Syllabus– General Studies 1(geography, disaster management)/3 (environment) 

Context

Recently, the director-general of the IMD gave a brief about climate change and weather forecasting; the advances that have been made, and the challenges that remain.

India’s Geographical Location:

• India falls in the tropical region; 
  • Extra-tropical regions are in the middle and higher latitudes where most of Europe, northern United States and Canada are located. 
• The weather of the Location:
  • The weather in the tropical region is different from that of the extra-tropical regions. 
  • Cyclones, the monsoon, thunderstorms are characteristic of tropical weather systems. 
  • Tropical weather is associated with convective forces of the atmosphere. 
  • The intense heating of the Earth’s surface plays a dominant role in the genesis, evolution, characteristics, propagation, and movement of the weather in these areas. 
  • Extra-tropical weather systems are more systematic and periodic, and therefore, in general, easier to predict. 
    • In comparison, the weather in the tropical zones is a little less predictable.

India’s weather forecasting:

• Tropical Cyclones:
  • There has been tremendous improvement in the forecasting of tropical cyclones in the last 10 years. 
  • The accuracy of monsoon forecasts, especially of extreme rainfall events, has increased from about 60 per cent 10 years ago to over 80 per cent now.
  • Even for thunderstorms, the potential zone of occurrence is being predicted five days in advance. 
    • These are not easy to predict because they are localised in about a 1-10-km area, and last barely half an hour to three hours. 
    • The specific location is predicted at least three hours in advance. 
    • In this India’s accuracy is among the best in the world.
• Lightning is a major killer during thunderstorms. 
  • India is one of the very few countries that provide lightning forecasts. 
  • This is constantly being improved. 
  • IMD scientists and equipment are able to identify potential hotspots 14 days in advance, and a lightning warning is issued every three hours on the day of the occurrence from over 1,000 stations across the country. 
  • IMD have an app called Damini;
    • It provides location-specific information about the occurrence of lightning during the past 5, 10, and 15 minutes, and a lightning forecast for the next 45 minutes.
• Heatwaves:
  • A large number of deaths used to happen because of heatwaves until a few years ago. 
  • Because of an accurate forecasting system, and effective communication and dissemination of information, the loss of lives due to heatwaves has come down to single digits now. 
  • India is also working on cold wave predictions.

Visible trends of extreme weather events:

• Globally, temperatures have risen by about 1.2 degrees Celsius compared to 100 years ago. 
• Over India, the rise has been about 0.6 degrees Celsius. 
• The rise has been more in the northern, central, and eastern parts, and less over peninsular India.
• This rise in temperature has an impact on extreme weather events. 
• It’s getting hotter not just on the surface, but also in the troposphere, increasing its water-holding capacity. 
• Studies show that with a rise of 1 degree Celsius, moisture-holding capacity increases by about 7 per cent. 
• If the atmosphere has the capacity to hold more moisture, it will have the capacity to cause more rainfall.
• So, the probability of occurrence of heavy rainfall has increased. 
• Studies also show an increase in the frequency of heavy rainfall events. 
• These are events when 24-hour accumulative rainfall on a particular day is more than 15 cm. 
• Such events are increasing over the tropical belt as a whole, including in India. 
  • This trend is more evident in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Odisha, and West Bengal.
• Rainfall:
  • On average, the number of light rainfall and moderate rainfall days is decreasing, while the number of extreme rainfall events is increasing. 
  • But total rainfall during the monsoon season has remained largely unchanged. 
  • This means when it rains, it rains heavily, and when it doesn’t rain, it doesn’t rain at all.
  • This trend is quite significant across the country’s central belt. A decrease in rainfall activity has been observed over Kerala and Jharkhand and adjoining areas, but an increase in West Bengal, western Uttar Pradesh, and parts of Karnataka.
• Heatwaves:
  • The increase is more in the central and northern parts of India. 
  • Cold wave conditions are likely to decrease because of the increase in temperature. 
• Thunderstorm and Cyclones:
  • Lightning also shows an increasing trend. 
  • There has been an increase in thunderstorms because of the rise in the moisture content in the atmosphere due to temperature increases.
  • The intensity of cyclones in the Bay of Bengal does not show any significant change, but Arabian Sea cyclones are showing an increase in intensity.

Future projections of weather:

• In the business-as-usual scenario, the temperature can rise as high as 4 to 5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. 
• But this will most likely not be the case in view of our efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. 
• Even so, heatwave conditions (area, duration, and frequency) are likely to increase.
• Monsoon rainfall is projected to increase, and so are events of extreme rainfall. 
• Rainstorm events, which are related to floods, are also expected to increase.
• In general, extreme events will become more frequent and more intense, going by the current projections.

Limitation of weather predictions:

• As you go towards extremes, their occurrence becomes very rare, and as the event becomes rare, the probability of prediction decreases gradually. 
• For a granular prediction, say over a small area of a city or a town, there are limitations with current resources and technology. 

Syllabus– General Studies 1(society) 

Context

• The recent decision of 14 engineering colleges across eight States to offer courses in regional languages in select branches from the new academic year marks a historic moment in the academic landscape of the country on which rests the future of succeeding generations.

Moreover,

• On a parallel note, the decision of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), to permit B. Tech programmes in 11 native languages in tune with the New Education Policy (NEP), is a momentous one. 
  • This monumental move opens the door to a whole world of opportunities — to students of B.Tech courses, in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati, Malayalam, Bengali, Assamese, Punjabi and Odia.
• In a survey conducted by the AICTE in February this year, of over 83,000 students, nearly 44% of students voted in favour of studying engineering in their mother tongue, underscoring a critical need in technical education.
• Even in elementary education, the mother tongue is being promoted and referred to as one of the key drivers in this regard 

Background

• It would be pertinent to recall the words of the great Indian physicist and Nobel Laureate, Sir C.V. Raman, who, demonstrating exemplary vision, observed, “We must teach science in our mother tongue. Otherwise, science will become a highbrow activity. It will not be an activity in which all people can participate…” 
  • While our educational system has seen phenomenal growth to the extent that it offers courses of international repute in engineering, medicine, law and the humanities, we have, paradoxically, excluded our own people from accessing it. 
• Over the years, we have ended up building academic roadblocks, impeding the progress of the vast majority of our students and remained content with creating a small bubble of English-medium universities and colleges, while our own languages languish when it comes to technical and professional courses.

Global Practices

• Among the G20, most countries have state-of-the-art universities, with teaching being imparted in the dominant language of their people.
• Amongst Asian countries, in South Korea, nearly 70% of the universities teach in Korean, even as they aspire to play a role on the international stage. 
  • In a unique move, with the increasing craze for learning English among parents, the South Korean government, in 2018, banned the teaching of English prior to third grade in schools, since it appeared to slow pupils’ proficiency in Korean.
  • Similarly, in Japan, a majority of university programmes are taught in Japanese; in China too, universities use Mandarin as the medium of instruction. 
• In Europe, France and Germany offer us great insights into how nations protect their languages. 
  • France went to the extent of having a strict ‘French-only’ policy as the medium of instruction in schools. 
  • In Germany, while the language of instruction in schools is predominantly German, even in tertiary education, more than 80% of all masters’ programmes are taught in German.
• India has an overwhelming majority of professional courses being taught in English. In science, engineering, medicine and law, the situation is even bleaker, with native language courses being practically non-existent. 

Steps Taken

• The NEP outlines the road map, demonstrating to us the means to protect our languages while improving the access and quality of our education. 
• It imparts primary education (at least until Class 5) in the student’s mother tongue, gradually scaling it up. 

• The NEP’s emphasis on the mother tongue as the medium of instruction will instil confidence in students from poor, rural and tribal backgrounds. 
• The progressive and visionary NEP 2020 champions education in one’s mother tongue right from the primary school level, improving the learning outcomes of the child and the development of his/her cognitive faculties hinges upon this.
• Multiple studies have proved that children who learn in their mother tongue in their early, formative years perform better than those taught in an alien language. 
• UNESCO and other organisations have been laying emphasis on the fact that learning in the mother tongue is germane to building self-esteem and self-identity, as also the overall development of the child. Unfortunately, some educators and parents still accord unquestioned primacy to English, and resultantly, the child’s mother tongue ends up as their ‘second/third language’ in schools.

Context:

On July 29 last year, the Government of India (GoI) announced the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 as a pathbreaking initiative to reimagine the future of education.

