IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-01

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It’s time to do away with ‘ghoonghat’, says Rajasthan CM

News

• Stressing on the importance of women empowerment for nation-building, Rajasthan Chief Minister said the custom of ‘ghoonghat’ must be eradicated at the earliest.

Covering women’s faces

• Expressing displeasure at the practice of covering women’s faces with a ‘ghoonghat’ or veil in some rural areas, Rajasthan Chief Minister said the custom belongs to a bygone era.
• Rajasthan Chief Minister said women will be able to come forward and play a constructive role in nation-building only when they are not forced to cover their faces.
• Rajasthan Chief Minister also emphasised the importance of eradicating the practice of child marriages, saying it destroys the lives of children.
• The Chief Minister said his government is serious about crime against women and therefore decided earlier this year to depute a senior police officer at the district level to monitor cases of crime against women.
• While the State government has been providing self-defence training to school girls, Rajasthan Chief Minister has now directed officials to extend the programme to all girls willing to join it.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-02

Will resolve outstanding issues raised by India for not joining RCEP: China

News

• China said that it will follow the principle of “mutual understanding and accommodation” to resolve the outstanding issues raised by India for not joining the Beijing-backed mega Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
• China also said it would welcome India joining the deal at an early date.

India’s decision

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi conveyed India’s decision not to join the RCEP deal at a summit meeting of the 16-nation bloc, effectively wrecking its aim to create the world’s largest free trade area having half of the world’s population.
• India has been forcefully raising the issue of market access as well as protected lists of goods mainly to shield its domestic market as there have been fears that the country may be flooded with cheap Chinese agricultural and industrial products once it signs the deal.
• Chinese President Xi Jinping also referred to the RCEP deal in his address on Tuesday at Shanghai while inaugurating the China International Import Expo but skirted India’s decision to opt out of the deal.
• The RCEP negotiations were launched by ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) leaders and six other countries during the 21st ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh in November 2012.
• The negotiations for the proposed free-trade agreement included 10 member countries of the ASEAN and six of the bloc’s dialogue partners — China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.

Karnataka recorded highest TB deaths in 2018

News

• At 6.2%, Karnataka has recorded the highest tuberculosis (TB) death rate in the country in 2018.
• This is higher than the national TB death rate of 4% in public sector.

Tuberculosis death rate

• Doctors see this as a worrisome trend, especially when the success rate of treatment in the public sector is 80% is the State.
• Karnataka is followed by Gujarat, Puducherry, and Tripura that have recorded 6%, 5.5%, and 5.2%, respectively.
• Attributing this to the high prevalence of TB-HIV co-infection, health officials said among those tested for TB in the last one year in the State, 10.3% were HIV positive patients and 70% of patients with TB have a known HIV status.
• Nearly 40% of the over 16,000 new HIV cases detected in the State are reported to have TB as a co-infection.
• According to India TB Report, 2019, over 90% of PLHIV are being screened in ART centres for TB symptoms, and nearly 6 lakh PLHIV have been given access to rapid molecular testing via CBNAAT (cartridge based nucleic acid amplification test) for TB diagnosis.
• The report said that nearly one lakh TB/HIV patients were initiated on daily drug regimen and nearly 5 lakh PLHIV were initiated on TB preventive therapy across the country till December 2018. The Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) has expanded its collaboration with Diabetes and Tobacco Control Programmes and is being further strengthened with cross linkage of services.
• Nearly 36% and 27% of the TB patients in public sector have been screened for diabetes and tobacco usage, respectively, and linked to appropriate services through the Non-Communicable Disease Programme and the Tobacco Control Programme.
• TB is a notifiable disease in the country since May 2012, for which the government has set up a web-based, case-based notification network called NIKSHAY. Despite awareness regarding mandatory TB notification, a significant number of private practitioners do not report cases and this has led to cases being missed out of government data.
• According to the India TB Report, 2019, of the 83,094 patients who were notified for TB in Karnataka in 2018, only 17.38% amount for private sector notification. The private sector notifications increased by 20% in 2018 (14,437 in 2018 as against 11,988 in 2017).
• In 2018, the total TB case notifications (83,094) increased by 2.34% over last year of which public sector notifications amount to 82.62%.
• While over half of all TB patients in India seek care in the private sector, the case notifications from the private sector are way behind those in government hospitals across the country.

• ‘Indian lungs under extreme stress’

  News

  

  • Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI) accounted for 69.47% of morbidity last year which was the highest in the communicable disease category leading to 27.21% mortality.

  Acute Respiratory Infections

  • Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal reported a large number of patients and fatalities due to ARI as per the National Health Profile-2019.
  • According to World Health Organisation, acute respiratory infection is a serious ailment that prevents normal breathing function and kills an estimated 2.6 million children annually every year worldwide.
  • Indians face the double burden of heavy air pollution in addition to the high rate of ARI which hits children the hardest, said experts here.
  • The high level of air pollution would be an additional burden to the already high rate of ARI that the country is facing.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-03

Economic slowdown will lighten India’s carbon burden

News

• There’s a silver lining to India’s economic slowdown. Carbon dioxide emissions are poised to grow at their slowest a 2% rise from last year since 2001, according to an analysis.

