Daily Prelims Notes 11 May 2023
- May 11, 2023
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN
Daily Prelims Notes
11 May 2023
Table Of Contents
- Global warming
- The law on polygamy among religious groups in India
- People are complaining about Mercury in retrograde. But what does it actually mean?
- WTO IT Agreement
- Sahel Region
- China objects to India’s bid to blacklist senior JeM leader at the UN
- National Medical Commission
Subject :Environment
Section: Climate Change
More on the News:
- The annual mean temperature of the world is known to have increased by 1.1 degree Celsius from the average of the 1850-1900 period. But this increase, as can be expected, is not uniform.
- It varies in different regions and also at different times of the year. This single number denoting global temperature increase, very effective for communicating the dangers of climate change, is built on top of several layers of averages.
- Temperature rise over land is much higher than over oceans. Over land, the annual mean temperatures have risen by as much as 1.59 degree Celsius since preindustrial times, according to the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Oceans, in contrast, have warmed by about 0.88 degree Celsius.
- An assessment of climate change over the Indian subcontinent, published by the Ministry of Earth Sciences in 2020, said annual mean temperatures had risen by 0.7 degree Celsius from 1900. This is significantly lower than the 1.59 degree Celsius rise for land temperatures across the world. It could give the impression that the problem of climate change over India was not as acute as other parts of the world.
Factors affecting mean temperature:
- Altitude: The increase in temperatures is known to be more prominent in the higher altitudes, near the Polar Regions, than near the equator.
- The IPCC report says the Arctic region has warmed at least twice as much as the world average. Its current annual mean temperatures are about 2 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial times.
- Albedo effect: Ice traps the least amount of heat and reflects most of the solar radiation when compared with land or water. The ice cover in the Arctic is melting, because of which more land or water is getting exposed to the Sun.
- Aerosols: Aerosols refer to all kinds of particles suspended in the atmosphere. These particles have the potential to affect the local temperature in multiple ways. Many of these scatter sunlight back, so that lesser heat is absorbed by the land. Aerosols also affect cloud formation. Clouds, in turn, have an impact on how much sunlight is reflected or absorbed.
- Higher warming over land than oceans: Land areas have a tendency to get heated faster, and by a larger amount, than oceans. Daily and seasonal variations in heating over land and oceans are usually explained in terms of their different heat capacities. Oceans have a higher capacity to cool themselves down through the process of evaporation. The warmer water evaporates, leaving the rest of the ocean relatively cooler.
- Tropical location key: A majority of the global landmass is concentrated in the northern latitude In the tropics and along the equator, it is mostly oceans. Land areas are also prone to faster, and greater heating.
Why is warming over India lower?
- A major part of India’s relatively lesser warming can be attributed to its location in the lower latitudes. India, located in the tropics, the deviation in temperature rise from the global average is not surprising.
- Aerosol concentration over the Indian region is quite high, due to natural as well as man-made reasons. Due to its location in the tropics and the arid climate, India is no stranger to dust. But it also happens to be experiencing heavy pollution right now. Emissions from vehicles, industries, construction, and other activities add a lot of aerosols in the Indian region. A reduction in warming could be an unintended but positive side-effect.
Arctic Amplification: https://optimizeias.com/combined-antarctic-arctic-sea-ice-extent-lowest/
2. The law on polygamy among religious groups in India
Subject :Polity
Section: Constitution
Context: ASSAM CHIEF MINISTER Himanta Biswa Sarma has said that the state government will move to ban the practice of polygamy through “legislative action”, and that an “expert committee” would be formed to examine the issue.
Prevalence of polygamy
The National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-20) showed the prevalence of polygamy was 2.1% among Christians, 1.9% among Muslims, 1.3% among Hindus, and 1.6% among other religious groups.
The data showed that the highest prevalence of polygynous marriages was in the Northeastern states with tribal populations. A list of 40 districts with the highest polygyny rates was dominated by those with high tribal populations.
Concept:
Polygamy is the practice of having more than one married spouse—wife or husband. The issue is governed both by personal laws and the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Traditionally, polygamy—mainly the situation of a man having more than one wife was practised widely in India.
Polygamy under various laws:
Under Hindu law
After Independence, anti-bigamy laws were adopted by provincial legislatures including Bombay and Madras. The Special Marriage Act, 1954, was a radical legislation that proposed the requirement of monogamy.
Sub section (a) of Section 4 of the SMA (“Conditions relating to solemnization of special marriages”) requires that “at the time of marriage…neither party has a spouse living”. Parliament passed the Hindu Marriage Act in 1955, outlawing the concept of having more than one spouse at a time. Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs are also included under the Hindu Marriage Code.
