Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Quantum Technology
Mains level: NM-QTA
The detailed project report for a National Mission on Quantum Technology and Applications (NM-QTA) has been drawn out and finalised.
Q.Discuss various applications of quantum technology for strategic and economic development.
Story so far
- In last year’s budget session, it was proposed that ₹8,000 crores be set aside to develop quantum science and technology.
- The detailed project report is now ready and in the next couple of months, this mission might get approval.
- Recognising the importance of quantum technology, the Department of Science and Technology has also initiated a programme called QuEST to explore the possibilities and engage with the researchers.
About NM-QTA
- The mission will function under the Department of Science & Technology (DST).
- It will be able to address the ever-increasing technological requirements of society and take into account the international technology trends.
- The mission will help prepare next-generation skilled manpower, boost translational research and also encourage entrepreneurship and start-up ecosystem development.
Why need such a mission?
- Quantum technologies are rapidly developing globally with hugely disruptive potential.
- The range of quantum technologies is expected to be one of the major technology disruptions that will change the entire paradigm of computation, communication and encryption.
- It is perceived that the countries who achieve an edge in this emerging field will have a greater advantage in garnering multifold economic growth and dominant leadership role.
- It has become imperative both for government and industries to be prepared to develop these emerging and disruptive changes.
- It will establish standards to be applied to all research and help stimulate a pipeline to support research and applications well into the future.
Recent applications
- Recently, DRDO has successfully demonstrated communication between its two labs using Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technology.
- In June 2020, China demonstrated quantum communication technology using the satellite Micius, by conducting a secret conference between two ground stations about 1,120 km apart.
- They used the satellite not to transmit the entire communication, but to simultaneously send a pair of secret keys to the two ground stations.
- Other potential applications include secure communication, fast computers that established quantum supremacy, sensors and quantum-inspired devices.
Back2Basics: Quantum Technology
- Quantum Technology is based on the principles of quantum theory, which explains the nature of energy and matter on the atomic and subatomic level.
- It concerns the control and manipulation of quantum systems, with the goal of achieving information processing beyond the limits of the classical world.
- Its principles will be used for engineering solutions to extremely complex problems in computing, communications, sensing, chemistry, cryptography, imaging and mechanics.
- This key ability makes quantum computers extremely powerful compared to conventional computers when solving certain kinds of problems like finding prime factors of large numbers and searching for large databases.
What is Quantum Mechanics?
- It is a fundamental theory in physics which describes nature at the smallest – including atomic and subatomic – scales.
- At the scale of atoms and electrons, many of the equations of classical mechanics, which describe how things move at everyday sizes and speeds, cease to be useful.
- In classical mechanics, objects exist in a specific place at a specific time.
- However, in quantum mechanics, objects instead exist in a haze of probability; they have a certain chance of being at point A, another chance of being at point B and so on.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: PIDF Scheme
Mains level: Digital banking facilitation measures
The RBI has announced operational guidelines to create digital payments acceptance infrastructure across Tier III to Tier VI regions in India.
Possible prelims question:
Q. Which of the following is the major aim of Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) recently created by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)?
a) Promotion of UPI payments
b) Deploying Points of Sale (PoS) infrastructure
c) Creation of digital wallets
d) All of the above
PIDF Scheme
- The scheme was first announced in June last year to encourage fintech companies and banks to deploy point of sale (PoS) infrastructure across the country to improve the penetration of card-based and other digital payments.
- The primary beneficiaries will be merchants providing essential services, such as transport and hospitality, government payments, fuel pumps, healthcare facilities, and groceries.
- Amid the rapid rise in the volume of payments through the UPI network, the RBI is taking steps to further widen the use of digital payments in the country.
- The fund will be operational for three years from January 1, 2021, and would help subsidise banks and non-banks for the deployment of payments, subject to them achieving specific targets.
Why need PIDF?
- Over the years, the payments ecosystem in the country has evolved with a wide range of options such as bank accounts, mobile phones, cards, etc.
- To provide further fillip to the digitization of payment systems, it is necessary to give impetus to acceptance infrastructure across the country, more so in under-served areas.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Various graphs of economic recovery
Mains level: Economic recovery amid coronavirus pandemic
The prospects of a K-shaped economic recovery from COVID are increasing both in India and across the world.
What is K-Shaped Recovery?
- A K-shaped recovery occurs when, following a recession, different parts of the economy recover at different rates, times, or magnitudes.
- This is in contrast to an even, uniform recovery across sectors, industries, or groups of people.
- A K-shaped recovery leads to changes in the structure of the economy or the broader society as economic outcomes and relations are fundamentally changed before and after the recession.
- This type of recovery is called K-shaped because the path of different parts of the economy when charted together may diverge, resembling the two arms of the Roman letter “K.”
Try these PYQs:
Q.Economic growth in country X will necessarily have to occur if
(a) There is technical progress in the world economy
(b) There is population growth in X
(c) There is capital formation in X
(d) The volume of trade grows in the world economy
Q. Economic growth is usually coupled with
(a) Deflation
(b) Inflation
(c) Stagflation
(d) Hyperinflation
3 characteristics of India’s economic recovery
- First, India has broken the link between virus proliferation and mobility earlier and more successfully than many countries.
- Second, the employment rate gradually improved till September but has weakened since then, even as the economy has progressively opened up.
- CMIE’s labour market survey still reveals 18 million fewer employed (about 5 per cent of the total employed) compared to pre-pandemic levels.
- A third phenomenon is large firms have endured the crisis better and are gaining market share at the expense of smaller firms.
- To the extent there is a migration of activity from the informal/SME firms to larger firms, tax collections and Sensex/Nifty earnings should get a boost, even holding the economic pie constant.
- Greater scale and formalisation undoubtedly augur well for medium-term productivity but could increase near-term labour market frictions and boost pricing power.
Increased prospects of K-shaped recovery
- Above 3 factors increases prospects of a K-shaped recovery from COVID, a phenomenon playing out globally.
- Households at the top of the pyramid are likely to have seen their incomes largely protected, and savings rates increased.
- Meanwhile, households at the bottom are likely to have witnessed permanent hits to jobs and incomes.
3 Implications of K-shaped recovery
- 1) What we are currently witnessing is pent-up demand from the upper-income households.
- However, households at the bottom have experienced a permanent loss of income in the forms of jobs and wage cuts, this will be a recurring drag on demand, if the labour market does not heal faster.
- 2) To the extent that COVID has triggered an effective income transfer from the poor to the rich, this will be demand-impeding in the steady state.
- This is explained by the fact that marginal propensity to consume at the bottom is higher than that at the top, just as the marginal propensity to import at the top is higher than at the bottom.
