Daily Prelims Notes 14 July 2021
- July 14, 2021
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN
Daily Prelims Notes
14 July 2021
Table Of Contents
- India to display relics of St. Ketevan
- Landslide destroys houses in Himachal
- J&K parties barred from paying tributes on Martyrs’ Day
- Funding gap may stump ‘Housing for All’ goal
- Kármán line
- Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) for Development of Infrastructure Facilities for Judiciary
- Cabinet Committee
- Booster Doses
- Water pollution caused by detergents
- Few electron bubbles (FEBs) in superfluid helium
- Antimicrobial resistance
- EESL
- Input Tax Credit
1. India to display relics of St. Ketevan
Subject: History
Context : Almost 400 years after she was murdered in present day Iran, relics of St. Queen Ketevan that were found in Goa in 2005 are likely to be put on display in India as well as her native Georgia, according to Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) officials
Concept:
About St. Ketevan
- Queen Ketevan was a 17th century Georgian Queen.
- From Kakheti, a kingdom in eastern Georgia, she was tortured and killed in 1624 in Shiraz during the rule of the Safavid dynasty.
- Portuguese missionaries were said to have carried the relics to Goa in 1627.
- In 2005, after years of research and study of medieval Portuguese records, the relics were found at the St. Augustine Church in Old Goa.
About Georgia:
- Georgia declared its independence in the wake of the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. India recognized Georgia on 26th December 1991.
- Strategic location: it is a country at the intersection of Europe and Asia.
- It is bounded on the north and northeast by Russia, on the east and southeast by Azerbaijan, on the south by Armenia and Turkey, and on the west by the Black Sea.
2. Landslide destroys houses in Himachal
Subject: Geography
Context: Rescue operations are under way in the Boh valley in Kangra district after a landslip, in which one person died and nine are feared trapped beneath the debris.
Concept:
Landslides:
- A landslide is defined as the movement of a mass of rock, debris, or earth down a slope.
- They are a type of mass wasting, which denotes any downward movement of soil and rock under the direct influence of gravity.
- The term landslide encompasses five modes of slope movement: falls, topples, slides, spreads, and flows.
Causes:
- Slope movement occurs when forces acting downward (mainly due to gravity) exceed the strength of the earth materials that compose the slope.
- Landslides are caused due to three major factors: geology, morphology, and human activity.
- Geology refers to characteristics of the material. The earth or rock might be weak or fractured, or different layers may have different strengths and stiffness.
- Morphology refers to the structure of the land. For example, slopes that lose their vegetation to fire or drought are more vulnerable to landslides.
- Vegetation holds soil in place, and without the root systems of trees, bushes, and other plants, the land is more likely to slide away.
- Human activity which include agriculture and construction increase the risk of a landslide.
Region:
- Continent-wise, Asia suffers the maximum damages/losses due to landslides and within that, South-Asian nations are the worst sufferers including India which is one of the worst affected by landslides.
Mitigation:
- Restriction on the construction and other developmental activities such as roads and dams in the areas prone to landslides.
- Limiting agriculture to valleys and areas with moderate slopes.
- Control on the development of large settlements in the high vulnerability zones.
- Promoting large-scale afforestation programmes and construction of bunds to reduce the flow of water.
- Terrace farming should be encouraged in the northeastern hill states where Jhumming (Slash and Burn/Shifting Cultivation) is still prevalent.
3. J&K parties barred from paying tributes on Martyrs’ Day
Subject : History
Context : J&K political parties, including the National Conference (NC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on Tuesday alleged they were denied permission to pay tributes at the graveyard in Srinagar’s Naqsband Sahib of 22 Kashmiris, who died during an anti-monarchy rebellion on July 13, 1931. Meanwhile, a shutdown affected life in the Valley.
Concept :
About the Rebellion
- A widespread agitation throughout the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir in British Raj occurred in 1931 against the Maharaja’s government.
- The Maharaja was forced to appoint the Glancy Commission to investigate the people’s concerns.
- Various political reforms were adopted including the introduction of the Jammu and Kashmir Praja Sabha (legislative assembly).
- The movement also saw the rise of Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah as the leader of Kashmiris.
4. Funding gap may stump ‘Housing for All’ goal
Subject: Government Schemes
Context: The government‘s promise to provide ‘Housing for All’ by 2022 faces a severe funding crunch even as implementation is running behind schedule.
Concept:
PMAY-HFA
- The Housing for All/Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana was launched in 2015 with an aim to provide affordable housing to urban poor by 2022.