Section 5 (“Conditions for a Hindu marriage”) of the Hindu Marriage Act lays down that “a marriage may be solemnized between any two Hindus, if [among other conditions] neither party has a spouse living at the time of the marriage Under Section 17 of the HMA bigamy is an offence, “and the provisions of sections 494 and 495 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, shall apply accordingly”.
However, despite bigamy being an offence, the child born from the bigamous marriage would acquire the same rights as a child from the first marriage under the law.
Exception to the bigamy law for Hindu:
A crucial exception to the bigamy law for Hindus is Goa, which follow its own code for personal laws. So, a Hindu man in the state has the right to bigamy under specific circumstances that are mentioned in the Codes of Usages and Customs of Gentile Hindus of Goa.
These circumstances include a case where the wife fails to conceive by the age of 25 or if She fails to deliver a male child by the age of 30.
The Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, 1936, had already outlawed bigamy.
Under Muslim law
Marriage in Islam is governed by the Shariat Act, 1937. Personal law allows a Muslim man to have four wives.
To benefit from the Muslim personal law, many men from other religions would convert to Islam to have a second wife.
In a landmark ruling in 1995, the Supreme Court in Sarla Mudgal v Union of India held that religious conversion for the sole purpose of committing bigamy is unconstitutional.
This position was subsequently reiterated in the 2000 judgment in Lily Thomas v Union of India.
Any move to outlaw polygamy for Muslims would have to be a special legislation which overrides personal law protections like in the case of triple talaq.
3. People are complaining about Mercury in retrograde. But what does it actually mean?
Subject : Science and Technology
Section: Space technology
Context:
Humans found out retrograde motion was an optical illusion 500 years ago. However, the pseudoscientific practice of astrology continues to ascribe a deeper meaning to this illusion
Concept:
When we say that a planet is in retrograde it means that from the perspective of Earth, a planet’s motion across the sky goes backwards night after night compared to its usual direction for a period of time.
This happens when Earth overtakes a slower-moving planet in its orbit around the Sun, or is overtaken by a faster-moving planet.
Retrograde motion is technically called “apparent retrograde motion” since it’s not an actual change in the planet’s motion through space, but rather an effect caused by our perspective from Earth.
What causes Retrograde Motion?
Every planet moves around the Sun in the same direction. Normally, when you observe a planet’s location in the sky over several nights, each night it will appear to have moved a little farther in one direction relative to the stars behind it.
When a planet is in retrograde, it appears to move a little farther to the opposite direction each night instead.
This happens because the closer a planet is to the Sun, the faster it moves in its orbit around the Sun. This means that Mercury and Venus move through space more quickly than Earth, and will occasionally lap Earth just like runners moving more quickly around a track.
Likewise, the more distant planets Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all move slower than Earth, and will occasionally be lapped by Earth.
Just like runners on a track, when a faster runner catches up to and then overtakes a slower one, the slower one’s motion relative to the faster one is backwards, even though both are moving forwards.
What does it mean when we say Mercury is “in retrograde”?
Retrograde motion works a little differently for Venus and Mercury. Because these planets orbit between Earth and the Sun, we tend not to see them high in the night sky. We mostly see them in the morning or evening, when they aren’t either directly between us and the Sun or on the far side of the Sun.
Most of the time, both planets move from east to west in Earth’s skies. But as Mercury, for example, speeds past Earth in its super-fast orbit and starts to turn around the Sun to pass to the other side, we see it slow in its east-to-west motion and start to move in the opposite direction as it takes that turn.
Because Mercury only takes 88 days to orbit the Sun compared to Earth’s 365, it overtakes us in this way three to four times a year, appearing to move backwards for about three weeks at a time. This frequency is probably the reason that Mercury’s is the most famous of the retrogrades
Subject : International Relations
Section: International Organization
Concept :
- The WTO’s IT Agreement has done little for India’s IT services. India’s hardware sector was hit instead.
Information Technology Agreement
- India is a signatory to the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) (now also known as ITA-1), a plurilateral agreement of WTO. As on date, there are altogether 75 member signatories, including 27 EU member countries, accounting for about 97 percent of the world trade in Information Technology (IT) products.
- India joined the ITA on 25th March 1997.
- During the last year, some of the developed country members of the ITA – USA, European Union and Japan- have again proposed in the ITA Committee meetings to broaden the scope and coverage of the ITA (it is being referred as ITA-2).
- These proposals basically relate to increasing the coverage of IT products on which customs duty would be bound at zero; addressing non-tariff measures; and expanding the number of signatory countries to include new signatories such as Argentina, Brazil and South Africa.
- Proponents of ITA expansion have prepared a consolidated list containing IT products (combining products of interest of all proponents of ITA 2), on which tariff reductions are being sought has been prepared and circulated amongst WTO members. Same is under active discussions in the WTO these days.