- 3) If COVID-19 reduces competition or increases the inequality of incomes and opportunities, it could impinge on trend growth in developing economies by hurting productivity and tightening political economy constraints.
Factors that need to be considered to decide the policy response
- Policy need to look beyond the next few quarters and anticipate the state of the macro economy post this expression of pent-up demand.
- The key factor is whether private sector starts re-investing and re-hiring.
- With manufacturing utilisation rates below 70 per cent pre-COVID, an investment revival, in turn, will depend crucially on the demand dynamics
- Exports should benefit from strengthening global growth as the world gets progressively vaccinated and more US fiscal stimulus.
Upcoming budget: India’s New Deal moment
- It’s against this backdrop that the upcoming budget presents India with its New Deal moment.
- Given the prevailing demand uncertainties, the budget represents an opportune moment for the Centre, in conjunction with the states, to embark on a large physical and social infrastructure push.
- This will simultaneously boost near-term aggregate demand, crowd in private investment, create jobs to soak up the unemployed, and improve the economy’s external competitiveness.
- Job creation, health and education, in turn, will be a start to help mitigate COVID-induced inequalities.
How to finance the investment?
- Gradual near-term consolidation coupled with a credible medium-term fiscal plan will be key to anchoring the bond market and underscoring an adherence to macro stability.
- How then can public investment increase meaningfully if the headline deficit (projected above 11 per cent of GDP) must come down?
- Public investment could be increased only if the public investment push is financed by aggressive asset sales-strategic sales, disinvestment, land and infrastructure monetisation.
- In this manner, expenditure to GDP can actually rise next year — generating an expansionary fiscal impulse to the economy — while automatic stabilisers are used to reduce the headline fiscal deficit.
Conclusion
India’s faster-than-expected rebound is very encouraging. But given labour market pressures and prospects of a K-shaped recovery around the world, the economy will need to be carefully nurtured and stoked. The budget presents a crucial opportunity to make a big down payment towards this end.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Black Holes, Recoils
Mains level: Black holes and gravitation waves
A supermassive black hole, which is estimated to weigh up to 100 billion times the mass of the Sun, is seemingly missing, leaving astronomers perplexed.
Try this PYQ:
Q.Recently, scientists observed the merger of giant ‘blackholes’ billions of light-years away from the Earth. What is the significance of this observation?
(a) ‘Higgs boson particles’ were detected.
(b) ‘Gravitational waves’ were detected.
(c) Possibility of inter-galactic space travel through ‘wormhole’ was confirmed.
(d) It enabled scientists to understand ‘singularity’.
The ‘missing’ black hole
- The black hole is supposed to be located in Abell 2261, an enormous galaxy cluster that is about 2.7 billion light-years away from our planet.
- So, when we look at a celestial object, we are looking at how it appeared that long ago in the past.
- At 2.7 billion light-years away, the Abell galaxy is at an overwhelmingly large distance away from us.
What could have happened?
- Every large galaxy in the universe has a supermassive black hole at its centre, whose mass is millions or billions of times that of the Sun, says NASA.
- The black hole at the centre of our galaxy– the Milky Way– is called Sagittarius A*, and is 26,000 light-years away from Earth.
- Scientists have been using data gathered in 1999 and 2004 to look for the centre of the Abell galaxy, but have so far been unable to find its black hole.
- A reason for this could be that Abell’s black hole has been ejected from the centre of the galaxy.
Recoil of Black Holes
- When two black holes merge, they release what is known as gravitational waves– invisible ripples travelling at the speed of light, which squeeze and stretch anything in their path.
- As per the theory of gravitational waves, during such a merger, when the amount of waves generated in one direction is stronger than another, the new big black hole can be sent away from the centre of the galaxy into the opposite direction.
- This is known as a “recoiling” black hole.
- So far, though, scientists are yet to find definitive evidence for recoiling black holes and are still to discover whether supermassive black holes can merge and release gravitational waves.
- As of now, only mergers of significantly smaller black holes have been verified.
Why it is significant?
- The researchers assert that this may have happened because of the merging of two smaller galaxies to form Abell– a process in which both of their black holes merged to form an even bigger black hole.
- If this hypothesis turns out to be true, it would mean a major breakthrough in astronomy.
Back2Basics:
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Meteor terminology
Mains level: Study of asteroids and meteors
An asteroid which made its landfall in Mukundpura village near Jaipur has been named after the same village and is under the study of Geological Survey of India, Kolkata.
Try this question from CSP 2014:
Q.What is a coma, in the content of astronomy?
(a) Bright half of material on the comet
(b) Long tail of dust
(c) Two asteroids orbiting each other
(d) Two planets orbiting each other
Mukundpura CM2
- The meteorite named Mukundpura CM2 was classified to be a carbonaceous chondrite.
- This is a type of stony meteorite, considered the most primitive meteorite and a remnant of the first solid bodies to accrete in the solar system.
- The composition of carbonaceous chondrites is also similar to the Sun.
- Chondrites are silicate-droplet-bearing meteorites, and this Mukundpura chondrite is the fifth carbonaceous meteorite known to fall in India.
Why it is important to study meteorites?
- Meteorites are representative of asteroids.
- Asteroids are the remnant debris of the inner solar system formation process and thus offer the formation history or the building blocks of the planets.
- Therefore, by studying meteorites in the laboratory and asteroids by exploration and sample return mission we try to reconstruct the activity of early solar system events.
- Also, asteroids are often rich in volatiles and other minerals and can be exploited for future planetary exploration.
Do you know?
Meteorites are broadly classified into three groups – stony (silicate-rich), iron (Fe–Ni alloy), and stony-iron (mixed silicate–iron alloy).
Details of its study
- The study revealed that Mukundpura CM2 had experienced varying degrees of alteration during the impact.
- Some minerals like forsterite and FeO olivine, calcium aluminium rich inclusion (CAI) minerals escaped alteration.
- Few magnetites, sulphides and calcites were also found.
- Detailed spectroscopic studies revealed that the meteorite had very high (about 90%) phyllosilicate minerals comprising both magnesium and iron.
- Further X-ray studies showed it also had aluminium complexes.
Relevance to asteroids
- The results of the Mukundpura CM2 study are relevant to the surface composition of near-Earth asteroids Ryugu and Bennu.
- In October 2020, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission collected samples from Bennu and is expected to return in September 2023.
- Last month, Japan’s Hayabusa-2 mission landed on Earth with samples from Ryugu.
Back2Basics:
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Lithium ion batteries and their significance
Mains level: Lithium reserves in India
Alongside a move to tap into the global lithium value chain, India has initiated a concerted domestic exploration in Karnataka’s Mandya district.
Lithium reserves in Karnataka
- Preliminary surveys by the Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research (AMD), an arm of the Department of Atomic Energy has carried out the exploration.
