Day-303 | Daily MCQs | UPSC Prelims | POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

[WpProQuiz 348]




TOPIC : FOREST FIRES NATURAL HAZARD OR MANMADE DISASTER

THE CONTEXT: Australia has declared a state of emergency for the state of New South Wales (NSW) along with a catastrophic fire warning the highest level of bush fire danger in light of widespread bushfires that have left at least three people dead. Bushfires are a routine occurrence in the country, but this bushfire season is believed to be the worst and has started even before the beginning of the Southern Hemisphere summer.

PRESENT ISSUE OF FOREST FIRE

AMAZON FOREST FIRE

  • The Amazon rainforest, which is home to a fifth of the world’s land species and more than 30 million people, including hundreds of indigenous people, experienced the third-worst forest fires in the last ten years.
  • The region has experienced more than 74,155 fires since January, according to data from Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research (INPE).
  • In 2019 September 19,925 fires broke out, 19.6 per cent less than the number of fire outbreaks same period last year, according to the latest INPE data. In September 2018, there were 24,803 outbreaks in the Amazon.

CALIFORNIA FIRE

  • Brush fire in Ventura county, north of Los Angeles, grew rapidly on Friday, even as calmer winds have allowed fire crews to increase containment of other wildfires plaguing California.
  • The forest fire in California is frequently in a year.

BANDIPUR NATIONAL PARK

  • A five-day fire that raged through the Bandipur Tiger Reserve has reportedly burnt more than 15,400 acres of forests.
  • Between February 21 and 25, 2019 the reserve saw 127 fire counts in various ranges of the 912 sq km forest.

FOREST FIRE

  • The most common hazard in forests is forests fire. Forests fires are as old as the forests themselves. They pose a threat not only to the forest wealth but also to the entire regime to fauna and flora seriously disturbing the bio-diversity and the ecology and environment of a region.
  • During summer, when there is no rain for months, the forests become littered with dry senescent leaves and twinges, which could burst into flames ignited by the slightest spark.
  • The Himalayan forests, particularly, Garhwal Himalayas have been burning regularly during the last few summers, with colossal loss of vegetation cover of that region.
  • Forest fire causes imbalances in nature and endangers biodiversity by reducing faunal and floral wealth. Traditional methods of fire prevention are not proving effective and it is now essential to raise public awareness on the matter, particularly among those people who live close to or in forested areas.

CAUSES OF FOREST FIRE

Causes of forest fires can be divided into two broad categories

  1. Environmental (which are beyond control) and
  2. Human related (which are controllable).

Environmental causes

  • Are largely related to climatic conditions such as temperature, wind speed and direction, level of moisture in soil and atmosphere and duration of dry spells.
  • Other natural causes are the friction of bamboos swaying due to high wind velocity and rolling stones that result in sparks setting off fires in highly inflammable leaf litter on the forest floor.

Human related causes

Result from human activity as well as methods of forest management.  These can be intentional or unintentional, for example:

  • Graziers and gatherers of various forest products starting small fires to obtain good grazing grass as well as to facilitate gathering of minor forest produce like flowers of Madhuca indica and leaves of Diospyros melanoxylon
  • The centuries old practice of shifting cultivation (especially in the North-Eastern region of India and in parts of the States of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh). etc..

Classification of Forest Fire Forest fire can broadly be classified into three categories;

  1. Natural or controlled forest fire.
  2. Forest fires caused by heat generated in the litter and other biomes in summer through carelessness of people (human neglect) and
  3. Forest fires purposely caused by local inhabitants.

Types of Forest Fire: There are two types of forest fire

  1. Surface Fire and
  2. Crown Fire

Surface Fire

  • A forest fire may burn primarily as a surface fire, spreading along the ground as the surface litter (senescent leaves and twigs and dry grasses etc) on the forest floor and is engulfed by the spreading flames.

Crown Fire

  • The other type of forest fire is a crown fire in which the crown of trees and shrubs burn, often sustained by a surface fire.
  • A crown fire is particularly very dangerous in a coniferous forest because resinous material given off burning logs burn furiously.
  • On hill slopes, if the fire starts downhill, it spreads up fast as heated air adjacent to a slope tends to flow up the slope spreading flames along with it. If the fire starts uphill, there is less likelihood of it spreading downwards.

EFFECT OF FOREST FIRE

Fires are a major cause of forest degradation and have wide ranging adverse ecological, economic and social impacts, including:

  • Loss of valuable timber resources
  • Degradation of catchment areas
  • Loss of biodiversity and extinction of plants and animals
  • Loss of wildlife habitat and depletion of wildlife
  • Loss of natural regeneration and reduction in forest cover
  • Global warming etc…

VARIOUS INITIATIVES

MoEFCC guidelines

MoEFCC issued a set of national guidelines for forest fire prevention and control in 2000. These guidelines call for:

  • Identification and mapping of all fire prone areas,
  • Compilation and analysis of database on forest fire damages,
  • Development and installation of fire damage rating system and fire forecasting system,
  • All preventive measures to be taken before the beginning of the fire season

National Master Plan for Forest Fire Control

The main objectives are:

  • To strengthen the organizations responsible for forest fire management
  • To coordinate international transfer of technology and training in the field of forest fire management
  • Creation of a strong database for: number of fires, area burnt, damage to flora and fauna, effect of fire on land and soil and measures taken
  • Assessment of ecological, social, and economic impact of fires
  • Strong national extension strategy for people’s awareness and their participation in forest fire management through Joint Forest Management and NGOs

Forest Fire Prevention and Management Scheme

In 2017, Intensification of Forest Management Scheme was revised and replaced as Forest Fire Prevention & Management Scheme. The main objectives of the scheme are as follows:

  • Minimise forest fire incidences and help in restoring productivity of forests in affected areas
  • Encourage partnership with forest fringe communities for forest protection
  • Prepare fire danger rating system and devise forest fire forecasting system

Pre-Warning Alert System

  • Forest Survey of India has developed Pre-Warning Alert System.
  • It gives alerts to state forest departments based on parameters like forest cover, forest types, climatic variables (temperature, rainfall) and recent fire incidences over the area

NDMA Guidelines

Major recommendations include:

  • Incorporate Forest Fire Prevention and Management (FFPM) in existing policy and planning documents
  • Establish National Forest fire Knowledge Network
  • Capacity building of forest officials for better use of early warning systems
  • Assess risk and prepare vulnerability and risk maps
  • Document national and international good practices and utilise them for making forest fire management more effective and practical
  • Increase community awareness

Draft National Forest Policy, 2018

  • It calls for safeguarding ecosystems from forest fires, mapping the vulnerable areas and developing and strengthening early warning systems and methods to control fire, based on remote sensing technology and community participation.

FAO Recommendations on Forest Fire Management

  • To conduct comprehensive analysis of the forest fire situation in India, including the study of number of fires and area burnt; the effects of ecological, economic and social impacts, current capacity for forest fire management at the National and States levels, including review of existing laws, regulations and policies covering forest fire management.
  • To design a training package on strategic forest fire management planning which would enable Indian foresters to prepare site specific fire plans for all the forest types in the country
  • To conduct training courses for the foresters and planners, who would then be capable of preparing strategic Forest Fire Management Plans and providing identical training to large number of field foresters throughout the country.
  • To develop minimum one model State Forest Fire Management Plan to serve as an example for subsequent State plans and National plan. Plans are to be organized into a series of program components, which can be considered for development assistance by international donors and financiers.

ISSUES AND CHALLENGES:

  1. Lack of appropriate policy: In India there are no clear guidelines for forest fire management. In November 2017, National Green Tribunal (NGT) had asked the Environment Ministry to evolve a national policy for prevention and control of forest fires. However, no progress has been made so far.
  2. Lack of funding: the allocation of funds to the states for forest fire management is largely insufficient. Further, a large amount of the money allocated under the forest management schemes are not released
  3. Early Warning: Unlike western countries, forest fire in India is largely man-made which makes it difficult to predict
  4. Lack of community participation: In most of the Indian states, community participation in forest fire management has been poor
  5. Lack of manpower: Lack of manpower hinders clearing of fire lines and also affects the patrolling of forest areas.
  6. Climate Change: The forest fire management in India do not include climate change aspects in planning, policy formulations and implementation stages

WAY FORWARD:

Policy

At the national level, a cohesive policy or action plan should be formulated to set forth the guiding principles and framework for FFPM. The policy and programmes for forest fire management should incorporate the dimension of climate change

Management

Forest fire prevention and management practices used by state forest departments also need to be strengthened

Funding and Human Resource

Greater funding for construction of watchtowers and crew stations and for frontline officers and seasonal firewatchers to spot fires is needed. Further, adequate training should be provided to field officers, seasonal firewatchers, and community volunteers involved in firefighting.

Technology

Modern firefighting techniques such as the radio-acoustic sound system for early fire detection and Doppler radar should be adopted.

Data and information

There is a need to support forest fire management through improved data and research to fill critical knowledge gaps

Awareness

Awareness generation for forest communities and visitors is important to prevent loss of life and injuries. Further, regular drills on escape methods and routes based on forest types should be conducted.

Best Practices:

1.Canadian Forest fire Danger Rating System:

  • The system collects data on fuels, weather, topography, foliar moisture content (how much moisture is in the leaves and pine needles), and type and duration of prediction.
  • The data helps managers of various fire agencies determine the areas that are most vulnerable to fires and allocate their resources accordingly. Further, the Canadian Forest Fire Behaviour Prediction (FBP) System helps managers assess how far a specific fire can spread and its severity.

2. Role of forest community: Best Practice in India:

  • Bilapaka village in Mayurbhanj District of Odhisa: The villagers have set up the Bilapaka Jangal Surakshya Parichalana Committee (BJSPC).
  • The villagers have developed an effective warning mechanism and a process to immediately stop small fire incidents

CONCLUSION: A significant amount of technical options to assist Forest Department in increasing their resilience, preparedness and response capacities against forest fire are known and available at regional, national and international levels. However, the spectrum of available options is often not known or easily accessible. To make Forest Fire Management more effective, it is of utmost significance that available options are systematically assessed, documented, shared and adapted to location specific needs in a participatory way.

STATISTICAL REPORT:

Forest Fires Report in India:

  • Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and World Bank recently released a joint report on forest fires in India.

Highlights:

  • At least 60% of districts in India are affected by forest fires each year.
  • The top 20 districts in terms of area affected by fire from 2003 to 2016 account for 48% of the total fire-affected area and they mostly fall in Central India.
  • The 16 of the top 20 districts in terms of fire frequency are located mainly in the Northeast.
  • Here, forest fires tend to be concentrated in a smaller area that is subject to repeated burning.
  • The peak fire season is the most concentrated (shortest) in the Northeast and the Northern state of Bihar.
  • Fires in other regions, particularly districts in Central and Southern India, are more expansive.
  • Districts experiencing widespread and frequent forest fires include areas of dry and moist deciduous forest.
  • These include the borderlands of Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Telangana that are affected by fire on a nearly annual basis.
  • Notably, between 2006 and 2015, forest fires were detected in just under half (281 of 614) of the protected areas in India.

What are the proposed reasons?

  • In line with other parts of the world, people are the main driver of fires in India.
  • Forest fires are distributed close to people and infrastructure in India.
  • Also, India’s monsoons are largely responsible for the seasonal nature of forest fires in the country.
  • Forest fires peak during the dry months of March or April before the arrival of the monsoon.
  • The fire season mainly occurs during the four-month period between February 15 and May 15.
  • Besides, the reduced contrast in land-sea temperatures had weakened the engine that drives the monsoon.
  • But it is not yet clear how the drying of the monsoon has affected the intensity or frequency of forest fires.

Significance:

  • Forest fires contribute to global warming and hence climate change, by releasing carbon stored in trees, undergrowth and soil into the atmosphere.
  • Given this, the report gains significance with recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on global warming.
  • The findings are crucial for India’s own pledge on creating additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of Co2-equivalent by 2030.
  • In the long run, climate shifts due to anthropogenic global warming may further alter India’s forest landscape and fire regime.
  • Also, the MoEF issued national guidelines on Forest Fire Prevention and Management (FFPM) in 2000.
  • But these are no longer being implemented in true spirit.
  • The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has documented the shortage of dedicated funding for FFPM at the central and state levels.
  • The recent report is thus expected to be a key input in issuing a national policy on FFPM.



