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  • Need for technological solutions to use water for agriculture more sustainably

    The article examine the use of water for sugarcane and rice cultivation in India and its impact. 

    Water availability and usage in India

    • As per the Central Water Commission’s reassessment of water availability, India receives a mean annual precipitation of about 3,880 billion cubic meters (BCM) but utilises only 699 BCM (18 percent) of this; the rest is lost to evaporation and other factors.
    • The demand for water is likely to be 843 BCM in 2025 and 1,180 BCM by 2050.
    • As per the UN’s report on Sustainable Development Goal-6 (SDG-6) on “Clean water and sanitation for all by 2030”, India achieved only 56.6 per cent of the target by 2019.
    • Further, as per the Niti Aayog’s Composite Water Management Index (2019), 75 per cent households in India do not have access to drinking water on their premises.
    • India ranks 120th amongst 122 countries in the water quality index.
    • India is identified as a water-stressed country with its per capita water availability declining from 5,178 cubic metre (m3)/year in 1951 to 1,544 m3 in 2011 — this is likely to go down further to 1,140 cubic metre by 2050.

    How free or highly subsidised electricity skews water use pattern

    • Despite decades of large public and private investments in irrigation, only about half of India’s gross cropped area:198 million hectares is irrigated.
    • Groundwater contributes about 64 per cent, canals 23 per cent, tanks 2 per cent and other sources 11 per cent to irrigation.
    • This results primarily from incentive policy of free or highly subsidised power, particularly in the country’s north-west, the site of the erstwhile Green Revolution.
    • Overexploitation of groundwater has made this region amongst the three highest water risk hotspots.
    • Overall, about 1,592 blocks in 256 districts in India are either critical or overexploited.

    Need to focus on rice and sugarcane

    • Agriculture uses about 78 per cent of fresh water resources.
    • As per a NABARD-ICRIER study on Water Productivity Mapping, these crops alone consume almost 60 per cent of India’s irrigation water.
    • We need a paradigm shift to increase land productivity measured as tonnes per hectare (t/ha), and to maximise applied irrigation productivity measured as kilogrammes, or Rs, per cubic metre of water (kg/m3).
    • Figure 1 shows applied irrigation water productivity against land productivity for rice and sugarcane in important growing states.
    • Note that while Punjab scores high on land productivity of rice, it is at the bottom with respect to applied irrigation water productivity.
    • In the case of sugarcane, irrigation water productivity in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu is only 1/3rd of that in Bihar and UP (Figure 2).
    • There is, thus, a need to realign cropping patterns based on per unit of applied irrigation water productivity.

    Use of technology

    • There are technologies to produce the same output of rice and sugarcane with almost half the irrigation water.
    • Jain Irrigation, for instance, has set up drip irrigation pilots for paddy and sugarcane.
    • The results of these pilots indicate while it takes 3,065 litres of water to produce 1 kg of paddy grain (yield level 7.75 t/ha) under traditional flood irrigation, under drip, it can be reduced to just 842 litres.
    • The benefit cost ratio of drip with fertigation in case of sugarcane in Karnataka is observed to be 2.64.
    • An extension to this is the “Family Drip System” innovated by Israel-based — Netafim.
    • The company has also launched its largest demonstration project in Asia at Ramthal, Karnataka.
    • Technologies like Direct Seeded Rice (DSR) and System of Rice Intensification (SRI) can also save 25-30 per cent of water compared to traditional flood irrigation.

    Need for right pricing policies

    • Technological solutions cannot make much headway unless pricing policies of agri-inputs are put on the right track and farmers are incentivised for saving water.
    • The Punjab government, along with the World Bank and J-PAL, has started some pilots with an innovative policy of “Paani Bachao Paise Kamao” to encourage rational use of water among farmers.

    Consider the question “Examine the impact of rice and sugarcane cultivation on the groundwater table in India. How technological solutions can help use water more sustainably for agriculture?”

    Conclusion

    Overall, it seems it is time to switch from the highly subsidised price policy of water/power (and even fertilisers) to direct income support on a per hectare basis, and investment policies that help with newer technologies and innovations.

  • The Afghan Endgame and the US

    As the May 1 deadline for pulling out all American troops from Afghanistan nears, US President Joe Biden faces some difficult decisions.