- AMD is carrying out surface and sub-surface exploration for lithium in potential geological domains of the country.
- Their research has shown the presence of 1,600 tonnes of lithium resources in the igneous rocks of the Marlagalla-Allapatna region of Karnataka’s Mandya district.
Must read:
Global producers of lithium
- Australia and Chile have swapped positions as the world’s leading lithium-producing country over the past decade. In 2019, the world’s Top 5 lithium producers were:
- Australia – 52.9% of global production
- Chile – 21.5%
- China – 9.7%
- Argentina – 8.3%
- Zimbabwe – 2.1%
- The U.S. ranked 7th with 1.2% of the world’s lithium production.
In 2019, the world’s Top 5 lithium reserves by country were:
-
Chile – 55.5% of the world’s total
-
Australia – 18.1%
-
Argentina – 11.0%
-
China – 6.5%
-
U.S. – 4.1%
Why is the exploration significant?
- India currently imports all its lithium needs.
- The find in Mandya is extremely small in quantitative terms, but it marks some initial success in the attempt to domestically mine the silver-white metal by way of hard-rock extraction of the ore.
- The domestic exploration push comes at a time when India has stepped up its economic offensive against China, a major source of lithium-ion energy storage products being imported into the country.
- The Marlagalla-Allapatna area is seen as among the most promising geological domains for potential exploration for lithium and other rare metals.
What lies ahead?
- India is seen as a late mover in attempts to enter the lithium value chain, coming at a time when EVs are predicted to be a sector ripe for disruption.
- 2021 is likely to be an inflexion point for battery technology – with several potential improvements to the li-ion technology, and alternatives to this tried-and-tested formulation in advanced stages of commercialization.
Back2Basic: Li-Ion battery
- Whittingham developed the first functional lithium-ion battery in 1976, Goodenough brought in a major improvement in 1980, while Yoshino made the first practical-use lithium-ion battery in 1985.
- Commercially manufactured lithium-ion batteries, based on what Yoshino had developed, made their first appearance in 1991.
Its’ working
- Batteries convert chemical energy into electricity.
- A battery comprises two electrodes, a positive cathode and a negative anode, which is separated by a liquid chemical, called an electrolyte, which is capable of carrying charged particles.
- The two electrodes are connected through an electrical circuit.
- When the circuit is on, electrons travel from the negative anode towards the positive cathode, thus generating an electric current, while positively charged ions move through the electrolyte.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: National Family Health Survey
Mains level: Paper 2- Problems of malnutrition and issues with it
The article suggests the ways to deal with the menace of malnutrition in the country.
Findings of the first phase of NFHS-5
- Recently, the first phase of the NFHS-5 survey was published.
- The deteriorating nutrition and anaemia indicators, especially among children is a cause for concern.
- More deterioration in nutrition indicators following the COVID-19 pandemic is feared in the next phase of NFHS-5.
- This deterioration would be on account of loss of livelihoods, reduced food consumption among the poor and disruption of government nutrition programmes.
Challenges
- Unlike a disease outbreak there may not be any popular demand to address malnutrition — the public, by and large, does not have adequate information about the damage malnutrition causes.
- Hence, in the Indian context, it becomes the responsibility of the government/civil society to first provide information and awareness to the community about malnutrition.
Steps to be taken
- The government should examine the current nutrition-related programmes, and analysing why they are not able to reduce malnutrition faster.
- Additional interventions could be introduced in pockets, identified as high-burden districts.
- There should be different norms and more intensive interventions within the ICDS for these chronically malnourished pockets.
- We need to know if the National Nutrition Policy 1993 is still operational.
- If not, it seems that we are attempting to address this problem without a policy framework or plan of action.
Addressing the root cause of malnutrition in India
The following three deficits are the root cause of malnutrition in India.
1) Dietary deficit
- There is a large dietary deficit among at least 40 per cent of our population of all age groups, shown in— the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau’s Third Repeat Survey (2012), NFHS 4, 2015-16, the NNMB Technical Report Number 27, 2017.
- Our current interventions are not being able to bridge this protein-calorie-micronutrient deficit.
- The NHHS-4 and NFHS-5 surveys reveal an acute dietary deficit among infants below two years, and considerable stunting and wasting of infants below six months.
- Unless this maternal/infant dietary deficit is addressed, we will not see rapid improvement in our nutritional indicators.
2) Information deficit at household level
- We do not have a national IEC (information, education and communication) programme that reaches targeted households to bring about the required behavioural change regarding some basic but critical facts.
- For example, IEC tells about the importance of balanced diets in low-income household budgets, proper maternal, child and adolescent nutrition and healthcare.
3) Inequitable market conditions
- The largest deficit, which is a major cause of dietary deficiency and India’s chronic malnutrition, pertains to inequitable market conditions.
- Such market conditions deny affordable and energy-fortified food to children, adolescents and adults in lower-income families.
- The market has stacks of expensive fortified energy food and beverages for higher income groups, but nothing affordable for low-income groups.
Conclusion
Raising the diet of our people from subsistence level to higher levels of nourishment by overcoming the triple deficit is the only way to improve the nutritional indicators of our population — amongst children, adolescents and adults.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Social sector expenditure as percentage of GDP
Mains level: Paper 2- Need to invest more in the social sector in the post pandemic world
The article highlights the need for more focus on the social sector in the post-Covid society and suggest ways to do the same.
Why focus on social sector
- No country has progressed without investing in the social sector.
- India is committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, and social sector development is important in reaching them.
- Progress in this sector has intrinsic (for its own sake) and instrumental (for higher growth) value.
- It is needed even to build a $5 trillion economy faster.
India’s social sector expenditure
- India’s progress in the social sector has been much slower compared to its GDP growth.
- In the social sector expenditure, the share of education as a percentage of GDP has been stagnant around 2.8-3 per cent during 2014-15 to 2019-20.
- In the case of health, the expenditure as a percentage of GDP increased from 1.2 per cent to 1.5 per cent.
- This is lower than the required 2-3 per cent of GDP.
- An increase in health expenditure is also important to take care of the present and future pandemics.
- There are supply side problems regarding the health infrastructure.
- It is essential to have a huge increase in public expenditure on health and provide accessible, affordable and quality health coverage to all.
Following are some key issues in the social sector India needs to focus on.
1) The problem of undernutrition
- The NFHS-5 report shows that malnutrition level has reduced marginally in a few states and has worsened in some other states between 2015-16 and 2019-20.
- We can’t have a society with 35 per cent of our children suffering from malnutrition.
- Apart from undernutrition, obesity seems to be increasing in both rural and urban areas.
- There is a need to raise allocations for ICDS and other nutrition programmes.
- The determinants of nutrition are agriculture, health, women’s empowerment, including maternal and child practices, social protection, nutrition education, sanitation and drinking water.
