16 Sep 2019: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

A. GS1 Related

B. GS2 Related

Category: HEALTH

1. Gooseberry candy rescues Assam nutrition drive

Context:

Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s assertion that Hindi, as the most spoken language, could work to unite the country has continued to draw sharp reactions from the opposition parties and non-Hindi speakers.

Details:

The issue has been comprehensively covered in BYJU’S Comprehensive News Analysis on 15^th September 2019. Click here to read.

Context:

In a major tragedy in Andhra Pradesh, a private boat carrying tourists to Papikondalu capsized in the Godavari near East Godavari district on September 15, 2019, leaving at least eight dead and over 37 missing.

Issue:

• The accident occurred post-noon when the boat ‘Vashista’ headed to the tourist destination against an inflow of about 5 lakh cusecs of floodwater in the Godavari, which has been in spate for the past several days.
• The boat had no permission from the government to operate.

Concerns:

• Twenty-one persons drowned in the Krishna on November 12, 2017, when a boat carrying tourists to Pavitra Sangamam, near Ibrahimpatnam, on the outskirts of Vijayawada, capsized.
• Nineteen persons drowned when a boat overturned in the Godavari near Manturu village in East Godavari district in May, 2018.
• Despite frequent boat accidents in the Godavari and Krishna rivers claiming several lives, no precautionary measures are being taken to prevent them.
• According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), on an average, 30 people die in boat mishaps every year in the state.
• According to officials, many private boat operators don’t follow the rules prescribed by the Indian Registration of Shipping and the Inland Vessels Act, 1917.

Details:

• Sources say that more than 40 boats operate in the Krishna and about 75 in the Godavari.
• However, only a few possess fitness certificates as per the Public Canals and Ferry Act, 1890.
• The AP Tourism Department Corporation (APTDC) operates 52 boats. However, unconfirmed reports say that over 200 boats operate in rivers and canals to tourist places without licence and ignoring safety norms.
• After the boat tragedy in the Krishna in 2017, the then TDP government constituted a committee to study the licensing system for boats in other States.
• Based on the three-member committee report, a meeting in 2018, had fixed specific responsibilities for ports, irrigation, DG fire services and panchayat raj departments.
• The director of ports was made the competent authority and nodal agency for boat survey, registration and management under AP Inland Vessel Rules, 2017, and enforcement for maintaining safety standards in all the waterways.
• As per the mandate, the route permissions for the various vessels operating in the rivers would be given by the irrigation department.
• However, in the Godavari mishap despite flood levels, irrigation department didn’t act on boats operating in the river.
• Also, the boat owners claim that despite several instructions from them people on boat refused to wear life jackets.

Way forward:

• Permission should be given only after verifying the hull shape, motor capacity, tonnage, length and breadth, bottom and other specifications.
• AP State Disaster Response and Fire Services personnel said owners should follow all fire safety norms and ensure that the boats contain fire extinguishers, caution boards, sand buckets and other fire-fighting equipment.
• Private boat owners flouting the norms must be heavily penalised.
• To prevent tragedies, officials should conduct raids regularly at tourist spots.

Context:

Saudi Arabia will use its vast oil reserves to offset disruption to production, Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman has said.

Details:

• Drone attacks on two major oil facilities on Saturday knocked 5.7 million barrels per day (bpd) off production — close to 6% of the global crude supplies.
• Between 1988 and 2009, Riyadh had built five giant underground storage facilities across the country to be used during crises.
• The disruption represents half the output of the kingdom, which is the world’s biggest oil supplier.
• Abqaiq is the world’s largest oil processing plant and can handle up to seven million bpd, some 70% of total Saudi output.
• It is located near Ghawar oilfield, the biggest in the world with reserves of over 60 billion barrels and a daily output capacity of six million bpd.
• The plant also receives crude oil and gas from Shayba oilfield in the Empty Quarter.
• Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for the attack.

The issue has been comprehensively covered in BYJU’S Comprehensive News Analysis on 15^th September 2019. Click here to read.

Context:

Bangladesh and India are currently enjoying “best ever” relations, Foreign Minister of Bangladesh Dr A.K. Abdul Momen said during an interaction with the media in Dhaka.