Ethics Through Current Development (06-10-2022)

  1. Matter may after all be only in the mind READ MORE
  2. The dharmic duty of doubt READ MORE
  3. Are you still evolving? READ MORE



Today’s Important Articles for Geography (06-10-2022)

  1. Calamity-prone — urban India’s worrying storyline READ MORE
  2. Stubble trouble: With more paddy sown this year, the problem of stubble burning is only going to get worse READ MORE
  3. Climate risk index shows threats to 90% of the world’s marine species READ MORE



Today’s Important Articles for Sociology (06-10-2022)

  1. In a society that defines women by marital status, can the Supreme Court judgment on abortion make a difference? READ MORE
  2. Protect the ethos of a multicultural India READ MORE
  3. MENTAL HEALTH MUST BE A GLOBAL PRIORITY READ MORE



DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS (OCTOBER 06, 2022)

INDIAN POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

1. THE CRITERION FOR SC STATUS

THE CONTEXT: The Supreme Court of India has sought the most recent position of the Union government on a batch of petitions challenging the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order of 1950, which allows only members of Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist religions to be recognised as SCs.
THE EXPLANATION:
Who all are included in the Constitution Order of 1950?
• When enacted, the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order of 1950, initially provided for recognising only Hindus as SCs, to address the social disability arising out of the practice of untouchability.
• The Order was amended in 1956 to include Dalits who had converted to Sikhism and once more in 1990 to include Dalits who had converted to Buddhism. Both amendments were aided by the reports of the Kaka Kalelkar Commission in 1955 and the High Powered Panel (HPP) on Minorities, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in 1983 respectively.
• On the other hand, the Union government in 2019 rejected the possibility of including Dalit Christians as members of SCs, rooting the exclusion on an Imperial Order of 1936 of the then colonial government, which had first classified a list of the Depressed Classes and specifically excluded “Indian Christians” from it.

Why are Dalit Christians excluded?
• Ever since the amendment to include Sikhs as SCs in 1956, the Office of the Registrar General of India (RGI) has been reluctant in expanding the ambit of the Order beyond members of Hinduism or Sikhism. Responding to the Ministry of Home Affairs’s (MHA) 1978 request for an opinion on the inclusion of Dalit Buddhists and Christians, the RGI had cautioned the government that SC status is meant for communities suffering from social disabilities arising out of the practice of untouchability, which it noted was prevalent in Hindu and Sikh communities.
• It also noted that such a move would significantly swell the population of SCs across the country. However, the amendment to include Buddhist converts as SCs was passed in 1990, which at the time did not require the approval of the RGI — a mandate introduced in the rules for inclusion framed in 1999.
• In 2001, when the RGI again opined against including Dalit Christians and Muslims as SCs, it referred to its 1978 note and added that like Dalit Buddhists, Dalits who converted to Islam or Christianity belonged to different sets of caste groups and not just one, as a result of which they cannot be categorised as a “single ethnic group”, which is required by Clause (2) of Article 341 for inclusion.
• Moreover, the RGI opined that since the practice of “untouchability” was a feature of Hindu religion and its branches, allowing the inclusion of Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians as SCs could result in being “misunderstood internationally” as India trying to “impose its caste system” upon Christians and Muslims.
• The 2001 note also stated that Christians and Muslims of Dalit origin had lost their caste identity by way of their conversion and that in their new religious community, the practice of untouchability is not prevalent.

Is there a case for inclusion?
• The petitions arguing for inclusion have cited several independent Commission reports that have documented the existence of caste and caste inequalities among Indian Christians and Indian Muslims, noting that even after conversion, members who were originally from SCs continued to experience the same social disabilities.
• This was substantiated in the First Backward Classes Commission’s report in 1953, the Report of the Committee on Untouchability Economic and Educational Development Of the Scheduled Castes in 1969, the HPP report on SCs, STs, and Minorities in 1983, the Mandal Commission Report, the report of the Prime Minister’s High-Level Committee formed in 2006, a 2008 study conducted by the National Commission for Minorities, the Ranganath Misra Commission Report and several other studies.
• In addition to this, the petitions have argued against the proposition that caste identity is lost upon conversion, noting that even in Sikhism and Buddhism, casteism is not present and yet they have been included as SCs. Furthermore, the above-mentioned reports argue that caste-based discrimination continues even after conversion, hence entitling these communities to SC status.
• However, the Union government refuses to accept the reports of the Commissions on the basis that these reports do not have enough empirical evidence to support their claims.

2. THE PARLIAMENT COMMITTEES, THEIR LEADERS, AND THEIR ROLE IN LAW-MAKING

THE CONTEXT: According to opposition party, a revamp of the Standing Committees of Parliament could potentially worsen the relations between the government and opposition parties.
THE EXPLANATION:
Of the 22 committees announced the Congress has the post of chairperson in only one, and the second largest opposition party, Trinamool Congress, none. The ruling NDA has the chairmanship of the important committees on Home, Finance, IT, Defence and External Affairs.
What are Committees of Parliament, and what do they do?
• Legislative business begins when a Bill is introduced in either House of Parliament. But the process of lawmaking is often complex, and Parliament has limited time for detailed discussions. Also, the political polarization and shrinking middle ground has been leading to increasingly rancorous and inconclusive debates in Parliament — as a result of which a great deal of legislative business ends up taking place in the Parliamentary Committees instead.
• A Parliamentary Committee is a panel of MPs that is appointed or elected by the House or nominated by the Speaker, and which works under the direction of the Speaker. It presents its report to the House or to the Speaker.
• Parliamentary Committees have their origins in the British Parliament. They draw their authority from Article 105, which deals with the privileges of MPs, and Article 118, which gives Parliament authority to make rules to regulate its procedure and conduct of business.

What are the various Committees of Parliament?
• Broadly, Parliamentary Committees can be classified into Financial Committees, Departmentally Related Standing Committees, Other Parliamentary Standing Committees, and Ad hoc Committees.
• The Financial Committees include the Estimates Committee, Public Accounts Committee, and the Committee on Public Undertakings. These committees were constituted in 1950.
• Seventeen Departmentally Related Standing Committees came into being in 1993, when Shivraj Patil was Speaker of Lok Sabha, to examine budgetary proposals and crucial government policies. The aim was to increase Parliamentary scrutiny, and to give members more time and a wider role in examining important legislation.
• The number of Committees was subsequently increased to 24. Each of these Committees has 31 members — 21 from Lok Sabha and 10 from Rajya Sabha.
• Ad hoc Committees are appointed for a specific purpose. They cease to exist after they have completed the task assigned to them, and have submitted a report to the House. The principal Ad hoc Committees are the Select and Joint Committees on Bills. Committees like the Railway Convention Committee, Committee on Food Management and Security in Parliament House Complex, etc. also come under the category of Ad hoc Committees.
• Parliament can also constitute a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) with a special purpose, with members from both Houses, for detailed scrutiny of a subject or Bill. Also, either of the two Houses can set up a Select Committee with members from that House. JPCs and Select Committees are usually chaired by ruling party MPs, and are disbanded after they have submitted their report.

How important are the recommendations of the Committees?
• Reports of Departmentally Related Standing Committees are recommendatory in nature. They are not binding on the government, but they do carry significant weight. In the past, governments have accepted suggestions given by the Committees and incorporated them into the Bill after it has come back to the House for consideration and passage. These panels also examine policy issues in their respective Ministries and make suggestions to the government.
• The government has to report back on whether these recommendations have been accepted. Based on this, the Committees table Action Taken Reports, detailing the status of the government’s action on each recommendation.
• However, suggestions by the Select Committees and JPCs — which have a majority of MPs and heads from the ruling party — are accepted more frequently.

SOCIAL ISSUES

3. WORLD BANK SAYS 70 MILLION PLUNGED INTO POVERTY IN 2020: WHAT CAUSED SETBACKS IN INDIA, WORLD

THE CONTEXT: According to a new World Bank report, titled “Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022: Correcting Course”, the Covid pandemic has been the biggest setback to global poverty alleviation in decades.
THE EXPLANATION:
According to the report, “The world is unlikely to meet the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 absent history-defying rates of economic growth over the remainder of this decade”.

What has the report found?
• The report states that global poverty reduction has been slowing down since 2015 but the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine have completely reversed the outcomes.
• By 2015, the global extreme-poverty rate had been cut by more than half. Since then, poverty reduction has slowed in tandem with subdued global economic growth. The economic upheavals brought on by COVID-19 and later the war in Ukraine produced an outright reversal in progress.”

• As such, the global goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 would not be achieved.
• In 2020 alone, the number of people living below the extreme poverty line rose by over 70 million; the largest one-year increase since global poverty monitoring began in 1990. As a result, an estimated 719 million people subsisted on less than $2.15 a day by the end of 2020.
• Inequalities, too, have risen the poorest people bore the steepest costs of the pandemic: income losses averaged 4 per cent for the poorest 40 per cent, double the losses of the wealthiest 20 per cent of the income distribution. Global inequality rose, as a result, for the first time in decades.
• Global median income declined by 4 per cent in 2020—the first decline since measurements of median income began in 1990.

What about India’s poverty levels?
Poverty has gone up in India too.
• “Previous estimates suggested a poverty headcount rate at the US$1.90 poverty line of 10.4 percent in 2017…The latest estimate based on Sinha Roy and van der Weide (2022) shows that poverty at the US$1.90 poverty line was 13.6 percent in 2017,” finds the report.
• However, the report uses data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), because there are no official estimates of poverty available since 2011.
• “The most recent survey data released by the National Sample Survey Office of India used to measure poverty is the 2011/12 National Sample Survey (NSS). The government decided not to release the 2017/18 NSS round because of concerns about data quality,” it states.
• But it could not have left India out of the poverty estimates simply because India is one of the countries with the biggest poor population. “Because of India’s size, the lack of recent survey data for the country significantly affects the measurement of global poverty, as was evident in Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020.”
• It states that given the country’s size and importance for global and regional poverty estimates, the CMIE data helps fill an important gap.

What are the suggested solutions?
• According to President of World Bank Group, “fiscal policy—prudently used and considering the initial country conditions in terms of fiscal space—does offer opportunities for policy makers in developing economies to step up the fight against poverty and inequality”.
• To be sure, the average poverty rate in developing economies would have been 2.4 percentage points higher without a fiscal response. Yet government spending proved far more beneficial to poverty reduction in the wealthiest countries, which generally managed to fully offset Covid-19’s impact on poverty through fiscal policy and other emergency support measures.
• Developing economies had fewer resources and therefore spent less and achieved less: upper-middle-income economies offset just 50 per cent of the poverty impact, and low- and lower-middle income economies offset barely a quarter of the impact.

The World Bank has three specific suggestions when it comes to fiscal policy.
1: Choose targeted cash transfers instead of broad subsidies.
2: Prioritize public spending for long-term growth.
3: Mobilize tax revenues without hurting the poor.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

4. WHAT IS OPEC+ AND WHY HAVE THEY SLASHED OIL PRODUCTION?

THE CONTEXT: The grouping of the world’s largest oil-producing countries, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies, together known as OPEC+, decided to cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day (bpd).
THE EXPLANATION:
• According to sources, this is the largest cut since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Brent crude, the international benchmark, was up 28 cents or 0.3%, at $92.08 a barrel after the cut was announced.
• In light of recent falling gas prices, OPEC+ officials had decided in September to reduce oil output by a modest 100,000 bpd after they first agreed in the previous month to increase production by the same amount.

What is OPEC+?
Established in 1960 by founding members Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, OPEC has since expanded and now has 13 member states. With the addition of another 11 allied major oil-producing countries that include Russia, the grouping is known as OPEC+.
• The objective of the organisation is to “coordinate and unify the petroleum policies of its Member Countries and ensure the stabilisation of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers and a fair return on capital for those investing in the petroleum industry”.
• Previously controlled by western-dominated multinational oil companies known as the “Seven Sisters,” OPEC sought to give the oil-producing nations greater influence over the global petroleum market. They account for roughly 40 per cent of the world’s crude oil and 80 per cent of the globe’s oil reserves, according to estimates from 2018. They usually meet every month to determine how much oil the member states will produce.
• However, many allege that OPEC behaves like a cartel, determining the supply of oil and influencing its price in the world market.

