1. Delay in MGNREGA wages.
TAG: GS 2: Social justice
THE CONTEXT: There are approximately 25,000 MGNREGA workers in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur with their wages pending despite having completed the work assigned to them.
EXPLANATION:
- Delays in the disbursement of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme wages in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur have led to severe financial stress, with some being forced to borrow money from private lenders at high interest rates. Some workers say they haven’t been paid for as many as five months, making it difficult to afford two square meals daily.
- While a government official in the district admitted that the Rural Development Department in Patna had not received funds from the Centre for some time, leading to delays in the disbursement of the wages under the rural job guarantee scheme, he said the Centre has released the funds and the wages of 93% of the district’s workers have been released.
- However, as per MGNREGA Watch, an NGO based in Muzaffarpur, around 25,000 workers in several blocks of the district, including Gaighat, Bochaha and Kurhani, are yet to receive their wages.
ABOUT MGNREGA:
Mahatma Gandhi NREGA was launched in 200 select districts on 2.2.2006 and was extended to 130 additional districts during 2007-08. All the remaining rural areas in the country have been covered under the Act w.e.f. 1.4.2008. Presently, Mahatma Gandhi NREGA is being implemented in all the notified rural areas of the country.
VISION: Mahatma Gandhi NREGA seeks to enhance the livelihood security of the households in rural areas of the country by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.
OBJECTIVE:
The objectives of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (Mahatma Gandhi NREGS) are:
- Providing at least one hundred days of unskilled manual work in a financial year to every household in rural areas as per demand resulting in creation of productive assets of prescribed quality and durability;
- Strengthening the livelihood resource base of the poor;
- Proactively ensuring social inclusion; and
- Strengthening Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs).
The Ministry of Rural Development is the nodal Ministry for the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi NREGA. It is responsible for ensuring timely and adequate resource support to the States and to the Central Council. It has to undertake regular review, monitoring and evaluation of processes and outcomes. MORD will support innovations that help in improving processes towards the achievement of the objectives of the Act.
Eligibility Criteria of MNREGA:
- The person must be an Indian national. The MGNREGA scheme requires applicants to be at least 18 years old to be eligible for enrollment.
- The person needs to be prepared to perform unskilled labor.
- The person who wants to enroll in the MGNREGA program must reside in a nearby household.
Problems in Scheme:
- Low wage rate: Currently, MGNREGA wage rates of 17 states are less than the corresponding state minimum wages. Various judgements have upheld that the MGNREGA wage rate cannot be less than the minimum agricultural wage rate of the state. The ridiculously low wage rates have resulted in lack of interest among workers in working for MGNREGA schemes, making way for contractors and middle men to take control, locally.
- Insufficient budget allocation: MGNREGA’s success at the ground level is subject to proper and uninterrupted fund flow to the states. Thrice in the last year and once this year, funds have dried up in states due to lack of “mother sanctions” from the Central government which hampers the work in peak season. Almost every year, more than 80 per cent of funds get exhausted within the first six months. Thus, the government’s claim of “record allocation” does not hold true in real terms. It has rather decreased as pending liabilities of the last year are also included in the current budget. Moreover, the fund allocation is insufficient to ensure proper implementation on the ground.
- Regular payment delays: The Union Ministry of Rural Development considers wages paid once the FTO (Fund Transfer Order) is signed by the second signatory. However, delays take place even in the processing of signed FTOs, for which the Management Information System (MIS) does not calculate compensation.
- Too much centralisation weakening local governance: A real-time MIS-based implementation and a centralised payment system has further left the representatives of the Panchayati Raj Institutions with literally no role in implementation, monitoring and grievance redress of MGNREGA schemes.
- Numerous incomplete projects: The MGNREGA-funded projects have taken longer than expected to finish, and project inspections have been inconsistent. Additionally, there is a problem with the MGNREGA’s asset development and work quality.
- Fabrication of Job Cards: There are a number of problems associated with fabricating Job Cards, including the availability of Fake Job Cards, the inclusion of Fake Names, Missing Entries, and Delays in Entries.
Way forward:
- Better coordination is required between the many government agencies and the system used to distribute and evaluate the work.
- There are certain differences in the payouts that also need to be handled. On average, women in the industry make 22.24% less money than males.
- Every community must begin public work, and state administrations must see to it that this happens. Workers who arrive at the job site should be given work as soon as possible.