Carbon dioxide emission

• The rise in C02 emissions from India sees wild swings from 7.7% in 2014 to 3.5% the next year and then back to 7.8% in 2018.
• This is the first time that emissions are expected to grow below 3% from the previous year.
• Analysis, based on data from various Ministries responsible for electricity, coal, oil, gas and foreign trade, shows that emissions increased by 2% in the first eight months of the year, a lower rate than any annual increase since 2001.
• Slower growth in coal-based power generation will also benefit the country’s air quality efforts, as essentially all coal-fired power plants lack pollution controls commonly required in.
• Industrial coal use fell dramatically in 2017 because of a slowdown in the construction sector and bounced back in 2018.
• Wind generation rose by 17% in the first six months of 2019 compared to the same period a year earlier, with solar up 30% and hydro increasing by 22%.
• Last year, a report by the International Energy Emissions Agency said India’s per capita emissions were about 40% of the global average and contributed 7% to the global carbon dioxide burden. The U.S., the largest emitter, contributed 14%.
• As per its commitments to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, India has promised to reduce the emission intensity of its economy by 2030, compared to 2005 levels.
• It has also committed to having 40% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.

NASA’s Voyager 2 becomes second spacecraft to reach interstellar space

News

• More than four decades after beginning its epic journey, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft has crossed the elusive boundary that marks the edge of the Sun’s realm and the start of interstellar space, scientists have announced.

Voyager 2

• According to the researchers, Voyager 2 has entered the interstellar medium (ISM), the region of space outside the bubble-shaped boundary produced by wind streaming outward from the Sun.
• This makes Voyager 2 the second human-made object to journey out of the Sun’s influence, following the US space agency’s Voyager 1’s solar exit in 2012.
• The study, confirmed Voyager 2’s passage, into the ISM by noting a definitive jump in plasma density detected by a plasma wave instrument on the spacecraft.
• The marked increase in plasma density is evidence of Voyager 2 journeying from the hot, lower-density plasma characteristic of the solar wind to the cool, higher-density plasma of interstellar space.
• It is also similar to the plasma density jump experienced by Voyager 1 when it crossed into interstellar space.
• Voyager 2’s entry into the ISM occurred at 119.7 astronomical units (AU), or more than 11 billion miles from the Sun. Voyager 1 passed into the ISM at 122.6 AU.
• Data from the instrument on Voyager 2 also gives additional clues to the thickness of the heliosheath, the outer region of the heliosphere and the point where the solar wind piles up against the approaching wind in interstellar space, which Gurnett likens to the effect of a snowplow on a city street.

Smog in Chennai

News

• Chennai experienced haze and smog in many parts causing concern among residents.
• The Meteorological Department said the haze over the city was due to local pollution and had no connection with the pollution in Delhi.

No connection with the pollution in Delhi

• Director, Area Cyclone Warning Centre, Chennai, said polluted air travelling for such a long distance was not possible. Surface-level air could not travel such distances, it was purely a local phenomenon in Chennai as interior parts of the State had not experienced such haze.
• Chennai had high humidity levels up to 95% and the high moisture content in the air absorbed the carbon particles and caused the haze. Hazy skies were more prevalent near and over waterbodies and localities close to the sea, where moisture content is usually high.
• As there was not enough wind circulation, the moist air from the sea mixed with the automobile and industrial pollutants and led to smog.

Pollution levels register dip due to wind

News

• High wind speed helped bring down pollution levels in the city even as the Air Quality Index (AQI) clocked in at 407, which falls in the ‘severe’ category.
• The AQI was 494, as per the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).

Pollution level

• The air quality is expected be in the ‘very poor’ category and may further improve, according to government-run monitoring agency SAFAR (System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research).
• The share of pollution in the city due to stubble burning in neighbouring States was 14%, down from 25%, stated SAFAR.
• High surface and boundary-layer wind is expected, which will improve air quality to ‘very poor’ level. A fresh western disturbance is approaching north India, scattered rainfall and change in wind direction is expected in Delhi region, which is likely to positively influence AQI.
• The level of deadly respirable particles PM2.5 was almost six times (368.6 ug/m3) the safe limit (60 ug/m3) in Delhi-NCR at 6.30 p.m. on Monday, as per CPCB data. PM2.5 was over 10 times (625.1 ug/m3) the safe limit the highest recorded so far this season.
• ‘Severe’ air quality can cause respiratory problems in healthy people and has serious impact on those with lung or heart diseases, according to a Supreme Court-appointed pollution control body EPCA.
• The EPCA extended a ban on coal-based industries, hot mix plants, and stone crushers in NCR .

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