Why are they slashing production?
• Oil prices skyrocketed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, and have since begun to soften over the past few months, before dropping sharply to under $90 in September due to fears of a recession in Europe and reduced demands from China because of its lockdown measures.
• Today’s cut is the biggest of its kind since 2020 when OPEC+ members slashed outputs by 10 million bpd during the Covid-19 pandemic, Reuters reported. The reductions would boost prices and be extremely beneficial for the Middle Eastern member states, to whom Europe has turned for oil after levelling sanctions against Russia since it invaded Ukraine.
• OPEC+ members are concerned that a faltering global economy would reduce the demand for oil, and the cuts are seen as a way to protect profits. Increased oil prices, which first occurred during the invasion of Ukraine, have helped Saudi Arabia, one of the founding members of OPEC, become one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

HEALTH ISSUES

5. NEW RESEARCH: SCIENTISTS ENGINEER MOSQUITOES THAT CAN’T SPREAD MALARIA, OFFER HOPE OF ERADICATING DISEASE

THE CONTEXT: Scientists have genetically modified mosquitoes to slow the growth of malaria-causing parasites in their guts — an advancement that can help prevent transmission of the disease to humans.
THE EXPLANATION:
• The disease is transmitted between people through a female mosquito after it bites someone infected with the malaria parasite. The parasite develops into its next stage in the mosquito’s gut and travels to its salivary glands, ready to infect the next person it bites.
• Now, the mosquitoes have been engineered to produce compounds that slow the growth of malaria-causing parasites.
• Though only around 10 per cent of mosquitoes live long enough for the infectious parasite to develop, malaria remains one of the most devastating diseases globally, putting at risk about half of the world’s population. In 2021, it infected 241 million people and killed 627,000 people.

The research
• Researchers from the Institute for Disease Modelling at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation developed a model to assess the impact of such modifications and found it could be effective even where transmission is high. While the technique, described in a paper published in Science Advances journal on September 21, has been shown to dramatically reduce the possibility of malaria spreading in a lab setting, if proven in the real world it could offer a powerful new tool to help eliminate malaria.
Researchers from the Transmission: Zero team at Imperial College London, UK, genetically modified the main malaria-carrying species of mosquito in sub-Saharan Africa, Anopheles gambiae, such that the mosquito produced antimicrobial peptides in its gut when it had a blood meal.

How it works
• The peptides impair the malarial parasite’s development and also cause the mosquitoes to have a shorter life span. The co-first author of the study, Tibebu Habtewold, said new tools are increasingly needed as mosquitoes develop resistance to insecticides and treatments.
• To prevent malaria spread via genetic modification, the change needs to be spread from lab-bred mosquitoes to wild ones. The innovation is so designed that it can be coupled with existing ‘gene drive’ technology.
• “Gene drive is one such powerful weapon that in combination with drugs, vaccines and mosquito control can help stop the spread of malaria and save human lives,” study co-lead author Professor George Christophides said. Gene drive would cause the anti-parasite genetic modification to be preferentially inherited, making it spread more widely among any natural populations.

Applicability
• It would, however, require extremely careful planning to minimise risks before any field trials. The Transmission:Zero team is, therefore, creating two separate but compatible strains of modified mosquitoes — one with the anti-parasite modification and one with the gene drive.
• They can then test the anti-parasite modification on its own first, adding in the gene drive once it has been shown to be effective. With partners in Tanzania, the team set up a facility to conduct some first tests. They are also risk-assessing potential releases of modified mosquitoes and taking into account potential hazards, but are hopeful that their intervention can help eradicate malaria.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

6. THE NOBEL PRIZE 2022: MAKING CHEMISTRY CLICK

THE CONTEXT: The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to chemists Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless from the U.S., and Morten Meldal from Denmark, for their work in the field of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.
THE EXPLANATION:
• Dr. Sharpless was the first scientist to work on what is today called click chemistry – a branch of science that explores the assembly of molecules. In fact, this is not his first Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He previously won the award in 2001.

What is click chemistry?
In simple terms, click chemistry is a functional field where molecules snap together quickly and efficiently – literally like a click.
• Dr. Sharpless talked about the field in the research paper in 2001, where he defined it as a “set of powerful, highly reliable, and selective reactions for the rapid synthesis of useful new compounds and combinatorial libraries through heteroatom links”. In the same paper, he talked about the need to develop synthetic strategies instead of trying to imitate naturally occurring compounds. He is of the view that even if click chemistry is unable to provide exact replicas of natural molecules, it can help find molecules that fulfil the same purpose.
• According to Dr. Sharpless, a reaction should be able to occur in the presence of oxygen and in water for it to be called that of click chemistry.

The need for click chemistry
• Replicating reactions that involve bonds between carbon atoms – that are vital to the existence of life – is expensive and often leads to side reactions and loss of material. Instead of trying to make carbon atoms react with each other, Dr. Sharpless’s research focuses on using smaller molecules that already have a complete carbon frame, The Nobel Foundation noted. These molecules can further be linked using oxygen or nitrogen atoms as bridges. Simpler reactions, “where there is a strong intrinsic drive for the molecules to bond together”, may avoid the loss of material as well as the unwanted side reactions.




Today’s Important Articles for Pub Ad (06-10-2022)

  1. Gubernatorial procrastination is unreasonable READ MORE
  2. The fraying framework: Across the world, foundational ideas of major political systems are under challenge READ MORE
  3. SC move to live-stream proceedings is good, but more needs to be done READ MORE
  4. Democracy is dying of success!! READ MORE
  5. Feasibility of freebies: Political parties need to spell out financial ramifications READ MORE



WSDP Bulletin (06-10-2022)

(Newspapers, PIB and other important sources)

Prelim and Main

  1. Explained | The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC)- where does it stand today? READ MORE
  2. Caves of Bandhavgarh not Buddhist, says Ashoka University Professor Nayanjot Lahiri READ MORE
  3. Nobel Prize in Chemistry announced: The winners’ work, its significance READ MORE
  4. ‘The picture for 2023 has darkened considerably’: The World Trade Organization says that global trade will decrease sharply next year as countries face a ‘multi-pronged crisis’ READ MORE
  5. What are the EU’s new laws to regulate content online, and how do they compare with India’s? READ MORE
  6. Debate over the collegium system: How are SC and HC judges appointed? READ MORE
  7. Delhi’s air quality is now poor, GRAP measures enforced READ MORE
  8. New research: Scientists engineer mosquitoes that can’t spread malaria, offer hope of eradicating disease READ MORE

Main Exam

GS Paper- 1

  1. In a society that defines women by marital status, can the Supreme Court judgment on abortion make a difference? READ MORE
  2. Protect the ethos of a multicultural India READ MORE

GS Paper- 2

POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

  1. Gubernatorial procrastination is unreasonable READ MORE
  2. The fraying framework: Across the world, foundational ideas of major political systems are under challenge READ MORE
  3. SC move to live-stream proceedings is good, but more needs to be done READ MORE
  4. Democracy is dying of success!! READ MORE
  5. Feasibility of freebies: Political parties need to spell out financial ramifications READ MORE

SOCIAL ISSUES

  1. MENTAL HEALTH MUST BE A GLOBAL PRIORITY READ MORE

INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

  1. Neutrality, abstention: India must take a stand against Russia’s bombing and annexation of territory READ MORE
  2. Creating a bridge between SCO, G20 READ MORE

 GS Paper- 3

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

  1. Leveraging value chains in farming READ MORE
  2. India’s new logistics policy can fix foundational issues READ MORE

ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY

  1. Calamity-prone — urban India’s worrying storyline READ MORE
  2. Stubble trouble: With more paddy sown this year, the problem of stubble burning is only going to get worse READ MORE
  3. Climate risk index shows threats to 90% of the world’s marine species READ MORE

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

  1. 5G must be evaluated READ MORE

SECURITY

  1. CDS faces challenge of jointness in operations READ MORE

GS Paper- 4

ETHICS EXAMPLES AND CASE STUDY

  1. Matter may after all be only in the mind READ MORE
  2. The dharmic duty of doubt READ MORE
  3. Are you still evolving? READ MORE

Questions for the MAIN exam

  1. How far do you agree with this view that ECI and Courts are nit is position to address the issue of fiscal responsibility and an independent fiscal body, as recommended by fiancé commission, to do it? Analyse your view in light of ongoing freebies debate.
  2. The National Logistics Policy can lead to greater integration of India into global value chains, higher share in international trade, higher employment, and accelerated economic growth. Examine.

QUOTATIONS AND CAPTIONS

  • Balance is not something you find, it is something you create.
  • To treat the Bengaluru floods as an isolated case would be an urban planning mistake as every key city is in need of a comprehensive climate action plan
  • India must take a stand against Russia’s bombing and annexation of territory.
  • Across the world, foundational ideas of major political systems are under challenge.
  • In societies of ethos, free and autonomous women cause trouble. They challenge familial ideologies and threaten state ideologies based on family, caste, and religion.
  • FPOs can play a major role in aggregating small farmers and help in value addition.
  • India is assuming the leadership of SCO and G20. While the two groupings have divergent goals, Delhi will need to ensure that the concerns of developing nations are not ignored. An assertive foreign policy that seeks to shape and steer conversations will help.
  • The National Logistics Policy can lead to greater integration of India into global value chains, higher share in international trade, higher employment, and accelerated economic growth.
  • A financially feasible road map for fulfilling poll promises is the need of the hour to help voters make informed choices and deter irresponsible governments from living beyond their means.
  • Though 5G would be a game changer its ill effects on the human health must be evaluated and made known to the public.
  • Using the power of democracy, India created a new paradigm. It rejected the view that a country must first become economically fit for democracy.
  • Great leaders create more leaders, not gobs of followers.
  • Democracy is a journey but also a destination. India hasn’t lost the path, but hasn’t found the way. There is a danger of democracy degenerating into power grabbing. India remains vulnerable to populist demagoguery and the predatory power of cross-border corporate and governing institutions.

ESSAY TOPIC

  • Balance is not something you find, it is something you create.
  • Great leaders create more leaders, not gobs of followers.

50-WORD TALK

  • Modi government prioritising electoral politics over economic prudence through decisions on free grains, fuel tax and monetary policy is troubling. The pandemic-hit economy is still struggling to recover. Global headwinds triggered by geopolitical uncertainties are making recovery even more challenging. The economy should trump elections, not the other way round.
  • The outrage from members of both communities over Muslims attending Hindu garba events is what India doesn’t need right now. Casual interfaith intermingling around Eid, Diwali, Dushera, Christmas is the way to go. Communities living in religious silos will hurt the India Story in the 21st century phase of nation-building.

Things to Remember:

  • For prelims-related news try to understand the context of the news and relate with its concepts so that it will be easier for you to answer (or eliminate) from given options.
  • Whenever any international place will be in news, you should do map work (marking those areas in maps and exploring other geographical locations nearby including mountains, rivers, etc. same applies to the national places.)
  • For economy-related news (banking, agriculture, etc.) you should focus on terms and how these are related to various economic aspects, for example, if inflation has been mentioned, try to relate with prevailing price rises, shortage of essential supplies, banking rates, etc.
  • For main exam-related topics, you should focus on the various dimensions of the given topic, the most important topics which occur frequently and are important from the mains point of view will be covered in ED.
  • Try to use the given content in your answer. Regular use of this content will bring more enrichment to your writing.



Day-302 | Daily MCQs | UPSC Prelims | GENERAL SCIENCE

[WpProQuiz 347]




TOPIC : LANDSLIDES- STORY OF FRAGILE HIMALAYAS AND VULNERABLE WESTERN GHATS

THE CONTEXT: The recent incidents of landslides in Himalayan states and the Western Ghats have again put the spotlight on the need for early detection, warning, and prevention systems and adopting sustainable solutions for better management of landslides disasters in India. This article analyses causes, impact & suggestive steps regarding Landslides.

WHAT IS A LANDSLIDE?

  • Landslide is a physical phenomenon when a part of rock, and/or debris/ soil fall due to the action of gravity.
  • It is caused by a set of terrain-specific geo-factors (e.g., slope, lithology, rock structure, land use/ cover, geomorphology, etc.) and in general is triggered by heavy rainfall or earthquake tremors.
  • In Indian terrain, landslide events are mostly triggered by monsoonal rainfall but examples of earthquake-triggered landslides are also not uncommon in India (e.g., Uttarkashi Earthquake, Chamoli Earthquake, Sikkim Earthquake, etc).
  • The entire Himalayan tract, hills/ mountains in sub-Himalayan terrains of North-east India, Western Ghats, the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu Konkan areas are landslide-prone.

RECENT LANDSLIDE DISASTERS

ü  On 26th July, nine people lost their lives when a landslide suddenly flung boulders down a hill in Himachal Pradesh’s Kinnaur district.

