Mains Factly (16-30) September 2022

  • October 10, 2022
  • Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
  • Category: Friday Factly
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ESSAY

  • In 1965, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri gave a well-known slogan “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan” to highlight the role of soldiers and farmers at a time when India faced the twin threats of food shortage and external incursion. Then, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee added “Jai Vigyan” at the time of the Pokhran atomic tests in 1998 to emphasise the value of science.
  • Let’s have no illusions. We are in rough seas. A winter of global discontent is on the horizon. A cost-of-living crisis is raging. Trust is crumbling. Our planet is burning. People are hurting – with the most vulnerable suffering the most. The United Nations Charter and the ideals it represents are in jeopardy (UN Secretary General)
  • “Policy is just a beginning, policy plus performance is equal to progress”

GS-1

GEOGRAPHY

Climate Change

  • Some 61 per cent of young people in Egypt cite climate concerns as a deterrent to having children, according to a recent study. Most people in South Korea (59 per cent), Turkey (54 per cent),Hong Kong (53 per cent),India (52 per cent) and Thailand (51 per cent) agree that they do not want to have children because of the implications of climate change. Four in every ten people, or 40 per cent of the respondents, cite the effects of climate change as a curb to having children

Life Expectancy

  • Life expectancy in India has more than doubled since Independence — from around 32 years in the late 1940s to 70 years.

GS-2

POLITY

Lok Sabha

  • The Lok Sabha’s productivity was 47%and the Rajya Sabha only 42%.
  • The percentage of Bills having been referred to the DRSCs during the tenures of the 14th (2004­-2009), 15th (2009­-2014) and 16thLok Sabhas (2014-­2019) has been60%, 71% and 27%, respectively.

Police Reforms

  • According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, violence cost the country 7 per cent of its GDP in 2020. Economic development depends on sound law and order and we can have good law and order only if we have professional police.
  • According to the Association of Democratic Reforms, the percentage of persons of questionable background in Parliament has been showing a steady upward trend. It was 24 per cent in 2004,30 per cent in 2009, 34 per cent in 2014 and 43 per cent in the last election held in 2019.
  • According to the Status of Policing in India Report, 2019, an average policeman works for 14 hours a day and does not get any weekly off.

Non-Communicable Diseases

  • Every 2 sec, one person under the age of 70 dies of a non-communicable disease (NCD)
  • 86% of those deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries.
  • In India, 66% of total deaths were due to NCDs in 2019,
  • Over 46 lakh people died due to NCDs in India in 2019, according to the report
  • There was a 22% probability of death between the age of 30 and 70 due to any type of non-communicable disease, including cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
  • WHO report: ‘Invisible numbers – the true scale of non-communicable diseases’
  • NCDs in India account for an economic burden in the range of 5%-10% of GDP

GS-3

ECONOMY

Agriculture

  • The sector’s gross value added grew at 3.6 per cent in 2020-21 and further improved to 3.9 per cent in 2021- 22 (Economic Survey, 2021-22).
  • Agriculture credit flow target was fixed at ₹16.50-lakh crore for FY 2021-22 against actual level of ₹15.75- lakh crore during 2020-21
  • Gulati et al(2018) showed that every rupee spent on agricultural research and development yields higher returns (11.2), compared to returns on every rupee spent on fertiliser subsidy (0.88), power subsidy (0.79), education (0.97), and roads (1.10).
  • According to the Situation Assessment Survey 2021, net income from farming of livestock increased from 12 per cent to 16 per cent of average monthly income of agricultural households in India between 2014 and 2021. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research promoted integrated farming by encouraging 75,000 farmers in 1,400 villages across India, thereby enhancing the farmers’ income by 125-272 per cent during the last four years.

Agri-Tourism

  • Globally, the agri-tourism market was valued at $42.46 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $62.98 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 13.4 per cent from 2021 to 2027.
  • In 2018-20, 17.9 lakh tourists visited these agri-tourism centres in the State, helping farmers earn ₹55.79 crore. It also generated one lakh jobs for rural women and youth. Maharashtra is the first State to formulate an agri-tourism policy, which aims at rural development.