    Key tasks for the US before they exit

    • The U.S. could abide by the promise made in the U.S.-Taliban agreement signed in February 2020 to withdraw the last of the around 2,500 American Marines stationed in Afghanistan.
    • However, Mr Biden has said it would be tough given the levels of violence there.
    • The US could negotiate with the Taliban for an extension of the agreement, offering other incentives like the release of more prisoners and the delisting of sanctioned Taliban terrorists.
    • The other option is to scrap the 2020 agreement and back the Ashraf Ghani government to continue towards a negotiated settlement, even as US troops remain in Afghanistan to stabilize the security situation.

    What is the US likely to do?

    • The US exit plan is still underway and that no decision on the length of stay or troop numbers have been made to this point, cleared the US Secy of Defence.
    • No U.S. troops have been targeted by Taliban militants in the past year, but violence against Afghan civilians, particularly women, journalists, students and activists has gone up manifold despite the peace agreement.
    • More than 3,000 civilians were killed in 2020.
    • The US has shown some impatience with the Ghani government as well, believing that it is dragging its feet on intra-Afghan negotiations that began last year in Doha but have stalled for the moment.

    Plans for Ashraf Ghani

    • A US plan proposes that Mr Ghani step up negotiations with the Taliban for “power-sharing”, discuss principles of future governance and step aside eventually for a “more inclusive” or interim government. The
    • The tone of the letter seems to make it clear that the US is not in favour of completely scrapping the 2020 agreement.
    • Therefore, it is most likely to pursue the option of negotiating for an extension of the agreement, according to experts, as it builds other dialogue platforms.

    Try this question from our AWE Initiative:

    What is President Ghani’s plan?

    • Ghani has proposed his own peace plan.
    • It would involve a full ceasefire, inviting the Taliban to participate in early elections in Afghanistan, and then for Mr Ghani to hand over power to the elected government.
    • He also said no regional talks could be successful if they did not include India, which is a development partner and a stakeholder.

    Where does India stand?

    • India’s position has been to back an “Afghan-owned, Afghan-led, Afghan-controlled” peace process, backing the elected government in Kabul, and it has not yet held talks with the Taliban directly.
    • As a result, its option remains to stand with the Ghani government and support the constitution that guarantees a democratic process and rights of women and minorities, over any plans the Taliban might have if they come to power.
    • At the same time, India has not foreclosed on the option of talking to the Taliban if it does join the government in Afghanistan.
    • India too has made it clear that it seeks to be an integral part of the process, as the outcomes will have a deep impact on India’s security matrix as well.

  • Unique Land Parcel Identification Number (ULPIN) Scheme

    The Centre plans to roll out the Unique Land Parcel Identification Number (ULPIN) Scheme.

    ULPIN Scheme

    • The ULPIN scheme has been launched in ten States this year and will be rolled out across the country by March 2022, the Department of Land Resources told the Standing Committee on Rural Development.
    • It would allot a 14-digit identification number to every plot of land in the country within a year’s time.
    • It will subsequently integrate its land records database with revenue court records and bank records, as well as Aadhaar numbers on a voluntary basis.
    • The scheme will enhance the service deliveries to the citizen of the country and will also function as inputs to the schemes of the other sectors like Agriculture, Finance Disaster Management etc.

    “Aadhaar number” for Land

    • Officials described it as “the Aadhaar for land”, a number that would uniquely identify every surveyed parcel of land and prevent land fraud, especially in the hinterlands of rural India, where land records are outdated and often disputed.
    • The identification will be based on the longitude and latitude coordinates of the land parcel and is dependent on detailed surveys and geo-referenced cadastral maps, according to a presentation the Department made to States in September 2020.
    • This is the next step in the Digital India Land Records Modernization Programme (DILRMP), which began in 2008 and has been extended several times as its scope grew.

    Try this PYQ:

    Q.Consider the following statements:

    1. Aadhaar card can be used as proof of citizenship or domicile.
    2. Once issued, the Aadhaar number cannot be deactivated or omitted by the Issuing Authority.

    Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 2 only

    (c) Both 1 and 2

    (d) Neither 1 nor 2

    A cost-effective approach

    • Linking Aadhaar with land records through ULPIN would cost ₹3 per record while seeding and authentication of landowner Aadhaar data would cost ₹5 each.
    • It added that the integration of the Aadhaar numbers with the land record database would be done on a voluntary basis.

  • Election Commission’s new rule for polling agents

    The Election Commission’s recent decision to change the rules for appointing polling agents has sparked off a debate in West Bengal.

    Who is a Polling Agent?

    • A polling agent is a person appointed as a representative of a political party as it is not possible for a candidate to be physically present at every polling booth on the day of the elections.
    • Therefore, the Election Commission allows a candidate to appoint a polling agent who keeps an eye on the voting process.

    What is his/her role?