ü  On 18th July 18, a series of landslides in two areas of Mumbai claimed at least 32 lives.

ü  On 14th July, five died in HP’s Kangra district after heavy rainfall triggered floods and landslides.

IMPORTANT FACTS RELATED TO LANDSLIDE RISK IN INDIA

  • India has mountainous and hilly areas in as many as 16 states and two UTs, located in the Himalayan and sub-Himalayan region and the Western Ghats.
  • The area prone to landslides accounts for about 12.6% of the Indian landmass, translating into 4.2 lakh square kilometers in absolute terms.
  • This area spans across more than 170 districts.
  • India accounts for about 18 percent of the total global fatalities due to landslides in the hills. Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, J&K, and Ladakh record more than 65 percent of the landslides in the country, followed by the Northeast Himalayas and the Western Ghats.

WHY DO THE HIMALAYAS EXPERIENCE MORE LANDSLIDES THAN THE WESTERN GHATS?

  • The Himalayas are one of the youngest fold mountains of the world. They are formed by the convergent movement of the Indian plate and Eurasian plate rather they are still rising in height. These tectonic movements cause frequent earthquakes in the region often resulting in landslides. Whereas the Western Ghats lies in the stable Deccan shieldless prone to landslides than the Himalayas.
  • The Himalayas are greater in height than the Western Ghats. The slopes are comparatively steeper which increases the chance of landslide. Whereas the Western Ghats is much lesser in height than the Himalayas.
  • The perennial rivers in the Himalayas carry a huge amount of silt and debris. The melting of glaciers even increasing the flow of water during summer thus leading to more amount of landslides. But the Western Ghats on the other hand does not face such a situation.

MAJOR LANDSLIDE PRONE AREAS OF INDIA

ANALYSING THE REASONS BEHIND LANDSLIDE

HUMAN INTERVENTION

  • Human activity such as the construction of roads, buildings, and railways, mining and quarrying, and hydropower projects damage hilly slopes and impact natural drainage by removing soil and vegetation, loosening soil and gravel, and making the hills more susceptible to landslides.
  • India accounted for 28% of construction-triggered landslide events, followed by China (9%), and Pakistan (6%).
  • India also accounted for maximum landslides triggered by mining, at 12%, followed by Indonesia (11.7%), and China (10%).
  • Bootstrapping an incompatible model of development in the hills, represented by big hydroelectric projects and large-scale construction activity involving the destruction of forests and damming of rivers, is an invitation to disasters like landslides.
  • According to the GSI report, infrastructural development for tourism that involved the modification of slopes – construction of new roads and widening of existing ones, building houses, hotels, and homestays – increased the vulnerability of mountains in both the Himalayas and the Western Ghats to the rain and made the landslides and floods that much more devastating. For example, landslides in Kodagu.
  • In the Western Ghats, Plantations are also the major reason for landslides. Imported tree species cannot withstand the local weather conditions and get uprooted even in a slight downpour. For example, Nilgiris initially had a lot of native trees and millet species but monoculture transformed the soil. With the use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and repeat planting methods, the texture of the soil changed gradually.

UNPLANNED DEVELOPMENT, FLAWED REGULATIONS

  • A study analyzing building regulations in eight towns in the Himalayan region found that building bylaws do not make provisions for the particular geo-environmental context of a settlement. The same land use regulations apply regardless of topographical location, slope angle and direction, and the hazard potential of a site.
  • The National Landslide Risk Management Strategy published by the NIDM in September 2019 also flagged this anomaly. The regulations are mostly inspired by Delhi Master Plan(s).
  • Lack of local land use planning or its updation in the urban local bodies of the Himalayan region and the Western Ghats is resulting in ill-conceived planning, unplanned development, and ultimately slope instability.

EXTREME WEATHER

  • Severe, unpredictable weather events such as heavy, intense rainfall due to the climate crisis are adding another layer of complexity to landslide incidents in the country.
  • Of the total landslides triggered by rainfall, 16% were reported from India. Of these, 77% occurred during the monsoon.

NDMA’S GUIDELINES FOR LANDSLIDE AND SNOW AVALANCHES DISASTER MANAGEMENT (2009) AND NATIONAL LANDSLIDE RISK

MANAGEMENT STRATEGY (2019)

LANDSLIDE HAZARD, VULNERABILITY, AND RISK ASSESSMENT

  • It includes delineating areas susceptible to landslide hazards and the status of landslide hazards in different areas and to assess the resources at risk due to these hazards as per the requirement of communities and for planning and decision-making purposes.
  • This also involves site-specific studies of landslides and preparation of landslide inventory.

MULTI-HAZARD CONCEPTUALISATION

  • Integrating landslide concerns into multi-hazard disaster management plans at different levels for effective risk assessment, mitigation and response.

LANDSLIDE REMEDIATION PRACTICE

  • Encouraging implementation of successful landslide remediation and mitigation technologies, and execution of pacesetter examples in mitigation and remediation strategies to build confidence amongst the affected communities.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT; MONITORING AND EARLY WARNING

  • Research is of critical importance in managing landslides. Developing a predictive understanding of landslide processes and triggering mechanisms; regional real-time landslide warning systems based on threshold values of rainfall; real-time monitoring and establishing early warning systems are some of the important fields of research that need immediate attention.

KNOWLEDGE NETWORK AND MANAGEMENT

  • Establishing an effective system for gathering information on landslides, loss assessment resulting from landslides, and the effective dissemination of technical information and maps is an essential component of the disaster management process.

PUBLIC AWARENESS AND EDUCATION

  • Effective communication of landslide hazard issues to the affected communities through education, public awareness programmes, posters, audio-visual aids, media campaigns, etc., is required.

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE

  • Development of coordinated landslide rapid response capability involving scientists, engineers, local authorities, the National Disaster Response Force, and paramilitary forces. Rescue, relief, and rehabilitation are covered in this component.

WAY FORWARD: LANDSLIDE-PRONE AREAS NEED TECH SUPPORT

HOW MAPPING LANDSLIDES CAN MINIMISE DAMAGE

  • Improvement in early warning systems, monitoring, and susceptibility zoning can reduce the damage caused by landslides.
  • The Geological Survey of India (GSI) has done a national landslide susceptibility mapping at 1:50,000 scale for 85% of the entire 420,000 square km landslide-prone area in the country.
  • This would not only help avoid many new landslides that are caused heavily by human interventions but also reduce damages to life and property if an incident happens.
  • The maps need to be localized to give a more magnified view of the locality to be more useful. This would help to build plans and local construction activities.

PLANNING AHEAD

  • Aizawl Municipal Corporation (AMC) has developed a landslide action plan using 1:5,000 scale susceptibility maps and new regulations to guide construction activities.
  • It has set up a landslide policy committee involving stakeholders from various departments and researchers to prepare a long-term safety plan.
  • After years of facing tragedies, Kerala is also trying to ensure disaster-resilient development in its hilly regions. The ‘Rebuild Kerala’ action plan has given high priority to the preparation of landslide hazard zonation maps in hilly areas at the municipality and panchayat levels.
  • NHAI while building roads took remedial measures such as concreting with wire mesh and rock bolting, use of rockfall nets, concrete cladding, and proper diversion of surface runoff through catch drains, chutes and toe drains on berms, etc. It provides stability to the slopes.

MONITORING FOR EARLY WARNING

  • Local geographical indicators offer warning signs for landslides.
  • New cracks, unusual bulges and depressions in the ground; tilting trees, telecom poles or retaining walls; soil moving away from foundations; and sudden increase in water flow in streams with more mud, or decrease in flow when it is still raining or rainfall has recently stopped, can signal landslides.
  • Rainfall is a key indicator. The GSI started an experiment in Landslide Early Warning System (LEWS) in Darjeeling (West Bengal) and the Nilgiris (Tamil Nadu), which could be expanded to other landslide-prone states if it proves successful. The model is based on rainfall threshold, which is the amount of rainfall a slope can hold before a landslide gets triggered, which is estimated using past cumulative rainfall data combined with landslide susceptibility data.
  • Some experiments are also going on to monitor landslides through movement sensors and rain gauges. These systems alert the officials and scientists through SMS or emails once a threshold value is reached. Coimbatore-based Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, for instance, has set up real-time landslide monitoring and early warning systems in Munnar (Kerala) and Gangtok (Sikkim).
  • The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mandi, has also installed surface-level motion-sensor-based early warning systems in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The device collects weather parameters, soil moisture, soil movement, and rainfall intensities. When the device detects a significant displacement of the earth which could result in a landslide, it alerts the officials.

SWISS MODEL

  • Prof.Madhav Gadgil who headed the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) suggested ‘Swiss Model’ is the solution to prevent landslides in the Western Ghats

ü  The extensive forest cover of Switzerland has developed only over the last 160 years.

ü  Before that, only about 4% of that country’s lands had retained forest and there were disastrous landslides.

ü  This led to a public awakening and a restoration of the tree cover.

ü  This regeneration was managed by local communities, not by government departments.

ü  Working together, communities of Switzerland, practicing genuine participatory democracy, have revived the country’s ecology.

CONCLUSION: There is a cost to pursuing development goals without paying attention to environmental constraints. Therefore, development goals must be pursued without breaching environmental regulations. Recent devastating landslides signal the dire need for ramping up disaster alert systems while enhancing climate change mitigation efforts.




DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS (OCTOBER 05, 2022)

THE INDIAN POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

1. CJI SENDS 2ND NOTE OVER NAMING NEW JUDGES: WHAT IS THE SC COLLEGIUM, HOW IT WORKS

THE CONTEXT: With two of the five-member Supreme Court Collegium against a proposal to recommend four new judges to the top court through a written note instead of a formal meeting, Chief Justice of India U U Lalit is learnt to have written to them again, seeking reconsideration of their stand.

THE EXPLANATION:

  • CJI Lalit is due to retire in little over a month, leaving him with very little time for appointments. As per convention, the government writes to the outgoing CJI before his retirement and the CJI recommends the name of the most senior judge as the successor about a month before retirement.
  • Once a new name is recommended, the incumbent CJI usually refrains from taking decisions on appointment of judges.

The Collegium system

  • The collegium system is the way by which judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts are appointed and transferred. The collegium system is not rooted in the Constitution or a specific law promulgated by Parliament; it has evolved through judgments of the Supreme Court.
  • The Supreme Court Collegium is a five-member body, which is headed by the incumbent CJI and comprises the four other senior most judges of the court at that time. A High Court collegium is led by the incumbent Chief Justice and four other senior most judges of that court. By its very nature, the composition of the collegium keeps changing.
  • Judges of the higher judiciary are appointed only through the collegium system, and the government has a role only after names have been decided by the collegium. Names recommended for appointment by a High Court collegium reach the government only after approval by the CJI and the Supreme Court collegium.
  • The role of the government in this entire process is limited to getting an inquiry conducted by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) if a lawyer is to be elevated as a judge in a High Court or the Supreme Court. The government can also raise objections and seek clarifications regarding the collegium’s choices, but if the collegium reiterates the same names, the government is bound to appoint them.
  • Critics have pointed out that the system is non-transparent, since it does not involve any official mechanism or secretariat. It is seen as a closed-door affair with no prescribed norms regarding eligibility criteria, or even the selection procedure. There is no public knowledge of how and when a collegium meets, and how it takes its decisions. There are no official minutes of collegium proceedings.

2. THE SUPREME COURT SAYS ABORTION RIGHTS NOT LIMITED TO ‘CIS-GENDER WOMEN’: WHAT THIS TERM MEANS

THE CONTEXT: In a significant judgment, the Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional to distinguish between married and unmarried women while allowing abortion when the foetus is between 20-24 weeks. Going a step further, the court said the term ‘woman’ in the judgment included persons other than cisgender women.

THE EXPLANATION:

  • The three-judge bench said in the order delivered by Justice D Y Chandrachud, “Before we embark upon a discussion on the law and its application, it must be mentioned that we use the term ‘woman’ in this judgment as including persons other than cis-gender women who may require access to safe medical termination of their pregnancies.”

What is cisgender?

  • The term cisgender is used to define people whose gender identity and expression match the identity assigned to them at birth.
  • When a child is born, it is assigned a gender identity based on its physical characteristics. Many believe that gender is a social construct, and growing up, the child may or may not confirm to the birth identity.
  • For transgender people, their sense of gender identity does not match the one assigned to them at birth.
  • Thus, a cisgender woman is a person who was assigned female at birth and continues to identify as a woman. On the other hand, a child assigned female at birth can feel it identifies more authentically as a man as it grows up.

