog releases draft Act, rules for states on land titling

The NITI Aayog recently released the draft model Act and rules for states for regulation on conclusive land titling, providing for a state government to order establishment of title registration for all or any type of immovable properties.

The move towards a land titling framework is aimed at reducing land-related litigations and improved land acquisition for infrastructure projects.

In a conclusive titling system, the government provides guaranteed titles for the land, and compensation in case of any ownership disputes.

The draft Act — as released by the government think tank — provides that any person aggrieved by an entry in the Record of Titles may file an objection before the Title Registration Officer within three years from the date of such notification, following which the Title Registration Officer make an entry in Register of Titles and in the Register of Disputes and refer the case to the Land Dispute Resolution Officer.

A party aggrieved with an order of Land Dispute Resolution Officer may file an appeal before the Land Titling Appellate Tribunal within 30 days of passing of such an order, according the draft by NITI Aayog.

A special bench of the high court shall be designated to deal with appeals against the orders passed by the Land Titling Appellate Tribunal, with the Act providing for a 30-day window to appeal before the High Court, the draft. Telangana to assign geographical coordinates to land

Telangana government to undertake a survey to allot geographical coordinates --longitudes and latitudes --to lands to make them tamper proof. Telangana claims to be the first state in the country which has been using Information Technology in a massive way to land

records.

Recently the Dharani portal, an integrated land record management system at Moodu Chintalapally village was launched in the state.

 On the Dharani portal, records of about 1.46 crore acres of land have been uploaded in the website and people can access them any time with just a click.  With the help of the Dharani portal, registrations and mutations can be done at the same time with minimum human interface.

Habitat decline for Himalayan Brown Bear

A recent study on the Himalayan brown bear (Ursus arctos isabellinus) has predicted a significant reduction in suitable habitat and biological corridors of the species in the climate change scenario, prompting scientists to suggest an adaptive spatial planning of protected area network in the western Himalayas for conserving the species.

The Himalayan brown bear is one of the largest carnivores in the highlands of Himalayas. It occupies the higher reaches of the Himalayas in remote, mountainous areas of Pakistan and India, in small and isolated populations, and is extremely rare in many of its ranges.

The study carried out in the western Himalayas by scientists of Zoological Survey of India, predicted a massive decline of about 73% of the bear’s habitat by the year 2050.

These losses in habitat will also result in loss of habitat from 13 protected areas (PAs), and eight of them will become completely uninhabitable by the year 2050, followed by loss of connectivity in the majority of Pas, study notes.

Also simulation suggests a significant qualitative decline in remaining habitats of the species within the protected areas of the landscape

Study notes that, in such a situation when the protected areas in the Himalayan region lose their effectiveness and representativeness, there is a need to adopt “preemptive spatial planning of PAs in the Himalayan region for the long-term viability of the species”.

 The suitable habitats were mapped outside the PAs and are closely placed to PAs; such areas may be prioritized to bring them into the PA network or enhanced protection, the study recommended.  The adaptive spatial planning broadly refers to conserving the existing landscape and augmenting the fragmented areas of the habitat of the species.

The study took the Himalayan brown bear as an example because it is a top carnivore of the high-altitude Himalayan region. The elevation gradient in which the brown bear is distributed is most vulnerable to global warming as this elevation belt is getting warmer faster than other elevation zones of Himalayas.

Ramsar Sites

India has named two new Wetlands of International Importance, bringing its total number of ‘Ramsar Sites’ to 39. Asan Conservation Reserve

Asan Conservation Reserve has become Uttarakhand’s first Ramsar site, making it a ‘Wetland of International Importance’.

The Reserve is located on the banks of Yamuna river near Dehradun district in Garhwal region of the Himalayan state. Asan receives about 40 migratory species, including Rudy Shelduck, Common coot, Gadwall, Kingfisher, Indian cormorant, Baer’s pochard, Northern pintail, Bar-headed goose.

Kabartal Wetland

Besides Asan, Kabartal Wetland from Bihar was the second new site to get included in this list.

KABAR Tal, a 7,500-ha lake in Begusarai district of north Bihar, is ecologically one of the most important wetlands in the state.

The lake hosts 106 species of resident birds and is a nesting ground for 59 species of migratory birds.

Economically, too, the lake is significant because it yields about two tonnes of fish everyday and is the single biggest source of irrigation in the area.