    • As per the EC’s rules, a polling agent should be familiar with the rules and procedures to conduct elections using EVMs and VVPATs, and with the working of these machines.
    • Towards this end, a polling agent attends the demonstrations arranged by the Returning Officer, where the functioning and operation of these machines are explained.

    How were they appointed earlier?

    • As per the earlier practice, polling agents had to be voters of the same polling stations or at least the neighbouring polling stations of the booth where she has been posted at.

    Try this PYQ from CSP 2017:

    Q.Consider the following statements:

    1. The Election Commission of India is a five member body.
    2. Union Ministry of Home Affairs decides the election schedule for the conduct of both general elections and bye-elections.
    3. Election Commission resolves the disputes relating to splits/mergers of recognized political parties.

    Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

    (a) 1 and 2 only

    (b) 2 only

    (c) 2 and 3 only

    (d) 3 only

    Answer: D

    What does the new rule say?

    • The ECI, revising the rule, has allowed a party to nominate a polling agent for any booth within the assembly segment where the person is an electorate of.
    • So, any voter from within an Assembly constituency can be a polling agent of any booth within that constituency.

    Issues with the rule

    • The political parties are opposing the change in rules, calling it “arbitrary, motivated and biased”.
    • They have also written to the Election Commission seeking withdrawal of the order.

    What is the EC’s stand?

    • The poll body has defended the change in a rule saying that the new norms have been formulated so that every political party gets to appoint polling agents.
    • It is difficult to convince people to sit at the booths amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Back2Basics: Election Commission of India (ECI)

    • ECI is an autonomous and permanent constitutional authority responsible for administering election processes in India at national and state level.
    • The body administers elections to the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, State Legislative Assemblies, State Legislative Councils and the offices of the President and Vice President of the country.
    • It operates under the authority of the Constitution per Article 324 and subsequently enacted the Representation of the People Act.
    • The commission has the powers under the Constitution, to act in an appropriate manner when the enacted laws make insufficient provisions to deal with a given situation in the conduct of an election.
    • Being a constitutional authority, Election Commission is amongst the few institutions which function with both autonomy and freedom, along with the country’s higher judiciary, the UPSC and the CAG.

  • Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project

    The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, in its draft budget for 2021-22, has set aside Rs 1050 crore for the Sabarmati River Front Development phase 2, work on which is to begin soon.

    Rs 1050 crore fund! See how rich even the Municipal Corporations in India are!

    Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project

    • The SRDP is an environmental improvement, social uplift and urban rejuvenation project that will renew Ahmedabad.
    • The project is being developed by the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corporation Ltd. (SRFDCL), a company wholly owned by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation.
    • The project will reclaim approximately 200 hectares of land from the riverbed.
    • To reclaim the land, protect low lying developments from floods, and prevent erosion of the river banks, retaining walls have been built on both sides of the river.
    • Since Sabarmati is a seasonal river, water is channelled into the river from the Narmada canal, which intersects the river upstream from Ahmedabad and is retained in the river using the Vasna Barrage which is located downstream.

    Significance of the project

    • The reclaimed land will make Ahmadabad’s riverfront, a public asset.
    • The project will provide Ahmedabad with 11.5 km long pedestrian promenades at the water’s edge along both the banks of the river.
    • In addition, many new public facilities will be built on the reclaimed land: cultural centres, museums, sports facilities, trade fair grounds and open-air markets.
    • A small portion of the reclaimed land will be sold for private commercial and residential developments.
    • The project has won Prime Minister’s National Award for Excellence in Urban Planning and Design in the year of 2003.

    Also, revise the concept of Water Divide from your NCERTS or refer to this link: https://www.ncert.nic.in/ncerts/l/iess103.pdf

    Back2Basics: Sabarmati River

    • Sabarmati is one of the major west-flowing rivers in India. Being a rain-fed river it runs dry most of the year.
    • It originates in the Aravalli Range of the Udaipur District of Rajasthan and meets the Gulf of Khambhat of the Arabian Sea after travelling 371 km in a south-westerly direction across Rajasthan and Gujarat.
    • 48 km of the river length is in Rajasthan, while 323 km is in Gujarat.
    • There are several reservoirs on Sabarmati and its tributaries. The Dharoi dam is located on the main river. Hathmati dam, Harnav dam and Guhai dam are located on the tributaries.

  • What is the 2008 Lehman Crisis?

    The fire sale of about $20 billion of Archegos assets, comprising Chinese and US stocks, has sent jitters in the global financial markets, raising worries that the event could be a possible “Lehman moment”.