Cisgender: Origins of the term

  • The latin prefix ‘cis’ literally means ‘on the same side of’, while ‘trans’ means on the other side. Trans as a prefix is used commonly (transatlantic, trans-tasman), though cis is rarer in popular usage.
  • ‘Cisgender’ entered Britain’s Oxford English Dictionary in 2015, and the USA’s Merriam Webster Dictionary in 2016. Both dictionaries document its first usage around 1994. Dana Leland Defosse, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, is believed to have first used the word in connection with a study on transphobia, in May 1994.
  • What is commonly agreed upon is that the word existed in academic journals since the mid-90s. It was popularised by gender theorist and activist Julia Serano’s 2007 book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, and gradually, especially with the advent of the internet, became part enough of popular parlance to be included in the dictionaries.

Why the word cisgender is important?

  • If there are ‘transgender’ people, there should be a word for those who are not. Giving a label to only one section of the population, especially when that is in the minority, implies that the others are default, ‘normal’, and only that section needs to be labeled.

Use of gender-inclusive vocabularies in official documents

  • Before India’s Supreme Court used ‘cisgender’ in the context of reproductive rights, last year in June, the US government had replaced the word ‘mothers’ with ‘birthing people’ in a section on bringing down maternal mortality in its 2022 fiscal year budget, provoking quite a furore in Republican circles.

Those who advocate the use of ‘birthing people’ say it is not just women who give birth. Transmen — a person assigned the female gender at birth but who identifies as a man – and genderqueer people – who identify as neither man nor woman – also give birth.

THE HEALTH ISSUES

3. THE INCREASE IN CHOLERA CASES

THE CONTEXT: The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned of a “worrying surge” in cholera cases across the globe.

THE EXPLANATION:

  • Recently 26 countries have reported cholera outbreak in 2022. This is problematic since, normally, less than 20 countries report cholera outbreak every year.
  • Haiti had recorded at least 7 cholera deaths for the first time in 3 years. The health crisis in the Caribbean country was worsened because of surge in fuel prices, which has caused shortages in clean drinking water and adversely affected the operations of healthcare facilities.
  • Conflict, poverty and climate crisis are the main reasons behind the spike in cholera cases at the international level.
  • Extreme climatic conditions like flooding, cyclones and droughts are reducing the access to clean water and supporting the spread of cholera.
  • The WHO warned that these outbreaks are expected to be larger and more fatal in the coming years because of climate change.
  • In 2021, the fatality rate has tripled when compared with the previous 5 years.
  • Currently, the WHO does not have accurate figures on the cholera cases and deaths because of the absence of standard surveillance system in the affected countries.
  • In India, cholera is endemic. This year, the number of cases in Maharashtra surpassed the last year’s figures, resulting in 261 cases and at least 6 deaths in July. The number of deaths in the state is highest in this decade.
  • Though cholera cases are spreading, this disease can be prevented easily.
  • The fatality rate can be reduced below one per cent through the timely and proper administration of oral rehydration and intravenous fluids.
  • While GAVI, the vaccine alliance, has the emergency stockpiles of vaccines against cholera and other diseases, such measures are inaccessible to many countries.
  • Though the WHO has these vaccines, there is a huge shortage because of manufacturing problems. There are insufficient number of vaccines to respond to both acute outbreaks and implement preventive measures.

VALUE ADDITION:

About Cholera:

Cholera is an acute, diarrheal illness caused by infection of the intestine with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The infection is often mild or without symptoms, but sometimes can be severe.

How does a person get cholera?

  • A person may get cholera by drinking water or eating food contaminated with the cholera bacterium. In an epidemic, the source of the contamination is usually the feces (stool) of an infected person. The disease can spread rapidly in areas with inadequate treatment of sewage and drinking water.
  • The cholera bacterium may also live in the environment in brackish rivers and coastal waters. Shellfish eaten raw have been a source of cholera. The disease is not likely to spread directly from one person to another; therefore, casual contact with an infected person is not a risk for becoming ill.

Can cholera be treated?

  • Cholera can be simply and successfully treated by immediate replacement of the fluid and salts lost through diarrhea. Patients can be treated with oral rehydration solution, a prepackaged mixture of sugar and salts to be mixed with water and drunk in large amounts.
  • This solution is used throughout the world to treat diarrhea. Severe cases also require intravenous fluid replacement. With prompt rehydration, less than 1% of cholera patients die.
  • Antibiotics shorten the course and diminish the severity of the illness, but they are not as important as rehydration. Persons who develop severe diarrhea and vomiting in countries where cholera occurs should seek medical attention promptly.

GOVERNMENT SCHEMES AND INITIATIVES IN NEWS

4. THE SARTHAK INITIATIVE

THE CONTEXT: NIMHANS and HelpAge India are jointly implementing Sarthak to ensure mental well-being of elderly.

THE EXPLANATION:

  • Sarthak is a community-based initiative that provides nurses, healthcare workers and volunteers training on geriatric mental health.
  • The National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS) and an NGO named HelpAge India are collaborating to implement this initiative.
  • Under Sarthak initiative, 10,000 mental health workers will be trained to identify and counter mental health issues faced by older people.
  • The training will be provided for non-specialized health workers and community caregivers through customized online modules focusing on specific categories like Non-Specialist health workforce, Informal Caregivers and Institutional Caregivers.

Mental health situation among elderly

According to the NGO HelpAge, over 20 per cent of adults aging 60 and above suffer from a mental or neurological disorders like dementia and depression. During the pandemic, it found that in a sample size of 5,000 people, 60 per cent reported that they felt lonely and isolated. 40 per cent of them have felt depressed. This issue is expected to worsen in the coming years. The Longitudinal Ageing Study of India (LASI) report forecasted 14 million senior citizens in India will face mental health issues by 2050. This is a significant increase from the current figure of 5 million. Currently, in India, 2 in 10 people facing mental health issues are not receiving any kind of assistance to address mental health problems. There is only 1 psychiatrist for over 2 lakh people.

About NIMHANS

The Bengaluru-based National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS) is India’s apex centre for mental health and neuroscience education. It comes under the aegis of the Union Health Ministry and operates autonomously as the Institute of National Importance. The institute’s origin can be traced to the establishment of Bangalore Lunatic Asylum in 1847. The Indian Parliament had passed a law in 2012 to declare it as an Institute of National Importance.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

5. NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS: BREAKTHROUGHS IN QUANTUM TECH

THE CONTEXT: The Nobel Committee announced the names of three physicists as Nobel Laureates for this year. They are Alain Aspect from the University of Paris-Saclay, France; John F. Clauser of John F Clauser and Associates, California, USA; and Anton Zeilinger, University of Vienna, Austria.

THE EXPLANATION:

They have been awarded for “experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science,” according to a press release by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobel Prizes every year.

The award

  • At the heart of the award is the concept of quantum entanglement, which Albert Einstein referred to as “spooky action at a distance.” The Prize has been given for experimental work in this area. Two of the laureates—John Clauser and Alain Aspect—worked on firming up this concept and developing more complex experiments that demonstrated this phenomenon, especially creating, processing and measuring what are called Bell pairs. The third laureate, Anton Zeilinger, has been chosen for his innovative use of entanglement and Bell pairs both in research and application such as quantum cryptography.
  • Mechanics is the branch of physics that deals with the movement and interaction of various bodies. Classical mechanics is the study of the dynamics of a system at the very basic level of Newton’s laws of motion.
  • When there are a few bodies or particles interacting, classical mechanics can be used in a straightforward manner. It can be extended to many particle systems like a box containing millions of molecules of a gas, by employing the powerful techniques of statistics. This is called statistical mechanics.

Breakdown of the classical

  • Newton’s laws were, of course, very successful in describing a lot of everyday activities, from playing tennis to sending a rocket to Mars. However, they broke down, or were of no use, when describing the behaviour of subatomic particles or light quanta, for example.
  • Despite all these innovations, there were phenomena that could not be explained by physicists. To understand these problems, in the early decades of the 20 th century, postulates of quantum mechanics were brought in. The chief architects of this were Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr to name a few.
  • Many of the concepts that were useful in visualising the movement of particles in the classical realm break down when you look at particles obeying quantum mechanics.

Trajectory and its absence

  • For example, when a tennis ball is struck, you can observe it and see that it traces out a definite path in space. This path called a trajectory, and it is eminently possible to theoretically calculate the trajectory of the ball to any given accuracy.

THE PRELIMS PERSPECTIVE

6. THE NANSEN AWARD

THE CONTEXT: Recently, the Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently received the Nansen Refugee Award.

THE EXPLANATION:

  • Ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel received the UNHCR Nansen Award for providing asylum for refugees while in office.
  • While Merkel was the Chancellor in 2015 and 2016, Germany welcomed more than 1.2 million refugees and asylum seekers, especially from Syria.
  • The UNHCR recognized Merkel’s determination to protect asylum seekers, helping them to survive and rebuild after facing war.
  • The Nansen Award committee also honoured four regional winners. These include a refugee support cacao cooperative in Costa Rica in the Americas, a volunteer refugee firefighting group in Mauritia in West Africa, humanitarian organization Meikse Myanmar that helps internally displaced people in Asia and the Pacific and an Iraqi gynaecologist known for providing medical and psychological aid to Yazidi girls and women in North Africa and Middle East.
  • The Nansen Awards will be bestowed to Merkel and other winners at a ceremony that will be organized in Geneva, Switzerland on October 10, 2022.
  • While Merkel will receive a cash prize of 150,000 USD, the regional winners will each receive 50,000 USD.

About Nansen Award

  • The Nansen Award is conferred every year by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to an individual, group or organization in recognition of their contribution towards aiding refugees, stateless or displaced people.
  • It was created in 1954 in honour of the first United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Arctic explorer and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen. The first to receive this award is Eleanor Roosevelt. Regional awards for the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East are being conferred since 2017.

What is UNHCR?

The UNHCR is a UN agency involved in the protection of refugees and displaced and stateless communities. It is involved in their voluntary repatriation, local integration and resettlement in a foreign country.




DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS (OCTOBER 04, 2022)

THE ENVIRONMENT, ECOLOGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

1. HOW CAN INDIA REDUCE ITS IMPACT ON GLOBAL WARMING

THE CONTEXT: Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has pointed out that since the industrial revolution, human activities have released large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2).
THE EXPLANATION:
Alarming Increase in Carbon Dioxide:
• Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased by over 40%, from 280 ppm in the 18th century to 414 ppm in 2020, and greenhouse gases level by over these 200 years.
Reason: Due to fuel burning and other ‘greenhouse gases’ such as methane, nitrous oxide, and compounds of sulphur, phosphorous, ozone into the atmosphere, changing the earth’s climate.

India Specific Observations:
Rise in Greenhouse gases: The industrial revolution started only after India’s Independence 75 years ago which has led to a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases.
Need to Reduce Carbon Footprint in Farming Sector: India has a total food-grain production of 275 million tonnes. India is the second largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, cotton and groundnuts. It, thus, becomes important that India try and reduce its carbon footprint as much as possible, more in its farming sector.
Innovative Initiatives in Agriculture to Reduce Global Warming
• Farmers are using solar panels in their fields, so that they can avoid diesel for groundwater pumps.
Climate-friendly agriculture offers new income sources and is more sustainable and India’s carbon emissions could drop by 45-62 million tonnes annually.
• India has about 20-39% vegetarians and 70% of the population eat meat — mainly chicken, mutton and fish. India, with its many rivers, has a vast coastline which is rich in fishes and fishes have high nutritional value and help in reducing carbon footprint.