- It is proposed to build around 2 crore houses for urban poor including Economically Weaker Sections and Low Income Groups, with central assistance in the range of Rs.1 lakh to Rs.2.30 lakh.
- This Mission has four components namely:
In-situ Slum Redevelopment with private sector participation using land as resource.
Affordable Housing through Credit Linked Subsidy.
Affordable Housing in Partnership with private and public sector.
Beneficiary led house construction/enhancement.
- Appreciably, affordable housing has recorded a considerable growth in recent months.
- This comes as a result of mission-mode implementation, new found infrastructure status and better inflow of formal credit to the segment.
- The uptake among slum dwellers for affordable housing is closely related to the balance of benefits and costs.
Subject: Science and Technology
Context: British businessman Richard Branson beat rival Jeff Bezos to reach the edge of space, giving space tourism an official kickstart. But experts and space enthusiasts are in doubt whether the height to which he travelled can be termed ‘space’.
Concept:
- The most widely accepted boundary of space is known as the Kármán line, 100km above mean sea level. The Kármán line has been compared to international waters, as there are no national boundaries and human laws in force beyond the line. It was named after aerospace pioneer Theodore von Kármán, who wrote that this is certainly a physical boundary, where aerodynamics stops and astronautics begin. Below this line, space belongs to each country. Above this level, there would be free space.
- The 1967 Outer Space Treaty says that space should be accessible to all countries and can be freely and scientifically investigated.
- Defining a legal boundary of what and where space is can help avoid disputes and keep track of space activities and human space travel.
- The United States, believe that defining or delimiting outer space is not necessary.
- It has been tricky understanding where our atmosphere ends and what should be called space.
- the Kármán line or “boundary was chosen as a nice round figure”, but it needs more studies from “a physical point of view”.
Layers of the atmosphere
- The Earth’s atmosphere has been divided into various layers, with the troposphere starting at the Earth’s surface and extending about 14.5 km high, stratosphere extending to 50 km, mesosphere to 85 km, and thermosphere to 600 kilometers and exosphere to 10,000 km.
- The chemical composition of the atmosphere was largely constant up to the mesopause, or the boundary between the mesosphere and the thermosphere.
6. Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) for Development of Infrastructure Facilities for Judiciary
Subject: Polity
Concept: The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved continuation of the Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) for Development of Infrastructure Facilities for Judiciary for further five years from 01.04.2021 to 31.03.2026 at a total cost of Rs.9000 crore,
Concept: The Gram Nyayalayas Act, 2008 that came into force from 2 October 2009was enacted for establishment of Gram Nyayalayas for speedy and easy access to justice system in the rural areas of India.
The Cabinet also approved the decision to support the Gram Nyayalayas by proving recurring and non-recurring grants for a period of 5 years with a total outlay of Rs 50 crores.
Funds will be released to the states only after the notified Gram Nyayalayas are operationalized and Nyayadhikar is have been appointed and reported on the Gram Nyayalaya portal of Department of Justice.
The major activities of the Scheme:
- Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) for Development of Infrastructure Facilities for Judiciary has been in operation since 1993-94.
- the primary responsibility of infrastructure development for the subordinate judiciary rests with the State Governments, however, the Central Government through this CSS augments the resources of the State Governments for construction of court buildings and residential quarters for Judicial Officers (JO) in all the States / UTs
Monitoring of the Scheme
- Department of Justice has developed an online monitoring system with technical assistance from ISRO. The upgraded “Nyaya Vikas-2.0” web portal and mobile application is used for monitoring physical and financial progress of CSS judicial infrastructure projects by geo-tagging completed and ongoing projects.
- Quarterly review meetings are held with the representatives of all States/UTs and High Courts.
- Regular State level meetings of the Monitoring Committee are held by various High Courts, States with State Chief Secretaries and PWD officials to enable speedy and good construction.
- The Gram Nyayalaya Portal helps online monitoring of working of the Gram Nyayalayas by the implementing states.
Subject: Polity
Context: Further, as part of the reshuffle, Union ministers Smriti Irani, Bhupender Yadav and Sarbananda Sonowal have been included in the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Concept:
Cabinet Committees are extra-constitutional in emergence, which means, they are not mentioned in the Indian Constitution. Prime Minister is part of six panels except for the Committee on Accommodation and Committee on Parliamentary Affairs.
Subject: Science and Technology
Context: Israel has started administering the third dose of Pfizer-Biotech’s Covid-19 vaccine to elderly people with compromised immune systems.
Concept:
- The fully vaccinated people by now clearly shows that immune responses last up to 8-12 months ,Hence a booster is a means of strengthening one’s immune system against a particular pathogen.