About Ramsar Convention

Ramsar Convention on Wetlands is an intergovernmental treaty adopted in February 1971 in the Iranian city of Ramsar, that provides the framework for national action and international cooperation for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources. Those wetlands which are of international importance are declared as Ramsar sites.

The Convention on Wetlands came into force for India on February 1, 1982.

The world’s first Site was the Cobourg Peninsula in Australia, designated in 1974. The largest Sites are Rio Negro in Brazil (120,000 square kilometres), and Ngiri-Tumba-Maindombe in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Queen Maud Gulf in Canada; these Sites each cover over 60,000 square km. Others are as small as one hectare.

The countries with the most Sites are the United Kingdom with 175 and Mexico with 142. Bolivia has the largest area with 148,000 square km under the Convention protection;

Canada, Chad, Congo and the Russian Federation have also each designated over 100,000 square km. Index of Eight Core Sector Industries

Recently, the Office of Economic Adviser within the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade released the Index of Eight Core Industries (ICI) for September 2020.

Accordingly, when compared to September 2019, the ICI contracted by 0.8 per cent in September 2020.

In terms of cumulative growth in the first half of the current financial year — that is, between April 2020 to September 2020 — this index contracted by 14.9 per cent. About Index of Core Industries

It is an index of the eight most fundamental industrial sectors of the Indian economy and it maps the volume of production in these industries.

It gives the details of these eight sectors — namely Coal, Natural Gas, Crude Oil, Refinery Products (such as Petrol and Diesel), Fertilisers, Steel, Cement and Electricity.

As can be seen from this Table, the lowest weight. Steel and Electricity are the other heavyweights.

Since these eight industries are the essential “basic” and/or “intermediate” ingredient in the functioning of the broader economy, mapping their health provides a fundamental understanding of the state of the economy.

In other words, if these eight industries are not growing fast enough, the rest of the economy is unlikely to either. Delhi’s Unusual Cool October

With the approaching winter, minimum temperatures in the national capital have trended downward over the last one week. October 29 and 30 were the coolest October days recorded in Delhi (Safdarjung) in recent years.

Changing weather in Delhi

Delhi is in the phase of seasonal transition between the southwest monsoon, which has withdrawn from the country, and winter. Since October 23, the minimum temperature recorded in Delhi has been slightly below normal.

Data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) show that recently, the minimum temperature fell below 13 degrees Celsius in October for the first time since 2007.

Cause of cooler weather

The weather is dry and the sky is mostly clear over North and Northwest India. Gentle northwesterly winds are blowing over the region.

Minimum temperatures across North and Northwest India are likely to remain 2 to 5 degrees Celsius below normal until at least November 12, according to the Extended Range Predictions issued on October 29. Labour Bureau to conduct three surveys to assess job situation

The Labour Bureau will conduct three surveys on migration, domestic workers and professional bodies for assessing their employment situation, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The expert group is chaired by SP Mukherjee and consists of economists, statisticians and government functionaries.

It has been constituted by the government for a period of three years to provide technical guidance to the Labour Bureau with respect to surveys on migration, professional bodies, domestic workers and other surveys and to expand available sources of data on employment and unemployment.

The migration survey to be undertaken by the Labour Bureau will provide estimates of the number of migrant workers in the country along with an assessment of the issues being faced by them.

The panel has been asked to collect data on domestic workers, who constitute roughly 3 per cent of the workers in the country, making it a first-of-its-kind survey on domestic workers to be carried out by the Labour Bureau.

For the survey on professional bodies, the government said that given the high proportion of employment generated in professions like chartered accountants, lawyers and doctors, there is a need to undertake a periodic estimation of the employment created in such professions. Seaplane Project

The first of the five seaplane services in Gujarat, connecting Sabarmati River in Ahmedabad to the Statue of Unity in Kevadia in Narmada district, will be inaugurated on October 31, the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

India’s first seaplane project

The first seaplane project of the country is part of a directive of the Union Ministry of Civil Aviation.

A seaplane is a fixed-winged aeroplane designed for taking off and landing on water. It offers the public the speed of an aeroplane with the utility of a boat.

There are two main types of seaplane: flying boats (often called hull seaplanes) and floatplanes.

The bottom of a flying boat’s fuselage is its main landing gear. This is usually supplemented with smaller floats near the wingtips, called wing or tip floats. The hull of a flying boat holds the crew, passengers, and cargo.

In India, Jal Hans, a commercial seaplane service based in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands was launched as a pilot project on 30 December 2010 by the then Indian Civil Aviation Minister, Praful Patel with a capacity of 10 passengers.

Impact on the environment

The water aerodrome is not a listed project/activity in the Schedule to the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification, 2006 and its amendments. However, the Expert Appraisal Committee was of the opinion that the activities proposed under the water aerodrome project may have a similar type of impact as that of an airport.

In Narmada, the Shoolpaneshwar Wildlife Sanctuary is located at an approximate aerial distance of 2.1 km from the proposed project site in south-west direction while the nearest reserve forest is situated at a distance of 4.7 meters in east direction, which serves local sensitive species of fauna.

The bathymetric and hydrographic survey was conducted by Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) before finalising Dyke 3, which is a rock-filled pond and popularly called the ‘Magar Talav’ as it is infested with crocodiles.

In terms of the long-term effects of the seaplane service, it is considered that During seaplane operations, there will be turbulence created in the water while takeoff and landing of seaplanes. This will lead to more operation process i.e. mixing of oxygen in the water. This will have a positive impact on the aquatic ecosystem near seaplane operations increasing oxygen content and decreasing carbon content in this system. Miscellaneous

Nobel for black hole physics

Three scientists won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for advancing our understanding of black holes, the all-consuming monsters that lurk in the darkest parts of the universe.

Briton Roger Penrose received half of this year’s prize “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity” and German Reinhard Genzel and American Andrea Ghez received the second half of the prize “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy,” the Nobel Committee said.

They made precise measurements of the orbits of the brightest stars in the area considered the middle of the Milky Way, and their studies showed that the slightly unusual trajectories and the speed of the stars could only be explained by the presence of a very massive but invisible, heavenly body. This is now known to be the Sagittarius A* supermassive black hole, which has a mass four million times that of the Sun and is confined to an area roughly the size of our Solar System.

Sagittarius A*

Sagittarius A* is one of two black holes whose photographs have been captured by the Event Horizon Telescope project. Black holes do not emit or radiate anything, even light. So, there is no way their image can be captured. But the area just outside its boundary, called

the event horizon, which has vast amounts of gas, clouds and plasma swirling violently, does emit all kinds of radiations, even visible light. Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Recently, Emmanuelle Charpentier of France and Jennifer A Doudna of the USA have been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors, one of gene technology’s sharpest tools. The Technology

Editing, or modifying, gene sequences is nothing new. It has been happening for several decades now, particularly in the field of agriculture, where several crops have been genetically modified to provide particular traits.

In essence, the technology works in a simple way — it locates the specific area in the genetic sequence which has been diagnosed to be the cause of the problem, cuts it out, and replaces it with a new and correct sequence that no longer causes the problem.

The technology replicates a natural defence mechanism in some bacteria that uses a similar method to protect itself from virus attacks.

An RNA molecule is programmed to locate the particular problematic sequence on the DNA strand, and a special protein called Cas9, which now is often described in popular literature as ‘genetic scissor’, is used to break and remove the problematic sequence.

A DNA strand, when broken, has a natural tendency to repair itself. But the auto-repair mechanism can lead to the re-growth of a problematic sequence. Scientists intervene during this auto-repair process by supplying the desired sequence of genetic codes, which replaces the original sequence. It is like cutting a portion of a long zipper somewhere in between, and replacing that portion with a fresh segment.

Because the entire process is programmable, it has a remarkable efficiency, and has already brought almost miraculous results.

There are a whole lot of diseases and disorders, including some forms of cancer, that are caused by an undesired genetic mutation. These can all be fixed with this technology. Genetic sequences of disease-causing organisms can be altered to make them ineffective. Genes of plants can be edited to make them withstand pests, or improve their tolerance to drought or temperature. Indian Air Force Day

The Indian Air Force is celebrating 88th Air Force Day on October 8. The day is being marked by the main event comprising a parade and flypast at Hindon Air Force Base along with events at IAF establishments across the country.

Details

October 8 is celebrated as the Air Force Day because on this day, the Air Force in India was officially raised in 1932 as the supporting force of the Royal Air Force of the United Kingdom. The first operational squadron came into being in April 1933.

After participation in World War II, the Air Force in India came to be called the Royal Indian Air Force in the mid 1940s. In 1950, after the republic came into being it became the Indian Air Force. From six officers and 19 Hawai Sepoys back in 1933, the Air Force now is the fourth largest in the world.

For several decades until 2005-06, the Air Force Day used to be marked by the main event, parade and flypast at Palam. But due to the increasing air traffic issues, it was shifted to Hindon Air Force Base in Ghaziabad which is home to two squadrons of transport aircraft and a helicopter unit among other establishments. The flypasts and displays on the occasion have traditionally showcased the in service aircraft and systems of the Air Force. Earthshot Prize

Britain’s Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge launched a new 50-million pound Earthshot Prize, aimed at funding the most innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.

Five prizes worth 1 million pounds each will be awarded each year for the next 10 years, providing at least 50 solutions to the world’s greatest environmental problems by 2030. Details

The Earthshot Prize has been pegged as the biggest initiative to date from both Prince William and the Royal Foundation and was first introduced in December last year, with nominations now set to open from November 1.

Taking inspiration from former US President John F. Kennedy’s Moonshot. which united millions of people around an organising goal to put man on the moon and catalysed the development of new technology in the 1960s, the Earthshot Prize is centred around five “Earthshots”, simple but ambitious goals for our planet, which if achieved by 2030 will improve life for us all, for generations to come.

The five Earthshots unveiled this week include protect and restore nature; clean our air; revive our oceans; build a waste-free world; and fix our climate.

Each Earthshot is underpinned by scientifically agreed targets including the UN Sustainable Development Goals and other internationally recognised measures to help repair our planet. Together, they form a unique set of challenges rooted in science, which aim to generate new ways of thinking, as well as new technologies, systems, policies and solutions.

By bringing these five critical issues together, the Earthshot Prize organisers say they are recognising the interconnectivity between environmental challenges and the urgent need to tackle them together.

Prizes could be awarded to a wide range of individuals, teams or collaborations – scientists, activists, economists, community projects, leaders, governments, banks, businesses, cities, and countries – anyone whose workable solutions make a substantial contribution to achieving the Earthshots.

Every year from 2021 until 2030, Prince William, alongside the Earthshot Prize Council which covers six continents, will award the Earthshot Prize to five winners, one per Earthshot.

In addition to the Prize Council, the Earthshot Prize will be supported by its Global Alliance, a network of organisations worldwide which share the ambition of the Prize to repair the planet. RTGS to become 24×7

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to make available the RTGS (real-time gross settlement system) — online fund transfer above Rs 2 lakh — round the clock on all days from December 2020. With this, India will be among the few countries globally with a large value payment ecosystem.

This will facilitate innovations in the large value payments ecosystem and promote ease of doing business.

In December 2019, the RBI made available the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system round the clock on all days and the system has been operating smoothly since then.

The RTGS system is primarily meant for large value transactions. The minimum amount to be remitted through RTGS is Rs two lakh with no upper or maximum ceiling. Currently, RTGS service window for customer transactions is available to banks from 7 am to 6 pm on a working day, for settlement at the RBI end. However, the timings that the banks follow may vary from bank to bank. Kasturi Cotton

Union Minister for Textiles unveiled a brand and a logo for Indian cotton recently.

The branding — Kasturi Cotton — would initially be applicable to long staple cotton that is grown in India and meets prescribed standards.

The Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) had developed a mobile application called “Cott-Ally” to provide the latest news on weather conditions, the crop situation and best farm practices. The CCI has opened 430 procurement centres in cotton-growing States and payments are made to farmers digitally within 72 hours, she said. The Economics of Auctions

Recently, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded this year’s Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel — popularly referred to as the Nobel Prize for Economics — to Paul R Milgrom and Robert B Wilson.

The pair were receiving the award for “for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats”. Auction theory

Auction theory studies how auctions are designed, what rules govern them, how bidders behave and what outcomes are achieved. Essentially, it is about how auctions lead to the discovery of the price of a commodity.

Over time, and especially over the last three decades, more and more goods and services have been brought under auction. The nature of these commodities differs sharply. For instance, a bankrupt person’s property is starkly different from the spectrum for radio or telecom use. Similarly, carbon dioxide emission credits are quite different from the spot market for buying electricity.

In other words, no one auction design fits all types of commodities or seller. The purpose of an auction also differs with the commodity and the entity conducting the auction. More often than not, private sellers want to maximise their gains while public authorities may have other goals in mind.

Three key variables need to be understood while designing an auction.