India’s Efforts
Updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs):
• India now stands committed to reducing the emissions intensity of its GDP by 45 percent by 2030 from its 2005 levels, as per the updated NDC.
• The country will also target about 50 percent of cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by 2030.
• To create an additional (cumulative) carbon sink of 2.5-3 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) by 2030 through additional forest and tree cover.
• To further a healthy and sustainable lifestyle, ‘LIFE’ ‘Lifestyle for Environment’ as a key to combating climate change” has been added to India’s NDC.
• The update is also a step towards achieving India’s long term goal of reaching net-zero by 2070.
Adaptation and Mitigation:
• The Government has launched many schemes and programs to scale up India’s actions on both adaptation and mitigation.
• Appropriate measures are being taken under these schemes and programs across many sectors, including water, agriculture, forest, energy and enterprise, sustainable mobility and housing, waste management, circular economy and resource efficiency, etc.
• As a result of the aforesaid measures, India has progressively continued decoupling of economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions.
Focus on Renewable Energy:
• The PM has set the targets and reiterated that the Indian government is committed to increasing the share of renewable energy in India’s total energy share. Initially, the target for renewable energy was set at 175 GW, but now it has been further revised to 450 GW by 2030.
• It will lead to an overall increase in green jobs such as in renewable energy, clean energy industries- in automotives, manufacturing of low emissions products like Electric Vehicles and super-efficient appliances, and innovative technologies such as green hydrogen, etc.
Mobilisation of Resources:
• India is earmarking a large part of its developmental resources to the fight against climate change.
• This is a stupendous effort as compared to the western countries, which are already at the advanced stages of development.
International Solar Alliance (ISA):
• ISA is a global alliance being initiated by India as well as headquartered in India. It is aimed at promoting research to develop more efficient, low-cost solutions to the global energy requirements, by leveraging advanced technology as well as providing incentives and regulation.

THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

2. INDIA’S ECONOMY TO GROW 5.7% IN 2022, 4.7% IN 2023: UNCTAD

THE CONTEXT: The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) expects India’s economy to grow 5.7% in 2022 and 4.7% in 2023. India’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 8.7% in FY22.
THE EXPLANATION:
• The UN report expects the world economy to grow 2.6% in 2022. This is 0.9 percentage points below last year’s projected rate. The growth is expected to further decelerate in 2023 to 2.2%. This would leave the real GDP below the pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2023.
• It warns that the rapidly increasing interest rates and fiscal tightening in the advanced economies, along with the Russia-Ukraine War, have already exacerbated the global slowdown into a global economic downturn.
• The advanced economies’ monetary and fiscal policies risk triggering a global recession and prolonging stagnation. This could lead to a situation worse than the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 induced shock.
• The report holds that attempting to curb inflation by increasing interest rates is an impudent gamble and would lead to a recession.
• Excessive monetary tightening, especially given the current situation of declining real wages, financial turbulence and insufficient support and coordination from multilateral forum, could lead to stagnation and instability in many developing economies as well as some developed ones.
• The report expects the Indian economy, the largest in the region, to grow 5.7% in 2022 and 4.7% in 2023. In FY22, the country’s GDP grew 8.7%.
• The country’s economic activity is being affected by weaker public expenditure and higher financing costs, according to the 2022 report. While the government plans to boost capex, especially in the road and rail sectors, the weakening global economy will put pressure on the policymakers to reduce the fiscal imbalances. This would reduce expenditure elsewhere.

ABOUT:
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
The Geneva-based UN body has been releasing this report since 1981 to provide analysis the major current economic trends and policy issues of global concern. It provides recommendations to boost the global economy so that lives of people are improved and the future of the planet is secure.

THE SECURITY AFFAIRS

3. INDIGENOUSLY DESIGNED AND DEVELOPED LCH INDUCTED INTO INDIAN AIR FORCE

THE CONTEXT: In a big boost to Aatmanirbhartha in Defence, Raksha Mantri presided over the formal induction of Light Combat Helicopter (LCH), designed and developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), into the Indian Air Force (IAF) in Jodhpur.
THE EXPLANATION:
Naming LCH as “Prachanda”, Raksha Mantri said that its induction comes during the Amrit kal when the Nation is celebrating Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav and a pointer to the future when IAF will be the top most force in the world, as also making the country fully AatmaNirbhar in Defence production requirements. Raksha Mantri also took a sortie onboard the LCH shortly after its induction into IAF.
• The LCH was developed after around 20 years of research and development post Kargil War. The name Prachand means “fierce”. It was designed and developed by the state-owned defence company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).
• The indigenous content in LSP version of the helicopter accounts for the 45 per cent of the cost, which is expected to raise to more than 55 per cent in the production version of the series.

FEATURES:

• This indigenously developed 5.5 tonne class combat helicopter is equipped with numerous stealth features, armoured protection, night attack capability and landing gear capable of survival.
• It has extended range and high-altitude performance capability as well as the round-the-clock, all-weather combat capability. It is capable of neutralizing adversary air defence, conducting counter-insurgency operations and combat search and rescue (CSAR) operations. It is useful for conducting high-altitude bunker busting operations and counter-insurgency operations in jungle and urban terrains.
• It can also be used for countering slow-moving aircraft and remotely operated aircrafts. This helicopter can also provide assistance to ground forces during combat situations.
• Presently, the Indian Armed Forces is expected to require a total of 160 LCHs, of which 65 is for IAF and 95 is for the Indian Army. The HAL has now created a strategy to achieve the peak rate production capacity of 30 helicopters per annum to manufacture the remaining 145 of these combat helicopters in 8 years from the date of inking the series production order.

THE GOVERNMENT SCHEMES AND INITIATIVES IN NEWS

4. SWACHH SURVEKSHAN AWARDS 2022

THE CONTEXT: Indore has been adjudged the cleanest city of India for the sixth year in a row, while Madhya Pradesh is the cleanest state in the country. Surat is the second cleanest city and Navi Mumbai comes a close third in the category of cities with a population more than a lakh.
THE EXPLANATION:
• In the population category of less than one lakh, Panchgani and Karad from Maharashtra bagged the first and third positions respectively, while Patan from Chhattisgarh bagged the second position.
• Tirupati received the best city award in Safai Mitra Suraksha category, while Haridwar in Uttarakhand received the award for the best Ganga town in more than one lakh population cities. Shivamogga in Karnataka received the fast mover city award.
• The State awards saw Madhya Pradesh emerge as the Cleanest State in the category of “more than 100 Urban Local Bodies”, relegating Chhattisgarh, the cleanest State of the previous three years, to second place. Maharashtra emerged as third cleanest State.
• Similarly, Tripura got the cleanest State award in the “less than 100 urban local bodies category”, dislodging Jharkhand, which had won in the past two consecutive years. Jharkhand and Uttarakhand received the second and third spots respectively.

VALUE ADDITION:
Swachh Survekshan:
• Swachh Survekshan, conducted by MoHUA since 2016, is the world’s largest urban sanitation and cleanliness survey.
o It is being conducted under the ambit of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban)2.0.
• It has been instrumental in fostering a spirit of healthy competition among towns and cities to improve their service delivery to citizens and towards creating cleaner cities.
• It aims to encourage cities to improve the status of urban sanitation while encouraging large scale citizen participation.

THE PRELIMS PERSPECTIVE

5. ICAR SCIENTISTS DISCOVER NEW FISH SPECIES IN METTUR DAM

THE CONTEXT: A new catfish species has been discovered in the river Cauvery near Mettur Dam.
THE EXPLANATION:
• The edible species has been named Pangasius icaria ( P. icaria) after the Indian Council of Agricultural Research that discovered the species. The species belongs to the Pangasius genus.
• The genus Pangasius is found in the Gangetic plains but not in peninsular India.
• Through this study, they found that Pangasius specimens from the river Cauvery are different from other species of the genus Pangasius.
• The new species is edible and the locals call it keluthi in Tamil.
• Catfish has high commercial value in aquaculture and wild capture fisheries.

THE MISCELLANEOUS

6. MEDICINE NOBEL GOES TO SWEDISH SCIENTIST SVANTE PÄÄBO FOR SEQUENCING NEANDERTHAL GENOME

THE CONTEXT: Swedish scientist Svante Pääbo has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology for the year 2022 “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.”
THE EXPLANATION:
• Through his pioneering research, Svante Pääbo – this year’s #NobelPrize laureate in physiology or medicine – accomplished something seemingly impossible: sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans.
• “Through his groundbreaking research, Svante Pääbo established an entirely new scientific discipline, paleogenomics. Following the initial discoveries, his group has completed analyses of several additional genome sequences from extinct hominins. Pääbo’s discoveries have established a unique resource, which is utilized extensively by the scientific community to better understand human evolution and migration.
• New powerful methods for sequence analysis indicate that archaic hominins may also have mixed with Homo sapiens in Africa. However, no genomes from extinct hominins in Africa have yet been sequenced due to accelerated degradation of archaic DNA in tropical climates.




Day-301 | Daily MCQs | UPSC Prelims | CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS

[WpProQuiz 346]




SOCIOLOGY OPTIONAL QUESTION PAPER : UPSC CSE Mains-2022



Download Paper




DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS (OCTOBER 03, 2022)

 INDIAN POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

1. THE REVIVAL OF SUKAPAIKA RIVER

THE CONTEXT: Recently, the NGT has directed the state government of Odisha to revive Sukapaika River within 6 months.

THE EXPLANATION:

  • The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has instructed the Odisha government to revive Sukapaika River, a distributary of Mahanadi River.
  • It has directed the state government to create a dedicated fund for this river’s revival.
  • The tribunal also directed the Odisha government to make budgetary allocation of Rs.49.67 crore to rejuvenate the river within one month and complete the whole river revival project by March 13, 2023.
  • NGT alleged that the Sukapaika river in Cuttack district became dead because of the closure of its mouth in the 1950s.
  • Sukapaika river originates from Ayatur Village in Cuttack district and flows some 40 km before re-joining the Mahanadi River in Tarapur in the same district.
  • When it was flowing freely, Sukapaika river acted as a source of drinking water, irrigation and other livelihood opportunities to over 425 villages under 26 gram panchayats.
  • Residents of these villages cultivated potato, tomato, cauliflower etc., and were involved in fisheries. These economic activities have ceased to be lucrative after the closure of the river’s mouth.
  • In 1952, the Odisha government blocked the starting point of the river with an embankment to prevent flooding in the delta of Sukapaika.
  • In 1957, two major projects – Hirakud Dam and Naraj barrage – were built on Mahanadi River to curb flooding. However, the embankment at the starting point of Sukapiaka river was not removed, leaving the distributary completely dependent on rainwater.
  • Since the river has lost its water holding capacity, it remains dry for almost the whole year. This has negatively affected half-a-million people in the villages in the region. The riverbed has been eroded and is invaded by hyacinth. Several encroachments have started taking place along the course of the dead river over the years and the entire riverbed was converted into a dumping ground for solid and liquid wastes.

ABOUT THE RIVER:

Sukapaika is one of the several distributaries of the mighty Mahanadi river in Odisha. It branches away from the Mahanadi at Ayatpur village in Cuttack district and flows for about 40 kilometres (km) before rejoining its parent river at Tarapur in the same district. In the process, it drains a large landmass comprising over 425 villages under 26 gram panchayats in three blocks.

 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

2. INDIA LOCKS DEAL WITH ARMENIA TO EXPORT MISSILES, ROCKETS AND AMMUNITION

THE CONTEXT: In a significant move to boost India’s defence export, the country has signed an export order for missiles, rockets, and ammunition to Armenia because the Asian nation is engaged in a border conflict with Azerbaijan.

THE EXPLANATION:

  • According to sources, the value of the contracts has not been revealed yet, however, it is estimated that military equipment worth over ₹2,000 crore will be exported to the country in the coming months.
  • Earlier this month, the government-to-government route was used to ink a number of contracts for the supply of arms and ammunition to Armenia.
  • “This order includes six additional first-ever export of the indigenous Pinaka multi-barrel rocket This weapon, which is already in service with the Indian Army, has been designed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and manufactured by private sector companies in the country”.
  • In addition to this, the anti-tank rockets, and ammunitions will also be supplied from India to Amenia under the bundled deal.
  • Over the past few years, India has been making significant efforts to increase military weapons exports, with policy reforms, and active support of the central government to secure overseas orders.
  • Meanwhile, the government has recently said that India’s exports have grown by 334 per cent within five years, and the country is now exporting to over 75 countries its defence products. The country has also witnessed the commissioning of its first indigenous aircraft carrier INS Vikrant in Kochi.
  • According to sources , the trend that had prevailed for the last 75 years. Since the beginning, India has continued to be one of the largest importers of defence products in the world. He expressed the need to reverse this trend and make India a top exporter of defence products across the world.

About Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher

  • The Pinaka is a multi-barrel rocket launcher developed by DRDO. It is currently used by the Indian Army, especially at the international borders with Pakistan and China.
  • This indigenously developed rocket launcher is capable of locating the enemy launchers and tracking the incoming artillery shells, mortar rounds and rockets. One Pinaka has 6 launchers, 6 loader trucks, 6 replenishment vehicles, two command post-transporting vehicles and a vehicle to transport the meteorological radar to provide wind-related data.

 ENVIRONMENT, ECOLOGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

3. FSI REPORT ON TIGER SAFARI PROJECT IN CORBETT TIGER RESERVE

THE CONTEXT: Thousands of trees were illegally cut down in the Corbett Tiger Reserve by the Uttarakhand government for the implementation of a safari project.

THE EXPLANATION:

  • A survey by the Forest Survey of India (FSI) revealed that 6,093 trees were illegally cut down in the Corbett Tiger Reserve for the Pakhro tiger safari project.
  • Only 163 trees were permitted to be cleared for this safari project.
  • The FSI launched the survey after a complaint was filed by an environmental activist to the National Tiger Conservation Authority alleging that thousands of trees were being felled in and around the project areas.
  • The Uttarakhand Forest Department has not accepted the findings made by the recently released FSI report and is seeking clarification on the timeline and the source of the satellite images and method for calculating the number of felled trees.
  • Apart from the FSI, the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change also found irregularities in the project’s implementation. They were set up investigating committees to probe these irregularities.
  • Earlier, the Central Empowered Committee has asked the state government to submit its views on the findings of the different committees investigating the illegal clearing of forest areas and construction activities in the Corbett Tiger Reserve and the Kalagarh forest.
  • It has also urged the state government to specify the reason behind the forest land being diverted for a tiger safari in Pakhro range, though it is not a site-specific activity.

About Corbett Tiger Reserve

  • Corbett National Park and the neighbouring Sonanadi together make up the Corbett Tiger Reserve. It is famed for hosting the world’s highest density of tiger population.
  • It houses 230 tigers, with 14 tigers per 100 sq km. The Corbett National Park was established as Hailey National Park in 1936 and was later renamed in honour of the famous naturalist Jim Corbett, who played a major role in the establishment of this national park. It was the first national park to come under Project Tiger.

4. FAST-MELTING ARCTIC ICE IS TURNING THE OCEAN ACIDIC, THREATENING LIFE

THE CONTEXT: A team of researchers has flagged the changing chemistry of the western region of the Arctic Ocean after discovering acidity levels increasing three to four times faster than ocean waters elsewhere.

THE EXPLANATION:

  • The team also identified a strong correlation between the accelerated rate of melting ice and the rate of ocean acidification. The study, published in ‘Science’, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is the first analysis of Arctic acidification that includes data from 1994 to 2020.
  • Scientists have predicted that by 2050, Arctic sea ice in this region will no longer survive the increasingly warm summers. As a result, the ocean’s chemistry will grow more acidic, creating life-threatening problems for the diverse population of sea creatures, plants and other living things that depend on a healthy ocean. Crabs, for example, live in a crusty shell built from the calcium carbonate prevalent in ocean water. Polar bears rely on healthy fish populations for food, fish and sea birds rely on plankton and plants, and seafood is a key element of many humans’ diets.
  • Seawater is normally alkaline, with a pH value of around 8.1.
  • First, the water under the sea ice, which had a deficit of carbon dioxide, now is exposed to the atmospheric carbon dioxide and can take it up freely.
  • The seawater mixed with meltwater is light and can’t mix easily into deeper waters, which means the carbon dioxide is concentrated at the surface.
  • The meltwater dilutes the carbonate ion concentration in the seawater, weakening its ability to neutralise the carbon dioxide into bicarbonate and rapidly decreasing ocean pH.

INTERNAL SECURITY

5. AFSPA EXTENDED IN NAGALAND, ARUNACHAL PRADESH

THE CONTEXT: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has extended the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) in parts of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland for another six months.

THE EXPLANATION:

  • Tirap, Changlang and Longding districts in Arunachal Pradesh and the areas along the Assam border, are declared as “disturbed areas” under Section 3 of the AFSPA 1958 for a period of six months from October 1,2022.
  • In Tripura the Act was revoked by the MHA in 2015 and in Meghalaya from 1st April 2018.

About Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958

  • The genesis of the law can be traced to the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Ordinance 1942which was enacted by the British to subjugate the rebels in the country during the Quit India movement, particularly in Assam and Bengal .
  • The law continues to be enforced in its new format as the Armed Forces

Provisions: 

  • Under Section 3, the Central Government or the Governor of the State or administrator of the Union Territory can declare the whole or part of the State or Union Territory as a disturbed area.
  • An area can be disturbed due to differences or disputes between members of different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities.
  • Section 4 gives the Army powers to search premises and make arrests without warrants, to use force even to the extent of causing death, destroy arms/ammunition dumps, fortifications/shelters/hideouts and to stop, search and seize any vehicle.
  • Section 6 stipulates that arrested persons and the seized property are to be made over to the police with the least possible delay.
  • Section 7 offers protection of persons acting in good faith in their official capacity. The prosecution is permitted only after the sanction of the Central Government.

Rationale behind its imposition

  • Effective functioning of forces in counter-insurgency / terrorist operations.
  • Protection of members of Armed forces.
  • Maintaining Law & Order.
  • Security & sovereignty of the nation.

Criticisms

  • Atrocities and human rights violations by security agencies.
  • Against democratic regime & threat to Fundamental Rights
  • Ineffectiveness in countering insurgency.
  • Fake encounters (Santosh Hegde Committee) & create an atmosphere of impunity among security agencies.

GOVERNMENT SCHEMES AND INITIATIVES IN NEWS

6. THE EDUCATION MINISTRY LAUNCHES PM YOUNG AUTHORS MENTORING SCHEME YUVA 2.0

THE CONTEXT: The Ministry of Education launched YUVA 2.0 – Prime Minister’s Scheme for Mentoring Young Authors, a programme to train young and budding authors to promote reading, writing and book culture in the country, and project India and Indian writings globally.

THE EXPLANATION:

  • The second edition of the Young, Upcoming and Versatile Authors (YUVA) scheme was launched by the Union Ministry of Education as part of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav or India @75 project.
  • The scheme is a mentoring programme for young and budding authors below the age of 30.
  • Its objective is to promote the culture of reading and writing across India and showcase Indian writing at the international level.
  • It aims to bring the perspective of the Indian youth on the theme “Democracy (institutions, events, people, constitutional values past, present and future)”.
  • It will benefit budding authors capable of writing on a wide-range of subjects focused on the promotion of Indian culture, heritage and knowledge across the globe.
  • The launch of the latest edition of YUVA scheme comes after the first edition witnessed a huge participation from young authors in 22 different regional languages as well as in English.
  • The theme for the inaugural edition was ‘National Movement of India’, with the focus on “Unsung Heroes”, “Role of Unknown Places in Freedom Movement” and other subjects.

About PM-YUVA scheme

  • Pradhan Mantri – Mentorship’s Scheme for Young writers (PM-YUVA) was launched on May 29, 2021. It is being implemented by the National Book Trust (NBT), India. Under this initiative, 75 young authors will be chosen based on the manuscripts submitted. The selections will be made by a committee set up by the NBT.
  • The chosen authors will get mentors who will guide and help develop the selected proposals into fully-complete books. The authors will be provided a scholarship of Rs.50,000 each month for a period of 6 months. 10 per cent of the royalty will be received by the authors on the publication and sale of the books.
  • The published books will be translated into different Indian languages to promote Ek Bharat Shrestha Bharat and boost cross-cultural and linguistic ties within India.



Ethics Through Current Development (03-10-2022)

  1. Mahatma Gandhi, the peacemaker: Gandhi considered the problem of peace as an ethical, rather than political, issue READ MORE
  2. On Gandhi Jayanti, let’s remind ourselves of transformative power of our youth, need to tap into it READ MORE



Today’s Important Articles for Geography (03-10-2022)

  1. Monsoon 2022 ends with filling up India’s major reservoirs READ MORE
  2. Monsoon 2022 ends: 188 districts dry even after heavy rains in last week of September READ MORE



Today’s Important Articles for Sociology (03-10-2022)

  1. Gandhi and Ambedkar: A Parallax Relation? READ MORE
  2. Freedom of conscience should be valued READ MORE  
  3. On abortion, Supreme Court has listened to women READ MORE



Today’s Important Articles for Pub Ad (03-10-2022)

  1. Rights and duties are interrelated READ MORE
  2. By recognising pregnant woman’s right to dignity and autonomy, Supreme Court has made informed decisions on reproductive health possible READ MORE
  3. Why the greatest legacy of monarchical Britain is parliamentary democracy READ MORE



WSDP Bulletin (03-10-2022)

(Newspapers, PIB and other important sources)

Prelim and Main

  1. First among equals READ MORE
  2. Indore bags cleanest city award for sixth year, M.P ranks first among States READ MORE
  3. Who is behind the Nord Stream pipeline leakages, and who gains from it? READ MORE
  4. UNEP calls Nord Stream methane leak ‘biggest-ever’; plume over Europe fading READ MORE
  5. Telangana scoops Swachh Survekshan Gramin, 2022 award READ MORE
  6. Tokenisation for credit and debit card transactions: What is it, and how does it help you? READ MORE
  7. India abstains on UNSC resolution condemning Russia’s ‘referenda’ READ MORE
  8. Fast-melting Arctic ice is turning the ocean acidic, threatening life READ MORE

Main Exam

GS Paper- 1

  1. Monsoon 2022 ends with filling up India’s major reservoirs READ MORE
  2. Monsoon 2022 ends: 188 districts dry even after heavy rains in last week of September READ MORE
  3. Gandhi and Ambedkar: A Parallax Relation? READ MORE
  4. Freedom of conscience should be valued READ MORE  

GS Paper- 2

POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

  1. Rights and duties are interrelated READ MORE
  2. By recognising pregnant woman’s right to dignity and autonomy, Supreme Court has made informed decisions on reproductive health possible READ MORE
  3. Why the greatest legacy of monarchical Britain is parliamentary democracy READ MORE

SOCIAL ISSUES

  1. On abortion, Supreme Court has listened to women READ MORE

INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

  1. UN Security Council reform an onerous task READ MORE
  2. If India wants to support Sri Lankans, it must back extension of UN panel probing rights violations READ MORE

 GS Paper- 3

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

  1. Boxed in: As high prices restrain consumption, inflation control must be top priority READ MORE
  2. The link between inflation and climate change READ MORE
  3. Anti-poaching labour pacts need scrutiny READ MORE
  4. Leading economies of the world are driving global instability. What can India do to retain its balance? READ MORE

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

  1. 5G is here: What lies ahead will become clearer with time but the possibilities are enormous READ MORE

GS Paper- 4

ETHICS EXAMPLES AND CASE STUDY

  1. Mahatma Gandhi, the peacemaker: Gandhi considered the problem of peace as an ethical, rather than political, issue READ MORE
  2. On Gandhi Jayanti, let’s remind ourselves of transformative power of our youth, need to tap into it READ MORE

Questions for the MAIN exam

  1. ‘Though fundamental duties are not enforceable constitutionally, they are as vital as fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution’. Argue the statement.
  2. In India, the greatest legacy of monarchical Britain has been the ideas of parliamentary democracy and liberal law. Comment on the statement and compare the system of parliamentary democracy between India and Britain.

QUOTATIONS AND CAPTIONS

  • The blunders are all there on the board, waiting to be made.
  • Gandhi considered the problem of peace as an ethical, rather than political, issue.
  • In an age of increasing ‘globalisation of selfishness’, there is an urgent need to read and practise the Gandhian social and political philosophy in order re-evaluate the concept of peace.
  • It has upheld the right of all women to make their own reproductive decisions. It has recognised that deprivation of access to reproductive healthcare affects the dignity of women.
  • If we have to tame food inflation, we will have to invest more in climate-smart agriculture, in precision farming, with high productivity and less damage to natural resources. Science and technologies can, of course, help us, but they cannot be scaled in a perverse policy ecosystem.
  • We need to encourage the nation-builder and sewa leader within them so that they go on to spearhead a culture of innovation, entrepreneurship and diversity.
  • The CCI must shed its laissez faire approach to labour markets, with no-poach deals and moonlighting on the rise.
  • Even in present-day India, Gandhi is greatly needed. As divisive forces prevail in our country, only Gandhi and ‘Gandhism’ are the most effective counter-measures to win over these.
  • Though fundamental duties are not enforceable constitutionally, they are as vital as fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution.
  • If Gandhi and Ambedkar are indispensable to political thought today, it is because both are deeply committed to the figure of the minor, and to an equality centred around this figure. This is why we must study the antagonism between them.
  • The Sri lanka’s economic crisis is also a political and human rights calamity. There can be no justice until the rights of ordinary Sri Lankans are safe.
  • Only through sustained poverty alleviation programmes and policies directed at benefitting the common man economically, India can sustain its economic bull run for over a period of time.

