Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

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Kerala to have 168 forward castes

News:

• The sub-castes among forward caste Hindus and Christians may soon be treated as castes, taking the number of forward castes in the State to 168.
• These include 149 castes from the Hindu community and 19 from Christians.

Beyond News:

• Earlier, there were 84 castes and 90 sub-castes in the forward communities. The KeralaState Commission for Economically Backward Classes among Forward Communities had drawn up the draft caste list the other day. These communities together account for 27.73% of the State population.
• The panel had earlier sought response from the public to finalise the list of forward caste communities that were out of caste-based reservation.
• The panel decided to consider the sub-castes in the Hindu and Christian communities as full-fledged castes to solve confusion over classification.
• At present, there are 70 sub-castes among the forward caste Hindu communities, including 24 in the Nair community.
• There are 13 Brahmin sub-castes.
• The 20 sub-castes among the forward caste Christians.
• Some Hindu sub-caste members objected to being classified under some particular caste and wanted to be marked as sub-caste of some other castes.
• The commission also fixed annual income of ₹8 lakh as the ceiling for identifying the economically weaker sections among the forward castes.
• The panel is understood to be in favour of an extensive survey to find out the representation of these communities in State service.
• It may also recommend that all benefits enjoyed by the Other Backward Communities be extended to these communities. The State should extend financial support for marrying off girls of these castes and offer assistance to its members for pursuing higher education, and identifying self-employment opportunities.
• The draft list of forward caste needs to be approved by the State government. A gazette notification is also required since no authentic data on forward castes are available.
• After the latest amendment to the Constitution, these castes are eligible for 10% reservation in educational institutions and government jobs.

Saudi announces launch of first communications satellite

News

• Saudi Arabia announced the launch of its first satellite for communications from the French Guiana Space Centre, Saudi Press Agency reported.

Beyond News

• The Indian National Satellite (INSAT) system is one of the largest domestic communication satellite systems in the Asia-Pacific region. The country’s 40th communication satellite, GSAT-31, was successfully put into orbit along with Saudi Arabia’s SGS-1.
• The launch aims at localising strategic technologies and enabling Saudi young people to work with state-of-the-art technologies in the field of satellite development and manufacturing.
• The satellite SGS-1 aims to employ advanced Ka-band capabilities to enable space communications at ultra-fast speeds, and will offer multiple applications including broadband telecommunications and secure communications for remote and disaster-stricken areas.
• Often abbreviated as comsat, a communications satellite is an artificial satellite that has been stationed in space for the purpose of providing telecommunications. This type of satellite provides services to television broadcasting, satellite newsgathering, societal applications, weather forecasting, disaster warning and search and rescue operations.
• These satellites relay signals from an earth station and then transmit them to other earth stations. Most of these satellites are in a geostationary orbit 35,700 km above the equator. Currently, there are about 2,134 communications satellites in Earth’s orbit, used by both private and government organisations.

Ambitious plan to reduce dependence on fossil fuels

News

• Encouraged by an increasing number of nations switching to solar energy in a big way, the International Solar Alliance (ISA) has set an ambitious target to mobilise investments to the tune of over US $ 1,000 billion by 2030.

Beyond News

• ISA is an alliance of more than 121 countries, initiated by India, with an objective to effectively exploit solar energy and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
• India has contributed $ 2 billion, while France has given 1 billion euros.
• The ISA is keen on setting up a World Solar Bank from where poor countries can get easy loans for solar projects.
• Moving forward, the ISA has plans to replicate the success tale of solar pumps in the country to other nations by installing five lakh of them in countries like Bangladesh, Uganda and Sudan.
• Encouraging nations to go for mini grids and roof-top solar projects in the industrial, commercial and residential sectors are some of the other priorities.
• With a financial assistance given by the European Union, the ISA has created a common platform for members to interact and share ideas. A master trainer programme, outreach events and promotion of solar awards are the issues the ISA focusses on.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

RBI cuts repo rate by 25 basis points to 6.25%

News:

• The six-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) decided to reduce the key policy rate or the repo rate by 25 bps to 6.25% in the last bimonthly policy review of 2018-19 while changing the policy stance to ‘neutral’ from ‘calibrated tightening’.

Beyond News:

• The rate cut is in line with expectations as retail inflation grew by 2.2% in Decemberits slowest in the last 18 months.
• This was the first policy under the new Governor Shaktikanta Das.
• Observing that actual inflation in the third quarter of 2018-19 was marginally lower than what was projected, the RBI said, there have been downward revisions in inflation projections during the course of the year, reflecting mainly the unprecedented soft inflation recorded across food sub-groups.
• The short-term outlook for food inflation appears particularly benign, despite adverse base effects.
• The RBI has revised the projection for Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation downward.

Asteroid help create continents

News:

• Heavy bombardment of Earth by asteroids from space over 3.8 billion years ago contributed to the formation of the early evolved crust on our planet, that later gave rise to continents.

Findings:

• In a time period called the Hadean eon, our planet Earth was constantly bombarded by asteroids, which caused the large-scale melting of its surface rocks, said researchers.
• Most of these surface rocks were basalts, and the asteroid impacts produced large pools of superheated impact melt of such composition.
• By studying the younger impact melt sheet of the Sudbury Igneous Complex (SIC) in Canada, the team inferred that ancient asteroid impacts were capable of producing various rock types from the earlier Earth’s basaltic crust.
• Most importantly, these impacts may have made the crust compositionally more evolved, i e silica-rich in composition.
• Traditionally, researchers believe that such silica-rich evolved rocks which are essentially building buoyant blocks of our continents can only be generated deep in the Earth, but they now argue that such blocks can be produced at new-surface conditions within impact melt pools.

KIA aims for 100% reliance on renewable energy by next year

 

News

• The Kempegowda International Airport (KIA), which currently meets 67% of its energy requirements through solar power, is aiming for 100% reliance on renewable energy by next year.
• A solar plant generating 3.5 MW of power was inaugurated. The plant has come up on eight rooftops on the premises of the airport.

Beyond News

• The airport has increased its consumption of solar power to over 50 MU (million units) through on-site and off-site solar power purchase agreements in a phased manner. The first phase was commissioned in 2017.
• 400 high pressure sodium vapour lamps on the air side have been replaced by LEDs. The move has helped the airport save 11.5 lakh units of electricity annually.

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