Green-House Gas Emissions

  • The agriculture sector contributes for about 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), according to the Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment (INCCA), Ministry of Environment and Forests

Logistics

  • To develop multi-modal infrastructure, India should bring the current modal mix of 60% roads, 31% rail & 9% waterways to 25-30 percent roads, 50-55 percent railway, 20-25 percent water

Nutricereals

  • The productivity of nutricereals in the US was at 4.2 tonnes a hectare, while it was 6.2 tonnes in Italy. In India it is just 1.2 tonnes. (International Year of Millets 2023)

Energy

  • The CEA National Electricity Plan report estimates a 40% increase in domestic coal requirement in 2031-32. In 2021-22, India’s domestic coal requirement was 678 million tonnes (MT). It will increase to 831.5 MT by 2026-27 and 1018.2 MT by 2031-32.At present, 51.1% of the total installed capacity in the energy sector in India comes from coal. Out of the total 399.49 gigawatts (GW) installed capacity of the country, 236.10 GW comes from thermal, 6.78 GW comes from nuclear and 156.60 GW comes from renewables
  • Clean energy transition will add 0.4 per cent to the global gross domestic product (GDP) each year – IMF & International Energy Agency

Inequality

  • According to Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel in their research paper titled Indian income inequality. 1922-2014: From British Rai to Billionaire Rai?’ income inequality is at its highest in the last 100 years in India. The top 1% had around 21% of total income in 1930s, which reduced to 6% in 1980s and again reached 22% by 2014 – reaching the highest level. The period after the 1980s, when we starting adopting a neoliberal political economy (officially in1991), the income shares of the bottom 50% reduced considerably and the top 1% increased consequently
  • According to Anand & Thampi in “Recent trends in Wealth Inequality in India”, the top 1% of India had 28% of the country’s wealth by 2012. which was an increase of 11 percentage points since 1991 The same period saw the decline of the share of the bottom 40%from 5% to less than 4%
  • The Report on Fifth Annual Employment-Unemployment Survey (2015-16) by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, showed that at the all-India level, around 77% of households did not have a single regular/salaried person. More than 67% of households had an average monthly earning that did not exceed Rs 10,000. Within the labour force, more than 71% were not eligible for any social security benefits. Only 1.8% of labour force in India earned more than Rs 50.000 a month and 0.2% earned more than Rs 1,00.000 a month. This data shows the vulnerability and inequality among the working population of India.

Food grains &Pesticides

  • Production of foodgrains alone increased from 52 million tonnes (mt) in 1951-52 to 309 mt in 2020-21. A big revolution has also taken place in the production of horticultural crops, which increased from 97 mt in 1991-92 to 331 mt in 2020-21.
  • The total use of pesticides was only 14,630 tonnes in 1965-66, but it increased to 62,180 tonnes in 2017-18. That is, per hectare consumption of pesticides has increased close to four times, from 94 grams to 315 grams during Green Revolution period

ENVIRONMENT

Facts

  • The lifetime cost to society, the environment and the economy of plastic produced in 2019 alone has been revealed at US$3.7 trillion, more than the GDP of India according to a new report by Dalberg commissioned by WWF. Unless action is taken, these costs are set to double for the plastics produced in 2040 at US$7.1 trillion, equivalent to 85% of global spending on health in 2018 and greater than the GDP of Germany, Canada, and Australia in 2019 combined

Plastics

  • Packaging plastic accounted for 59 % of country’s plastic waste generated in 20218-19- Plast Indian Foundation

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Patent

  • The number of patent applications rose from 45,444 in 2016-17 to 66,440 in 2021-22. The dominance of multinationals also declined with the share of residents rising from 30 per cent to 44.5 per cent. However, despite these improvements, India lags far behind its global peers.
  • In 2020 (the latest available comparable data), the number of patents filed in India was 56,771 — merely 4 per cent of China’s 15 lakh and 5 per cent of the US’s 6 lakh applications in the same year. Similarly, the patents granted in India were 26,361 in 2020 compared to 5.3 lakh in China and 3.5 lakh in the US.
  • Filing of trademark applications also increased from about 2.8 lakh in 2016-17 to 4.5 lakh in 2021-22. India’s Trademark Registry Office was at the fifth position in terms of the number of filings.
  • India is one of the fastest in first examination reports. The time taken for final disposal of applications averages 18 months, which is in line with global peers.

Semiconductors

  • World wafer fab capacity is distributed across China (14 per cent), Japan (19 per cent), Taiwan (19 per cent), EU (9 per cent) and US (13 per cent)

Superbugs

  • WHO estimates that MDROs (Multi drug resistant organisations) account for 700,000 deaths every year. It is the frequent overuse of antibiotics that has led to the evolution of superbugs.