- The Poshan Abhiyan is a good programme, but has to cover all these determinants with a multi-pronged approach to reduce undernutrition.
2) Quality education
- Quality education is key for raising human development.
- The pandemic has enhanced inequalities in education and has revealed the widening digital gap.
- Equality of opportunity in terms of quality education is the key for raising human development and for reducing inequalities in the labour market.
- Several committees have recommended that public expenditure on education should be at 6 per cent of GDP.
3) Social safety nets
- It is known that migrant workers were the most affected during the pandemic and that they do not have any safety nets.
- There is a need to have safety nets like an employment guarantee scheme for the urban poor and facilities for migrants.
- Similarly in rural areas, allocations to MGNREGA have to be increased because of the reverse migration.
4) Programs for vulnerable section need to be continued
- The government has done well in providing cooking gas through Ujjwala Yojana and electricity through Saubhagya Yojana, introducing programmes such as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and initiatives for housing, financial inclusion and providing loans to the self-employed.
- These programmes have helped the vulnerable sections, particularly women.
- Another initiative of the government was to facilitate direct benefit transfers (DBT) for welfare schemes.
- These initiatives have to be continued.
Way forward
- The government should give more focus to the social sector with better policies and implementation.
- It has to work closely with the states in revitalising the social sector as major expenditures particularly on health and education are met by them.
- The 15th Finance Commission also seems to have mentioned that health expenditure should be increased to 2.1 per cent of GDP.
- The Commission may also suggest some incentives for states to increase health expenditure.
- Both Centre and states should have a five-year vision on the social sector.
Consider the question “No country has progressed without investing in the social sector. In the post pandemic world India needs to chart the plan to invest more in the sector. In light of this, examine the challenges in the social sector and suggest the ways to deal with them.
Conclusion
India, aspiring to be a global power, should have a harmonious and inclusive social sector development. This is also important for achieving the SDGs, reducing inequalities and building a $5 trillion economy faster.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Idea of universal basic income
Mains level: Paper 2- Remuneration to women for domestic work and issues with it
Recently, a political party promised salaries to housewives as a part of its electoral campaign in Tamil Nadu. This led to the debate on the issue. The article deals with the issue.
Salary for housework: Historical background
- Demand for wages against housework was first raised at the third National Women’s Liberation conference in Manchester, England.
- In 2012, the then minister for Women and Child development announced that the government was considering mandating a salary for housework to wives, from husbands.
- The purpose, once again, was to empower women financially and help them live with dignity.
Recognising the value of unpaid domestic work
- Time-use data from 2019 gathered by the National Sample Survey Organisation revealed that only about a quarter of men and boys above six years engaged in unpaid household chores, compared to over four-fifths of women.
- Every day, an average Indian male spends 1.5 hours per day in unpaid domestic work, compared to about five hours by a female.
- Housework demands effort and sacrifice, 365 days a year, 24/7.
Issues with paying for domestic work
- Asking men to pay for wives’ domestic work could further enhance their sense of entitlement.
- It may also put the additional onus on women to perform.
- There is a risk of formalising the patriarchal Indian family where the position of men stems from their being “providers” in the relationship.
Way forward
- Despite a legal provision, equal inheritance rights continue to be elusive for a majority of women.
- More than creating a new provision of salary for housework, we need to strengthen awareness, implementation and utilisation of other existing provisions.
- Starting from the right to reside in the marital home, to streedhan and haq meher, to coparcenary and inheritance rights as daughters and to basic services, free legal aid and maintenance in instances of violence and divorce.
- Women should be helped to reach their full potential through quality education, access and opportunities of work, gender-sensitive and harassment-free workplaces and attitudinal and behaviour change within families to make household chores more participative.
Conclusion
Just like we do not want women to commodify their reproductive services because of their inherently exploitative nature — we have, therefore, banned commercial surrogacy in the country — let us not allow commodification of housework and personal care.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Telecom Spectrum
Mains level: Read the attached story
In the spectrum auctions scheduled to begin on March 1this year, the government plans to sell spectrum for 4G in the 700, 800, 900, 1,800, 2,100, 2,300, and 2,500 MHz frequency bands.
Q.What are the various challenges faced by India’s telecom before the upgradation to 5G technology?
What is Spectrum?
- Devices such as cellphones and wireline telephones require signals to connect from one end to another.
- These signals are carried on airwaves, which must be sent at designated frequencies to avoid any kind of interference.
- The Union government owns all the publicly available assets within the geographical boundaries of the country, which also include airwaves.
- With the expansion in the number of cellphones, wireline telephone and internet users, the need to provide more space for the signals arise from time to time.
Spectrum allocations
- Spectrum refers to the invisible radio frequencies that wireless signals travel over. The frequencies we use for wireless are only a portion of what is called the electromagnetic spectrum.
- To sell these assets to companies willing to set up the required infrastructure to transport these waves from one end to another, the central government through the DoT auctions these airwaves from time to time.
- These airwaves called spectrum is subdivided into bands which have varying frequencies.
- All these airwaves are sold for a certain period of time, after which their validity lapses, which is generally set at 20 years.
Why is spectrum being auctioned now?
- The last spectrum auctions were held in 2016 when the government offered 2,354.55 MHz at a reserve price of Rs 5.60 lakh crore.
- Although the government managed to sell only 965 MHz – or about 40 per cent of the spectrum that was put up for sale.
- The need for a new spectrum auction has arisen because the validity of the airwaves bought by companies is set to expire in 2021.
How is the spectrum priced?
- The reserve price of all these bands together has been fixed at Rs 3.92 lakh crore.
- Depending on the demand from various companies, the price of the airwaves may go higher, but cannot go below the reserve price.
How will the payment plan work?
- As part of the deferred payment plan, bidders for the sub-1 GHz bands of 700, 800 and 900 MHz can opt to pay 25 per cent of the bid amount now, and the rest later.
- In the above-1 GHz bands of 1,800, 2,100, 2,300, and 2,500 MHz frequency bands, bidders will have to pay 50 per cent upfront, and can then opt to pay the rest in equated annual instalments.
- The successful bidders will, however, have to pay 3 per cent of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) as spectrum usage charges, excluding wireline services.
Who is likely to bid for the spectrum?
- All major private telecom players in India are eligible contenders to buy additional spectrum to support the number of users on their network.
- Apart from these three, new companies, including foreign companies, are also eligible to bid for the airwaves.
- Foreign companies, however, will have to either set up a branch in India and register as an Indian company or tie-up with an Indian company to be able to retain the airwaves after winning them.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: First Advance Estimates
Mains level: India's GDP related issues
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation released the First Advance Estimates (FAE) for the current financial year.