• NEP is expected to transform the landscape of higher education in India by making Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) work on “solutions to the problems” rather than “solutions looking for a problem” in the following specific ways.
• India today has over 1,000 Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs), including over 150 of national importance.
• India currently ranks third globally in terms of the total research output, accounting for 5.31% of the total of research publications.

As per media reports, Pakistani authorities have finalized a law to award provisional provincial status to strategically located Gilgit-Baltistan.

About Gilgit-Baltistan

• Gilgit-Baltistan is the northernmost territory administered by Pakistan, providing the country’s only territorial frontier, and thus a land route, with China, where it meets the Xinjiang Autonomous Region.
• It borders PoK to the south, the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the west, the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan to the north, the Xinjiang region of China, to the east and northeast, and the Indian-administered union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh to the southeast.
• The territory of present-day Gilgit-Baltistan became a separate administrative unit in 1970 under the name “Northern Areas”.

A group of health experts in India have raised concerns about the country’s strategy to fight malnutrition through food fortification. They argued for “extreme caution” in implementing new chemical interventions to address micronutrient deficiencies.

What is fortification?

Fortification is the addition of key vitamins and minerals such as iron, iodine, zinc, Vitamin A & D to staple foods such as rice, milk and salt to improve their nutritional content. These nutrients may or may not have been originally present in the food before processing.

Syllabus– General Studies 2(polity) 

Context

• Disruption is replacing discussion as the foundation of our legislative functioning. 

Issue 

• In 2001, a day-long conference was held in the Central Hall of Parliament to discuss discipline and decorum in legislatures. 
• A galaxy of political leaders including the then Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Sonia Gandhi, and leader of the All-India Trinamool Congress, Mamata Banerjee, weighed in on the subject. 
• Their inputs and those of parliamentarians like Arun Jaitley, Pranab Mukherjee, and former prime minister Chandra Shekhar helped identify four reasons behind the disorderly conduct by MPs.
  • The first was dissatisfaction in MPs because of inadequate time for airing their grievances. 
  • The second was an unresponsive attitude of the government and the retaliatory posture of the treasury benches. 
  • The third was political parties not adhering to parliamentary norms and disciplining their members. 
  • Finally, the absence of prompt action against disrupting MPs under the legislature’s rules.
• Two of the conference suggestions to curb disorder in Parliament were enforcement of a code of conduct for MPs and MLAs and an increase in the sitting days of legislatures.

Context:

The Supreme Court has rejected the Kerala government’s plea to withdraw criminal cases against its MLAs who were charged in the assembly.

The Supreme Court held that legislators who indulge in vandalism and general mayhem cannot claim parliamentary privilege and immunity from criminal prosecution against leaders who destroyed public property and disrupted a Budget speech (on the State Assembly floor in 2015 Kerala government).

About Privileges and Legal immunity:

• Feature of parliamentary privileges in the Indian Constitution is borrowed from the British Constitution.
• The British Constitution is a source of other borrowed features like parliamentary government, the rule of law, legislative procedure, single citizenship, cabinet system, prerogative writs, and bicameralism.
• Legislative privileges are defined as special powers given to the legislators so as to enable them to carry out their role of framing laws in an unbridled manner and also, they are able to express their views inside the parliament without any fear of legal proceedings against them.
• Legislative privileges draw their origin from the British parliament and is a convention that is being followed as the “cornerstone of British parliament”.
• It was inserted as part of the constituent assembly as temporary in character but it has prevailed since then and forms part of 105 and 194 Articles of the Constitution.
• Rule No 222in Chapter 20 of the Lok Sabha Rule Book and correspondingly Rule 187 in Chapter 16 of the Rajya Sabha rulebook governs privilege.
• Since Independence we have witnessed many instances of arbitrary usage of such powers, shadowing the fundamental rights of the citizens.

Context

The Government of India has launched the Central Sector Scheme of “Formation and Promotion of 10,000 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs)”  

• to form and promote 10,000 new FPOs which will leverage economies of scale in production and marketing with a view to- 
  • enhance productivity through efficient, cost-effective and sustainable resource use for ensuring sustainable income-oriented farming, 
  • Thus helping in reduction of cost of farm production and enhancing farmers’ earning thus playing a major role towards doubling the income of farmers. 
  • Under this scheme, provision is made for professional handholding support for a period of five years to new FPOs formed.

