IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-01

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The locust attack in Gujarat’s farms.

News

• Gigantic swarms of locusts have descended on parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan, destroying crops and triggering panic. The first large swarm arrived in Gujarat about 10 days ago.
• In Rajasthan, Chief Minister reviewed measures taken to deal with locust attacks in the western districts.

Destroying crops locust control teams

• Some 10 swarms have entered Rajasthan since May; however, the crisis is currently the most acute in Gujarat.
• The government has formed 27 locust control teams that has been engaged in spraying insecticides in the affected regions, especially in the Banaskantha district of North Gujarat.
• The government has also ordered a survey of farmers affected by the locust swarms.
• About 20 tractor mounted sprayers are currently being used to fight the locust attack. These teams had covered 1,815 hectares of 99 villages of Banaskantha by using insecticide sprayers mounted on tractors.
• On December 23 and 24, the taluka development officer of Tharad had issued two advisories to all village sarpanchs and the principals of government primary and secondary schools, asking villagers to use primitive methods such as beating drums, chasing after the insects in large groups while making a loud noise, and spraying kerosene.
• The local office of the Agriculture Department in Banaskantha has issued a circular asking farmers and villagers to clang metal plates with sticks, which officials said will not allow the locust swarms to settle.
• The locust division of the Directorate of Plant Protection, Quarantine and Storage, Faridabad, under the Union Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, says that a small swarm of the desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria), a polyphagous feeder (eating a large variety of plants), eats on average “as much food in one day as about 10 elephants, 25 camels or 2500 people”.
• Locusts devour leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, bark and growing points, and also destroy plants by their sheer weight as they descend on them in massive numbers.
• The Locust Warning Organisation LWO (comprising of all field units), a central government body responsible for issuing warnings and monitoring and controlling locust attacks, undertakes regular surveys in the scheduled desert area of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Haryana, which are prone to swarms, to monitor the presence of desert locusts and ecological conditions.
• The assessment is to determine if the locust numbers have crossed the economic threshold level (ETL) which is 10,000 adults/ha. and 5-6 hoppers/bush that may require control.
• These surveys are done regularly during the entire year, but most importantly from May to November when desert locust activity is considered at its peak due to congenial breeding conditions.
• Officials of the Agriculture Department in Gujarat said that the locust menace is a natural occurrence which varies in intensity every year. The locusts remain inactive during evening and morning.
• Most swarms enter Gujarat through Rajasthan and Pakistan, riding on the wind to travel across large distances. India is most at risk of a swarm invasion just before the onset of the monsoon. The swarms usually orginate in the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa.
• The government has also ordered a survey of the farms that have been affected by locusts.

Panel works on how to split assets between J&K and Ladakh UTs

News

• Although the committee for division of assets between the newly formed Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh submitted its preliminary assessment two months ago, many contentious issues remain.
• These pertain to division of immovable assets owned by the erstwhile state in Delhi, Amritsar, Chandigarh and Mumbai, besides allocation of government officials of various state departments to the two UTs.

Split assets

• The three-member committee for division of assets between the two UTs, submitted an interim assessment report where it recommended certain guidelines for division of assets. The final report of the Committee is expected by the end of the current financial year.
• The committee, created an index which measured the backwardness, area, remoteness along with the historical deprivation suffered by Ladakh.
• As part of a restitution process towards Ladakh, the committee proposed a formula of 80:20 for dividing the divisible resources essentially liquid assets for J&K and Ladakh.
• Immovable assets located in the respective UTs are likely to remain in that UT, the big question is about the share of prime real estate properties outside the erstwhile state which will be given to Ladakh. There are six major properties in Delhi, Amritsar, Chandigarh and Mumbai, which include the Kashmir House on Delhi’s Rajaji Marg and J&K House in Chanakyapuri.
• Kashmir House is currently used by the Army and is unlikely to be vacated to be given to the two UTs. The division between the other properties also seems to be a tricky proposition as it would pose major challenges of management and control.
• A bungalow allocated to the erstwhile state government on Akbar Road is also something which cannot be realistically divided between the two UTs.
• The other issue is of allocation of government officials of various departments to the two UTs. As per provisions of the Reorganisation of J&K Act, an option has been given to various officials to choose between the two UTs.
• As a UT without legislature, the recruitment to fill these vacancies will have to be done by UPSC which will put local Ladakhis at a huge disadvantage. There is no clarity on grant of tribal status to residents of Ladakh or restrictions on landowning by non-residents in the region.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-02