What do estimates show?
- According to MoSPI, India’s gross domestic product (GDP) — the total value of all final goods and services produced within the country in one financial year — will contract by 7.7 per cent in 2020-21.
- The first advance estimates of GDP, obtained by extrapolation of seven months’ data, are released early to help officers in the Finance Ministry and other departments in framing the broad contours of Union Budget 2021-22.
What are the First Advance Estimates of GDP?
- For any financial year, the MoSPI provides regular estimates of GDP. The first such instance is through the FAE.
- The FAE for any particular financial year is typically presented on January 7th.
- Their significance lies in the fact that they are the GDP estimates that the Union Finance Ministry uses to decide the next financial year’s budget allocations.
- The FAE will be quickly updated as more information becomes available.
- On February 26th, MoSPI will come out with the Second Advance Estimates of GDP for the current year.
How is the FAE arrived at before the end of the concerned financial year?
- The FAE are derived by extrapolating the available data. (Hope you remember Newtons’ interpolation and extrapolation from XII std.)
- According to the MoSPI, the approach for compiling the Advance Estimates is based on Benchmark-Indicator method.
- The sector-wise estimates are obtained by extrapolating indicators such as-
- Index of Industrial Production (IIP) of the first 7 months of the financial year
- Financial performance of listed companies in the private corporate sector available up to quarter ending September 2020
- The 1st Advance Estimates of crop production,
- The accounts of central & state governments,
- Information on indicators like deposits & credits, passenger and freight earnings of Railways, passengers and cargo handled by civil aviation, cargo handled at major seaports, sales of commercial vehicles, etc., available for first 8 months of the financial year.
How is the data extrapolated?
- In the past, extrapolation for indicators such as the IIP was done by dividing the cumulative value for the first 7 months of the current financial year by average of the ratio of the cumulative value of the first 7 months to the annual value of past years.
- So if the annual value of a variable was twice that of the value in the first 7 months in the previous years then for the current year as well the annual value is assumed to be double that of the first 7 months.
- However, this year, because of the pandemic there were wide fluctuations in the monthly data. Moreover, there was a significant drop, especially in the first quarter, on many counts.
- That is why the usual projection techniques would not have yielded robust results.
- As such, MoSPI has tweaked the ratios for most variables.
What are the key takeaways from the First Advance Estimates for 2020-21?
There are 7 key takeaways.
#1 GDP Growth Rate:
- In the context of recent history, the 7.7 per cent contraction in GDP is a sharp one considering that India has registered an average annual GDP growth rate of 6.8 per cent since the start of economic liberalisation in 1992-93.
#2 Absolute level of real GDP:
- At Rs 134.4 lakh crore, India’s real GDP — that is, GDP without the influence of inflation — in 2020-21 will be lower than the 2018-19 level.
- In other words, from the start of the next financial year, India would first have to raise its GDP back to the level it was at in 2019-20 (Rs 143.7 lakh crore).
#3 Per Capita GDP:
- While the GDP provides an all-India aggregate, per capita GDP is a better variable if one wants to understand how an average India has been impacted.
- India’s per capita GDP will fall to Rs 99, 155 in 2020-21.
- In fact, while the overall real GDP will fall by 7.7 per cent, per capita real GDP will fall by 8.7 per cent.
#4 Absolute level of real Gross Value Added (or GVA):
- The GVA provides a picture of the economy from the supply side.
- It maps the value-added by different sectors of the economy such as agriculture, industry and services. In other words, GVA provides a proxy for the income earned by people involved in the various sectors.
- This fiscal, at Rs 123.4 lakh crore, India’s real GVA level, too, will fall below the 2018-19 level.
#5 Absolute level of Private Final Consumption Expenditure (PFCE):
- India’s overall GDP can be divided into four main sections. The biggest demand for goods and services comes from private individuals trying to satisfy their consumption needs.
- Typically this would include all the things — be it toothpaste or a car — that you and your family members buy in their private individual capacity.
- This demand is called PFCE and it constitutes over 56 per cent of the total GDP.
#6 Per capita PFCE:
- Just like per capita GDP, the per capita PFCE is also a relevant metric as it shows how much does an average Indian spend in his/her private capacity.
- Typically, with rising incomes standards, such consumption levels also rise.
- However, at Rs 55,609, per capita, PFCE will fall below the 2017-18 level.
#7 Absolute level of Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF):
- The second biggest component of GDP is called GFCF and it measures all the expenditures on goods and services that businesses and firms make as they invest in their productive capacity.
- So if a firm buys computers and software to increase the overall productivity then it will be counted under GFCF.
- This type of demand accounts for close to 28 per cent of India’s GDP. Taken together, private demand and business demand account for almost 85 per cent of all GDP.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Insects as bioindicators
Mains level: Not Much
This newscard is an excerpt from the original article published in the DownToEarth. It talks about the ecological importance of insects.
Try this PYQ:
Q.Consider the following:
- Birds
- Dust blowing
- Rain
- Wind blowing
Which of the above spread plant diseases?
(a) 1 and 3 only
(b) 3 and 4 only
(c) 1, 2 and 4 only
(d) 1, 2, 3 and 4
Various threats to insects
- Insects are increasingly susceptible to extinction due to increasing climate crisis.
- They form the basal part of the food pyramid and impact our agriculture ecosystems as well as human health.
- Their extinction can have a cascading effect on the upper levels of the food pyramid.
- Rampant and indiscriminate use of chemicals in commercial agricultural practices, mainly monocropping systems, has been taking a toll on insects in the vicinity of farmlands and plantations.
- While everyone is talking about sustainability in agriculture, the role of insects has largely been ignored.
A few common insects whose existence is taken for granted and their ecological relevance are:
(1) Butterflies
- They are important pollinators like bees.
- Species diversity and density of butterfly indicate a good diversity of plants in an area. Several types of butterflies have specific host plants.
- Climate change, forest degradation, habitat loss, unavailability of hosts and nectar plant species are among major reasons for a decline in butterfly population.
- This leads to loss of plants species that depend on the butterflies for pollination.
- Backyard gardening and growing host plants in public spaces are important strategies to conserve butterfly species.
(2) Dragonflies
- They are one of the most widely recognised insects, need clean aquatic systems and are hence a good indicator of the health of local aquatic systems.
- These, along with damselflies, are well-known biological predators with both larvae and adults acting as natural bio-control agents.
- They are highly sensitive to changes in their habitats and are declining due to increasing habitat loss, anthropogenic activities, pollutants, climate change and rapid urbanisation.
- For their conservation, use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has to be prohibited or minimized in agriculture systems.
(3) Grasshoppers
- They feed on different plants and can cause serious damage to economic crops.
- However, in a biodiversity-rich region, they are an important component of the food chain, being an important food source for many birds.