India-Bangladesh:

• The relations between Bangladesh and India, the South Asian neighbours have been friendly, although sometimes there are border disputes.
• The historic land boundary agreement was signed on 6 June 2015 which opened a new era in the relations and further stopped all irritants in ties.
• They are common members of SAARC, BIMSTEC, IORA and the Commonwealth.
• The two countries share many cultural ties. In particular, Bangladesh and the East Indian state of West Bengal are Bengali-speaking.

Details:

• The observations form the backdrop to the October 3-6, 2019 visit of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that will include a summit-level meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
• Sheikh Hasina is also expected to participate in the India Economic Forum.
• Bangladesh has recently been in the spotlight after the final list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam was published on 31^st August 2019.
• The exercise excluded more than 1.9 million individuals.
• However, India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had assured Bangladesh that the future of the NRC-excluded Bengali-speaking people in Assam is an internal issue of India.
• Subsequently, however, Home Minister Amit Shah had said the people excluded from the NRC will not find space in India.
• Bangladesh has steadfastly refused to be drawn into the debate.

Context:

• Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is expected to visit Australia in November, 2019 when both countries are likely to conclude the long-pending mutual logistics support agreement and a broader maritime cooperation agreement to elevate the strategic partnerships.
• These will lead to greater interoperability and help in elevating the strategic partnership.
• There have been a series of high-profile visits aimed at elevating the partnership between India and Australia.

Mutual logistics support agreement:

• Logistics agreements are administrative arrangements facilitating access to military facilities for exchange of fuel and provisions on mutual agreement simplifying logistical support and increasing operational turnaround.
• Australia has been keen on a mutual logistics support agreement and submitted a draft after India signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement with the U.S. in 2016.
• But New Delhi said it would consider more such agreements only after the first was operationalised.
• India’s latest such agreement was with South Korea.
• Officials of both countries said that with more engagement, the mutual logistics support agreement would facilitate cooperation by simplifying paperwork and procedures, which are pretty huge.

Details:

• The defence cooperation between India and Australia is underpinned on the Memorandum on Defence Cooperation 2006, the Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation 2009 and the bilateral Framework for Security Cooperation 2014.
• The two countries have steadily expanded cooperation in maritime domain awareness.
• The information exchange agreement, with a border mandate, is important for better maritime domain awareness.
• The bilateral naval exercise, AUSINDEX, held earlier this year saw the participation of the largest Australian naval contingent ever sent to India, with over 1,000 men.
• The Indian Navy and the Royal Australian Navy are partners in the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS), a maritime cooperation construct conceptualised by the Indian Navy in 2008.
• Both Navies are also co-chairs for the IONS working group on information-sharing and interoperability, for which the inaugural meeting was hosted by Australia in June 2019.

C. GS3 Related

Category: ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY

1. Windfall for Odisha tribals if single-use plastic is banned

Issue:

• In the late 1990s, the population of the vultures in the country had begun to decline sharply.
• The number declined from 40 million in the 80s to a few thousand by 2009.

Background:

• To study the cause of deaths of vultures, a Vulture Care Centre (VCC) was set up at Pinjore, Haryana.
• It was here that the rescued vulture from Keoladeo National Park in Rajasthan, Haryana, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh were brought in.
• By the time vulture conservation breeding centers were started in 2004, the vulture population had already crashed significantly, almost by 99 %.
• As vultures are slow-breeding birds, intervention was of immediate requirement otherwise the vultures would have become extinct.
• With a decline in the vulture population, a rise in the plague causing rodents and feral dogs was also seen.

Vulture Care Centre (VCC):

• Starting with just a few vultures, the VCC, until then the sole facility for the conservation of vultures in the country, has come a long way in the past two decades.
• At present, there are nine Vulture Conservation and Breeding Centres (VCBC) in India, of which three are directly administered by Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS).
• The total number of vultures in these VCBCs is more than 700.
• The objective of the VCBCs was not only to look after the vultures and breed them in captivity, but also to release them into the wild.
• The first objective of the VCBC was to produce a few hundred pairs of each of the three species of the endangered vultures.

Details:

• The major reason behind the vulture population getting nearly wiped out was the drug Diclofenac.
• Diclofenac was found in the carcass of cattle the vultures fed on.
• The drug, whose veterinary use was banned in 2008, was commonly administered to cattle to treat inflammation.
• Apart from the establishment of VCBCs and getting Diclofenac banned, the scientists’ imperative was to manage the carcass dumps and make sure that poisoned carcasses were not dumped for the vultures to feed on.
• There was also an emphasis on creating awareness and on creating safe zones for vultures in places where there is an existing vulture population.
• So far nine states have been undertaken programmes to create safe habitats for vultures.
• Estimation of the vulture population in the wild is said to have stabilised.
• Surveys in 2015 revealed that there are about 6,000 White-backed vultures, 12,000 Long-billed vultures and 1,000 Slender-billed vultures in the wild.