- The same original vaccine, in which case its goal is to increase the protection by producing more antibodies.
- boosters given after six months of full immunisation can increase antibody level so high that they protect against all the variants
Need
- These boosters will be particularly helpful for the elderly and immunocompromised people.
- There are studies showing that a new variant can sneak past the antibodies created by a specific vaccine, the need of a tweaked booster shot arises then.
9. Water pollution caused by detergents
Subject: Environment
Context: Contamination and pollution of water are serious problems today.
Concept:
Water pollution caused by detergents is now a big concern in the global context. The per capita detergent consumption in India is around 2.7 kilogram per year. It is around 10 kg in the United States of America.
Constituents
- Nonylphenol, a hazardous chemical present in detergents, is known to enter water bodies and the food chains. It bio-accumulates and can pose serious environmental and health risks.
- A few more harmful components of detergents which are anthropogenic components such as herbicides, pesticides and heavy metal concentrations (like zinc, cadmium and lead)
- Many laundry detergents contain approximately 35 to 75 per cent phosphate salts.
Effects
- This blocks out light and disrupting the growth of plants
- It has been detected in human breast milk, blood and urine, and is associated with reproductive and developmental effects in rodents.
- Detergents also contain oxygen-reducing substances (ie, a chemical compound that readily transfer oxygen atoms) that may cause severe damage to the fishes and other marine animals.
- Detergents are capable of destroying the external mucus layers that protect the fish from bacteria and parasites, causing severe damage to the gills. Mostly fish die when detergent concentrations are near 15 parts per million (ppm); however, detergent concentrations as low as 5 ppm will kill fish eggs
- The detergents contain suspected carcinogens, and ingredients that do not fully biodegrade.
- Phosphate tends to inhibit the biodegradation of organic substances. Non-biodegradable substances cannot be eliminated by public or private wastewater treatment.
- Turbidity also clogs the respiratory system of some species of fishes.
- Pathogens from these toxic water bodies cause diseases, some fatal, in human or animal hosts diseases.
- Drinking water contaminated with detergents can be hazardous to human health.
- Some phosphate-based detergents can also cause eutrophication. Phosphate-enrichment can cause the water body to become choked with algae and other plants.
Steps:
- In Belgium, phosphates are restricted for use in household detergents since 2003.
- The Bureau of Indian Statistics (BIS) has set the standard of phenolic compounds in drinking water {0.001 milligram per litre (mg/L)} and surface water (5.0 mg/L).
- The use of ecofriendly and biodegradable detergents should be encouraged to lower our laundry footprints.
10. Few electron bubbles (FEBs) in superfluid helium
Subject: Science and Technology
Context: Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have experimentally shown the existence of two species of few electron bubbles (FEBs) in superfluid helium for the first time.
Concept:
- The electron bubbles FEBs can serve as a useful model to study how the energy states of electrons and interactions between them in a material influence its properties. FEBs, are nano metre-sized cavities in liquid helium containing just a handful of free electrons. The number, state and interactions between free electrons dictate the physical and chemical properties of materials.
- An electron injected into a superfluid form of helium creates a single electron bubble (SEB) a cavity that is free of helium atoms and contains only the electron.
- The shape of the bubble depends on the energy state of the electron. There are also MEBs multiple electron bubbles that contain thousands of electrons.
- These FEBs were found to be stable for at least 15 milliseconds (quantum changes typically happen at much shorter time scales) which would enable researchers to trap and study them. FEBs form system that has both electron-electron interaction and electron-surface interaction
Studying FEBs, could help scientists
- better understand how some of these properties emerge when a few electrons present in a material interact with each other
- Provide insights into the self-assembly of soft materials, which can be important for developing next- generation quantum materials.
- scientists have only theoretically predicted the existence of FEBs so far, now experimentally observed FEBs for the first time and understood how they are created
- There are several phenomena that FEBs can help scientists decipher, such as turbulent flows in super fluids and viscous fluids, or the flow of heat in superfluid helium, superfluid helium also conducts heat efficiently at very low temperatures
- The defects in the system, called vortices. Since FEBs are present at the core of such vortices, can help in studying how the vortices interact with each other as well as heat flowing through the superfluid helium.
Subject: Science and Technology
Context: A new joint inter-agency report has found positive associations between antimicrobial use (AMU) in animals and antimicrobial resistance in animals as well as in humans.
- The report, titled Antimicrobial consumption and resistance in bacteria from humans and animals
According to the report:
- Penicillins, first- and second-generation cephalosporins and macrolides were the highest selling classes in human medicine.
