THE HEALTH AND SOCIAL ISSUES

1. MEGHALAYA HIT BY AFRICAN SWINE FEVER

THE CONTEXT: At least 259 pigs have died in Meghalaya’s Ri-Bhoi district this year due to African Swine Fever with 45 pigs dying on May 8 alone

THE EXPLANATION:

• African swine fever (ASF) is a highly contagious and deadly viral disease affecting both domestic and feral swine of all ages.
• It was first detected in Africa in the 1920s.
• ASF is not a threat to human health and cannot be transmitted from pigs to humans.
• It is not a food safety issue.
• ASF is found in countries around the world.
• The disease was first reported in November-December 2019 from the areas of China bordering Arunachal Pradesh.

THE POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

2. COMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL LAW REFORMS RECOMMENDED AMENDMENTS TO SEDITION LAW

THE CONTEXT: A panel of experts constituted by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to suggest reforms to the British-era Indian Penal Code (IPC) has recommended amendments to the sedition law.

THE EXPLANATION:

• The Committee for Reforms in Criminal Laws appointed by the MHA in 2020 submitted an exhaustive report in March, which among other IPC sections also examined Section 124-A IPC or sedition.
• There were two school of thoughts – either completely withdraw the law or amend the particular section.
• The panel was largely of the view that if sedition could be dropped and included as a sub-set in a wider range of crimes committed against the State. A person cannot be made to languish in jail for writing a newspaper article. It has to be seen if that article led to serious law and order problems, mere presumption is not sufficient.
• A questionnaire sent by the committee for public consultation in 2020 had under a category called the “Offences Against the State,” asked “Does the offence of sedition under Section 124-A require omission or any amendment in terms of its definition, scope and cognisability?”
• Other than IPC, the committee also examined and has recommended changes to the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and the Evidence Act, 1872.
• Simply criticising the State should not be enough to invoke sedition, let there be a guilty mind – whether such act wanted to disturbance? The term sedition is colonial. When there is no king, how can a provision meant to protect the king be there?
• The committee largely concluded that sedition can be amended and included in the category of crimes committed against the State to protect its sovereignty, integrity and security.
• According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), as many as 356 cases of sedition were registered in the country between the years 2015 and 2020 in which 548 persons were arrested. Only 62 cases went to trial, there were acquittals in 55 cases and only 12 persons in seven cases were convicted during the period.
• In 2019, as many as 96 persons were arrested for sedition but only two were convicted and 29 persons were acquitted. Of the 93 cases of sedition registered in 2019, charge sheet was filed in only 40 cases.
• On May 9, MHA filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court informed the apex court of its decision to “re-examine” and “re-consider” the sedition law in the background of Prime Minister’s belief that the nation should work harder to shed “colonial baggage”, including outdated laws, while celebrating 75 years of Independence under the banner of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav.
• The maximum punishment for the crime is life imprisonment.

THE ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY

3. THE GRIM FOREWARNINGS OF A GLOBAL STUDY ON BIRDS

THE CONTEXT: The State of the World’s Birds, an annual review of environmental resources published on May 5 by nine natural sciences and avian specialists across the globe, has revealed that the population of 48% of the 10,994 surviving species of birds is declining.

THE EXPLANATION:

• The study found that 5,245 or about 48% of the existing bird species worldwide are known or suspected to be undergoing population declines.
• While 4,295 or 39% of the species have stable trends, about 7% or 778 species have increasing population trends.
• The trend of 37 species was unknown.
• Birds are a truly global taxon, with one or more species occupying all habitats across the earth’s terrestrial surface including urban environments with no natural analogues.
• Birds contribute toward many ecosystem services that either directly or indirectly benefit humanity. These include provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services.
• The functional role of birds within ecosystems as pollinators, seed-dispersers, ecosystem engineers, scavengers and predators not only facilitate accrual and maintenance of biodiversity but also support human endeavours such as sustainable agriculture via pest control besides aiding other animals to multiply.
• The study lists eight factors, topped by land cover and land-use change. The continued growth of human populations and of per capita rates of consumption lead directly to conversion and degradation of primary natural habitats and consequent loss of biodiversity.
• Although global tree cover increased between 1982 and 2016, including by 95,000 sq. km in the tropical dry forest biome and by 84,000 sq. km in the tropical moist deciduous forest biome, this has been driven by afforestation with plantations (often of non-native species) plus land abandonment in parts of the global North, with net loss in the tropics.
• The other factors are habitat fragmentation and degradation, especially in the tropics.

THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

4. INSOLVENCY AND BANKRUPTCY CODE(IBC) SHRINK TO 33%

 THE CONTEXT: Recoveries by financial creditors under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) have dropped significantly in the past two years owing to the pandemic, resulting in larger haircuts for them.

THE EXPLANATION:

• As of March 2022, financial creditors have recovered 33 per cent of the amount admitted as claims.
• It was 39.3 per cent as of March 2021, and as high as 46 per cent till March 2020, according to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) data. Further, on a quarterly basis, realisation by financial creditors as a percentage of their admitted claims in Q4FY22 dropped to as low as 10 per cent.
• In the preceding quarter (Q3FY22), it stood at 13 per cent. However, in the first two quarters of FY22 (Q1 and Q2), the rate was 25 per cent and 49 per cent, respectively.
• In Q4, the amount realised by financial creditors dropped below the liquidation value of assets. “The haircut for cases resolved in Q4FY22 was high at 90 per cent. The overall haircut scenario is not very encouraging.
• Some of the weaker assets where there are incomplete projects or sectors which are seeing very poor demand from buyers, the realization values have started to come down.
• The number of new cases admitted under the insolvency process has also gone down in FY22, with only 834 cases admitted as against 2,000 cases in FY20.
• Experts reckon the pandemic-induced slowdown in the economy and delays in the resolution process are the root cause behind the drop in realisation. Having said that, recovery under the IBC is still far higher than other measures.

THE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

5. WHAT IS A ‘MARSQUAKE’, AND WHAT CAUSES IT?

 THE CONTEXT: On May 4, NASA’s InSight lander detected a quake on Mars, the largest ever observed on another planet.

THE EXPLANATION:

• NASA has reported that on May 4, its InSight Mars lander detected the largest quake ever observed on another planet.
• The rover first landed on Mars in November 2018, and has since heard 1,313 quakes.
• The largest previously recorded “marsquake” was detected in August 2021.

What are marsquakes, and why do they happen?

On Earth, quakes are caused by shifts in tectonic plates. Mars, however, does not have tectonic plates, and its crust is a giant plate. Therefore, NASA notes, ‘marsquakes’ are caused due to stresses that cause rock fractures or faults in its crust.

What is InSight doing on Mars?

• InSight is not looking for life on Mars, but is studying what Mars is made of, how its material is layered, and how much heat seeps out of it.
• This is important because Earth and Mars used to be similar — warm, wet and shrouded in thick atmospheres — before they took different paths 3-4 billion years ago. Mars stopped changing, while Earth continued to evolve.
• With InSight, scientists hope to compare Earth and Mars, and better understand how a planet’s starting materials make it more or less likely to support life.
• There are other missions to Mars that are looking for life on the planet, which makes Insight’s mandate unique. It mostly boils down to the possibility that the atmosphere of Mars was once warm enough to allow water to flow through its surface, which could mean life existed there too.
• In fact, what makes scientists curious about Mars is the “defining question” of the existence of life on the planet, because of the possible presence of liquid water on it, either in the past or preserved in its subsurface.
• This question makes the planet more intriguing for scientists since “almost everywhere we find water on Earth, we find life.
• If Mars harboured a warmer atmosphere enabling water to flow in its ancient past (3.5-3.8 billion years ago), and if microbial life existed on it, it is possible that it exists in “special regions” even today.
• But regardless of life having existed on Mars or not, there is the idea that humans themselves might be able to inhabit the planet one day.
• Some missions studying the possibility of life on Mars include UAE’s Hope, China’s Tianwen-1, and NASA’s Perseverance.

THE INTERNAL SECURITY

                   6. SURVIVING SOLDIERS OF ‘OPERATION DUDHI’ FETED

THE CONTEXT: Back in 1991, the Assam Rifles had eliminated 72 militants in a single counter-insurgency operation in Jammu & Kashmir and the force on Monday felicitated the surviving heroes.