- Grasshoppers and insects such as crickets are often consumed by people as they are rich in protein.
(4) Ants
- They are in the most abundance. Ants act as scavengers/decomposers by feeding on organic wastes and other dead animals.
- Ants also aerate the soil.
- Heavy use of chemicals in agriculture causes harm to ants.
(5) Wild honey bees
- They play a major role in the pollination of forest species affecting cross-pollination and maintenance of variability within species.
- Wild honey is also a food source for humans and many wild animals.
- When forest covers are lost, wild bees tend to migrate to newer areas where they may or may not adapt.
- With the possibility of commercial apiaries, wild bees need to be left alone and honey tapping from wild hives discouraged.
- This can help sustain the natural processed of pollination among forest species and maintain diversity in plants conventionally propagated through seeds.
(6) Rainbow leaf beetles
- They are found in forests, woodlands and mountain grasslands.
- They mostly depend on leaves and flowers of some specific plant family like Apocynaceae.
- These are listed as endangered species in International Union for Conservation of Nature from 1994.
- The species is also known to be poisonous to its predators for they feed on dogbane that contains poisonous cardenolides.
(7) Fireflies
- They are a good indicator of a healthy environment, especially a good aquatic system. They avoid regions with chemical toxicity.
- They are good pollinators and natural pest control agents in several ecosystems.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: JK IDS, 2021
Mains level: Development of JK region
The Union Govt. has formulated the New Industrial Development Scheme for Jammu & Kashmir (J&K IDS, 2021).
Tap to read more about: Reorganization of J&K
J&K IDS, 2021
- It is a new Central Sector Scheme for the development of Industries in the UT of Jammu & Kashmir.
- The main purpose of the scheme is to generate employment which directly leads to the socio-economic development of the area.
Incentives available
- Capital Investment Incentive at the rate of 30% in Zone A and 50% in Zone B on the investment made in Plant & Machinery (in manufacturing) or construction of the building is available.
- Capital Interest subvention: At the annual rate of 6% for a maximum of 7 years on loan amount up to Rs. 500 crore for investment in plant and machinery (in manufacturing) or construction of the building.
- GST Linked Incentive: 300% of the eligible value of actual investment made in plant and machinery (in manufacturing) or construction in building for 10 years.
- Working Capital Interest Incentive: All existing units at an annual rate of 5% for a maximum of 5 years. Maximum limit of incentive is Rs 1 crore.
Key features:
- The scheme is made attractive for both smaller and larger units.
- Smaller units with an investment in plant & machinery upto Rs. 50 crore will get a capital incentive upto Rs. 7.5 crore and get capital interest subvention at the rate of 6% for a maximum of 7 years
- The scheme aims to take industrial development to the block level in UT of J&K, which is the first time in any Industrial Incentive Scheme of the GoI.
- The scheme has been simplified on the lines of ease of doing business by bringing one major incentive- GST Linked Incentive- that will ensure less compliance burden without compromising on transparency.
- It is not a reimbursement or refund of GST but gross GST is used to measure eligibility for industrial incentive to offset the disadvantages that the UT of J&K face
Major Impact and employment generation potential:
- The scheme is to bring about a radical transformation in the existing industrial ecosystem of J&K with emphasis on job creation, skill development and sustainable development.
- It is anticipated that the proposed scheme is likely to attract unprecedented investment and give direct and indirect employment to about 4.5 lakh persons.
- Additionally, because of the working capital interest subvention, the scheme is likely to give indirect support to about 35,000 persons.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Payment Banks and Small Finance Bank
Mains level: Paper 3- Challenges in financial inclusion
The article highlights the important role Payment Banks could play in furthering the financial inclusion in India.
Financial inclusion and challenges
- Interventions, especially the JAM trinity—Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar and Mobile phones—have accelerated digital and financial inclusion in India.
- Four of every five Indian adults have a registered bank account.
- Financial inclusion is not only about opening accounts, it encompasses access to credit, insurance and micro-investment products in a simple and safe way.
- This remains a challenge for ‘weaker sections and low-income groups’.
- For instance, only 16% of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) have access to formal credit amid an estimated debt demand of ₹69.3 trillion.
High-technology, low-cost banking to accelerate financial inclusion
- In 2014, Nachiket Mor committee recommended setting up “high technology—low cost” banking models to accelerate financial inclusion to the last mile.
- Subsequently, the Reserve Bank of India licensed ‘vertically differentiated banking systems’, such as Payments Bank (PBs) and Small Finance Banks (SFBs).
- SFBs have grown profitably thanks to the yield spread between deposits and lending.
- Most of them started off as micro finance institutions with a ready asset base, and after converting into SFBs, they have got a better liability franchise but continue to operate in niche geographies.
- On the other hand, PBs have shown strong growth in revenues, while operating at a larger scale than SFBs.
- The high-tech PB model has shown more rigour than the cost-heavy branch-based SFB model in terms of its impact on inclusion.
Need for structural intervention
- If we intend to make a real move ahead on the inclusion front, PBs will have to play a larger role.
- However, to realize their full potential, they need certain structural interventions:
1) Liabilities
- PBs can take deposits only up to ₹1 lakh, which limits their ability to augment profit that can be further deployed to enhance efficiencies.
- For a few segments, such as self-help groups and MSMEs, the savings account limit blocks the adoption of highly-accessible bank accounts.
- Since the model has matured, it would be prudent to enhance the deposit limit to ₹5 lakh and benchmark it to Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation limits.
- Banking Correspondents (BCs) are a critical link in driving financial inclusion.
- PBs could offer low-value and simple fixed or recurring deposit products and sell to consumers through their BC distribution network, thus improving their viability.
2) Assets
- Currently, there is no national-level lender with the risk appetite for thin-credit consumers.
- PBs can evolve new micro-lending models through their BC networks and mobile apps and create an alternate credit score for these consumers.
- Allowing micro-lending by PBs could be a starting point. Thereafter, regulators may consider a transition path for them to become SFBs, or even Universal Banks.
3) Working together for collective impact
- PBs have an edge in technology and reach, while traditional players have a trust legacy.
- For collective impact on inclusion, two options can be evaluated with safeguards in place.
- One, PBs could co-originate loans with traditional institutions so that capital requirements are shared.
- Two, they can originate credit and allow it to mature, or securitize and turn it into a market-linked instrument.
- This could accelerate credit formalization.
Conclusion
We must remind ourselves that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to achieve complete financial inclusion for the diversified needs of our people. An enabling framework needs to be in place. Payments Banks, in particular, have the potential to bridge India’s financial inclusion gaps.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: MSP, Public Procurement System
Mains level: Paper 3- Reasons for farmers concerns with MSP
The article explains the purpose of Minimum Support Price (MSP) and reasons for insecurity in farmers regarding its continuance.
Relation between MSP and time-bound procurement through PPS
- MSP, public procurement system (PPS) and a strict time-bound purchase of output brought to the PPS(through APMCs) form a package deal.
- Take out one aspect, the deal falls apart.
- For example, if you have MSP but not compulsory PPS, the support price becomes redundant.
- If you have MSP and PPS/APMC mandi but not strict time-bound purchase of the product brought to the PPS, the deal will fail.
Purpose of MSP
- At the launch of the Green Revolution, MSP and PPS were designed to assist the country in achieving its goal of food self-sufficiency, which was met by the early Seventies.
- The purpose of MSP and PPS/APMC is now two-fold.
- One, to maintain food self-sufficiency because crop diseases and weather conditions such as droughts.
- The second purpose is to ensure a reasonable, assured income to the farmers.
- The recommendation to dismantle FCI public procurement, made by the Shanta Kumar Committee in its 2015 report, displayed a lack of recognition of the importance of these two purposes.
Issues with the Farm bills
- The government’s assurance that MSP/APMC can co-exist with the big agro-business-controlled private markets is not tenable.
- A farmer who has reached a contract will not be legally allowed to take the product to APMC if the APMC mandi offered him/her a better price.
- The agro-business entity will take the non-compliant farmer to court, where the dispute resolution mechanism is stacked against the farmer due to the structural inequities of legal resources and social-cultural capital.
- The proposed dispute resolution mechanism increases the choice of the trader to trade and not of the farmer to sell.
- The central law will prevail in the private markets, while state laws will prevail in the APMC mandis.
- Two markets with two regulatory frameworks will create conditions for perpetual Centre-state conflicts.
- MSPs are announced for 23 crops but compulsory and timely public procurement, are provided mainly for two crops, wheat and rice, the support price does not work for the remaining 21 crops.
Challenge in defining MSP
- Farmers’ organisations are insisting on the Swaminathan Committee formula of C2+50 per cent.
- The MSP announced by the government is based on the A2+Fl+50 per cent formula.
- Unlike the C2+50 per cent formula, A2+Fl+50 formula does not cover all the costs of farming.
Conclusion
Agrarian reforms that recognise the importance of ecologically and economically sustainable agriculture are an absolute necessity. Such reforms would require more than merely changing the trade emphasis of existing laws. They will involve the creation of inclusive, transparent and well-informed laws compatible with these reforms.
Back2Basics: Understanding the cost formula
- M S Swaminathan committee recommended minimum support prices (MSP) for crops at levels “at least 50 per cent more than the weighted average cost of production”.
- The National Commission on Farmers did not elaborate on what really constituted “weighted average cost of production” in its report submitted in October 2006.
- The Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), on the other hand, gives three definitions of production costs: A2, A2+FL and C2.
- A2 costs basically cover all paid-out expenses, both in cash and in kind, incurred by farmers on seeds, fertilisers, chemicals, hired labour, fuel, irrigation, etc.
- A2+FL cover actual paid-out costs plus an imputed value of unpaid family labour.
- C2 costs are more comprehensive, accounting for the rentals and interest forgone on owned land and fixed capital assets respectively, on top of A2+FL.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Digital Services Tax, Equalization Levy
Mains level: Digital taxes and related issues
Digital services taxes adopted by India, Italy and Turkey discriminate against U.S. companies and are inconsistent with international tax principles, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office has said.
Do you remember?
GAFA tax—named after Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon—is a proposed digital tax to be levied on large technology and internet companies.
Fact of the matter: Equalization Levy
- India has earlier expanded the scope of the Equalization Levy, or digital tax, to the sale of goods and services in the country by overseas e-commerce firms.
- The Equalization Levy was introduced for the first time in 2016 as 6 per cent tax on revenues earned by non-residents from online advertising and related services.
- The burden of this tax eventually fell on local firms advertising on these platforms.
Contention for E-Commerce
- In March 2020, the government expanded the scope of this levy to include the sale of goods and services in the country by overseas e-commerce operators.
- The transactions were to be taxed at 2 per cent if businesses earned more than Rs 2 crore.
- Globally, the rate of digital tax varies from 1.5 per cent (in Poland and Kenya) to 15 per cent (Paraguay). In Europe, the tax rate varies from 3 per cent (France, UK, Spain) to 7.5 per cent (Hungary).
Digital Services Taxes
- The “digital services tax” (DST) is a levy on the overall revenues earned by the supplier of specific digital services.
- The DST should not be confused with the so-called “Netflix tax,” which one may find in some western countries.
- The Netflix tax is essentially a “value-added tax” on digital services where the consumer bears the entire tax burden on the value of the final product.
The US Question
- The need to tax digital companies – the likes of Amazon, Google and Netflix – arises because these companies collect digital revenues from countries where they do not have a significant business presence.
- These are new-age companies, which can use virtual infrastructure to operate in another country.
- Countries across the globe have felt the need to tax revenues generated by such companies in a particular jurisdiction.
- Talks began in 2018 under the aegis of the OECD to formalize a framework on what and how to tax revenues earned by such companies in a country in which they have no physical or significant presence.
- But an abrupt US decision to pull out of the negotiations, involving 137 countries and threats of retaliatory action against those levying digital taxes have hit the 2020 deadline.
India’s response
- USTR has concluded the digital taxes imposed by France, India, Italy and Turkey discriminate against big U.S. tech firms, such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon.com
- For India, it created enormous uncertainty, since the country has always been at the forefront of adopting the concept of taxing foreign digital companies.
- It is now subject to a probe initiated by the US called the ‘Section 301’ investigations into the digital taxes.
A populist fuss by the US
- The US is a bit confused and so is the exiting President. They are not able to decide what they want to do.
- It is being argued that it could lead to tariffs before Donald leaves office or early in the administration of President-elect Biden.
- This arguably another populist measure that Trump administration wants to leave behind.
Conclusion
- Given that a global consensus at the OECD or even the UN level may take several more months, countries including India are likely to continue with their unilateral DSTs.
- At this juncture, when economies are reeling under the ill-effects of the pandemic, no country would want to give up its share of revenue and wait for a global consensus to emerge.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Ozone Hole
Mains level: Climate change impact
The Antarctic ozone hole — one of the deepest, largest gap in the ozone layer in the last 40 years — has closed, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Try this PYQ:
Q.Consider the following statements:
Chlorofluorocarbons, known as ozone-depleting substances are used:
- In the production of plastic foams
- In the production of tubeless tyres
- In cleaning certain electronic components
- As pressurizing agents in aerosol cans
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1, 2 and 3 only
(b) 4 only
(c) 1, 3 and 4 only
(d) 1, 2, 3 and 4
Antarctic Ozone Hole
- The Antarctic “ozone hole” was discovered by British Antarctic Survey scientists Farman, Gardiner and Shanklin in 1985.