    What is the Lehman Crisis?

    • The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, was the climax of the subprime mortgage crisis.
    • After the financial services firm was notified of a pending credit downgrade due to its heavy position in subprime mortgages, the Federal Reserve summoned several banks to negotiate to finance for its reorganization.
    • These discussions failed, and Lehman filed a petition that remains the largest bankruptcy filing in US history, involving more than US$600 billion in assets.

    Note: The subprime mortgage crisis occurred when the real estate market collapsed and homeowners defaulted on their loans.

    What defines the moment?

    • It signalled a limit to the government’s ability to manage the crisis and prompted a general financial panic.
    • Money market mutual funds, a key source of credit, saw mass withdrawal demands to avoid losses, and the interbank lending market tightened, threatening banks with imminent failure.
    • The government and the Federal Reserve system responded with several emergency measures to contain the panic.

    Other terminologies:

    Margin Call

    • Typically, a margin call occurs when the value of an investor’s margin account falls below the broker’s required amount during a market correction or sell-off.
    • As the margin account contains securities bought with borrowed money, a margin call occurs when lenders demand that an investor deposit additional money or securities into the account so that it is brought up to the minimum value.
    • A margin call is usually an indicator that the securities held in the margin account have decreased in value.
    • When a margin call occurs, the investor must choose to either deposit more money in the account or sell some of the assets held in their account.
    • If the investor fails to pay up the margin amount, the lender will resort to the sale of assets lying in the investor’s account.

  • Large Hadron Collider beauty Experiment

    The LHCb experiment at CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research) has announced the results of their latest analysis of data.

    LHCb Experiment: An easy explanation

    • LHCb is an experiment set up to explore what happened after the Big Bang that allowed the matter to survive and build the Universe we inhabit today.
    • Fourteen billion years ago, the Universe began with a bang.
    • Crammed within an infinitely small space, energy coalesced to form equal quantities of matter and antimatter.
    • But as the Universe cooled and expanded, its composition changed.
    • Just one second after the Big Bang, antimatter had all but disappeared, leaving the matter to form everything that we see around us — from the stars and galaxies to the Earth and all life that it supports.

    What is the new finding?

    • CERN scientists are excited enough to reveal that if the anomaly they had detected was confirmed.
    • Because, if confirmed, it would require a new physical process, such as the existence of new fundamental particles or interactions.

    What is this excitement all about?

    It is necessary to delve into the world of elementary particles to understand this.

    (1) Particle zoo

    Until now it is believed that the electron, muon and tauon and their antiparticles, though they differ in mass, behave similarly in particle interactions.

    • Broadly speaking, elementary particles are classified into the particles called baryons – which include protons, neutrons and their antiparticles the antiprotons etc.
    • The “middle mass” particles, roughly speaking, are called the mesons and they include members such as the K and B particles.
    • We then have the leptons, which include the electron and its cousins the muon and tau particles and the anti-particles.
    • At a still smaller scale, there are tiny particles called quarks and gluons.
    • There are six flavours of quarks: up, down, truth, beauty, charm and strange. They too have antiquarks associated with them.

    In this particle zoo, while the baryons are made up of combinations of three quarks, the mesons contain two quarks, more accurately a quark and antiquark pair, and the leptons are truly fundamental and are thought to be indivisible.

    Do you know?

    Higgs Boson is called the god particle.

    (2) Colliding particle beams

    By interactions here, is meant the following:

    • If a huge particle accelerator such as the LHC were to accelerate beams of hadrons (such as protons) to very high speeds, a fraction of that of light, and then cause them to collide.
    • Basically, smash through the repulsive nuclear forces and shatter them, the hadrons would break up into constituents which would recombine to form short-lived particles, which would decay into stabler states.
    • Roughly speaking, during this process, they are imaged in a huge multistorey detector and the number of specific processes and particles are counted.

    (3) Lepton universality principle

    • One such process that was measured was the decay of a meson B (which contained the beauty quark) into K-meson (which contains the strange quark) and a muon-antimuon pair, and this was compared with the decay of B into K and an electron-antielectron pair.
    • The expectation is that the ratio of the strengths of these two sets of interactions would be just one.
    • This is because the muons are not essentially different from the electrons as per the Standard Model, the presently accepted theoretical model of all elementary particle interactions.
    • This is called the lepton universality principle.

  • Species in news: Hypnea Indica

    Two new species of seaweed have been discovered by a group of marine biologists from the Central University of Punjab, Bathinda.

    What are the species?