Vultures:

• Vultures are scavenging raptors.
• Vultures are rightfully called the sanitizers of the ecosystem as they feed on the flesh of dead animals and prevent the bacteria and diseases in animals by clearing the carcass to the bones that helps to decompose the dead three times faster than otherwise.
• In India, upon death, cows are dumped in a common place which is inhabited by the vultures.
• Vultures are long-lived and slow breeding birds that attain sexual maturity by five years of age.
• The slow breeding process makes it even more difficult to conserve or reintroduce them.
• Killing them is strictly prohibited, even for research purposes.
• A particular characteristic of many vultures is a bald head, devoid of normal feathers.
• Although it has been historically believed to help keep the head clean when feeding, the bare skin may play an important role in thermoregulation.
• Vultures have been observed to hunch their bodies and tuck in their heads in the cold, and open their wings and stretch their necks in the heat.
• Vultures also use urine as a way to keep themselves cool by urinating on themselves.

D. GS4 Related

E. Editorials

Context:

Completed in record time and launched with fanfare, the Train 18 project now finds itself off track

Train 18 project:

• Vande Bharat Express, also known as Train 18, is an Indian semi-high speed intercity electric multiple unit.
• It was designed and built under the Indian government’s Make in India initiative over a span of 18 months.
• The first Indian Trainset for long-distance run was indigenously manufactured at Chennai’s Integral Coach Factory (ICF).
• It was launched in February 2019.

Details:

• Train 18 had propelled India into the exclusive club of about a half a dozen countries in the world that have the capability to turn out a brand new design of a high-speed/semi-high-speed train set in such a short time.
• The Prime Minister had flagged off the inaugural run of the Train 18 as ‘Vande Bharat Express’ in Varanasi.
• The train did provide a trouble-free performance for six months.
• Unfortunately, perhaps it was the outstanding success of the Train 18 project that proved to be its undoing.

What went wrong?

• Following top-level changes in the Railway Board at the turn of the New Year, a vigilance investigation was launched into certain alleged procedural irregularities and allegations of undue favours shown to a particular indigenous firm in awarding contracts for the crucial propulsion system.
• It was also reported that deviations had been observed from the specifications prescribed by the Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO).
• Meanwhile, the man who had spearheaded the Train 18 project — from its conception and design to its launch — as General Manager of Integral Coach Factory (ICF) was not even extended an invitation for the train’s ceremonial inaugural run in February 2019.
• A few months after the train’s inauguration, it was announced at the highest policymaking level of the Indian Railways that the Railways would be willing to start the import of complete train sets from foreign suppliers if they agreed to establish the coach manufacturing facility in India.
• With the train set’s production having come to a halt in ICF, Chennai, despite tenders having been floated, Project 18 is as good as dead now.

Conclusion:

• The scourge of interdepartmental rivalries and internecine turf wars within the Indian Railways has caused enormous damage to the organisational morale and synergistic functioning of the nation’s prime public transporter. Unfortunately, Train 18 appears to have become the latest victim of this age-old malady of the Indian Railways.
• A committee of experts under economist and NITI Aayog member Bibek Debroy, tasked among other things to suggest ways of breaking down departmental silos within the Indian Railways to improve efficiency and speed of decision-making, gave its recommendations in early 2015.
• The ‘Mission Train 18’ episode is proof, that nothing has changed since then and that the departmental silos are alive and well.
• It is futile to expect the techno-bureaucracy of the Indian Railways to reform itself.
• The political leadership must put in efforts to push for reforms in this area.
• Otherwise, the Indian Railways will continue to achieve more successes like Train 18 that would eventually be pushed to the state of being forgotten, unlike ISRO where, it seems, public opinion reckons even a failure as a victory.

2. Effort worth emulation

Q1. Consider the following statements:

 Q2. Nandankanan Zoological Park is located in:

 Q3. “Vallam Kali” is

Q4. The IUCN Red List classifies White-backed vulture as: