Syllabus– General Studies 1(Society)

Child Rights and Right to Education.

Context

Children have long borne the costs of school closure and evidence-based decisions toward reopening are a necessity

• Most schools in India have been closed since the national lockdown started in March 2020.
• This raises a lot of questions following data and publications on this topic over the last 15 months.
• Interestingly, various regions around the world which have been worse hit by the novel coronavirus pandemic than India, have kept their schools, especially primary schools, mostly open.
• On the other hand in India, schools have mostly been shut even as other businesses have opened.

Impact of school closure

• Already there was a huge attainment gap across students, especially in higher grades. The bottom half of children passing Class 10 are about two years behind in terms of skills.
• Ironically, the poorest families living in dense urban slums, who bore the brunt of the first wave, and are now largely immune from the virus itself (as shown by serosurveys), are the ones suffering the most from school closures.

Syllabus– General Studies 1(Geography)

Context

• At least 30 people were killed in separate incidents of lightning in various parts of the country in the past 24 hours. While Rajasthan reported 18 deaths, Uttar Pradesh recorded 12.
• Causalities have also been reported from Madhya Pradesh. Earlier in June, 20 persons were killedin lightning strikes in three districts of south Bengal.

Deaths by Lightening

• Are more common than is sometimes realised in the urban areas.
• As a whole, India sees 2,000-2,500 lightning deaths every year on average.
• Lightning is the biggest contributor to accidental deaths due to natural causes.
  • A few years ago, over 300 people were reported killed by lightning in just three days — a number that surprised officials and scientists.

Issues

• Yet, lightning remains among the least studied atmospheric phenomena in the country.
  • Just one group of scientists, at the Indian Institute of Tropical Management (IITM) in Pune, works full-time on thunderstorms and lightning.

 Syllabus:

Context:

Recently, Italy has also begun to signal its intention to enter the indo-pacific geography.

Introduction:

One of the signs of india’s growing centrality in the indo-pacific strategic architecture is its burgeoning engagement with key western nations.

Even countries which have been lackadaisical in their regional outreach so far have begun to approach the indo-pacific with a new seriousness and have been reaching out to india.

The growth of india’s weight in indo-pacific affairs comes at a time when it is becoming clearer that complex regional geopolitical problems cannot be addressed adequately by rigid and structured traditional alliance frameworks.

This aspect is even more evident in the context of the indo-pacific, where the geographical vastness of the area and the criticality of the challenges posed by china’s assertive initiatives clash with a region lacking multilateral

Syllabus– General Studies 2(Polity)

Context

Recently, the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly concluded its two-day Monsoon Session without electing a Speaker.

More on the news:

• The previous Speaker was Nana Patole of the Congress, elected to the post in 2019 following the Assembly elections.
• Since Patole’s resignation from office in February this year, Deputy Speaker Narhari Zirwal Sitaram of the NCP has been at the helm of proceedings in the Legislative Assembly.
• The Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra has been demanding that the post of the Speaker be filled, and the Governor has forwarded the demand to Chief Minister.
• While the Speaker’s chair is currently vacant in Maharashtra, the Deputy Speaker’s position is vacant in several other state legislatures as well as Lok Sabha.
• The position of Deputy Speaker vacant in: 
  • Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Jharkhand.
• In Lok Sabha, an election for Deputy Speaker has not taken place since the beginning of the 17th Lok Sabha in June 2019.

Syllabus:

Context:

Recently, the central government announced the creation of a separate ‘ministry of co-operation’.

• The ministry will work to streamline processes for ‘ease of doing businesses for co-operatives and enable development of multi-state co-operatives (mscs).
• Cooperative banks in india have been struggling to survive for the last few years.
• According to thetrends and progress of banking in india report published by the reserve bank of india, urban commercial banks have witnessed a decline in deposits from 6.1 per cent in 2018-19 to 3.5 per cent in 2019-20.
• By the end of march 2020, the sector comprised 1,539 ucbs and 97,006 rural cooperative banks, with a depositor base of 8.6 crore.

About cooperative banks:

• A  cooperative  bank  is  a  financial  entity  which  belongs  to  its  members,  who  are  at  the  same  time  the  owners  and  the  customers  of  their  bank.
  • Cooperative  banks  are  often  created  by  persons  belonging  to  the  same  local  or  professional  community  or  sharing  a  common interest.
• The  structure  of  commercial  banking  is  of  branch-banking  type;  while  the  co-operative  banking structure is a three tier federal one.
  • A state co-operative bank works at the apex level (ie. Works at state level).
  • The central co-operative bank works at the intermediate level. (ie. District co-operative banks ltd. Works at district level)
  • Primary co-operative credit societies at base level (at village level)
  • According to an rbi report, there were 1,551 urban cooperative banks as on 31 march 2018 and 96,612 rural cooperative banks as on 31 march 2017, with the latter accounting for 65.8% of the total asset size of all cooperative banks.

Syllabus– General Studies 3(environment)

Context

Parliamentary panel for synergy between IMD and private players

More on the news:

• According to the Standing Committee on Science:
  • There is a need for better synergy between the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and private forecasters.
  • To avoid confusion, especially during extreme climate events like cyclones or flash floods.
• Currently, there are three private players in India i.e.;
  • Skymet (India),
  • Earth Networks and
  • IBM Weather.
• In recent years, the IMD and Skymet have often made differing predictions on the monsoon.
• In June 2021, the Kerala government, dissatisfied with the IMD’s performance, hired Skymet Private Limited, Earth Networks and the IBM Weather Company.
  • In order to use ensemble predictions to improve extreme weather alert services in the State.
  • The IMD was vociferous on the issue and said that multiple predictions often create unnecessary confusion.
• The members of the committee also expressed that, year after year, the IMD assesses the monsoon to be normal though the actual experience is different.

Syllabus: General studies paper 3 (S&T)

Context:

Kerala is on alert after detecting at least 15 cases of the zika virus.

About zika virus:

• Zika is a viral infection, spread by mosquitoes.
• The vector is the aedes aegyptimosquito, which also spreads dengue and chikungunya.
• Additionally, infected people can transmit zika sexually.
• First identified in uganda in 1947 in monkeys,zika was detected in humans five years later.
• Sporadic cases have been reported throughout the world since the 1960s, but the first outbreak happened only in 2007 in the island of yap in the pacific.
• In 2015, a major outbreak in brazil led to the revelation that zika can be associated with microcephaly, a condition in which babies are born with small and underdeveloped brains.

Syllabus: General studies paper 3 (Economics)

Context:

Recently, britain’s cairn energy plc has secured an order from a french court authorising the freezing of 20 indian government properties in paris valued at over 20 million euros.

About the dispute:

The arbitration between india and cairn challenged the india retrospective taxation policy:

• In 2012, india brought in legislation mandating retrospective tax demands over deals going back to 1962 in which shares in non-indian companies were transferred to an indian holding company.
• In 2006-07, as a part of internal rearrangement, cairn uk transferred shares of cairn india holdings to cairn india.

Syllabus– General Studies 2(Polity)

Context

Recently, the government announced the formation of a separate Union Ministry of Cooperation, a subject that till date was looked after by the Ministry of Agriculture. Home Minister Amit Shah was given charge of the new Ministry.

Objectives of the new Ministry:

• It will provide a separate administrative legal and policy framework for strengthening the cooperative movement in the country.
• It will help deepen Co-operatives as a true people based movement reaching upto the grassroots.
• In our country, a Co-operative based economic development model is very relevant where each member works with a spirit of responsibility.
• The Ministry will work to streamline processes for ‘Ease of doing business’ for co-operatives and enable development of Multi-State Co-operatives (MSCS).

The Co-operative Movement:

• By definition, cooperatives are organisations formed at the grassroots level by people to harness the power of collective bargaining towards a common goal.
• In agriculture sector:
  • Cooperative dairies, sugar mills, spinning mills etc are formed with the pooled resources of farmers who wish to process their produce.
  • The country has
    • 1,94,195 cooperative dairy societies and
    • 330 cooperative sugar mill operations.

Cooperative sugar mills account for 35% of the sugar produced in the country.

• • In 2019-20, dairy cooperatives had procured 4.80 crore litres of milk from 1.7 crore members and had sold 3.7 crore litres of liquid milk per day. (Annual Report, National Dairy Development Board, 2019-20).
• Banking and Finance:
  • Cooperative institutions are spread across rural and urban areas.
  • Village-level primary agricultural credit societies (PACSs) formed by farmer associations are the best example of grassroots-level credit flow.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2 (International Relations)

Context:

“A historical solidarity is today a modern partnership,” tweeted external affairs minister s. Jaishankar during his recent trip to kenya.

Introduction:

• India has a long history of partnership with africa, with solidarity and political affinitygoing back to the early 1920s when both regions were fighting against colonial rule and oppression.
• India’s freedom movementhad an internationalist outlook; many indian nationalists viewed the struggle for independence as part of the worldwide movement against imperialism.
• After india gained independence, it became a leading voice in support of african decolonisation at the united nations.
• Independent india, though extremely poor after two centuries of colonial exploitation, strived to share its limited resources with african countries under the banner of south-south cooperation.
• In 1964, india launched the indian technical and economic cooperation (itec) programmeto provide technical assistance through human resource development to other developing countries, with african countries the greatest beneficiaries of it and the special commonwealth african assistance programme (scaap).

Indias role in africa:

• A historical solidarityis today a modern partnership. Critical to its foreign policy matrix, india’s engagement with the african continent has been multifaceted, with projects implemented under indian lines of credit, capacity-building initiatives, and cooperation in a range of sectors.
• As an importer of fruits, nuts, grains and pulses from the continent, indian congruence with african countries in the agriculture sector is expanding.