    • Named Hypnea indica (after India) and Hypnea bullata (because of the blisterlike marks on its body – bullate), the seaweeds are part of the genus Hypnea or red seaweeds.
    • They grow in the intertidal regions of the coast, namely the area that is submerged during the high tide and exposed during low tides.

    Do you know?

    Red Algae have great ecological importance. They form a vital part of the food chain and are also involved in producing about 40 to 60 per cent of the total global oxygen for both terrestrial habitat and other aquatic habitats.

    Details of the genus

    • The genus Hypnea consists of calcareous, erect, branched red seaweeds.
    • While Hypnea indica was discovered Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, and Somnath Pathan and Sivrajpur in Gujarat, Hypnea bullata was discovered from Kanyakumari and Diu island of Daman and Diu.
    • There are 61 species of which 10 were reported in India.

    Significance for the food industry

    • Species of Hypnea contain the biomolecule carrageenan, which is widely used in the food industry.
    • As the two species have been found on the west and south-east coasts of India, it suggests good prospects for their cultivation which can be put to good use economically.
    • The extensive calcareous deposit on the body that has been observed also provides room for thought.

  • [pib] Exercise Desert Flag-VI

    Exercise Desert Flag –VI has successfully culminated with the de-induction of the Indian contingent from the UAE.

    Ex Desert Flag

    • It is an annual multi-lateral large force employment exercise hosted by UAE.
    • The sixth edition of the exercise was conducted at Air Force Base Al Dhafra, UAE.
    • IAF participated in the exercise for the first time, fielding Su-30MKI fighter aircraft.
    • Six countries; UAE, USA, France, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain apart from India participated with aerial assets. Jordan, Greece, Qatar, Egypt and South Korea participated as observer forces.

    Objective of the exercise

    • The aim for the participating crew and specialist observers was to expose them to operational environment in scenarios requiring multinational forces working together.
    • A multinational exercise in UAE with friendly forces afforded a unique opportunity to gain valuable learning to all the participating forces.

    Must read:

    [Prelims Spotlight] Defence Exercises

  • Space weather preparedness is in our national interest

    The article suggests the need for space weather preparedness to protect the satellite constellations in the future.

    Satellite constellations

    • By 2030, the global space industry could add almost 50,000 new commercial satellites to the existing 5,000.
    • These would include earth-observation satellites selling commercial imagery, telecom orbiters providing 5G and next-in-line 6G data services, and meteorological ones selling weather-forecasts and datasets.
    • The increasing dependence of the digital economy on satellite constellations is spurring investment in this area.

    Risks involved

    • The most important threat to the constellation of satellites will be the collisions between satellites.
    • Such collision could result in massive free-floating space debris.
    • A 2020 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report estimates that protecting satellites from space debris could cost 5-10% more per space mission.
    • Another threat to satellite constellations is that of extreme space weather events, and this cannot be addressed by space and digital players alone.
    • It demands the attention of governments.

    Improving space weather forecasting ability

    • Last October, the US Congress passed an Act that directs civilian and military agencies to reinforce national space weather forecasting abilities.
    • China transferred its meteorological, hydrological and space weather command from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) general staff department to the PLA strategic support force, the latter being its new branch for cyber, space and e-warfare.

    Lessons for India

    • India’s economy is expected to become increasingly dependent on space- and ground-based commercial, civilian and military assets.
    • These will be vulnerable to extreme space weather events.
    • India is progressing with its capital-intensive planetary exploration and human space-flight projects.
    • we must deploy across-the-board space-weather monitoring, forecasting and response systems designed to safeguard deep-space assets and protect our gaganauts.
    • Consequently, it is imperative for the government to develop and adopt space weather forecasts before initiating outer space activities.
    • India, therefore, needs legislation like America’s to issues cross-ministerial directions.
    • The Indian scientific community operates numerous ground-based ‘sun observing’ telescopes across India, and is well connected with its international peers.
    • In the coming months India is expected to launch Aditya-L1, a space-based solar observatory, with assistance from the Indian Space Research Organisation.
    • The data generated by it will be crucial for India’s space weather monitoring ambitions.
    • But without a national policy backed by legislation, the scientific community would find it difficult to meet the strategic demands of the conjoined space and digital economies.

    Consider the question “The increasing dependence of the digital economy on satellite constellations is spurring investment in this area. But it is not risk-free. In light of this, examine the risks involved and suggest the measures to deal with the risks.” 

    Conclusion

    The enactment of a space weather law could help the country protect its digital and telecom systems that extend to outer space from destructive solar storms and intense solar and galactic radiation whiplashes.