50-WORD TALK

  • Every year, since February 2009, diplomats from various countries ritually make statements on the question of equitable representation in the membership of the Security Council, but nothing changes. A broad list of issues relevant to the debate around the UNSC reform includes the proposed size of the expanded council, the question of veto, categories of membership, regional representation and the working methods.

Things to Remember:

  • For prelims-related news try to understand the context of the news and relate with its concepts so that it will be easier for you to answer (or eliminate) from given options.
  • Whenever any international place will be in news, you should do map work (marking those areas in maps and exploring other geographical locations nearby including mountains, rivers, etc. same applies to the national places.)
  • For economy-related news (banking, agriculture, etc.) you should focus on terms and how these are related to various economic aspects, for example, if inflation has been mentioned, try to relate with prevailing price rises, shortage of essential supplies, banking rates, etc.
  • For main exam-related topics, you should focus on the various dimensions of the given topic, the most important topics which occur frequently and are important from the mains point of view will be covered in ED.
  • Try to use the given content in your answer. Regular use of this content will bring more enrichment to your writing.



TOPIC : URBAN FLOODS

THE CONTEXT: Recently, torrential rains that took place in Hyderabad have caused massive urban floods. In many Indian cities, the urban floods have become a frequent phenomenon in recent years.The scale of destruction has been unprecedented. This experience is not unique to the city of Hyderabad but something that cities across India have been experiencing in recent years. This article discusses about the urban flooding, causes, impacts and the possible solutions.

WHAT IS URBAN FLOODING?

Flooding in urban areas can be caused by flash floods, or coastal floods, or river floods, but there is also a specific flood type that is called urban flooding. It is different from normal floods, because

  • Urban flooding is specific in the fact that the cause is a lack of drainage in an urban area. As there is little open soil that can be used for water storage nearly all the precipitation needs to be transport to surface water or the sewage system.
  • High intensity rainfall can cause flooding when the city sewage system and draining canals do not have the necessary capacity to drain away the amounts of rain that are falling.
  • Overburdened drainage, frenzied and unregulated construction, no regard to the natural topography and hydro-geomorphology all make urban floods a man-made disaster.

CAUSES

Natural causes

  • Meteorological Factors- Heavy rainfall, cyclonic storms and thunderstorms causes water to flow quickly through paved urban areas and impound in low lying areas.
  • Hydrological Factors- Overbank flow channel networks, occurrence of high tides impeding the drainage in coastal cities.
  • Climate Change- Climate change due to various anthropogenic events has led to extreme weather events.

The rainfall received in Hyderabad in 2020 has been the highest for the month of October in a century.

Anthropological causes

  • Unplanned Urbanization is the key cause of urban flooding. A major concern is blocking of natural drainage pathways through construction activity and encroachment on catchment areas, riverbeds and lake beds.
  • Destruction of lakes is a major issue in India cities. Lakes can store the excess water and regulate the flow of water.
  • Pollution of natural urban water bodies and converting them for development purposes has increased risk of floods.

Poor and old drainage system

Cities like Hyderabad, Mumbai rely on a century-old drainage system, covering only a small part of the core city.

  • In the last 20 years, the Indian cities have grown manifold with its original built-up area.
  • As the city grew beyond its original limits, not much was done to address the absence of adequate drainage systems.
  • Inability to manage the city’s drainage systems is an another cause of urban flooding.

Incremental land use change

  • Neglecting issues of incremental land use change, particularly of those commons which provide us with necessary ecological support — wetlands.
  • This has led to creation of urban terrain which is incapable of absorbing, holding and discharging water.
  • The number of wetlands has reduced to 123 in 2018 from 644 in 1956.
  • Green cover is only 9 per cent, which ideally should have been at least 33 per cent.

Overlooking environmental regulations

Overlooking environmental regulations in mega-projects is fairly common in the country.

  • Commonwealth Games Village (CWG) were built right on the Yamuna’s floodplain.
  • The secondary runway of Chennai International Airport was also built right over the Adyar river. Most of the airport was constructed on the riverine floodplains, leading to massive flooding during the 2015 Chennai floods.
  • Recent developments such as Andhra Pradesh’s Amaravati Capital City Project, had major areas proposed to be built on the floodplains of Krishna river.

IMPACTS OF URBAN FLOODS

  • Economy- Damage to infrastructure, roads and settlements, industrial production, basic supplies, post disaster rehabilitation difficulties etc.
  • Human population and wildlife– Trauma, loss of life, injuries and disease outbreak, unhygienic living conditions in slums, contamination of water etc.
  • Environment- Loss of habitat, tree and forest cover, biodiversity loss and large scale greenery recovery failure.
  • Transport and communication– Increased traffic congestion, disruption in rail services, disruption in communication- on telephone, internet cables causing massive public inconvenience.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?

Holistic engagement

  • Floods needs to be managed with concerted and focused investments of energy and resources.
  • The Metropolitan Development Authorities, National Disaster Management Authority, State revenue and irrigation departments along with municipal corporations should be involved in such work together.
  • Such investments can only be done in a mission mode organisation with active participation of civil society organisations at the metropolitan scale.

Developing Sponge Cities

  • The idea of a sponge city is to make cities more permeable so as to hold and use the water which falls upon it.
  • Sponge cities absorb the rain water, which is then naturally filtered by the soil and allowed to reach urban aquifers.
  • This allows for the extraction of water from the ground through urban or peri-urban wells.
  • This water can be treated easily and used for city water supply.

Wetland Policy

There is a need to start paying attention to the management of wetlands by involving local communities.

  • Terrain alteration needs to be strictly regulated and a ban on any further alteration of terrain needs to be introduced.
  • To improve the city’s capacity to absorb water, new porous materials and technologies must be encouraged or mandated across scales.
  • Examples of these technologies are bio-swales and retention systems, permeable material for roads and pavement, drainage systems which allow storm water to trickle into the ground, green roofs and harvesting systems in buildings.

EIAs and enforcement will remain vital to ensure that fragile wetlands and floodplains are not concretised.

Drainage planning

  • Watershed management and emergency drainage plan should be clearly enunciated in policy and law.
  • Urban watersheds are micro ecological drainage systems, shaped by contours of terrain.
  • Detailed documentation of these Urban watersheds must be held by agencies where natural boundaries instead of governance boundaries (like wards) are used to come up with drainage plan.

Water sensitive urban design

  • Methods should be adopted which takes into consideration the topography, types of surfaces (permeable or impervious), natural drainage and leave very less impact on the environment.
  • Vulnerability analyses and risk assessments should form part and parcel of city master plans.
  • In a changing climate, the drainage infrastructure (especially storm water drainage) has to be built considering the new ‘normals’.
  • Tools such as predictive precipitation modelling can help do that and are also able to link it with the adaptive capacity of urban land use.

These can all be delivered effectively through an urban mission along the lines of the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY) and Smart Cities Mission.

CONCLUSION: Urban Flood management will not just help control recurring floods but also respond to other fault lines, provide for water security, more green spaces, and will make the city resilient and sustainable. We need to urgently rebuild our cities such that they have the sponginess to absorb and release water without causing so much misery and so much damage to the most vulnerable of our citizens

CASE STUDIES OF URBAN FLOODING

1. HYDERABAD FLOODS

Urban flooding has become a common occurrence these days in India. The latest victim of urban flooding is Hyderabad.

Basic information-The city as well Telangana received unusually excessive rainfall October 13-14, 2020, due to a deep depression that developed in the Bay of Bengal. Heavy damage to property, roads and human lives has been reported.

The population of the city has grown exponentially. It is 10 million today.

Geographical setting- Hyderabad is located on the banks of the Musi river. The Himayat Sagar and Osman Sagar dams on the river, supply the water to the city.

Based on hydrology, present-day Hyderabad can be divided into Krishna and Godavari basins. Traditionally, all the rainwater falling in the catchment areas of Musi would discharge into Musi which is one of the 22 tributaries of the Krishna river. And newer localities to the west of Hyderabad, including Gachibowli and the IT corridor, are all in the catchment areas of the Godavari.In both Krishna and Godavari basins, the city has a network of lakes and drains which carry the excess water from one to another and then finally into the Musi and Majeera rivers.

Over the years, owing to the expansion of the city, the lakes were not in demand for their primary purposes of irrigation and drinking water. But they continued to be relevant for flood regulation.

Issue-The city of Hyderabad doesn’t usually get flooded due to monsoonal rain, which is spread over a long period. There is a natural system of flow of water from a high elevated area to a lower one. But Lakes in the town have shrunk due to encroachment. Discharge of sewage and industrial effluents, encroachments by government and private individuals, and decades of neglect had everyone thinking the river would never flow again. Most of the former waterways are open sewers now. But, on October 13, the river was in spate once again after a record downpour. Low-lying localities and colonies that were built on the lake beds and nullahs were submerged in no time. Many days later, hundreds of these colonies were still under water.

Large water bodies that existed for centuries have shrunk in size, encroachments have eaten into natural waterways, and stormwater drains get easily clogged.

Losses-As many as 33 lives have been lost to heavy rains and floods in the city, with the GHMC estimating that at least 37,409 families have been affected. The Municipal Administration minister pegged the city’s losses at Rs 670 crore.

2. MUMBAI FLOODS

Basic information-The 2005 Maharashtra floods impacted many parts of the Indian state of Maharashtra including large areas of the metropolis Mumbai, a city located on the coast of the Arabian Sea, on the Western coast of India. The floods were caused by the eighth heaviest-ever recorded 24-hour rainfall figure of 944 mm (37.17 inches) which lashed the metropolis on 26 July 2005, and intermittently continued for the next day.

Approximately 1,094 people died and city of Mumbai came to a standstill due to flooding.

Issues

  • The present storm-water drainage system in Mumbai was put in place in the early 20th century and is capable of carrying only 25.1237 millimetres of water per hour which was extremely inadequate on a day when 993 mm of rain fell in the city. The drainage system was also clogged at several places.
  • Haphazard Development- Development in certain parts of Mumbai is haphazard and buildings are constructed without proper planning. The drainage plans in northern suburbs is chalked out as and when required in a particular area and not from an overall point of view.
  • Destruction of mangrove ecosystems- Mangrove ecosystems which exist along the Mithi River and Mahim Creek are being destroyed and replaced with construction. These ecosystems serve as a buffer between land and sea.
  • Sewage and garbage dumps have also destroyed mangroves. The Bandra-Kurla complex in particular was created by replacing such swamps. The most acclaimed Mindspace CBD (INORBIT MALL) in Goregaon & Malad has been built by destroying a large patch of mangroves in Maharashtra.

3. CHENNAI FLOODS

Basic information-Chennai received 1,049 mm (41.3 in) of rainfall in November, the highest recorded since November 1918 when 1,088 mm (42.8 in) in of rainfall was recorded. On 1 December, heavy rains led to inundation in many areas of Chennai.

Chennai is built on flat coastal floodplains. Wetlands – including natural and artificial drains are the city’s insurance against heavy rains and cyclonic storm surges.

Issues-A study revealed how the city’s built-up area grew nine-fold – from 47 sq km in 1980 to 402 sq km in 2012 – even while area under wetlands declined from 186 sq km to 71 sq km during the same period. Between 1996 and 2015, more than 1,000 acres of this wetland was allegedly illegally diverted to accommodate industrial installations belonging to state-owned companies, including a large port and several coal-fired power plants.

The 2015 rains crippled the neighbourhoods drained by the creek. Some went under because power plants, coal ash ponds and coal yards blocked the flowing run-off from their habitations to the creek. Others were harmed by waters backing up far inland because their natural holding area – the backwaters – had been eaten into. The floods brought the refinery to a halt.

A parliamentary committee that enquired into the cause of the 2015 floods was categorical in its report that “encroachment of lakes and riverbeds played a major role in causing massive floods in Chennai”.

Impact-Power supplies were suspended to 60% of the city while several city hospitals stopped functioning. The Southern Railways cancelled major train services and Chennai International Airport was closed until 6 December.




Day-300 | Daily MCQs | UPSC Prelims | HISTORY OF MODERN INDIA

[WpProQuiz 345]




Ethics Through Current Development (01-10-2022)

  1. Nine-step blueprint to raise our consciousness READ MORE
  2. In Pursuit of an Ideal Bureaucracy READ MORE
  3. Ahimsa, the greatest force at our disposal READ MORE
  4. Just be a real human READ MORE