Major points of focus

The Scheme is intended to undertake and provide the following relevant major services and activities for their development which would cater to increasing farmer’s income:-

(i)   Supply quality production inputs like seed, fertilizer, pesticides and such other inputs at reasonably lower wholesale rates.

(ii)   Make available need-based production and post-production machinery and equipment like cultivator, tiller, sprinkler set, combine harvester and such other machinery and equipment on custom hiring basis for members to reduce the per-unit production cost.

(iii)  Make available value addition like cleaning, assaying, sorting, grading, packing and also farm level processing facilities at user charge basis at a reasonably cheaper rate. Storage and transportation facilities may also be made available.

Context:

July 30 is United Nations World Day against Trafficking in Persons.

World Day against Trafficking in Persons is marked every year on July 30 to create awareness around people who are being trafficked and are taken away against their will.

It helps to educate others that trafficking in persons is a crime exploiting even women and children for tragic jobs like forced labour and sex.

About Human Trafficking:

• According to the UN- International Labour Organization (ILO)defines human trafficking is the trade of humans, most commonly for the purpose of forced labour, commercial sexual exploitation or sexual slavery for the trafficker or others.
• It estimates that 21 million people are victims of forced labour globally which includes victims of human trafficking for labour and sexual exploitation.
• According to the UNODC, people are being trafficked for various exploitative purposes including forced marriage, begging, labour, sexual exploitation, organs removal, selling children etc.
• A recent report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on the effects of the pandemic on trafficking echoes these findings.
  • It says, traffickers are taking advantage of the loss of livelihoods and the increasing amount of time spent online to entrap victims, including by advertising false jobs on social media.
  • In addition, there is an increased demand for child sexual exploitation material online due to lockdowns.

India’s vulnerability in dealing with trafficking:

• It is also a time to reflect on India’s human trafficking crisis. Between April 2020 and June 2021, an estimated 9,000 children have been rescued after being trafficked for labour, according to a child rights non-governmental organisation (NGO).
• In other words, 21 children have been trafficked every day over nearly 15 months.
• The Childline India helpline received 44 lakh distress calls over 10 months. Over a year, 2,000 children have arrived at its shelter homes and 800 rescued from hazardous working conditions.
• Trafficking in Human Beings or Persons is prohibited under the Constitution of India under Article 23 (1).
• The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956 (ITPA)is the premier legislation for the prevention of trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation.
• Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013has come into force wherein Section 370 of the Indian Penal Code has been substituted with Section 370 and 370A IPC which provide for comprehensive measures to counter the menace of human trafficking including trafficking of children for exploitation in any form including physical exploitation or any form of sexual exploitation, slavery, servitude, or the forced removal of organs.

Syllabus– General Studies 3(economy)

Context

• Recent troubles for depositors in getting immediate access to their funds in banks such as Punjab & Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank, Yes Bank and Lakshmi Vilas Bank has put spotlight on the subject of deposit insurance.
• The Union Cabinet recently cleared changes to the deposit insurance laws to provide funds up to Rs 5 lakh to an account holder within 90 days in the event of a bank coming under the moratorium imposed by the RBI.
  • Earlier, account holders had to wait for years till the liquidation or restructuring of a distressed lender to get their deposits that are insured against default.

The Union Cabinet has approved the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2021 and has been introduced in Parliament’s monsoon session.

Bill provisions

• The cover of Rs 5 lakh per depositor is provided by the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC). It provides deposit insurance that works as a protection cover for bank deposit holders when the bank fails to pay its depositors.

• The Bill has proposed that even if a bank is temporarily unable to fulfil its obligations due to restrictions such as moratorium, depositors can access their deposits to the extent of the deposit insurance cover through interim payments by the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC). For this, the Bill seeks to insert a new Section in the DICGC Act, 1961.
• It also seeks to amend Section 15 of the DICGC Act to enable the Corporation to increase the ceiling on the amount of premium, with the prior approval of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
• Besides, it will also provide that the DICGC may defer or vary the receipt of repayments due to it from the insured bank and to empower the Corporation to charge penal interest in case of delay in repayment by the banks to the Corporation.