- Local authorities must actively engage with quarantined and repatriated migrant workers and assist those who require it in obtaining job cards.
- In order to prevent payment delays, gram panchayats must be given sufficient resources, authority, and duties to approve projects, deliver work on demand, and allow salary payments.
2. Disasters in North Africa
TAG: GS 3: Disaster and disaster management.
THE CONTEXT:
- More than 5,300 are feared dead, thousands more are missing as eastern Libya is devastated by floods.
- Powerful quake in Morocco kills more than 2,000 people and damages historic buildings in Marrakech.
EXPLANATION:
- The death toll in the city of Derna alone has exceeded 5,300.
- Storm Daniel, which wrought devastation across the Mediterranean in the past week, killed 15 people in central Greece where it dumped more rain than previously recorded before sweeping across to Libya where over 2,500 died in a huge flood.
- Flooding often happens in Libya during the rainy season, but rarely with this much destruction. A key question was how the rains were able to burst through two dams outside Derna – whether because of poor maintenance or sheer volume of rain.
Flood: An overflow of water onto normally dry land. The inundation of a normally dry area caused by rising water in an existing waterway, such as a river, stream, or drainage ditch. Ponding of water at or near the point where the rain fell. Flooding is a longer term event than flash flooding: it may last days or weeks.
Flash flood: A flood caused by heavy or excessive rainfall in a short period of time, generally less than 6 hours. Flash floods are usually characterized by raging torrents after heavy rains that rip through river beds, urban streets, or mountain canyons sweeping everything before them. They can occur within minutes or a few hours of excessive rainfall. They can also occur even if no rain has fallen, for instance after a levee or dam has failed, or after a sudden release of water by a debris or ice jam.
Causes of Flood: Floods are caused by many factors:
- Heavy precipitation,
- Severe winds over water,
- Unusual high tides,
- Tsunamis, or
- Failure of dams, levels, retention ponds, or other structures that contained the water.
Flood Control: Some of the common techniques used for flood control are installation of rock berms, rock rip-raps, sandbags, maintaining normal slopes with vegetation or application of soil cements on steeper slopes and construction or expansion of drainage channels. Other methods include levees, dikes, dams, retention or detention basins.
Flood management:
- Organizations in charge of flood management must routinely do flood mapping.
- Pre- and post-monsoon examination of structural measures will enhance the preparation.
- Global best practices must be considered as the capacity of the disaster response force is developed.
- Urban flooding is a significant problem nowadays. The smart cities program needs to take this danger into account.
- The effects of climate change have been largely to blame for the regular flooding. Urgent action must be taken to implement the adoption and mitigation methods.
- Geopolitical circumstances shouldn’t be a barrier to cross-border cooperation in the exchange of hydrological data.
Powerful quake in Morocco:
- A rare, powerful earthquake struck Morocco in which more than 2,000 people were killed, and the toll was expected to rise.
- The magnitude 6.8 quake is the biggest to hit the North African country in 120 years.
- The epicenter of the tremor was near the town of Ighil in Al Haouz Province, roughly 70 kilometers (44 miles) south of Marrakech. Al Haouz is known for scenic villages and valleys tucked in the High Atlas Mountains.
- In 1960, a magnitude 5.8 tremor struck near the Moroccan city of Agadir and caused thousands of deaths. That quake prompted changes in construction rules in Morocco, but many buildings, especially rural homes, are not built to withstand such tremors.
- Earthquakes in the magnitude 6 range are more common in the northern part of Morocco near the Mediterranean Sea. . For example, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck in February 2004 and a magnitude 6.3 in January 2016 rocked the region.
- Such quakes occur due to the “northward convergence of the African plate with respect to the Eurasian plate along a complex plate boundary.”
- As per experts, the “oblique-reverse faulting at shallow depth within the Moroccan High Atlas Mountain range” resulted into the current earthquake.
A fault is a fracture or zone of fractures between two blocks of rock. Faults allow the blocks to move relative to each other, causing earthquakes if the movement occurs rapidly. During a quake, the rock on one side of the fault suddenly slips with respect to the other.
Scientists use the angle of the fault with respect to the surface (known as the dip) and the direction of the slip along the fault to classify faults.
Faults which move along the direction of the dip plane are dip-slip faults, whereas faults which move horizontally are known as strike-slip faults. Oblique-slip faults show characteristics of both dip-slip and strike-slip faults. The term ‘reverse’ refers to a situation where the upper block, above the fault plane, moves up and over the lower block. This type of faulting is common in areas of compression — when one tectonic plate is converging into another.