India’s Experience
- India’s experience with the ITA has been most discouraging, which almost wiped out the IT industry from India. The real gainer from that agreement has been China which raised its global market share from 2% to 14% between 2000-2011.
- In light of recent measures taken by the Government to build a sound manufacturing environment in the field of Electronics and Information Technology, this is the time for us to incubate our industry rather than expose it to undue pressures of competition.
- Accordingly, and also keeping in view opinion of domestic IT industry, it has been decided not to participate in the ITA expansion negotiations for the time being.
Subject: International Relations
Section: Regions in new
Concept:
- The ongoing fighting in Sudan is forcing thousands to flee. The humanitarian emergency is spreading, creating a dangerous security situation in the Sahel region.
About Sahel Region
- The Sahel is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic realm of transition in Africa between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian savanna to the south.
- Having a semi-arid climate, it stretches across the south-central latitudes of Northern Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea.
- The Sahel part of Africa includes from west to east parts of northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, central Mali, northern Burkina Faso, the extreme south of Algeria, Niger, the extreme north of Nigeria, the extreme north of Cameroon and Central African Republic, central Chad, central and southern Sudan, the extreme north of South Sudan, Eritrea, and the extreme north of Ethiopia.
6. China objects to India’s bid to blacklist senior JeM leader at the UN
Subject : International Relations
Section: International Organisation
Concept :
- India’s proposals to blacklist Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorist Abdul Rauf Azhar at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) were objected to by China.
- Abdul Rauf Azhar has been involved in planning and executing numerous terror strikes in India which include the hijacking of Indian Airlines aircraft IC814 in 1999, the attack on Parliament in 2001 and the targeting of the IAF base in Pathankot in 2016.
- China objected to the proposal from India to add Abdul Rauf of the JeM to the UN Security Council’s 1267 ISIL and Al Qaida Sanctions list.
- China had also blocked the proposals to blacklist Pakistan-based terrorists Hafiz Talah Saeed, Lashkar-e-Taiba leader Shahid Mahmood and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba terrorist Sajid Mir in the past.
UNSC’s 1267 Sanctions Committee
- This Committee was set up based on resolution 1267 passed in 1999.
- The Committee oversees the implementation of the sanctions measures under resolutions 1267, 1989 (2011) and 2253 (2015) concerning ISIL (Da’esh), Al-Qaida, and associated individuals, groups, undertakings and entities.
- Hence it is also called ISIL and Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee.
- The Committee comprises all 15 members of the Security Council and makes its decision by consensus. i.e. it consists of both the permanent as well as non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
- The Committee designates individuals and entities who meet the listing criteria set out in the relevant resolutions.
Sanctions imposed on individuals who are designated as terrorists by UNSC
- Assets Freeze: All states are mandated to freeze the funds, and financial and economic assets of designated individuals and entities.
- Travel Ban: All states are mandated to prevent the entry or transit of these designated individuals through their territories.
- Arms Embargo: All states are mandated to prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale and transfer of arms and other materials such as spare parts, technical advice, and training related to military activities to designated individuals.
7. National Medical Commission
Subject : Polity
Section: msc
Concept :
- The National Medical Commission (NMC) has relaxed its norms for a year, allowing foreign medical graduates who have passed their screening test to intern at non-teaching hospitals.
- The allotment of FMGs in these non-teaching hospitals shall also be done through concerned state medical councils
- The “clarification” issued by the National Medical Commission on Wednesday states that the two-year internship will be applicable only to candidates who came back to India during their final year and completed their education online because of the Covid-19 pandemic or the Russia-Ukraine war.
About National Medical Commission
- The government dissolved the MCI in 2018 and replaced it with a Board of Governors (BoG), which was chaired by a member of NITI Aayog.
- Now, the IMC Act, 1956 stands repealed after the gazette notification, and has been replaced by The National Medical Commission Act that came into existence on 8th August 2019.
- The change is aimed at bringing in reforms in the medical education sector and especially aimed at replacing the MCI, which was tainted by corruption and other problems.
- The NMC will function as the country’s top regulator of medical education.
- It will have four separate autonomous boards for:
- Undergraduate medical education.
- Postgraduate medical education.
- Medical assessment and rating.
- Ethics and medical registration.
- The common final year Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) examination will now be known as the National Exit Test (NEXT), according to the new medical education structure under the NMC.
- NEXT will act as licentiate examination to practice medicine, the criteria for admission to postgraduate medical courses, and also for screening of foreign medical graduates.
- Besides, the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET), NEXT will also be applicable to institutes of national importance such as all the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in a bid to ensure a common standard in the medical education sector in the country.
- NEET is conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA).