Daily Prelims Notes 3 August 2020

August 3, 2020
Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
Category: DPN

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Table Of Contents

1. Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi

Subject: Government schemes

Context:

A survey conducted in Delhi has found that PM-KISAN is not reaching all farmer households as intended

Concept:

Pradhan MantriKisanSammanNidhi (PIV-KISAN) is a new Central Sector Scheme to provide income support to all landholding farmers’ families in the country to supplement their financial needs for procuring various inputs related to agriculture and allied activities as well as domestic needs.
Under the Scheme, the entire financial liability towards transfer of benefit to targeted beneficiaries will be borne by Government of India.
ln the beginning when the PM-Kisan Scheme was launched on February, 2019, its benefits were admissible only to Small & Marginal Farmers’families, with combined landholding upto 2 hectare.
The Scheme was later on revised on 1 .6.2019 and extended to all farmer families irrespective of the size of their landholdings
Under the PM-KISAN scheme, all landholding farmers’ families shall be provided the financial benefit of Rs.6000 per annum per family payable in three equal installments of Rs.2000 each, every four months.
State Government and UT administration will identify the farmer families which are eligible for support as per scheme guidelines
There are various Exclusion Categories for the scheme like institutional land holders.

2. Assam accord

Subject: History

Context:

Architect of Assam accord has passed away

Concept:

The Assam Accord was a Memorandum of Settlement (MoS) signed between representatives of the Government of India and the leaders of the Assam Movement in New Delhi on 15 August 1985.
Six year agitation demanding identification and deportation of illegal immigrants was launched by the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) in 1979 concluded with the signing of the Assam Accord.
In the 15 clauses of the Assam Accord, the key focus areas were:
- Foreigners issue
- Economic development
- Restricting acquisition of immovable property by foreigners
- Prevention encroachment of government lands
- Registration of births and deaths
This was done to ensure protection of political, social, economic and cultural identity of the local people.
The foreigners were classified under three heads for identification and differential treatment under Clause 5 of the Assam Accord.
- “All persons who came to Assam prior to 1.1.1966, including those amongst them whose name appeared on the electoral rolls used in 1967 elections, shall be regularised.
- “Foreigners, who came to Assam after 1.1.1966 (inclusive) and upto 24th March, 1971 shall be detected in accordance with the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946 and the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order 1964 and were to be disenfranchised. This group of people was required to register themselves as foreigners in accordance the Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939. The Assam Accord does not call for their deportation but they were to get voting rights only after expiry of 10 years from the date of their detection or declaration as foreigner.
- The rest had to be expelled.

3. R value

Subject: Science and tech

Context:

R value has fallen below 1 in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, for the first time since the novel Coronavirus outbreak began in India in March

Concept:

R0 or reproduction number tells you the average number of people who will contract a contagious disease from one person with that disease
R-naught is a frequently used mathematical metric to estimate how contagious an infectious disease can be. It can help in making projections for the number of people likely to be affected by such a disease and is often used to decide on the kind of policy interventions required to halt the epidemic.
A less than one value for R-naught would mean that disease would not take the form of an epidemic. Any value more than one indicates an exponential rise in the number of patients.
R-naught is also a dynamic metric, and is sensitive to the kind of interventions made to contain the spread.

4. ENSO (El Nino) and Indian Ocean Dipole

Subject: Geography

Context:

The India Meteorological Department has forecast rainfall during August-September to be 104% of long-period average with a model error of ± 8%. The prediction assumes “neutral” ENSO (El Nino) and Indian Ocean Dipole conditions continuing during the remaining part of the monsoon season

Concept:

ENSO (El Nino)

ENSO is one of the most important climate phenomena on Earth due to its ability to change the global atmospheric circulation, which in turn, influences temperature and precipitation across the globe.
Though ENSO is a single climate phenomenon, it has three states, or phases, it can be in. The two opposite phases, “El Niño” and “La Niña,” require certain changes in both the ocean and the atmosphere because ENSO is a coupled climate phenomenon.
El Niño: A warming of the ocean surface, or above-average sea surface temperatures (SST), in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Over Indonesia, rainfall tends to become reduced while rainfall increases over the tropical Pacific Ocean. The low-level surface winds, which normally blow from east to west along the equator (“easterly winds”), instead weaken or, in some cases, start blowing the other direction (from west to east or “westerly winds”).
La Niña: A cooling of the ocean surface, or below-average sea surface temperatures (SST), in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Over Indonesia, rainfall tends to increase while rainfall decreases over the central tropical Pacific Ocean. The normal easterly winds along the equator become even stronger.
Neutral: Neither El Niño or La Niña. Often tropical Pacific SSTs are generally close to average.

Indian Ocean Dipole

The Indian Ocean Dipole was so strong that it overrode concerns of a drought in India last June and brought torrential rainfall — the most India has seen in decades.
It also lasted nearly a month more than what is normal. This extended rainfall continued in several parts of West Asia, Oman, Yemen and in the Horn of Africa — Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya — so much so that that the dry sand became heavily moisture laden, facilitating the formation of several locust swarms.
While this dipole was beginning to take shape by late 2018 — and locust outbreaks were growing in Africa — it increased last year.
Due to favourable winds, it helped swarms to fly and breed in traditional grounds in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

Indian Ocean Dipole

Sustained changes in the difference between sea surface temperatures of the tropical western and eastern Indian Ocean are known as the Indian Ocean Dipole or IOD.
The IOD is one of the drivers of Indian Monsoon. The IOD has three phases: neutral, positive and negative
Neutral IOD phase: Water from the Pacific flows over to East Indian Ocean ( between the islands of Indonesia). Air rises above this area and falls over the western half of the Indian Ocean basin, blowing westerly winds along the equator. Temperatures are close to normal across the tropical Indian Ocean, and hence the neutral IOD does not affect the Indian Southwest Monsoon.
Positive IOD phase: Westerly winds weaken along the equator allowing warm water to shift towards Africa. Changes in the winds also allow cool water to rise up from the deep ocean in the east. This sets up a temperature difference across the tropical Indian Ocean with cooler than normal water in the east and warmer than normal water in the west. Generally this means there is more moisture than normal in the atmosphere over West Indian Ocean & Arabian Sea. This changes the path of weather systems coming towards India, often resulting in more rainfall during Southwest Monsoon.

Negative IOD phase: Westerly winds intensify along the equator, allowing warmer waters to concentrate near Equatorial East Indian Ocean. This sets up a temperature difference across the tropical Indian Ocean, with warmer than normal water in the east and cooler than normal water in the west. A negative IOD typically adversely affects the Indian Southwest Monsoon rainfall resulting in below-average rainfall over India.

5. Educational reforms

Subject: Government schemes

Context:

Systemic reform in education sector has gained ground in recent years through initiatives such as the NITI Aayog’s School Education Quality Index (SEQI), the Sustainable Action for Transforming Human Capital in Education (SATH-E) and even the Aspirational Districts programme

Concept:

School Education Quality Index (SEQI)

The School Education Quality Index (SEQI) was developed by NITI Aayog to evaluate the performance of States and Union Territories (UTs) in the school education sector.
The index aims to bring an outcomes focus to education policy by providing States and UTs with a platform to identify their strengths and weaknesses and undertake requisite course corrections or policy interventions.

Sustainable Action for Transforming Human Capital in Education (SATH-E)

‘SATH’ the programme for Sustainable Action for Transforming Human Capital (SATH) focuses on two main sectors — Education and Health and to build three ‘Role Model’ States.
SATH programme will be implemented by NITI Aayog along with global consultancy McKinsey & Company and IPE Global consortium in the three selected States after the signing of MoUs.

Aspirational Districts programme

Transformation of Aspirational Districts’ programme which was launched in January 2018 aims to quickly and effectively transform some of the most underdeveloped districts of the country.
The broad contours of the programme are Convergence (of Central & State Schemes), Collaboration (of Central, State level ‘Prabhari’ Officers & District Collectors), and Competition among districts driven by a Mass Movement.
With States as the main drivers, this program will focus on the strength of each district, identify low-hanging fruits for immediate improvement, measure progress, and rank districts.
The Government is committed to raising the living standards of its citizens and ensuring inclusive growth for all – SabkaSaath, SabkaVikas.
To enable optimum utilization of their potential, this program focuses closely on improving people’s ability to participate fully in the burgeoning economy.
Health & Nutrition, Education, Agriculture & Water Resources, Financial Inclusion & Skill Development, and Basic Infrastructure are this programme’s core areas of focus.
After several rounds of consultations with various stakeholders, 49 key performance indicators have been chosen to measure progress of the districts.
Districts are prodded and encouraged to first catch-up with the best district within their state, and subsequently aspire to become one of the best in the country, by competing with, and learning from others in the spirit of competitive & cooperative federalism

6. Bharat Air Fibre Services

Subject: Schemes

Context:

Union Minister of State for Communication has inaugurated “Bharat Air Fibre Services” at Akola in Maharashtra.

Concept:

The Bharat Air Fibre services are introduced by BSNL as part of digital India initiates by the Government of India and it aims of providing Wireless Connectivity in the range of 20 KMs from the BSNL Locations and thus customers at remote places also will be benefitted as BSNL comes with cheapest services with support of Telecom Infrastructure Partners (TIPs).
BSNL is providing the “Bharat Air Fibre Services” through local business partners of BSNL and these services will give fastest internet connectivity in quick time. These services are special and different from other operators as BSNL is providing unlimited free voice calling.
When BSNL will be increasing its customer base with this high Technology services, at the same time BSNL is giving a great opportunity to local residents to join hands with BSNL as Telecom Infrastructure Partners. They will earn regular monthly income of about one lakh per month thereby becoming self-reliable under “AtmaNirbhar Bharat” initiatives of Govt of India.

7. Inflation vs Growth

Subject: Economy

Context:

RBI is facing two conundrums:

Inflation is spiking even though growth is faltering. GDP growth rate is likely to be negative this year in comparison to the last financial year. Yet, retail inflation continues to stay above the 6% mark.
Within inflation, retail and wholesale inflation are charting fairly divergent paths

Concept:

Core inflation

An inflation measure which excludes transitory or temporary price volatility as in the case of some commodities such as food items, energy products is called core inflation

Headline inflation

The headline inflation measure demonstrates overall inflation in the economy.

CPI

Consumer Price Index or CPI is the measure of changes in the price level of a basket of consumer goods and services bought by households.
Central Statistics Office (CSO), Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation releases Consumer Price Indices (CPI).

WPI

Wholesale Price Index, or WPI, measures the changes in the prices of goods sold and traded in bulk by wholesale businesses to other businesses
The numbers are released by the Economic Advisor in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

CPI VS WPI

While WPI keeps track of the wholesale price of goods, the CPI measures the average price that households pay for a basket of different goods and services.
Even as the WPI is used as a key measure of inflation in some economies, the RBI no longer uses it for policy purposes, including setting repo rates. The central bank currently uses CPI or retail inflation as a key measure of inflation to set the monetary and credit policy.

8. Saint Ravidasa

Subject: Arts and culture

Context:

Earth and water have been collected from each sacred river and important pilgrimage centre like birthplace of SantRavidas in Kashi and from Delhi’s Jain Lal Mandir and Gurudwara Sis Gunj for construction temple at Ayodhya.

Concept:

Ravidas of 15th or 16th century, was a mystic and poet who was one of the most renowned of the saints of the North Indian bhakti movement. He was born in Varanasi.
He belonged to nirgun bhakti tradition that valued the worship of a formless God
He was considered as a spiritual Guru of the Meera Bai
He formed his distinct identity so his disciples came to be known Ravidas-panthis.
The AdiGranth of Sikhs, and Panchvani of the Hindu DaduPanthisare the two oldest attested sources of the literary works of Ravidas.

9. Crew Dragon

Subject: Science and tech

Context:

NASA astronauts safely returned to Earth inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule this afternoon, bringing their historic two-month mission at the International Space Station to an end

Concept:

This successful technology demonstration has long term ramifications and will likely change the course of space exploration.
Behnken and Hurley, tallying 64 days in space, undocked from the station on Saturday and returned home to land their capsule in calm waters off Florida’s Pensacola coast following a 21-hour overnight journey aboard Crew Dragon “Endeavor.”
The successful splash-down, the first of its kind by NASA in 45 years, was a final test of whether SpaceX spacecraft can transport astronauts to and from orbit — a feat no private company has accomplished before.