Here the movement occurs, in two directions. Horizontal movement along the slip plane and vertical movement along the dip plane.
Earthquake: An earthquake in simple words is the shaking of the earth. It is a natural event. It is caused due to release of energy, which generates waves that travel in all directions.
Why does the earth shake?
- The release of energy occurs along a fault. A fault is a sharp break in the crustal rocks. Rocks along a fault tend to move in opposite directions. As the overlying rock strata press them, the friction locks them together. However, their tendency to move apart at some point of time overcomes the friction. As a result, the blocks get deformed and eventually, they slide past one another abruptly.
- This causes a release of energy, and the energy waves travel in all directions. The point where the energy is released is called the focus of an earthquake, alternatively, it is called the hypocentre. The energy waves travelling in different directions reach the surface. The point on the surface, nearest to the focus, is called epicentre. It is the first one to experience the waves. It is a point directly above the focus.
Earthquake Waves:
- All natural earthquakes take place in the lithosphere.Earthquake waves are basically of two types — body waves and surface waves. Body waves are generated due to the release of energy at the focus and move in all directions travelling through the body of the earth. Hence, the name body waves. The body waves interact with the surface rocks and generate new set of waves called surface waves. These waves move along the surface. The velocity of waves changes as they travel through materials with different densities. The denser the material, the higher is the velocity. Their direction also changes as they reflect or refract when coming across materials with different densities.
- There are two types of body waves. They are called P and S-waves. P-waves move faster and are the first to arrive at the surface. These are also called ‘primary waves’. The P-waves are similar to sound waves. They travel through gaseous, liquid and solid materials. S-waves arrive at the surface with some time lag. These are called secondary waves.
Earthquake management in india:
- Awareness among various stakeholders
- Structural mitigation measures
- Monitoring and enforcement of earthquake-resistant building codes and appropriate town planning.
- Proper earthquake response planning
- System of decentralized response
- Trained manpower to deal with the disaster
- Building back better
3. India and Saudi Arabia build on corridor, strategic ties
TAG: GS 2: International relations
THE CONTEXT: The Prime Minister of India held a bilateral meeting with Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, after the conclusion of the G20 Summit.
EXPLANATION:
- Days after the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), an ambitious infrastructure project to connect India to Europe via West Asia, was unveiled at the G20 Summit, India and Saudi Arabia signed eight agreements to boost cooperation in a range of areas — from energy to interconnectivity, digitalisation and electronic manufacturing to finance and security.
- Modi and MBS — as the Saudi Crown Prince is popularly referred to — co-chaired the first meeting of the India-Saudi Arabia Strategic Partnership Council which was set up in 2019.
- The two sides signed eight agreements, including on upgrading their hydrocarbon energy partnership to a comprehensive energy partnership for renewable, petroleum and strategic reserves.
- The two sides also agreed to create a joint task force for US$ 100 billion in Saudi investment, half of which is earmarked for a delayed refinery project along India’s western coast.
- India will be connected by railroad under the multinational IMEC that was announced on the sidelines of the G20 Summit. The proposed rail and ports plan, with the US, Saudi Arabia, India, European Union, United Arab Emirates as members, is being perceived as a counter to China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative.
- The agreements include cooperation between India’s Central Vigilance Commission and Saudi’s anti-corruption unit, between investment entities, small and medium enterprises banks, between the National Archives of the two countries, and on desalination and renewable energy.
- The two sides also discussed the possibility of trading in local currencies and expediting the negotiations for a free trade agreement between India and the Gulf Cooperation Council of which Saudi Arabia is a member.
- Both sides agreed to explore opportunities for cooperation in payment systems, including the acceptance of RuPAY cards in Saudi Arabia for the benefit of the Indian community in general and more particularly the Haj/ Umrah pilgrims.
- The importance of trade in the bilateral relationship was recognised. Both sides praised the burgeoning trade ties and noted that bilateral trade has increased to more than US$ 52 billion in 2022-23, marking a growth of more than 23%. Both sides also noted that India is the second largest trade partner of Saudi Arabia, while Saudi Arabia is the fourth largest trade partner of India,”
- India thanked Saudi Arabia for taking excellent care of over 2.4 million Indians residing there, extending support for evacuating Indian nationals stranded in Sudan through Jeddah under Operation Kaveri, and for facilitating Indian Haj and Umrah pilgrims.
Source:(https://indianexpress.com/article/india/neet-aspirant-from-jharkhand-kills-self-in-kota-8937706/)
4. NIPAH VIRUS
TAG: GS 3: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
THE CONTEXT: The Kerala government is on high alert after two deaths due to Nipah virus occurred at a private hospital in Kozhikode. The Health Ministry has also directed for an isolation facility to be set up.
NIPAH VIRUS (NiV):
- Nipah virus is a zoonotic virus as it can be transmitted from animals to humans.
- It can also be transmitted through contaminated food and directly from human-to-human.
- The case fatality rate is estimated at 40% to 75%.
- This rate can vary by outbreak depending on local capabilities for epidemiological surveillance and clinical management.
- In infected people, it causes a range of illnesses from asymptomatic infection to acute respiratory illness and fatal encephalitis (inflammation of the brain).
- The virus can also cause severe disease in animals such as pigs, resulting in significant economic losses for farmers.
- Although Nipah virus has caused only a few known outbreaks in Asia, it infects a wide range of animals and causes severe disease and death in people, making it a public health concern.
- Fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family are the natural host of Nipah virus.
- There is no treatment or vaccine available for either people or animals. The primary treatment for humans is supportive care.
WHAT IS THE STRUCTURE OF THE NIPAH VIRUS?
- The NiV genome consists of a negative-sense, single-stranded RNA of approximately 18.2 kb, encoding six structural proteins:
- nucleoprotein (N),
- phosphoprotein (P),
- matrix protein (M),
- fusion protein (F),
- attachment glycoprotein (G), and
- the large protein or RNA polymerase protein (L).
- In addition, the P gene encodes three non-structural proteins by RNA editing (V and W proteins) or an alternative open reading frame (C protein)
Structure of Nipah virus.
PAST OUTBREAKS OF THE VIRUS:
- Nipah virus was first recognized in 1999 during an outbreak among pig farmers in, Malaysia. No new outbreaks have been reported in Malaysia since 1999.
- It was also recognized in Bangladesh in 2001, and nearly annual outbreaks have occurred in that country since.
- The disease has also been identified periodically in eastern India.
- Other regions may be at risk for infection, as evidence of the virus has been found in the known natural reservoir (Pteropus bat species) and several other bat species in a number of countries, including Cambodia, Ghana, Indonesia, Madagascar, the Philippines, and Thailand.
5. THE PALPIMANUS GODAWAN AND THE PALPIMANUS MALDHOK
TAG: GS 3: ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY
THE CONTEXT: Two new spider species, the Palpimanus Godawan and Palpimanus Maldhok, have been found in the conservation sites of the Rajasthan Desert National Park and Solapur, which is home to the critically endangered bird, the Great Indian Bustard (GIB).
THE PALPIMANUS GODAWAN AND THE PALPIMANUS MALDHOK:
- Godawan and Maldhok are named in honour of the local name of the GIB.
- The spiders are particularly shy, hiding under rocks or in crevices when disturbed.
- They are maroon in colour and belongs to the genus Palpimanidae.
- They are ground species and have heavier bodies so their ability to disperse as spiders do by ballooning, shooting their web, and traipsing from one place to another is limited.
- These two new species owe their continued existence to the protection awarded to the habitats of the GIB.
- If the GIB was not there, these areas would not have been protected, and these spiders would not have survived as commented by an arachnologist
- They stay confined to an area. More research on these spider species will continue. These discoveries signify that there are new species to be found in these areas, and so they are worth protecting.
Great Indian Bustard:
- It is mainly found in the Indian subcontinent, is the flagship grassland species of India.
- It is one of the largest flying birds in the world, and India’s heaviest flying bird.
- Its population of about 150 in Rajasthan accounts for 95% of its total world population.
- They are mainly in Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan, including the Desert National Park which is the natural habitat of the species.
- Grasslands of Kutch in Gujarat which is home to second-largest bustard population in India.
- Arid regions of Maharashtra (Solapur), Karnataka (Bellary and Haveri) and Andhra Pradesh (Kurnool)
- It is the State bird of Rajasthan.
Conservation status:
- IUCN: Critically Endangered.
- CITES: Appendix I
- The Indian Wildlife (Protection)Act, 1972: Schedule I
