The Union Environment Minister has delivered the statement on behalf of the BASIC group of countries at the UN Climate Change Conference underway at Glasgow.
Who are the BASIC Countries?
The BASIC countries (also Basic countries or BASIC) are a bloc of four large newly industrialized countries – Brazil, South Africa, India and China.
It was formed by an agreement on 28 November 2009.
The four committed to act jointly at the Copenhagen climate summit, including a possible united walk-out if their common minimum position was not met by the developed nations.
This emerging geopolitical alliance, initiated and led by China, then brokered the final Copenhagen Accord with the United States.
What is the Copenhagen Accord?
The Copenhagen Accord is a document signed at COP 15 to the UNFCCC on 18 December 2009.
The Accord states that global warming should be limited to below 2.0 °C (3.6 °F).
It does not specify what the baseline is for these temperature targets (e.g., relative to pre-industrial or 1990 temperatures).
In January 2010, the Accord was described merely as a political agreement and not legally binding, as is argued by the US and Europe.
It is not legally binding and does not commit countries to agree to a binding successor to the Kyoto Protocol, whose round ended in 2012.
According to the UNFCCC, these targets are relative to pre-industrial temperatures.
There is a huge pool of unemployed university graduates with unfulfilled aspirations. This group of dissatisfied, disgruntled youth can lead to disastrous consequences for our society.
Enhanced enrollment
Reservation: The extension of reservations to OBCs and EWS increased the enrollment of students from these socio-economic backgrounds.
Increased education institutions: In addition, the massive increase in the number of higher education institutions has led to an enlargement of the number of available seats — there are more than 45,000 universities and colleges in the country.
The Gross Enrollment Ratio for higher education, which is the percentage of the population between the ages of 18-23 who are enrolled, is now 27 per cent.
Issues of employment opportunities
Unfortunately, the spectacular increase in enrollment in recent years has not been matched by a concomitant increase in jobs.
Employment opportunities in the government have not increased proportionately and may, in fact, have decreased with increased contractualisation.
Even in the private sector, though the jobs have increased with economic growth, most of the jobs are contractual.
Worse, the highest increase in jobs is at the lowest end, especially in the services sector — delivery boys for e-commerce or fast food for instance.
Thus what we see is a huge pool of unemployed university graduates with unfulfilled aspirations.
This group of dissatisfied, disgruntled youth can lead to disastrous consequences for our society, some of which we are already witnessing.
Way forward
A reduction in the rate of increase of universities and colleges might not be politically feasible given the huge demand for higher education.
Increase vocation institutions: A concurrent increase in the number of high-quality vocational institutions is something that can be done.
There are upwards of 15,000 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) in the country currently.
Upgrading the existing ITIs, opening many more new ones with high-quality infrastructure and updated curriculum is something which should be done urgently.
There is a scheme to upgrade some ITIs to model ITIs.
However, what is required is not a selective approach but a more broad-based one that uplifts the standards of all of them besides adding many more new ones.
Industry might be more than willing to pitch in with funding (via the CSR route) as well as equipment, training for the faculty and internships for students.
Conclusion
These steps could help mitigate the mismatch between employment opportunities and the increasing number of educated youth in the country.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) faces a negative net balance of Rs. 8,686 crores, including payments due.
About MGNREGA
It stands for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005.
This is labour law and social security measure that aims to guarantee the ‘Right to Work’.
The act was first proposed in 1991 by P.V. Narasimha Rao.
The objectives of the MGNREGA are:
To enhance the livelihood security of the rural poor by generating wage employment opportunities.
To create a rural asset base that would enhance productive ways of employment, augment and sustain a rural household income.
Features of MGNREGA
MGNREGA is unique in not only ensuring at least 100 days of employment to the willing unskilled workers, but also in ensuring an enforceable commitment on the implementing machinery i.e., the State Governments, and providing a bargaining power to the labourers.
The failure of provision for employment within 15 days of the receipt of job application from a prospective household will result in the payment of unemployment allowance to the job seekers.
Employment is to be provided within 5 km of an applicant’s residence, and minimum wages are to be paid.
Thus, employment under MGNREGA is a legal entitlement.
News: MGNREGS runs out of fund
The MGNREGS has run out of funds halfway through the financial year.
Supplementary budgetary allocations will not come until the next Parliamentary session begins.
Implications on laborers
Delayed payment: Due to this, payments for MGNREGA workers as well as material costs will be delayed, unless States dip into their own funds.
Livelihood loss: MGNREGA data shows that 13% of households who demanded work under the scheme were not provided work.
Halt of work: Many workers are simply turned away by officials when they demand work, without their demand being registered at all.
Fall in demands: This has led to stop the generation of work. There is an artificial squeezing of demand.
Why has MGNREGS acquired so much importance?
The MGNREGA, a demand-driven scheme, has provided many returnees relief during the covid imposed a lockdown for a year.
