IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-01

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Meghalayan rainforests similar to equatorial ones

News:

The northeastern State of Meghalaya known for its wettest districts and living root bridges is also home to a lowland tropical rainforest north of the Tropic of Cancer. A new study discovers that this rainforest, the northernmost in the world, is similar in structure and diversity to the other rainforests found near the Equator.

Beyond News:

• Tropical rainforests are the terrestrial areas on the earth teemed with enormous diversity of trees and other life-forms which make the largest sink of carbon.
• Although these forests cover just about 6% of the Earth’s land surface, about four-fifth of world’s documented species can be found in tropical rainforests. Characteristically, tropical rainforests occur in “hot and wet” habitats where all months receive precipitation and there is no dry season.
• Rainforests usually occur near the Equator and about five degrees North and South latitudes from the Equator are considered the real home of the lowland tropical rainforest.
• The Meghalayan rainforest trees showed short stature. While the trees in the Equatorial region are known to grow from 45 to 60 m in height, the highest ones in Meghalaya could reach only up to about 30 m.
• The region had a high density of 467 trees per hectare. Though this is lower compared with equatorial rainforests, it fell in the intermediate category for rainforests around the Tropic of Cancer. Also, the richness of species per hectare was the highest among all lowland rainforests near the Tropic of Cancer.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-02

Ayodhya verdict | Temple at disputed site, alternative land for mosque, says Supreme Court

News:

A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on Saturday permitted the construction of a temple at the site where the Babri Masjid once stood, and asked the government to allot a “prominent and suitable” five-acre plot for Muslims to construct a mosque in Ayodhya.

Beyond News:

• In a unanimous judgment, a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi asked the Centre, which had acquired the entire 67.73 acres of land including the 2.77 acre of the disputed Ramjanmabhumi-Babri Masjid premises in 1993, to formulate a scheme within three months and set up a trust to manage the property and construct a temple.
• For the time being, the possession of the disputed property would continue to vest with the Centre until a notification is issued by it investing the property in the trust.
• The judges declared that the demolition of the 16th century Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, was “an egregious violation of the rule of law” and “a calculated act of destroying a place of public worship”. The Muslims have been wrongly deprived of a mosque which had been constructed well over 450 years ago, the Bench said.
• The Court referred to the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act of 1991, which prohibits the conversion of the status any place of worship, to say that all religions are equal. “The Constitution does not make a distinction between the faith and belief of one religion and another.
• The court concluded that the Muslims were ousted from the 1500 square yards of the mosque through acts of damage during communal riots in 1934, desecration in the intervening night of December 22-23 of 1949 when idols were place inside the mosque, and finally, the demolition of the mosque in 1992.
• Besides, the Supreme Court accepted the version of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) that the mosque was not constructed on a vacant land. The ASI had suggested the remains of a large pre-existing structure underneath the Babri mosque which was “non-Islamic” in nature. The ASI had said the artefacts collected from the dig and the pillars of the mosque were of a non-Islamic origin.
• The court refrained from arriving at a conclusion on the issue whether the pre-existing structure was demolished to construct the mosque. It said the ASI had also maintained a studied silence, only venturing that the pre-existing structure was used to build the mosque.

New HIV subtype discovered, first since 2000, says study

News:

• Researchers have discovered a new subtype of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) called HIV-1 Group M, subtype L which is the first time a subtype of HIV has been found in almost two decades.

Beyond News:

• The researchers said the guidelines for determining whether an unusual virus was a new HIV subtype required three independent cases of the virus to be reported.
• In the current study, the researchers developed new techniques with next-generation sequencing technology to help narrow in on the virus portion of the sample to fully sequence and complete the viral genome.

Moody’s lowers India’s outlook to ‘negative’ from ‘stable’, Govt rebuts

News:

• Moody’s Investors Service, the investor-focussed arm of ratings agency Moody’s, has downgraded its outlook on India to ‘negative’ from ‘stable’.

Beyond News:

• The agency, however, has retained India’s credit rating at Baa2.
• The agency said that while government measures to support the economy should help reduce the depth and duration of India’s growth slowdown, prolonged financial stress among rural households, weak job creation and a credit crunch among non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) have increased the probability of a more entrenched slowdown.
• The government responded swiftly to the announcement, defending the economy on the basis of its status as one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world, a fact reaffirmed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-03

RBI moots dropping NEFT transaction charges

News:

• In a bid to give an impetus to digital transactions on the third anniversary of demonetisation, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has mooted a proposal to drop charges for transactions done through the NEFT from January 2020.

Beyond News:

• • The RBI has also proposed that ‘FASTags’ may be enabled to pay for parking fee and transactions at fuel stations.
  • Digital payments constituted a high 96 per cent of total non-cash retail payments during the October 2018 to September 2019.
  • During the same period, the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) systems handled 252 crore and 874 crore transactions with year on year growth of 20 per cent and 263 per cent, respectively.
  • It also plans to operationalise the ‘Acceptance Development Fund’ to increase acceptance infrastructure with from January 1, 2020.
  • A committee would also be set up to assess the need for plurality of QR codes and merits of their co-existence or convergence from both systemic and consumer viewpoints.

Pollution in India: How a farming revolution could solve stubble burning

News:

As a cloud of pollution enveloped Delhi earlier this week, closing schools and prompting the announcement of a public health emergency, new hope in mitigating the capital’s annual pollution crisis might be found in a government plan to transform the agricultural sector.

Beyond News:

• Delhi has seen the worst pollution since 2016 this month, with some parts of the city experiencing over 150 times the concentration of toxic particles recommended by the World Health Organization.
• Although a variety of measures – such as restricting Diwali fireworks and halting construction in the city – have been implemented in an attempt to curb the pollution, blame has largely been apportioned to stubble burning in the neighboring states of Punjab and Haryana.
• Unlike manual harvesting techniques however, combine harvesters leave behind rice stubble, which prevents machines from sowing wheat seeds. With as little as 10 days between rice harvesting season and the sowing of wheat, farmers often turn to stubble burning to quickly remove the remaining rice crop residue.
• With one ton of residue containing 4-6 kg of nitrogen, 1-2 kg of phosphorus, and 15-20 kg of potassium, CIMMYT’s research has shown that residue burning not only releases toxic gases into the air, but also reduces soil nutrition and therefore crop yields.

Government subsidy helps farmers

• Although the technology itself is not new, it was up until recently prohibitively expensive, with a happy seeder costing around 150,000 INR (almost €2,000). With around 80% of farmers in Haryana owning under 5 acres of land, the majority cannot afford to invest.
• Now, however, a central government scheme is investing over 11b INR (€140 million) in three states over a two-year period, with the aim of reducing crop residue burning by providing subsidies to farmers buying the machines. Organizations like CIMMYT are working alongside state governments to train farmers and promote the new technology, in an attempt to both increase grain productivity and reduce economic and labor inputs required by the farmers.
• Although the number of happy seeders has increased from just 100 to around 10,000 within the past decade, the machines are still only used on 20% of the land cultivated each year. In the rest of the region, stubble burning persists.
• With the pollution crisis increasing year-on-year however, investment in agricultural technology is becoming more of a priority for governments and NGOs.

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