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  • Thawing of Permafrost

     

    A recent study makes a disturbing connection between the loss of Arctic sea ice and thawing (melting) of permafrost in the region, with global implications.

    What is Permafrost?

    • ‘Permafrost’ or permanently frozen ground is land that has been frozen at or below 0 degrees Celsius for two or more consecutive years.
    • A staggering 17 per cent of Earth’s entire exposed land surface is comprised of permafrost.
    • Composed of rock, sediments, dead plant and animal matter, soil, and varying degrees of ice, permafrost is mainly found near the poles, covering parts of Greenland, Alaska, Northern Canada, Siberia and Scandinavia.
    • The Arctic region is a vast ocean, covered by thick ice on the surface (called sea ice), surrounded by land masses that are also covered with snow and ice.

    Permafrost thawing

    • When permafrost thaws, water from the melted ice makes its way to the caves along with ground sediments, and deposits on the rocks.
    • In other words, when permafrost thaws, the rocks grow and when permafrost is stable and frozen, they do not grow.

    Why thawing?

    • The link between the Siberian permafrost and Arctic sea ice can be explained by two factors:
    • One is heat transport from the open Arctic Ocean into Siberia, making the Siberian climate warmer.
    • The second is moisture transport from open seawater into Siberia, leading to thicker snow cover that insulates the ground from cold winter air, contributing to its warming.
    • This is drastically different from the situation just a couple of decades ago when the sea ice acted as a protective layer, maintaining cold temperatures in the region and shielding the permafrost from the moisture from the ocean.
    • If sea ice (in the summer) is gone, permafrost start thawing.

    Impact on Climate Change

    • Due to relentlessly rising temperatures in the region, since the late-twentieth century, the Arctic sea ice and surrounding land ice are melting at accelerating rates.
    • When permafrost thaws due to rising temperatures, the microbes in the soil decompose the dead organic matter (plants and animals) to produce methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2), both potent greenhouse gases.
    • CH4 is at least 80 times more powerful than CO2 on a decadal timescale and around 25 times more powerful on a century timescale.
    • The greenhouse gases produced from thawing permafrost will further increase temperatures which will, in turn, lead to more permafrost thawing, forming an unstoppable and irreversible self-reinforcing feedback loop.
    • Experts believe this process may have already begun. Giant craters and ponds of water (called ‘thermokarst lakes’) formed due to thawing have been recorded in the Arctic region. Some are so big that they can be seen from space.

    Why a matter of concern?

    • An estimated 1,700 billion tonnes — twice the amount currently present in the atmosphere — of carbon is locked in all of the world’s permafrost.
    • Even if half of that were to be released to the atmosphere, it would be game over for the climate.
    • Scientific estimates suggest that the Arctic Ocean could be largely sea ice-free in the summer months by as early as 2030, based on observational trends, or as late as 2050, based on climate model projections.

  • UAE declared ‘Reciprocating Territory’ by India

    Recently, the Ministry of Law and Justice issued an Extraordinary Gazette Notification, declaring the UAE to be a “reciprocating territory” under Section 44A of the Civil Procedure Code, 1908. The notification also declared a list of courts in the UAE to be “superior Courts” under the same section.

    What is a ‘Reciprocating Territory’ ?

    • Essentially, orders passed by certain designated courts from a ‘reciprocating territory’ can be implemented in India, by filing a copy of the decree concerned in a District Court here.
    • The courts so designated are called ‘superior Courts’.

    What does Section 44 of the CPC say?

    Section 44A, titled “Execution of decrees passed by Courts in reciprocating territory”, provides the law on the subject of execution of decrees of Courts in India by foreign Courts and vice versa.

    Under Explanation 1 of S. 44A:

    • “Reciprocating territory” means any country or territory outside India which the Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, declare to be a reciprocating territory for the purposes of this section; and “superior Courts”, with reference to any such territory, means such Courts as may be specified in the said notification.”
    • 44A (1) provides that a decree passed by “a superior Court” in any “reciprocating territory” can be executed in India by filing a certified copy of the decree in a District Court, which will treat the decree as if it has been passed by itself.
    • According to Explanation-2, the scope of the Section is restricted to decrees for payment of money, not being sums payable “in respect of taxes or other charges of a like nature or in respect of a fine or other penalty”.
    • It also cannot be based on an arbitration award, even if such an award is enforceable as a decree or judgment.