During last year’s COVID-19 lockdown it has provided a critical lifeline for a record 11 crore workers.
Try this PYQ:
Q. Which principle among the following was added to the Directive Principles of State Policy by the 42nd Amendment to the constitution?
(a) Equal pay for equal work for both men and women
(b) Participation of workers in the management of industries
(c) Right to work, education and public assistance
(d) Securing living wage and human conditions of work to workers
[wpdiscuz-feedback id=”nptq4a88id” question=”Please leave a feedback on this” opened=”1″]Post your answers here.[/wpdiscuz-feedback]
Last month, researchers from the Geological Survey of India collected some meteorite fragments near the town of Katol in Nagpur in 2012. Studying this, IIT Kgp researchers have unravelled the composition expected to be present in the Earth’s lower mantle which is at about 660 km deep.
Katol L6
Initial studies revealed that the host rock was mainly composed of olivine, an olive-green mineral.
Olivine is the most abundant phase in our Earth’s upper mantle.
Our Earth is composed of different layers including the outer crust, followed by the mantle and then the inner core.
Key findings: Presence of Bridgmanite
The study reported for the first time, presence of veins of the mineral bridgmanite, which is the most abundant mineral in the interior of the Earth, within the Katol L6 Chondrite meteorite.
Bridgmanite consists of magnesium, iron, calcium aluminium oxide and has a perovskite structure. It is the most volumetrically abundant mineral of the Earth’s interior.
It is present in the lower mantle (from 660 to 2700 km), and it is important to understand its formation mechanism to better comprehend the origin and evolution of planetary interiors.
What is the hypothesis of moon-formation?
The discovery of Bridgmanite in Katol L6 adds evidence to the Moon-forming giant impact hypothesis.
The Moon-forming giant impact hypothesis occurred nearly 4.5 billion years ago.
The Earth collided with a planet the size of Mars named Thela.
The force of this impact was so huge as to melt the Earth down from the surface to a depth of 750 km to 1,100 km.
The hypothesis goes that this caused the Earth to be bathed in a magma ocean, and the ejecta from the collision led to the formation of the Moon.
Note: Earth was an ocean of magma in the past. The heavier iron and nickel went to the core while the lighter silicates stayed in the mantle.
Future prospect of the study
This finding could help investigations of high-pressure phase transformation mechanisms in the deep Earth.
Back2Basics: Interior of Earth
Earths Structure
The earth is made up of three different layers: the crust, the mantle and the core.
The crust
This is the outside layer of the earth and is made of solid rock, mostly basalt and granite. There are two types of crust; oceanic and continental. Oceanic crust is denser and thinner and mainly composed of basalt. Continental crust is less dense, thicker, and mainly composed of granite.
The mantle
The mantle lies below the crust and is up to 2900 km thick. It consists of hot, dense, iron and magnesium-rich solid rock. The crust and the upper part of the mantle make up the lithosphere, which is broken into plates, both large and small.
The core
The core is the centre of the earth and is made up of two parts: the liquid outer core and solid inner core. The outer core is made of nickel, iron and molten rock. Temperatures here can reach up to 50,000 C.
The Prime Minister has recalled the rich contributions of Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar on Thevar Jayanthi.
Who was M. Thevar (1908-1963)?
Muthuramalingam was a politician and a patriarch of Thevar community in the state of Tamil Nadu.
He was elected three times to the national Parliamentary Constituency.
His legacy:
(a) Association with INC
Thevar attended the 52nd annual session of the Indian National Congress, held in Tripuri in March 1939.
At this meeting the presidency of Subhas Chandra Bose was challenged by Pattabhi Sitaramayya. Sitaramayya had the active support of Gandhi.
Bose was elected president again over Gandhi’s preferred candidate Pattabhi Sitaramayya.
Thevar strongly supported Bose in the intra-Congress dispute and joined the Forward Bloc.
(b) Opposition to the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA)
The CTA had been enacted in 1920 by the government of the Madras Presidency and was subsequently implemented in a piecemeal fashion.
CTA criminalized entire communities by designating them as habitual criminals.
Adult males of the groups were forced to report weekly to local police, and had restrictions on their movement imposed.
Thevar mobilised resistance to it, touring villages in the affected areas and leading protest rallies for the rights of the individuals registered under it.
(c) Temple entry movement
The Temple Entry Authorisation and Indemnity Act was passed by the government of C. Rajagopalachari in 1939.
This removed restrictions prohibiting Dalits from entering Hindu temples.
Thevar supported this reform and on 8 July 1939 he helped the activist A. Vaidyanatha Iyer take Dalits to Meenakshi Temple in Madurai.
A paper has recently published in the US has found that Integrated farming with intercropping increases food production while reducing environmental footprint.
What is the finding?