 One is the rules of the auction.  The second variable is the commodity or service being put up for auction.  The third variable is uncertainty. Blue Flag tag

Two beaches in the State are among the eight in the country that have bagged the coveted eco-label ‘Blue Flag’ from the international agency Foundation for Environment Education, Denmark. The two are Kasarkod beach near Honnavar in Uttara Kannada and Padubidri beach near Udupi.

Earlier, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change had embarked upon a programme for ‘Blue Flag’ certification for select 13 beaches in the country.

‘Blue Flag’ beach is an eco-tourism model to provide tourists clean and hygienic bathing water, facilities/amenities, safe and healthy environment and sustainable development of the area.

The certification is awarded by the Denmark-based agency based on 33 stringent criteria in four major heads that is environmental education and information, bathing water quality, environment management and conservation and safety and services in the beaches. Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog

Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog (RKA) unveiled a “chip” made of cow dung and claimed that it reduces radiation from mobile handsets significantly during the launch of a nationwide campaign ‘Kamdhenu Deepawali Abhiyan’, which is aimed at promoting cow dung products.

The “chip”, named Gausatva Kavach, is manufactured by Rajkot-based Shrijee Gaushala.

Also unveiled other cow dung-based products like earthen lamps, candles, incense, paperweights, idols of gods and goddesses. RKA aims to reach 11 crore families to light 33 crore diyas made of cow dung this Diwali.

The RKA, which comes under the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying, was established by the Centre on February 6, 2019, and is aimed at “conservation, protection and development of cows and their progeny”. Saviour Sibling

India’s first ‘saviour sibling’ experiment is a success, say doctors. A one-year-old sibling has saved her brother’s life by donating her bone marrow.

Kavya Solanki, the one-year old ‘saviour sibling’ was conceived in-vitro by her parents to save her elder brother, Abhijeet, who was born with Thalassemia in November 2013.

Thalassemia

Thalassemia is an inherited genetic disorder wherein the body produces less hemoglobin and thus affects the transfer of oxygen in the body. Parents carrying a mutated gene could pass on the mutated gene to children during reproduction. Thalassemia can be diagnosed through a blood test called Hb Electophoresis / Hb A2. An alternative treatment is blood and bone marrow transplant.

India with over 40 million thalassemia cases witnesses around 10,000 thalassemic births every year, according to the World Health Organization. These children develop anemia as their hemoglobin production is decreased and constantly fatigued. Many children have to resort to blood transfusion and chelation therapy. The WHO further states that only 15% of the people who require blood transfusion during thalassemia can access it. Solidarity Trial dampener

The World Health Organization (WHO), recently made available interim results from the Solidarity Therapeutics Trial — a large-scale global trial studying the effectiveness of various repurposed therapies in Covid-19 treatment.

The findings put a dampener on expectations from these therapies — including remdesivir, once seen as promising.

About Solidarity Trial

The world’s “largest” multinational human trials on Covid-19 therapeutics, it was initiated by WHO and its partners in March to help find an effective treatment for Covid-19. It covers four repurposed drugs or drug combinations — remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir and interferon (in combination with rotinavir and lopinavir).

The study spans over 400 hospitals in more than 30 countries and looks into the effects of these treatments on various indicators, including their ability to prevent deaths and shorten hospital stays. The trial involved more than 11,300 participants.

The main aim was to help determine whether any of these repurposed therapies could at least moderately affect in-hospital mortality, and whether any effects differed between moderate and severe disease.

Findings

None of the drugs was able to prove benefits across the parameters studied, especially in reducing mortality among hospitalised patients. The interim results, made available on a pre-print server, said these drugs had “little or no effect” on hospitalised Covid-19 patients “as indicated by overall mortality, initiation of ventilation and duration of hospital stay.

Drugs like hyrdoxychloroquine and lopinavir, in fact, had already been dropped over the course of the last six months for not showing much promise. Ghar Tak Fibre

The government’s ambitious ‘Ghar Tak Fibre’ scheme — which aims to connect all the villages with high-speed internet — is off to a slow start in poll-bound Bihar, the first state that aims to connect all its 45,945 villages by March 31.

Ghar Tak Fibre’ scheme, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September.

Under the Ghar Tak Fibre scheme, Bihar has to provide at least five fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connections per village, while there should also be at least one WiFi hotspot per village.

Challenges

Of all the GPs connected under phase one, about 60 per cent or 3,591 gram panchayats were non-operational as of October 15, while the status of another 200 was unclear.

To connect all villages by March 31, the state would need to dig trenches, lay cables, and provide connectivity to an average of 257 villages daily, or a monthly average of over 7,500 villages. However, nearly a month after the scheme was inaugurated, optical fibre cable has been laid only in 4,347 villages as of October 14, or at the rate of 181 villages per day.

 The current capacity is laying down between 80,000-100,000 km of optical fibre per year. To connect all the villages by March 31, 2021, we will need to lay down at least 200,000-225,000 km of optical fibre, which is a tough task.

The main problems were lack of power and related equipment failure, equipment theft, and faulty or lossy leased fibre.

While optical fibre cable has been laid to connect nearly all the GPs, lack of users in these areas has resulted in minimal or zero follow-ups on repair and maintenance work. COVIRAP

A new diagnostic test for Covid-19 from IIT Kharagpur, called COVIRAP, can be a potential game-changer in bringing high-end molecular diagnostics from the lab to the field.

How it works: It has an automated pre-programmable temperature control unit, a special detection unit on genomic analysis, and a customised smartphone app for results.

Three master mixes work as markers of different genes to confirm the presence of SARS- CoV-2. Samples collected react with these mixes. When paper strips are dipped into these reaction products, coloured lines indicate the presence of the virus.

Why it’s special: Current tests include RT-PCR, which are highly accurate but require advanced lab infrastructure, and antigen tests that can give results in minutes but have a lower accuracy.

COVIRAP process is completed within an hour. The test is conducted in a ultra-low-cost portable unit that can be handled by unskilled operators outside the lab environment and is an alternative to high-end RTPCR machines. It can test samples even on open fields. The

same unit can be used for a large number of tests on replacement of the paper cartridge after each test.

The patented machine unit is also very generic, which means that it can perform tests beyond Covid-19 — for influenza, malaria, dengue, Japanese encephalitis, TB etc, under the category of isothermal nucleic acid-based tests.

FELUDA: FELUDA, named after Satyajit Ray’s fictional detective as an acronym for FNCAS9 Editor-Limited Uniform Detection Assay, is a test developed by the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology. This too detects genes specific to SARS-CoV-2 but uses CRISPR-CAS technology. With FELUDA, too, the need for technical expertise is minimal.

While the current FELUDA prototype requires a PCR machine for processing, COVIRAP uses its own detection technology, patented by IIT-KGP. New organ in the throat

Researchers from the Netherlands Cancer Institute have discovered a new location of salivary glands, which is believed as a good news for patients with head and neck tumours as radiation oncologists will be able to bypass this area to avoid any complications during treatment

Details

When researchers who investigate the side-effects of radiation on the head and neck were studying a new type of scan as part of their research work, they found two “unexpected” areas that lit up in the back of the nasopharynx. These areas looked similar to known major salivary glands.

When researchers were studying scans from about 100 people, they found a bilateral structure at the back of the nasopharynx and these glands had characteristics of salivary

glands. They believe that these glands produce saliva necessary for swallowing, digestion, tasting, mastication and dental hygiene.

Researchers have proposed the name “tubarial glands” for their discovery.

The researchers believe that these glands would qualify as the fourth pair of major salivary glands. The proposed name is based on their anatomical location, the other three glands are called parotid, submandibular and sublingual.

Significance

Researchers believe that their discovery is potentially good news for some cancer patients with head and neck cancers.

 Patients with head and neck cancers and tumours in the tongue or the throat are treated with radiation therapy that can damage the new salivary glands, whose location was not previously known.

With the discovery, radiation oncologists will be able to circumvent these areas and protect them from the side effects of radiation which can lead to complications such as trouble speaking, swallowing and speaking. Some patients may even face an increased risk of caries and oral infections that can significantly impact their life. Nazca Lines

Peru’s famous Nazca Lines, a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its depictions of larger- than-life animals, plants and imaginary beings, grabbed the spotlight recently after the discovery of a hitherto unknown massive carving –– that of a resting cat on the slope of a steep hill.

The cat geoglyph, believed to be older than the ones previously found at Nazca, was discovered by archaeologists carrying out maintenance in the area during the Covid-19 pandemic.

About Nazca Lines

Considered among the top places to visit in Peru, the Nazca Lines are a group of geoglyphs, or large designs made on the ground by creators using elements of the landscape such as stones, gravel, dirt or lumber.

These are believed to be the greatest known archaeological enigma, owing to their size, continuity, nature and quality. The images on the ground are so big in size that the best way to get a full view of them is overflying them.

Drawn more than 2 millennia ago on the surface of southern Peru’s arid Pampa Colorada (“Red Plain” in Spanish), the geoglyphs feature different subjects, but mainly plants and animals. The figures include pelicans (the largest ones sized around 935 feet long), Andean Condors (443 feet), monkeys (360 feet), hummingbirds (165 feet), and spiders (150 feet).

There are also geometric shapes, such as triangles, trapezoids and spirals, and some have been associated with astronomical functions.

The Lines were first discovered in 1927 and were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1994. Heeng cultivation in India

Asafoetida, or heeng, is a common ingredient in most Indian kitchens and is so much important that the country imports Rs 600 crore worth of this pugent flavoured herb every year.

The scientists at CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource, Palampur (IHBT), are on a mission to grow heeng in the Indian Himalayas. The first sapling has been planted in Himachal Pradesh’s Kwaring village in Lahaul valley last week.

The institute will also provide cultivation knowledge and skilling to local farmers. Seed productions centres are also in the offing.

What is asafoetida and where is it commonly cultivated?

Ferula asafoetida is a herbaceous plant of the umbelliferae family. It is a perennial plant whose oleo gum resin is extracted from its thick roots and rhizome. The plant stores most of its nutrients inside its deep fleshy roots.

Asafoetida is endemic to Iran and Afghanistan, the main global suppliers. It thrives in dry and cold desert conditions. While it is very popular in India, some European countries too use it for its medicinal properties.

Heeng is not cultivated in India. Government data states that India imports about 1,200 tonnes of raw heeng worth Rs 600 crore from Iran, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.

The plant can withstand a maximum temperature between 35 and 40 degree, whereas during winters, it can survive in temperatures up to minus 4 degree. During extreme weather, the plant can get dormant.

Regions with sandy soil, very little moisture and annual rainfall of not more than 200mm are considered conducive for heeng cultivation in India.

Some of the benefits of asafoetida

Published studies list out a range of medicinal properties of heeng, including relief for digestive, spasmodic and stomach disorders, asthma and bronchitis.

The herb is commonly used to help with painful or excessive bleeding during menstruation and pre-mature labour. Being an anti-flatulent, the herb is fed to new mothers. Single Male Parent

Male government employees raising a child alone are now entitled to child care leave.

Single male parent’ includes unmarried employees, widowers and divorcees, who may be expected to take up the responsibility of caring for a child single-handedly.

Child care leave can be granted at 100 per cent of leave salary for the first 365 days and 80 per cent of leave salary for the next 365 days.

Another welfare measure introduced in this regard, in case of a disabled child, the condition that child care leave can be availed by the parents only till the child is 22 years of age has been removed. Infantry Day

Army establishments across the country are marking October 27 as ‘Infantry Day’ and paying homage to the thousands of infantry soldiers who have laid down their lives in the line of duty.

October 27 celebrated as Infantry Day

It was on this day that first Indian infantry soldiers took part in an action to defend Indian territory from external aggression.

On October 26, 1947 the then Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh, signed the instrument of accession, making his state a part of Indian dominion, and thus paving the day for Indian troops to be deployed in the state to fight against Pakistani invaders.

 On October 22, Pakistan had poured in thousands of regular soldiers in the grab of tribals as well as volunteers from the tribal areas of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) into J&K with the aim of forcibly occupying the state and integrating it into Pakistan.  The initial resistance to the invaders was given by the state forces of J&K.  On October 26, after the Maharaja signed the instrument of accession the way was paved for India to send in its troops and ward off the Pakistani invaders on October 27. ISRO to launch satellite EOS-01

India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in its 51st mission (PSLV-C49), will launch EOS-01 as primary satellite along with nine international customer satellites from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota on November 7.

EOS-01 is an earth observation satellite intended for applications in agriculture, forestry and disaster management support.

 Earth observation is the gathering of information about planet Earth’s physical, chemical and biological systems via remote sensing technologies, usually involving satellites carrying imaging devices. Earth observation is used to monitor and assess the status of, and changes in, the natural and manmade environment.

The customer satellites are being launched under commercial agreement with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), Department of Space. Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine

American scientists Harvey Alter and Charles Rice, and Michael Houghton of the UK, have been recognised for their contributions to the discovery of a new virus that was the cause of a vast majority of chronic hepatitis cases, or cases of serious liver inflammation, in patients who required blood transfusion. This virus was eventually called Hepatitis C virus.