    Other countries with such status

    • Apart from Dubai, the other countries declared to be “reciprocating territories” are: United Kingdom, Singapore, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Trinidad & Tobago, New Zealand, the Cook Islands (including Niue) and the Trust Territories of Western Samoa, Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Aden.

    Why such move?

    • The notification was the only remaining part of a 1999 agreement between the UAE and India related to cooperation in civil and commercial matters.
    • The decision is believed to help bring down the time required for executing decrees between the two countries.
    • With this, Indian expatriates in the UAE would no longer be able to seek safe haven in their home country if they are convicted in a civil case in the UAE.

  • [pib] UNCITRAL

     

    An International Arbitration Tribunal has dismissed all claims brought against  India in entirety. The arbitration arose out of the cancellation of Letters of Intent for the issuance of telecom licences to provide 2G services in five telecommunications circles by reason of India’s essential security interests.

    UNCITRAL

    • The UN Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) is a subsidiary body of the U.N. General Assembly responsible for helping to facilitate international trade and investment.
    • Established by the UNGA in 1966, UNCITRAL’s official mandate is “to promote the progressive harmonization and unification of international trade law” through conventions, model laws, and other instruments that address key areas of commerce, from dispute resolution to the procurement and sale of goods.
    • UNCITRAL carries out its work at annual sessions held alternately in New York City and Vienna, where it is headquartered.
    • The Tribunal constituted in accordance with the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules 1976 is seated at the Hague, Netherlands, and proceedings are administered by the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

  • Steppe Eagle

     

    A lone endangered steppe eagle (Aquila nipalensis) has been sighted by a group of birdwatchers in a paddy field near Vijayawada.

    Steppe Eagle

    • The Steppe Eagle is a migratory raptor which has undergone extremely rapid population declines within all its range.
    • It breeds in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia during the winter season.
    • Steppe eagle is the second-largest migratory eagle species to India.
    • IUCN Status: It has moved from ‘Least Concern’ to ‘Endangered’

  • [op-ed of the day] Equity’s weak pulse and commodified medicine

    Context

    As the government tries to overhaul the public health system in India, its time to take into account the advent and the role played by the private sector and its implications.

    The advent of the private sector

    • Increase in the role of the private sector in the post-Independence era: Post-Independence, the private sector increased its footprint in India.
      • Perpetual sub-optimal investments in public health allowed the private sector to capitalise, flourish, and increasingly gain the confidence of the masses.
      • The private sector went from having about 1,400 enterprises in 1950 to more than 10 lakh in 2010-11.
      • To doctors, this promised greater professional liberty, lesser restrictions, and higher incomes.
      • After liberalisation, the greater focus shifted to the lucrative tertiary-care sector and led to an onslaught of sophisticated private health care in cities.

    The dominance of the private sector and malpractices

    • The scale of dominance: Private sector has over 70% of the health-care workforce and 80% of allopathic doctors, has meant that it is scarcely possible for a health-care provider to function in defiance of its norms.
      • Pervasive malpractices: The pervasiveness of malpractices in this market has come to ensure that few could survive without condoning them.
      • Nexus of the private players: Players in this market, in much of their malpractices, have also learnt to function as a harmonious family.
      • Organised form to safeguard interest: The family plays its role in safeguarding its members, acquainting them with its norms and interests, and leveraging the power of its patriarchs to defend its interests in society.
      • Standards of success dictated by the markets: It is little wonder that the market has also come to dictate the avenues of aggrandisement and yardsticks of professional success for health-care professionals.
      • Benchmark of quality changed: Business finesse and social adroitness rather than clinical excellence and empathy become the touchstones of calibre in this market.

    Failure of the government

    • Absence of national system: The larger chunk of Indian health care (and health workforce) could not be brought under a “national system” having some form of overarching state control or involvement.
      • If such a system existed it could avail of essential health care without most people having to rely on a vagarious market, except as a luxury.
      • Example of the UK’s NHS: The National Health Service of the United Kingdom, remains the single largest health-care provider.
      • NHS employs nearly the entire health-care workforce.
      • NHS makes essential health care available to all practically free at the point of service.
    • Consequences of the absence of such system: The absence ensures is that the profit-driven private sector, the minor component, caters mainly to the affluent lot as largely a matter of deliberate choice rather than desperate compulsion.
      • Hopes of benefits of free-market belied: The Indian example, much like the United States’, bespeaks the failure of the idea that a free market will compel players to be more efficient.
      • The exploitation of the loops by the private players: Rather than increasing efficiency, the players have found it expedient to scrupulously exploit the prevailing cracks in the system and employ devious methods in order to maximise profits.

    Conclusion

    • Health-care providers, just like others, are moulded by their social surroundings. When necessary controls are loosened, the connatural vices are let loose; when the habitat is conducive to values, the right traits develop.
    • A system that starts off with health care as an overt tradable commodity it threatens the development of virtues in the system.
    • On the other hand, a system founded on the concept of equity cultivates a totally different culture of patient care.

     

     

  • Pulse Polio Programme

    The beginning of this year’s Pulse Polio Programme was inaugurated from the Rashtrapati Bhavan itself.  To prevent the virus from coming to India, the government has since March 2014 made the Oral Polio Vaccination (OPV) mandatory for those travelling between India and polio-affected countries.

    The Pulse Polio Programme

    • India launched the Pulse Polio immunisation programme in 1995, after a resolution for a global initiative of polio eradication was adopted by the World Health Assembly (WHA) in 1988.
    • Children in the age group of 0-5 years are administered polio drops during national and sub-national immunisation rounds (in high-risk areas) every year.

    India is polio-free

    • According to the Ministry of Health, the last polio case in the country was reported from Howrah district of West Bengal in January 2011.
    • The WHO on February 24, 2012, removed India from the list of countries with active endemic wild polio virus transmission.
    • Two years later, the South-East Asia Region of the WHO, of which India is a part, was certified as polio-free.

    Back2Basics

    What is Polio?

    • The WHO defines polio or poliomyelitis as a highly infectious viral disease, which mainly affects young children.
    • The virus is transmitted by person-to-person, spread mainly through the faecal-oral route or, less frequently, by a common vehicle (e.g. contaminated water or food) and multiplies in the intestine, from where it can invade the nervous system and can cause paralysis.
    • Initial symptoms of polio include fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness in the neck, and pain in the limbs. In a small proportion of cases, the disease causes paralysis, which is often permanent.
    • There is no cure for polio, it can only be prevented by immunization.

  • Drone Census

    India’s first drone census has seen only 2,500 Ownership Acknowledgment Numbers (OANs) being issued by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) since five days of beginning.

    Drone Census

    • The MoCA had issued a notice providing a one-time opportunity for voluntary disclosure of all drones and operators starting from January 14.
    • The DGCA issued the Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR), Section 3 – Air Transport Series X, Part I, Issue I, dated August 27, 2018 regulates use of drones.
    • It provides the process for obtaining Unique Identification Number, Unmanned Aircraft Operator Permit (UAOP) and other operational requirements; there are drones that do not comply with the CAR.
    • If a drone is not enlisted by 5 p.m. on January 31, then it will most definitely be confiscated.
    • After January 31, only authorised retailers will be allowed to sell them after uploading buyers’ Know your Customer (KYC) and sale invoice, similar to the sale of mobile phones and cars.

    Why such move?

    • The exercise will give the government a picture of who owns what kind of drone in which part of the country.
    • It will help in making policy decisions that should ideally become the base for understanding the scale of operations.

  • Irrawaddy Dolphins

    146 Irrawaddy dolphins were recently sighted in Chilika Lake of Odisha. The lake has highest single lagoon population of the aquatic mammal in the world.

    Irrawaddy Dolphins

    • IUCN Status: Endangered
    • Scientific Name: Orcaella brevirostris
    • Habitats: Lakes, Rivers, Estuaries, and Coasts

    • The Irrawaddy dolphin is a euryhaline species of oceanic dolphin found in discontinuous subpopulations near sea coasts and in estuaries and rivers in parts of the Bay of Bengal and Southeast Asia.
    • They are also found in coastal areas in South and Southeast Asia, and in three rivers: the Ayeyarwady (Myanmar), the Mahakam (Indonesian Borneo) and the Mekong.
    • The total population of these aquatic mammals in the world is estimated to be less than 7,500.
    • Of these, more than 6,000 Irrawaddy dolphins have been reported from Bangladesh, while the dolphin distribution in Chilika is considered to be the highest single lagoon population.