This work found that:
Relay planting enhances yield
Within-field rotation or strip rotation allowing strips for planting other plants (such as grass, fruits) besides the major crop was more fruitful
Soil munching that is, available means such as crop straw, in addition to the major crop such as wheat or rice, and
No-tillor reduced tillage, which increases the annual crop yield up by 15.6% to 49.9%, and decreasing the environmental footprint by 17.3%, compared with traditional monoculture cropping
Various terms mentioned
[A] Relay planting
Relay planting means the planting of different crops in the same plot, one right after another, in the same season.
Examples of such relay cropping would be planting rice (or wheat), cauliflower, onion, and summer gourd (or potato onion, lady’s fingers and maize), in the same season.
Benefits: It is less risk since you do not have to depend on one crop alone. It also means better distribution of labour, insects spread less, and any legumes actually add nitrogen to the soil.
[B] Strip cropping
Strip cropping has been used in the U.S. (where the fields are larger than those in India), where they grow wheat, along with corn and soybean, in the same farm in an alternative manner.
However, this needs large lands. The land is divided into strips, and strips of grass are left to grow between the crops.
Benefits: Planting of trees to create shelters has helped in stabilising the desert in Western India.
[C] Soil mulching and no-till
Soil mulching requires keeping all bare soil covered with straw, leaves, and the like, even when the land is in use.
Benefits: Erosion is curtailed, moisture retained, and beneficial organisms, such as earthworms, kept in place. The same set of benefits are also offered by not tilling the soil.
Significance of the findings
This research has led to the conclusion that small farm holders can grow more food and have reduced environmental footprint.
Current statistics reveal that our country has a significant population of small farmers, many owning less than 2 hectares of land.
About 70% of its rural households still depend primarily on agriculture for their livelihood, with 82% of farmers being small and marginal.
The sharp turns away from democracy seen recently in the country must jolt citizens into stopping the descent.
Equality in democracy
The central edifice of a democracy, or what makes it a revolutionary idea, is equality, or that it accords an equal status to all its people.
The promise of the far-sighted Indian Constitution was of equal rights to all.
If any benefit was accorded to smaller groups, religious or linguistic minorities or Dalits, it was in order to achieve substantive equality.
Faith as a differentiator
The basis of citizenship under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019, allowing for non-Muslims from three countries to fast-track their citizenship, was the most serious push to introduce religion into citizenship.
Impact on marital choice: In terms of marital choices, laws in the country in States where the national ruling party holds sway have drawn harsh attention on inter-faith couples.
The Gujarat law criminalising inter-faith marriages has been called out by the Gujarat High Court.
But the ordinance introduced in Uttar Pradesh (Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020) is now a law.
Food has been criminalised: Stringent laws on cattle end up penalising those who have a certain diet, namely beef. The mood in the country created and abetted by people close to the powers that be, has led to lynchings.
State governments and the Union government have mostly ignored the Supreme Court’s directions in 2018 to set up fast track courts, advice to take steps to stop hate messages on social media, or compensation to victims, or bringing in an anti-mob lynching law.
Circumscribe where on can reside: The Gujarat Prohibition of Transfer of Immovable Property and Provision for Protection of Tenants from Eviction from Premises in Disturbed Areas Act, popularly known as the Disturbed Areas Act, circumscribes where one can reside.
The act was brought in an atmosphere where there was communal rioting and forced displacement, to ostensibly protect communities from distress sales, the twist accorded to it over the years firmly makes the forced separation of communities. evident.
Hostile environment
Scholars like Thomas Blom Hansen and Paul Brass have unhesitatingly pointed to the role of violence that has historically been acceptable in Indian society and politics.
Scholars like Christophe Jaffrelot have pointed out that there will not be a seamless transition to an “ethnic democracy”.
The Indian nation is one formed on the promise of shared and participatory kinship, which recognised Indian nationalism as being distinct from the faith you practised at home.
Prioritising any one identity will have disastrous consequences and history provides enough evidence of this.
Conclusion
The mobs read together with actions of the Union government and that of State governments mark a sharp turn away from the democracy India claims it is. That must jolt us into recognising the distance we have already travelled down the wrong path. That may be the first step to try to wrest the descent into the darkness of an apartheid state.
The department for the promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT) in the ministry of commerce and industry is building an open network for digital commerce (ONDC), designed to curb digital monopolies and standardize the onboarding of retailers on e-commerce sites.
What does the ONDC aim to achieve?
The Unified Payment Interface (UPI) has disrupted the digital payments domain. ONDC seeks to achieve something similar for e-commerce.
It aims to “democratize” digital commerce, moving it away from platform-centric models like Amazon and Flipkart to an open network.
ONDC may enable more sellers to be digitally visible. The transactions will be executed through an open network.
The system may empower merchants and consumers.
It will eventually touch every business, from retail goods and food to mobility.
How would ONDC work?