- It came as a shock to the scientific community because the observed decline in polar ozone was far larger than anyone had anticipated.
- It was caused by the chemical reactions on polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) in the cold Antarctic stratosphere caused a massive.
- Though localized and seasonal, an increase in the amount of chlorine present in active, ozone-destroying forms.
Role of PSCs
- The polar stratospheric clouds in Antarctica are only formed when there are very low temperatures, as low as −80 °C, and early spring conditions.
- In such conditions, the ice crystals of the cloud provide a suitable surface for the conversion of unreactive chlorine compounds into reactive chlorine compounds, which can deplete ozone easily.
An annual process
- An ozone hole is the thinning of the ozone layer boosted in size by colder temperatures.
- The formation of the ozone hole in the Antarctic has been an annual occurrence and has been recorded for the last 40 years.
- Human-made chemicals migrate into the stratosphere and accumulate inside the polar vortex. It begins to shrink in size as warmer temperatures dominate.
- As the temperatures high up in the stratosphere start to rise, ozone depletion slows, the polar vortex weakens and breaks down.
- By the end of December, ozone levels return to normal.
The hole closes after achieving peak
- The annually occurring ozone hole over the Antarctic had rapidly grown from mid-August and peaked at around 24 million square kilometres — one of the largest so far — in early October 2020.
- The expansion of the hole was driven by a strong, stable and cold polar vortex and very cold temperatures in the stratosphere.
- The same meteorological factors also contributed to the record 2020 Arctic ozone hole, which has also closed.
Note: A polar vortex is a wide expanse of swirling cold air, a low-pressure area, in Polar Regions. During winters, the polar vortex at the North Pole expands, sending cold air southward.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: FAO Food Price Index
Mains level: Poverty and Hunger
World food prices rose for a seventh consecutive month in December 2020, with all the major categories, barring sugar, said the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN-FAO).
Try this PYQ:
Q.Which one of the following is not a sub-index of the World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business Index’? (CSP 2019)
(a) Maintenance of law and order
(b) Paying taxes
(c) Registering property
(d) Dealing with construction permits
World Food Price Index
- The FAO Food Price Index is a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities.
- It consists of the average of five commodity group price indices [cereal, vegetable, dairy, meat and sugar], weighted with the average export shares.
- The index has become a critical and timely monthly indicator of the state of international food markets, gauging the change in food commodity prices over time in nominal and real terms.
Why it matters?
- High food prices have contributed to a surge in inflation
- There are social and economic advantages from high food prices for example higher prices are an opportunity to improve farmers’ incomes and to stimulate investments in farming.
- For developing countries that are major exporters of food, the rise in world prices helped to bring about an improvement in the terms of trade and a strong balance of payments.
Concerns raised
- That said higher food prices for domestic consumers created fresh problems of poverty and hunger.
- Lower-income families spend a higher proportion of their budgets on food.
- Higher prices hit them hardest causing a fall in real living standards.
- This means that food price inflation can act as a tax on the poor and have a regressive effect on the distribution of income.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Magnetotelluric Study
Mains level: Earthquakes
In the backdrop of multiple quakes of low intensity in the Delhi-NCR region, the National Centre for Seismology (NCS) is conducting a unique geophysical Magnetotelluric-MT survey to accurately assess potential seismic hazards.
Try this PYQ:
Q.Consider the following statements:
- The Earth’s magnetic field has reversed every few hundred thousand years.
- When the Earth was created more than 4000 million years ago, there was 54% oxygen and no carbon dioxide.
- When living organisms originated, they modified the early atmosphere of the Earth.
Which of the statements given above is/ are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3
What is Magneto-Telluric Survey?
- MT is a geophysical method which uses natural time variation of the earth’s magnetic and electric fields to understand the geological (underground) structure and processes.
- It is an increasingly popular technique widely used to image the electrical resistivity distribution inside the Earth in various application fields ranging in scale from the shallow crust to the lithosphere.
- In the MT method, the earth’s natural electromagnetic field is used as a source field.
- The receivers record the electric and magnetic fields on the surface of the Earth.
- The variations in amplitude and phase of the received signals can be interpreted in terms of the resistivity structure of the subsurface using the magnetotelluric impedance.
Where would the MT survey be undertaken?
- The survey is conducted across three major seismic sources, namely Mahendragarh-Dehradun Fault (MDF), Sohna Fault (SF) and Mathura Fault (MF).
- It will ascertain the presence of fluids, which generally enhance the possibility of triggering earthquakes.
Benefits of the survey
- Its findings will help different user agencies for designing quake-resistant buildings, industrial units and structures such as hospitals and schools.
- In addition to MT, analysis and interpretation of satellite imageries and geological field investigations for locating the faults are also being carried out.
- Both these geophysical and geological surveys will help in taking multiple preventive measures in the quake-prone region.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Asian Waterbird Census (AWC) 2021
Mains level: Wetland conservation in India
The two-day Asian Waterbird Census-2020 was recently held in Andhra Pradesh.
Anyone can participate!
By using eBird and filling an additional site form, one can take part in this multi-country effort to document the state of our wetlands and waterbirds. To take part one simply visits a wetland and count the birds he/she see there.
Asian Waterbird Census
- The Asian Waterbird Census (AWC) takes place every January.
- The AWC was started in 1987, and many birders were initiated into bird counting and monitoring through this project.
- This citizen-science event is a part of the global International Waterbird Census (IWC) that supports the conservation and management of wetlands and waterbirds worldwide.
- The data collected each year is shared by Wetlands International with global conservation organisations such as IUCN and Ramsar Convention.
Why need such census?
- Waterbirds are one of the key indicators of wetlands health.
- Wetlands provide feeding, resting, roosting and foraging habitats for these charismatic species.
AWC in India
- In India, the AWC is annually coordinated by the Bombay Natural history Society (BNHS) and Wetlands International.
- BNHS is a non-government Organisation (NGO) founded in the year 1883.
- It engages itself in the conservation of nature and natural resources and also in the research and conservation of endangered species.
- Its mission is to conserve nature, primarily biological diversity through action based on research, education and public awareness.
Back2Basics: Waterbirds
- The term water bird, alternatively waterbird or aquatic bird is used to refer to birds that live on or around water.
- In some definitions, the term is especially applied to birds in freshwater habitats, though others make no distinction from birds that inhabit marine environments.
- Also, some water birds are more terrestrial or aquatic than others, and their adaptations will vary depending on their environment.
- These adaptations include webbed feet, bills, and legs adapted to feed in the water, and the ability to dive from the surface or the air to catch prey in water.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now