  • K-4 Missile

    India successfully test-fired the 3,500-km range submarine-launched ballistic missile, K-4. The test was carried out by the DRDO from a submerged pontoon off the Visakhapatnam coast around noon.

    K-4

    • K-4 is a nuclear-capable Intermediate-range submarine-launched ballistic missile developed and tested successfully in the month of January 2020 by DRDO.
    • The missile has a maximum range of about 3500 km.
    • Once inducted, these missiles will be the mainstay of the Arihant class of indigenous ballistic missile nuclear submarines (SSBN).
    • It will give India the standoff capability to launch nuclear weapons submerged in Indian waters.

    What’s so special about K-4?

    : Circular Error Probability

    • India’s Circular Error Probability (CEP) is much more sophisticated than Chinese missiles.
    • The CEP determines the accuracy of a missile.
    • The lower the CEP, the more accurate the missile is.
    • There are very few countries which have managed to achieve this technological breakthrough.

    About INS Arihant

    • The Advanced Technology Project (ATV) began in the 1980s and the first of them, Arihant, was launched in 2009.
    • INS Arihant, the first and only operational SSBN is armed with K-15 Sagarika missiles with a range of 750 km.
    • Given India’s position of ‘No-First-Use’ (NFU) in launching nuclear weapons, the SSBN is the most dependable platform for a second-strike.
    • Because they are powered by nuclear reactors, these submarines can stay underwater indefinitely without the adversary detecting it.
    • The other two platforms — land based and air launched are far easier to detect.

  • [op-ed of the day] Business possibilities in a world of digital payments

    Context

    UPI has brought digital payments to the common man and it has immense scope for growth.

    Zero MDR rate

    • Recently the finance minister made the announcement of the zero merchant discount rate (MDR) policy for payments through RuPay debit cards and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) instruments.
    • What does it mean? This policy dictates that when a consumer pays a merchant using RuPay or UPI, the bank may not charge the merchant a commission on the sale value that it usually charges a merchant.
    • Criticism of the move: Critics of this policy lament that it would begin to reverse the progress India has made in recent years to expand the digital payments network.

    Some facts and figures

    • Setting up of NPCI: In 2008 the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) was set up as an umbrella organization for operating retail payments and settlements in India. 
    • UPI:  In 2016, NPCI introduced UPI.
      • UPI has since registered 100 million users.
      • UPI now clocks more than 1 billion transactions every month.
    • Growth prospects for mobile payments: According to the NITI Aayog, mobile payments in India are expected to grow nearly 20-fold to $190 billion in the next three years.
    • Digital payment for the common man: There are 1 billion mobile phone users in India.
    • 420 million users have a feature phone, these users can use the *99# USSD service to dial into 13 different languages.
    • Which would connect them to UPI and brings digital payments to the common man.

    Need for innovation

    • We are far behind: India is far behind china, where 55% of spending is done digitally, compared to only 11% in India.
      • The outlook for future growth is mind-boggling.
      • There is a need for innovation at three levels.
    • First level-Adoption
      • A better understanding of human behaviour, technology, use cases and dis-use cases will facilitate the 10x growth necessary in adoption rates to cover the entire population.
    • Second level-Policy
      • The government has the rare opportunity to develop a data-centric understanding of how the economy conducts itself and uses money, and can set taxes accordingly.
    • Third level-Technology
      • Voice for authentication: At the technology level, there is an opportunity to use voice as a means for authentication and conduct transactions across multiple local languages.
      • Data analysis: Copious amounts of data from payment transactions can be analysed to understand user needs and develop personalized loans and financial solutions at scale.

    Taking UPI to Global Level

    • UPI in Singapore and UAE: The NCPI is gearing up to take UPI to other countries, beginning with Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
      • NCPI is working with its counterpart in Singapore, the Network for Electronic Transfers for Singapore, to bring UPI live in Singapore.
    • The low hanging fruit is to provide payment solutions to Indians travelling abroad.
    • Competition with global peers: The bigger and tougher game is to increase its usage among local people in countries outside India.
      • This would put UPI in competition with the likes of PayPal and Skrill.

    Conclusion

    We have seen just the tip, albeit a very substantial tip, of the digital payments iceberg. In the coming years, young business leaders of today must learn to uncover the iceberg itself.