THE EXPLANATION:

• The Assam Rifles battalions are well-known for their valour and self-sacrifice but the story of Operation Dudhi is the most inspiring. It will remain etched in the annals of Assam Rifles’ history.
• The operation, undertaken by the battalion during its tenure in Jammu & Kashmir from 1990 to 1992, remains the most successful counter-insurgency operation conducted by any security force to date. Not only the battalion had eliminated 72 militants but it also apprehended 13 others in that operation.
• Conducted on May 3, 1991, Operation Dudhi was undertaken by a column comprising a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) and 14 other ranks under the command of Naib Subedar Padam Bahadur Chhetri. The column had moved from Battalion Headquarters, Chowkibal, for a routine patrol to check the winter vacated post of Dudhi, with the staging camp established at Bari Baihk.
• Located about 13 km away from the battalion headquarters, the camp was covered with five to six feet of snow.

THE MISCELLANEOUS

7. A HISTORY OF THE PULITZER PRIZE

THE CONTEXT: A team of four Indian photographers from Reuters news agency — slain photojournalist Danish Siddiqui, Adnan Abidi, Sanna Irshad Mattoo and Amit Dave — have won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography for their coverage of the Covid-19 crisis in India.

THE EXPLANATION:

• A member of the Ghadar Party in America, Indian American journalist Gobind Behari Lal, was the first from India to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1937.
• He won the award for reporting with four others, for their coverage of science at the tercentenary of Harvard University. A postgraduate from University of California, Berkeley, he also received the Padma Bhushan in 1969.
• The latter also won in the the 2020 Pulitzer in the Breaking News Photography category as part of the team from Reuters that covered the 2019-20 Hong Kong protests.
• In 2020, Channi Anand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasin of Associated Press won the Pulitzer in the Feature Photography category “for striking images captured during a communications blackout in Kashmir depicting life in the contested territory as India stripped it of its semi-autonomy,”

Who was Joseph Pulitzer, after whom the awards are named?

• Born to a wealthy family of Magyar-Jewish origin in Mako, Hungary, in 1847, Joseph Pulitzer had a stint in the military before he built a reputation of being a “tireless journalist”.
• In the late 1860s he joined the German-language daily newspaper Westliche Post, and by 25 he had become a publisher. In 1978, he became the owner of St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Under him, the paper published several “investigative articles and editorials assailing government corruption, wealthy tax-dodgers, and gamblers”.
• In 1883, he also negotiated the purchase of The New York World, which was in financial straits, and elevated its circulation.
• In 1884, he was elected to the US House of Representatives from New York’s ninth district as a Democrat and entered office on March 4, 1885. During his tenure, he led a movement to place the newly gifted Statue of Liberty in New York City.

When were the Pulitzer awards instituted?

• The awards were instituted according to Pulitzer’s will, framed in 1904, where he made a provision for the establishment of the Pulitzer Prizes as an incentive to excellence.
• Pulitzer specified solely four awards in journalism, four in letters and drama, one for education, and five travelling scholarships.
• In his will, Pulitzer bestowed an endowment on Columbia of $2,000,000 for the establishment of a School of Journalism, one-fourth of which was to be “applied to prizes or scholarships for the encouragement of public service, public morals, American literature, and the advancement of education.After his death in 1911, the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in June, 1917.

THE PRELIMS PRACTICE QUESTIONS

QUESTION FOR 11th MAY 2022

Q. Consider the following statements about African swine fever (ASF):

1. It was first detected in Africa in the 1920s.
2. ASF is a threat to human health and can be transmitted from pigs to humans.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

a) 1 only

b) 2 only

c) Both 1 and 2

d) Neither 1 nor 2

ANSWER FOR THE 10TH OF MAY

Answer: B

Explanation:

• Cyclone ’Asani’ originated in May 2022 in Bay of Bengal.
• Name of the cyclone was given by Sri Lanka. It means ‘wrath’ in Sinhalese language.
• It did not make landfall, rather it weakened in Bay of Bengal.

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