Since the discovery and identification of the virus in the 1970s and 1980s, a cure has been found for the disease, and effective anti-viral drugs are now available. Tests have been developed to identify blood that has this virus, so that infected blood is not given to any patient.

According to the World Health Organization, about 71 million people (6 -11 million of them in India) have chronic infection with the Hepatitis C virus, which also happens to be major cause of liver cancer. In 2016, this viral infection led to the death of nearly 400,000 people across the world. A vaccine for the disease has still not been developed.

What was known about hepatitis before the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus

Before the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus, two other viruses were known to cause hepatitis in patients. The Hepatitis A virus was known to spread mainly through contaminated food and water, and caused a relatively milder form of liver inflammation. Hepatitis B, discovered in the 1960s, was known to transmit mainly through infected blood, and caused a more serious form of the disease.

The discovery of the Hepatitis B virus too was rewarded with a Nobel Prize in Medicine, given to Baruch Blumberg in 1976. There are vaccines available for this disease now.

Significance

The discovery of the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) was one of the important milestones in improvement in public health that had raised hopes for eliminating the disease.

The discoveries of HBV and HCV, and the establishment of effective screening routines, have virtually eliminated the risk of transmission via blood products in many parts of the world. Also the development of highly effective drugs against HCV has reduced the threat of the virus infection. Paytm launches its own mini app store

Paytm has played its big move in the battle against Google’s Play Store with the launch of its Android Mini App Store for Indian developers.

These mini-apps will not be full-fledged apps per se but rather be web apps that are basically websites that act like native apps. Paytm claims that these apps will also help users save their data and memory.

In-app payment options include Paytm Wallet, Paytm Payments Bank, and UPI at a zero per cent fee which gives new software developers an added incentive. However, there is a 2 per cent charge (plus GST) levied by the company when payment is made using a credit card, debit card and net banking.

Paytm’s big move can be in retortion of Paytm’s temporary removal from Google Play Store citing its violation of gambling policies.

The move has the potential of being welcomed by many Indian developers. Also, it falls under the Atmanirbhar Bharat mission drive as the digital spending of the consumers is in India only. In order to lure small startups, Paytm has said that mini-apps can be set up using HTML and javascript. The company also claims two developers can complete the integration of the web app within just two weeks. 16 Psyche

A recent study has found that asteroid 16 Psyche, which orbits between Mars and Jupiter, could be made entirely of metal and is worth an estimated $10,000 quadrillion — more than the entire economy of Earth.

 New images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope offer a closer view of the mysterious asteroid 16 Psyche, whose surface may mostly comprise iron and nickel, similar to the Earth’s core, according to the study published in The Planetary Science Journal.

The exact composition and origins of the asteroid will be uncovered in 2022, when NASA sends an unmanned spacecraft to study it up close.

 The first objective of the mission is to capture a photograph of the metallic asteroid, after which the spacecraft will study and map it from a distance.

 Another objective of the mission is to determine whether the asteroid is, in fact, the core of an earlier planet or if it is merely made up of unmelted material. Based on the data collected, scientists will also ascertain the age and origins of the mammoth metallic asteroid.

Asteroid 16 Psyche

Located around 370 million kilometres away from Earth, asteroid 16 Psyche is one of the most massive objects in the asteroid belt in our solar system. The somewhat potato-shaped asteroid has a diameter of around 140 miles, according to NASA.

It was first discovered on March 17, 1853, by the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis and was named after the ancient Greek goddess of the soul, Psyche.

Unlike most asteroids that are made up of rocks or ice, scientists believe that Psyche is a dense and largely metallic object thought to be the core of an earlier planet that failed in formation. Rashtriya Ekta Diwas 2020

National Unity Day or Rashtriya Ekta Diwas is observed on October 31 every year. The day was introduced in 2014 by the Government of India to mark the birth anniversary of Iron Man of India - Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

In memory of the first Deputy Prime Minister of independent India- Sardar Patel, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Government of India has constructed a huge statue of the Iron Man of India near the Narmada River in Gujarat.

Significance of National Unity Day

National Unity Day will provide an opportunity to re-affirm the inherent strength and resilience of our nation to withstand the actual and potential threats to the unity, integrity and security of our country."