- For food-producing animals, tetracyclines and penicillins were the highest selling classes
- The consumption of colistin, was higher in food-producing animals than in humans.
- Need to promote prudent use of antimicrobial agents and infection control and prevention in both humans and in food-producing animals, in a ‘One Health’ approach.
- Restricting the use of CIAs in animals or adoption of preventive measures to reduce dependence on antibiotics in food-animal production.
Some antibiotics and pathogens
- Six classes of antibiotics: Third and fourth generation cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones, polymyxins, aminopenicillins, macrolides and tetracyclines.
- Except tetracyclines, all remaining five classes are critically important antimicrobials (CIA) categorised by the World Health Organization (WHO) as critical for use in human health.
- Four out of these five CIAs are highest priority (HPCIA). These classes are also included in the WHO AWaRe (Access, Watch, Reserve) classification.
- coliand K. pneumonia are common infection causing pathogens, S. aureus and C. jejuni are food-borne bacteria.
Subject: Economy
Context: The Andhra Pradesh government will buy 25,000 electric two-wheelers for its employees.
Concept:
Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) is a joint venture of four national Public-Sector Undertakings – NTPC Limited, Power Finance Corporation Limited, Rural Electrification Corporation Limited and POWERGRID Corporation of India Limited.
- Convergence Energy Services Limited (CESL), a newly established subsidiary of Energy Efficiency Services Limited
- EESL leads the market-related activities of the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency (NMEEE), one of the eight national missions under the Prime Minister’s National Action Plan on Climate Change.
EESL is implementing the following Programmes:
- Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All (UJALA): World’s largest zero-subsidy domestic LED bulb programme
- Street Lighting National Programme (SLNP): World’s largest street light replacement programme
- Agriculture Demand Side management (AgDSM): World’s largest Agricultural Demand Side Management programme
Subject: Economy
Context: Year-long crackdown on tax evasion, the GST authorities have unearthed over Rs 35,000 crore of tax fraud committed by misuse of input tax credit provision under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime.
Concept:
Input credit means at the time of paying tax on output, you can reduce the tax you have already paid on inputs. Say, you are a manufacturer – tax payable on output (FINAL PRODUCT) is Rs 450 tax paid on input (PURCHASES) is Rs 300 You can claim INPUT CREDIT of Rs 300 and you only need to deposit Rs 150 in taxes
Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (erstwhile Central Board of Excise & Customs) is a part of the Department of Revenue under the Ministry of Finance, Government of India.
It deals with the tasks of
- formulation of policy concerning levy and collection of Customs, Central Excise duties, Central Goods & Services Tax and IGST,
- prevention of smuggling and administration of matters relating to Customs, Central Excise, Central Goods & Services Tax, IGST and Narcotics to the extent under CBIC’s purview.
- The Board is the administrative authority for its subordinate organizations, including Custom Houses, Central Excise and Central GST Commission rates and the Central Revenues Control Laboratory.
GST
- The GST aims to streamline the taxation structure in the country and replace a gamut of indirect taxes with a singular GST to simplify the taxation procedure.
- It has been established by the 101st Constitutional Amendment Act.
- It is an indirect tax for the whole country on the lines of “One Nation One Tax” to make India a unified market.
- GST subsumes
At the Central level, the following taxes are being subsumed:
- Central Excise Duty
- Additional Excise Duty
- Service Tax
- Additional Customs Duty commonly known as Countervailing Duty
- Special Additional Duty of Customs.
At the State level, the following taxes are being subsumed:
- Subsuming of State Value Added Tax/Sales Tax
- Entertainment Tax (other than the tax levied by the local bodies)
- Central Sales Tax (levied by the Centre and collected by the States)
- Octroi and Entry tax
- Purchase Tax
- Luxury tax
- Taxes on lottery, betting and gambling.
- GST is essentially a consumption tax and is levied at the final consumption point. The principle used in GST taxation is Destination Principle.
- It is levied on the value addition and provides set offs. As a result, it avoids the cascading effect or tax on tax which increases the tax burden on the end consumer.
- There is a provision of GST Council to decide upon any matter related to GST whose chairman in the finance minister of India. It will approve all decision related to taxation in the country. It consists of Centre, states and UTs with legislature. Centre has 1/3rd voting rights and states have 2/3rd voting rights. Decisions are taken after a majority in the council.
- GSTN is registered as a not-for-profit company under the companies Act. It has been formed to set up and operate the information technology backbone of the GST. While the Central (24.5%) and the state (24.5%) governments hold a combined stake of 49%, the remaining 51% stake is divided among five financial institutions