Tamil Nadu tops good governance index, Maharashtra and Karnataka placed second, third

News

• Tamil Nadu topped the composite ranking for Good Governance Index (GGI), with Maharashtra and Karnataka bagging the second and third spot respectively, according to a report released by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances and the Centre for Good Governance.

Good Governance Index

• Chhattisgarh stood fourth, followed by Andhra Pradesh (fifth), Gujarat(sixth), Haryana (seventh) and Kerala (eighth). Madhya Pradesh bagged the ninth position, West Bengal tenth, followed by Telangana (11th), Rajasthan (12th), Punjab (13th), Orissa (14th), Bihar (15th), Goa (16th), Uttar Pradesh (17th) and Jharkhand at the eighteenth position in the big states category.
• Tamil Nadu has achieved excellence in sectors like public infrastructure, which measures indicators like access to potable water, towns that are Open Defection Free (ODF), connectivity to rural habitations, access to clean cooking fuel (LPG/PNG), 24×7 power supply etc.
• The state has also fared well in judicial and public security, which factors in indicators like conviction rate, availability of police personnel, proportion of women police personnel, disposal of court cases, etc.
• The states and Union Territories were divided into three groups big states, north-east and hill states and UTs for the rankings based on certain indicators separately. Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh are among the big states that have fared poorly in the rankings.
• In the North-East and Hill states, Himachal Pradesh has topped the list with a score of 5.22 followed by Uttrakhand and Tripura. Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland are the least performing states. Similarly, among Union Territories, Pondicherry, Chandigarh, and Delhi lead the ranking, with Lakshwadeep at the bottom.
• Under the agriculture and allied sector, Madhya Pradesh has got the first position followed by Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in the big states category. Mizoram has got the first position in north-east and hill states category and Daman and Diu has bagged the top slot in the UT category for the sector.
• In the commerce and industries sector, Jharkhand has got the first position in the big states category, followed by Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Among the north-east and hill states, Uttarakhand has achieved the top rank, whereas Delhi is at the first rank in the union territories category.
• Goa has got the first rank among big states for human resource development sector. Himachal Pradesh has got the first position among the north-east and hill states and Pondicherry is in the first place among the UTs for this sector.
• Under the economic governance sector, Karnataka has got the first position followed by Maharashtra, Telangana, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu among the big states. Uttarakhand has got the top rank in the north-east and hill states category. Delhi has got the first position in the union territories category for the sector.
• Chhattisgarh has got the first position in the social welfare and development sector ranking. Meghalaya has topped the slot for the northeast and hill states. Daman and Diu is in the first position in the UTs category for the sector.
• For the judicial and public security sector, Tamil Nadu has got the first position followed by Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat, Haryana, Orissa, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal and Bihar.
• Under the environment sector, West Bengal has got the first position followed by Kerala and Tamil Nadu among the big states. Jammu and Kashmir is in the first place among the north-east and hill states, and Chandigarh in the union territories category for the ranking under the environment sector.

Ordinance for ring fencing corporate debtors receives Cabinet approval

News

• The Union Cabinet approved the Ordinance to amend the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, under which a corporate debtor would not be held liable for any offences committed by the erstwhile management, before the start of the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP).

Ordinance to amend the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code

• This ring fencing of successful bidders under the CIRP process is aimed at protecting them from the risk of any criminal proceedings against them, arising from cases filed by various investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate or the Economic Offences Wing.
• The Bill to amend the IBC was introduced in the Lok Sabha during the recently passed Winter Session of Parliament. It has since been referred to the Standing Committee on Finance.
• The committee will examine the Bill and present its report within three months.
• The amendments to the Bill came after successful bidders of certain debt-ridden companies expressed apprehension of taking over the new company, fearing action from investigative agencies.

PM Modi launches Atal Bhujal Scheme, renames Rohtang Pass after Vajpayee

News

• On the birth anniversary of former prime minister late Atal Bihari Vajpayee , Prime Minister  launched the Atal Bhujal Scheme, which was approved by the Union cabinet, for better management of groundwater in seven states.

Atal Bhujal Scheme

• The World Bank-funded scheme focuses on the need to use technology which helps prevent wastage of water in various spheres, including agriculture.
• To mark the 95th birthday of Vajpayee, the Prime Minister also named Himachal Pradesh’s Rohtang passageway as Atal Tunnel.
• PM Modi unveiled statue of former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Lucknow and also laid the foundation stone for Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical University in the city.
• The Atal Jal scheme had been approved by the World Bank board in June 2018. It was waiting for the Union Cabinet’s approval for the last several months.
• The total budget of the scheme will be Rs 6,000 crore, of which Rs 3,000 crore will be contributed by the World Bank. The scheme will benefit seven states – Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
• Implementation of the scheme is expected to benefit nearly 8,350 Gram Panchayats in 78 districts in these states.

West Bengal minister denied visa by Bangladesh amid CAA row

News

• West Bengal minister and state president of Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind Siddiqullah Chowdhury has been denied visa by the Bangladesh government to visit the country.

Denied visa

• This development comes after Bangladesh Foreign Minister A K Abdul Momen and Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan cancelled their visits to India following the massive protests that erupted across the country following the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill in Parliament.

Country’s first university for transgender community to come up in UP’s Kushinagar

News

• The country’s first university for transgender community will be opened in Uttar Pradesh’s Kushinagar district to facilitate its members to study right from class one to PG and even do research and get PhD degree.
• The university, which will come up in Fazilnagar block of Kushinagar district, is being built by the Akhil Bhartiya Kinnar Siksha Seva Trust (All-India transgender education service trust).

Government constitutes expert panel to resolve oil, gas disputes

News

• With overhang of disputes choking investments in the oil and gas sector, the government has constituted an expert committee for time-bound resolution of exploration and production disputes without having to resort to tardy judicial process.

Expert committee

• The panel will have a tenure of three years and the resolution will be attempted to be arrived at within 3 months.
• India’s oil and gas sector has been plagued by disputes from cost recovery to production targets, and companies, as well as the government, have resorted to lengthy and costly arbitration followed by judicial review a process that takes years to resolve differences.
• The notification said the committee will arbitrate on a dispute between partners in a contract or with the government over commercial or production issues for oil and gas.
• Once a resolution has been referred to panel, the parties cannot resort to arbitration or court case to resolve it.
• The committee acting as conciliator or mediator will be allowed to take services of third-party or expert agency to aid and assist it in discharge of its functions as and when required.
• Upon receipt of a request referring dispute for resolution, the committee shall conduct the conciliation or mediation proceedings.
• For procedural aspect, the committee will be guided by the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, and the venue of the conciliation or mediation proceedings shall be New Delhi.
• It shall be open to the parties to make any suggestions, proposal or alternative proposals for amicable settlement of dispute.
• The parties are required to keep conciliation or mediation proceedings confidential and the same cannot be relied upon them as evidence in any arbitration or court proceeding.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-03

•  Annular Solar Eclipse

  Eclipse

  • An eclipse happens when the moon while orbiting the Earth, comes in between the sun and the Earth, due to which the moon blocks the sun’s light from reaching the Earth, causing an eclipse of the sun or a solar eclipse.

  Three types of eclipses

  • There are three types of eclipses: one is a total solar eclipse, which is visible only from a small area on Earth. According to NASA, people who are able to view the total solar eclipse are in the centre of the moon’s shadow as and when it hits the Earth. A total solar eclipse happens when the sun, moon and Earth are in a direct line.
  • The second type of a solar eclipse is a partial solar, in which the shadow of the moon appears on a small part of the sun.
  • The third kind is an annular solar eclipse, which happens when the moon is farthest from the Earth, which is why it seems smaller. In this type of an eclipse, the moon does not block the sun completely, but looks like a “dark disk on top of a larger sun-colored disk” forming a “ring of fire”.
  • Furthermore, during a solar eclipse the moon casts two shadows on the Earth, the first one is called the umbra, which gets smaller as it reaches the Earth. The second one is called the penumbra, which gets larger as it reaches the Earth.
  • According to NASA, people standing in the umbra see a total eclipse and those standing in the penumbra see a partial eclipse. One of the reasons that NASA studies solar eclipses is to study the top layer of the sun called the corona.

NTPC to invest Rs 50,000 crore to add 10GW solar energy capacity by 2022

News

• State-owned power giant NTPC is planning to add 10GW of solar energy generation capacity by 2022, which entails an investment of around Rs 50,000 crore, to be funded mainly by green bonds, a source has said.

Solar energy generation

• At present, NTPC has installed renewable energy capacity of 920 MW, which includes mainly solar energy. It has formulated a long term plan to become a 130 GW company by 2032 with 30 per cent non-fossil fuel or renewable energy capacity.
• The company will complete tendering of 2,300 MW of solar energy capacity by the end of this fiscal. Thereafter it has planned to add 4GW each in 2020-21 and 2021-22.
• The NTPC’s plans to add 10GW solar energy capacity assumes significance in view of India’s ambitious target of having 175GW of clean energy by 2022.
• The company would also set up some of its solar energy projects under scheme where it gets viability gap funding to keep the tariff below Rs 3 per unit level.
• The company will also set up solar energy projects without any long term (for 25 years) power purchase agreements (PPA) as it intends to sell the electricity to industrial as well as commercial consumers and also at energy exchanges, the source added.
• The sector regulator Central Electricity Regulatory Authority (CERC) has already approved the real time power market.
• In the real time power market, there would be 48 sessions of half an hour each in a day. This will allow consumers to get the desired power supply within an hour of buying at the energy exchanges.

SEBI rolls out stewardship code for all mutual funds and AIFs

News

• The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) announced Stewardship Code for all mutual funds and all categories of alternative investment funds.

Stewardship Code

• The code has laid down six principles which institutional investors will have to follow for their investments in listed securities.
• Under the Stewardship Code, the market regulator has asked fund houses and AIFs to formulate a comprehensive policy on the discharge of their stewardship responsibilities and how institutional investors should monitor their investments in listed companies.
• Sebi also said that institutional investors should have a clear policy on voting and disclosure of voting activity and they should report periodically on their stewardship activities.
• The six principles laid down by Sebi are intended to strengthen the role of fund houses as stewards on behalf of the investors. Under stewardship responsibilities, institutional investors are expected to have greater responsibility towards their beneficiaries by enhancing monitoring and engagement with their investee companies.
• Sebi has implemented principles on voting for Mutual Funds through which prescribed detailed mandatory requirements for mutual funds to disclose their voting policies and actual voting by Mutual funds on different resolutions of investee firms.
• The Stewardship Code shall come into effect from the April 1, 2020.
• Sebi said every institutional investor should formulate a policy on how it intends to fulfill the aforesaid stewardship responsibilities and disclose it publicly and have a clear policy on how they manage conflicts of interest in fulfilling their stewardship responsibilities and publicly disclose it.

Madras Waste Exchange: In a first, Chennai launches online portal for recyclable scrap

News

• In a bid to address the waste management issue in the city and reduce their carbon footprint, citizens of Chennai have begun segregating waste and recycling non-biodegradable waste generated in their households every day.

Madras Waste Exchange

• Madras Waste Exchange is a web portal-cum-mobile application that facilitates the trading of recyclable non-biodegradable waste by providing an online market to purchase and sell recyclable scrap materials and recycled products in Chennai.
• The Madras Waste Exchange website helps buyers and sellers identify each other through geotags.
• Traders have to register themselves on the Madras Waste Exchange and provide their location details, following which a One Time Password (OTP) will be sent to their registered mobile numbers for verification. Once verification is done, other registered buyers and sellers can view the materials for sale using the concerned vendor’s geotag.
• Individuals, apartment complexes, offices, schools, religious institutions and other establishments in the city can register themselves as traders in the exchange.
• The portal facilitates the trade of all solid municipal waste that can be recycled, such as plastic, clothes, glass and so on.
• While the Madras Waste Exchange helps connect private traders, the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) has set up Resource Recovery Centres (RRC), where the waste collected from households are segregated before being sent to the city’s landfills.

Earthquake Disaster Risk Index: Ratnagiri at high risk for casualties; Mumbai, Pune in ‘high exposure’ category

News

• Port town Ratnagiri is at a high risk for casualties in the event of an earthquake, an Earthquake Disaster Risk Index (EDRI), released earlier this month, has found.

Earthquake Disaster Risk Index

• The report, prepared by National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), indicates that while Mumbai and Pune are in the medium-risk category, high density of population makes them susceptible to “high exposure”.
• The EDRI also indicates that about 56 per cent area of India is prone to moderate to severe earthquakes.
• The NDMA, has prepared EDRI for 50 cities and one district on a pilot basis in seismically active zones around the country. The risk levels for casualties have been graded as low, medium and high.
• According to the index, Ratanagri is observed to have third highest risk at 69 per cent among all cities in seismic zone IV, after Shimla and Panipat.
• The cities were selected for the pilot study based on the population density, housing threat factor and if they were identified as smart cities. Seismically active regions in India, that is, seismic zones IV and V, were the main focus of the study.
• The report was prepared on the basis of field visits to 25 cities and collection of secondary data from the remaining cities. Among 50 cities, 13 cities were found to have high risk, 30 with medium and the remaining seven with low risk level.
• It was observed that among 13 cities with high risk level, seven cities have high hazard level. Aizawl, Solan, Gangtok and Vijayawada are the four cities which have high exposure among the 13 high-risk level cities.
• Similarly, Ghaziabad, Pune and Mumbai are three cities which have higher exposure among 30 cities with medium risk level.
• The risk, which is initially estimated of individual building typology in a city, was eventually projected onto the city using the Census data of total number of buildings in that city of that typology.
• The project also aims to increase general awareness about earthquake safety and to make homes earthquake resilient.
• The report also observes that one way is to educate architects and engineers is by putting in place an adequate framework for new buildings, determining the risk of existing buildings and suggesting techniques for reinforcing them.

New laser-based system to accurately spot space junk

News

• Researchers in China have improved the accuracy of detecting space junk in the Earth’s orbit, providing a more effective way to plot safe routes for spacecraft manoeuvres.

Space junk identification systems

• Scientists have developed space junk identification systems , it has proven tricky to pinpoint the swift, small specks of space litter. A unique set of algorithms for laser ranging telescopes, has significantly improved the success rate of space debris detection.
• Laser ranging technology uses laser reflection from objects to measure their distance. However, the echo signal reflected from the surface of space debris is very weak, reducing the accuracy. Previous methods improved laser ranging pinpointing of debris but only to a one-kilometer level.
• The new study is the first time a neural network has significantly improved the pointing accuracy of a laser-ranging telescope. Scientists trained a back propagation neural network to recognise space debris using two correcting algorithms.
• The observation data of 95 stars was used to solve the algorithm coefficients from each method, and the accuracy of detecting 22 other stars was assessed.
• The new pointing correction algorithms proved the most accurate, as well as easy to operate with good real-time performance.

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