The ONDC is still work in progress and the details are not public.
But what we know so far is the network may make it easier for a small retailer to be discovered.
A boon for retailers
Once a retailer lists its products or services using the ONDC’s open protocol, the business can be discovered by consumers on e-commerce platforms that follow the same protocol.
A consumer searching for the product can see the location of the seller and opt to buy from the neighbourhood shop that can deliver faster compared to an e-commerce company.
This may promote hyperlocal delivery of goods such as groceries, directly from sellers to consumers.
What are the next steps?
A private sector-led non-profit unit will be set up to fast-track its roll-out.
It is expected to provide a startup mindset enabled by a management with a futuristic vision, deep understanding of commerce and comfort with cutting edge technology.
A non-profit company structure removes any incentive for profit maxi-mization,
It would keep focus on ethical and responsible behaviour while providing for trust, rigorous norms of governance, accountability and transparency.
Union Health Minister has launched a nationwide expansion of Pneumococcal 13-valent Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) under the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP).
Why such drive?
Pneumonia was a leading cause of death among children under five, globally and in India.
Pneumonia caused by pneumococcus is the most common cause of severe pneumonia in children.
Around 16% of deaths in children occur due to pneumonia in India.
The nationwide roll-out of PCV will reduce child mortality by around 60%.
Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV)
The PCV is a mix of several bacteria of the pneumococci family, which are known to cause pneumonia—hence ‘conjugate’ is included in the name of the vaccine.
PCV prevents pneumococcal disease. It can protect both children and adults from pneumococcal disease.
Such conjugate vaccines are made using a combination of two different components.
Pneumonia vs Pneumococcal pneumonia
Pneumonia is a lung disease.
Pneumococcal pneumonia, a kind of pneumonia, can infect the upper respiratory tract and can spread to the blood, lungs, middle ear, or nervous system.
Pneumococcal disease is a name for any infection caused by bacteria called Streptococcus pneumonia or pneumococcus.
Most people carry pneumococcus in their nose and throat, where the bacteria do not cause any symptoms.
Take this yorker from CSP 2020:
Q.What is the importance of using Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccines in India?
These vaccines are effective against pneumonia as well as meningitis and sepsis.
Dependence on antibiotics that are not effective against drug-resistant bacteria can be reduced.
These vaccines have no side effects and cause no allergic reactions.
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
(a) 1 only
(b) 1 and 2 only
(c) 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3
[wpdiscuz-feedback id=”txjic5odbw” question=”Please leave a feedback on this” opened=”1″]Post your answers here.[/wpdiscuz-feedback]
It is designed to carry 3 persons in 2.1meter diameter Titanium Alloy Personnel Sphere with an operational endurance of 12hrs and systems to support emergency endurance up to 96hrs.
It could work at a depth between 1000 and 5500 meters.
Objectives
Samudrayan shall facilitate carrying out deep ocean exploration of the non-living resources such as polymetallic manganese nodules, gas hydrates, hydro-thermal sulphides and cobalt crusts.
The mission would carry out subsea activities such as high-resolution bathymetry, biodiversity assessment, geo-scientific observation, search activities, salvage operation and engineering support.
Focus areas of the Project
Ocean climate change advisory services
Underwater vehicles
Underwater robotics-related technologies
Deep-sea mining: Exploitation of polymetallic nodules
Components of the mission
Some of the critical subsystems of the manned submersibles are:
Development of Titanium Alloy Personnel Sphere, Human support and safety system in enclosed space, low density buoyancy modules, Ballast and Trim System
Pressure compensated batteries and propulsion system, control and communication systems and Launching and Recovery System.
Progress till date
The preliminary design of the manned submersible MATSYA 6000 is completed.
Sea trials of 500 metre rated shallow water version of the manned submersible are expected to take place in the last quarter of 2022 and the MATSYA 6000.
The deep-water manned submersible will be ready for trials by the second quarter of 2024.
Why need such mission?
This manned submersible mission provides a feel of direct physical presence for researchers and has better intervention capability.
With the advancing subsea technologies, the recent Fendouzhe manned submersible developed by China in 2020 has touched ~11000m water depths.
With Samudrayan, India joins the elite club of nations such as USA, Russia, Japan, France and China to have such underwater vehicles for carrying out subsea activities.
Back2Basics: India and International Seabed Authority (ISA)
The ISA, an autonomous international organization established under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, allots the ‘area’ for deep-sea mining.
India was the first country to receive the status of a ‘Pioneer Investor’ in 1987 and was given an area of about 1.5 lakh sqkm in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB) for nodule exploration.
In 2002, India signed a contract with the ISA, and after a complete resource analysis of the seabed, India surrendered 50%, and the country retained an area of 75,000 sqkm.
Further studies have helped narrow the mining area to 18,000 sqkm, the ‘First Generation Mine-site’.
