Daily Prelims Notes 5 January 2022

Daily Prelims Notes

5 January 2022

Table Of Contents

1. Government securities (G-Secs)
2. United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL)
3. Blizzard
4. New Covidvariant ‘IHU’
5. India to surpass China as 3rd largest user of Ethanol
6. Green Hydrogen
7. 5 Sikh takhts
8. Residual Pandemic
9. Trash into a Volcano
10. Saint Kuriakose Elias Chavara
11. Multi Agency Centre (MAC)
12. Mud Crab Reovirus (MCRV)

1. Government securities (G-Secs)

Subject – Economy

Context – G-Secs yield tops 6.5 per cent

Concept –

• Bond yields and prices are inversely correlated and move in opposite directions.

What are government securities, or g-secs?

These are debt instruments issued by the government to borrow money. The two key categories are treasury bills – short-term instruments which mature in 91 days, 182 days, or 364 days, and dated securities – long-term instruments, which mature anywhere between 5 years and 40 years.

Why are G-secs volatile?

G- Sec prices fluctuate sharply in the secondary markets. Factors affecting their prices:

• Demand and supply of the securities.
• Changes in interest rates in the economy and other macro-economic factors, such as, liquidity and inflation.
• Developments in other markets like money, foreign exchange, credit and capital markets.
• Developments in international bond markets, specifically the US Treasuries.
• Policy actions by RBI like change in repo rates, cash-reserve ratio and open-market operations.

Are g-secs tax free? How do they compare with bank FDs?

• Like bank fixed deposits, g-secs are not tax-free.
• They are generally considered the safest form of investment because they are backed by the government. So, the risk of default is almost nil.
• However, they are not completely risk free, since they are subject to fluctuations in interest rates.
• Bank fixed deposits, on the other hand, are guaranteed only to the extent of Rs 5 lakh by the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC).

To know more about G-Sec, please refer September 2021 DPN.

To know about RBI Retail Direct platform for Government Securities (G-secs), please refer September 2021 DPN.

2. United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL)

Subject – IR

Context – The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has challenged the order passed by a Canadian court in the case related to Devas Multimedia

Concept –

To know about UNCITRAL, please refer November 2021 DPN.

3. Blizzard

Subject – Geography

Context – Winter storm pounds Washington; federal offices shut down, schools delay resumption

Concept –

• A blizzard is a dangerous weather event, bringing with it frigid temperatures, howling winds, and decreased visibility.
• Blizzards can be deadly, which is why it is important that meteorologists accurately measure atmospheric conditions and provide the public with timely warnings.
• Blizzards are not just bad snowstorms; they are specific types of snowstorms that consist of large amounts of snow lasting more than three hours, winds of at least 56 kilometers (35 miles) per hour, and visibility of less than 0.4 kilometers (0.25 miles) away.
• A ground blizzard is a weather condition where snow is not falling but loose snow on the ground is lifted and blown by strong winds.
• Blizzards can have an immense size and usually stretch to hundreds or thousands of kilometres.

Snowstorm and Severe blizzard

• The United States National Weather Service’s winter weather advisory, watch, or warning system helps meteorologists determine whether atmospheric conditions should be classified as typical winter weather, a snowstorm, or a severe blizzard.

4. New Covid variant ‘IHU’

Subject – Science and Tech

Context – New Covid variant ‘IHU’ identified in France

Concept –

• Known as ‘IHU’, the B.1.640.2 variant has been reported by researchers at Institute IHU Mediterranee Infection in at least 12 cases, and has been linked to travel to the African country Cameroon.
• However, researchers noted that it is too early to speculate on how this variant behaves as far as infection and protection from vaccines is concerned.
• IHU has 46 mutations and 37 deletions resulting in 30 amino acid substitutions and 12 deletions. Fourteen amino acid substitutions — including N501Y and E484K — and nine deletions are located in the spike protein.
• N501Y and E484K mutations were earlier also found in Beta, Gamma, Theta and Omicron variants.
• IHU has not been identified in other countries or labelled a variant under investigation by WHO.
• The variant can be detected via shortcut tests through a polymerase chain reaction analysis.
• SARS-CoV-2 is a ribonucleic acid (RNA) virus; it is in its nature to mutate. It remains to be seen which category of variant IHU falls under, based on its characteristics.
  • It will be declared a variant of concern (VoC) if one or all of the following are true: It is more infectious, more virulent and evades vaccine immune response, treatments and diagnostics put in place till now.

5. India to surpass China as 3rd largest user of Ethanol

Subject – Environment

Context – India to surpass China as 3rd largest user of Ethanol

Concept –

• India is on course to race past China as the world’s third largest ethanol consumer by 2026 as it accelerates the transformation towards a clean energy ecosystem.
• Ethanol demand in India tripled between 2017 and 2021 with consumption expected at 3 crore litres in the last calendar year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.
• In January 2021, India brought forward its target of 20 per cent ethanol blending of gasoline to 2025 from 2030, and is aiming to start selling 20 per cent blends in 2023.
• IEA added that the country is supporting ethanol as it helps reduce oil imports, cut down air pollution and offers economic and employment opportunities for farmers.
• Lifting ethanol demand is also aligned with its net zero pathway.
• India, the world’s third largest oil importer and consumer, imported petroleum products worth more than ₹1.09-lakh crore in FY21.
• At present, public sector oil marketing companies are selling 10 per cent ethanol blended petrol. Similarly 5 per cent biodiesel is blended as per availability.

To know about Ethanol, please refer October 2021 DPN.

To know about National Policy on Biofuels, please refer August 2021 DPN.

To know about India’s ambitious ethanol plan, please refer October 2021 DPN.

6. Green Hydrogen

Subject – Environment

Context – Green hydrogen is the ‘fuel of the future’, says Gadkari

Concept –

• Green hydrogen is produced by splitting water using electricity generated from solar panels or through wind turbines. When produced using fossil fuels, it is not classified as green hydrogen.
• Hydrogen is known to be the cleanest fuel used for powering vehicles as it has zero tailpipe emissions.
• India has committed to spending $200 million over five to seven years to promote use of hydrogen, making it the government’s first concrete announcement since Union Budget 2021 that talked about the National Hydrogen Mission.
  • Under NHM the government is working on Blue Hydrogen, Hydrogen CNG (H-CNG) and Green Hydrogen.
  • H-CNG is the blending of hydrogen with CNG.
• Hydrogen can be a practical option for long-distance vehicles because of its light weight and high energy. Hydrogen-powered vehicles have a higher drive range. They consume 50 percent less fuel than conventional fuels.

To know more about Green Hydrogen, please refer September 2021 DPN and December 2021 DPN.

To know about National Hydrogen Mission, please refer August 2021 DPN.

7. 5 Sikh takhts

Subject – Art and Culture

Context – PM to lay foundation stone for ₹42,750-cr projects in UP.

The green field expressway will connect key Sikh religious sites at SultanpurLodhi, Goindwal Sahib, Khadoor Sahib, Tarn Taran and the holy Hindu shrine of Vaishno Devi in Katra.

Concept –

• Takht is a Persian word that means imperial throne. At present Sikhs recognise five places as takhts.
• Three are in Punjab —Akal Takht (Amritsar); Takht Keshgarh Sahib (Anandpur Sahib); Takht Damdama Sahib (Talwandi Sabo) — and the other two are Takht Patna Sahib (Bihar) and Takht Hazur Sahib (Nanded, Maharashtra).

Akal Takht

• Akal Takht (Throne of the Timeless One) is the oldest of the takhts, and considered supreme among the five.
• It was set up in 1606 by Guru Hargobind, whose succession as the sixth Guru after the execution of his father, Guru Arjan Dev, is considered a turning point in Sikh history.
• The Akal Takht, a raised platform that he built in front of the causeway leading to the sanctum sanctorum of the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple), symbolised the coming together of the temporal authority and the political sovereignty of the Sikh community (miri) with the spiritual authority (piri).
• It is seen as the first marker of Sikh nationalism.
• The Akal Takht is a five-storey building today; the first storey houses the Guru Granth Sahib.

The other four takhts

• The other four takhts are linked to Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru.
• It was at Keshgarh Sahib that Guru Gobind Singh raised Khalsa, the initiated Sikh warriors, in 1699.
• Patna Sahib is his birthplace, and he spent several months in Damdama Sahib and his final days in Hazur Sahib, where he was cremated in 1708.

Damdama Sahib

• Damdama Sahib was the last and the most recent one to be recognised as a takht, through a resolution of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) in November 1966, a couple of months after the Reorginsation of States under which Punjab became a separate state.

Role of Takhts

• Takhts are known to issue hukumnamas from time to time on issues that concern the community.
• Akal Takht is supreme because it is the oldest and was created by a Sikh guru himself, say Sikh historians and scholars. Any edict or order concerning the entire community is issued only from Akal Takht.
• Also, it is from Akal Takht that Sikhs found to be violating the Sikh doctrine and code of conduct are awarded religious punishment (declared tankhaiya) and even excommunicated, depending on the degree of violation and failure of adherence to directives of the highest temporal seat of Sikhs.
• Scholars say the first hukamnama was issued by Guru Hargobind from Akal Takht. A seal believed to have been used by Guru Gobind Singh for his edicts is preserved at Damdama Sahib.
• Today, the Akal Takhtjathedar issues edicts for the community, usually reading them out from the balcony of the Akal Takht building, after deliberations with the chiefs of the other four takhts.

8. Residual Pandemic

Subject – Science and Tech

Context – There is a huge number of people who have defeated COVID-19, but continue to suffer its debilitating long-term effects

Concept –

• Two years after the outbreak of the disease, the world has started grappling with a parallel pandemic. Millions who have recovered from COVID-19 say they still face a myriad of health problems months, even years, after being infected by the virus.
• Doctors have listed nearly 300 such effects, which are quite wide-ranging: Respiratory, neurological and gastroenterological. People complain of shortness of breath, muscle pain, fatigue, cough, headache, joint pain, chest pain, diarrhoea and an altered sense of smell and taste.
• Other persistent symptoms include “brain fog” that makes one’s ability to think sluggish and fuzzy, memory loss, disordered sleep, palpitation and sore throat.
• Rare cases of self-harm, suicides and seizures have also been reported. Most of the symptoms are observed after the infection has clinically ended.
• While the world has tracked the pandemic in terms of people affected and recovered, the rise in cases of recovered patients with such a long list of ailments has largely been ignored. It has, however, emerged as the starkest sign of the virus’ continuance in our body.
• Some call this new health crisis post-COVID syndrome while some have named it post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC). Doctors also refer to those having persistent illness with one or more symptoms of the infection as “long haulers”. But the most common name for this condition the world over is “long COVID”.

9. Trash into a Volcano

Subject – Geography

Context – Why can’t we throw all our trash into a volcano and burn it up? – Georgine T.

Concept –

• It’s true that lava is hot enough to burn up some of our trash. When Kilauea erupted on the Big island of Hawaii in 2018, the lava flows were hotter than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 Celsius).
  • That’s hotter than the surface of the planet Venus and hots enough to melt many rocks. It’s also as hot as waste incinerators, which usually burn garbage at 1,800 to 2,200 F (1,000-1,200 C).
• But not all lavas are the same temperature. The eruptions in Hawaii produce a type of lava called basalt. Basalt is much hotter and more fluid than the lavas that erupt at other volcanoes, like the thicker dacite lava that erupts at Mount St Helens in Washington state.

Beyond temperature, there are other good reasons not to burn our trash in volcanoes.

• First, although lava at 2,000 degrees F can melt many materials in our trash — including food scraps, paper, plastics, glass and some metals — it’s not hot enough to melt many other common materials, including steel, nickel and iron.
• Second, there aren’t many volcanoes on Earth that have lava lakes, or bowl-like craters full of lava, that we could dump trash into. Of all of the thousands of volcanoes on Earth, scientists know of only eight with active lava lakes.
  • They include Kilauea, Mount Erebus in Antarctica and Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Most active volcanoes have craters filled with rocks and cooled lava, like Mount St Helens, or with water, like Crater Lake in Oregon.
• The third problem is that dumping trash into those eight active lava lakes would be a very dangerous job. Lava lakes are covered with a crust of cooling lava, but just below that crust they are molten and intensely hot. If rocks or other materials fall onto the surface of a lava lake, they will break the crust, disrupt the underlying lava and cause an explosion.
• When plastics, garbage and metals burn, they release a lot of toxic gases. Volcanoes already give off tons of toxic gases, including sulphur, chlorine and carbon dioxide.
• Sulphur gases can create acidic fog, which we call “vog,” for “volcanic fog.” It can kill plants and cause breathing problems for people nearby. Mixing these already-dangerous volcanic gases with other gases from burning our trash would make the resulting fumes even more harmful for people and plants near the volcano.
• Finally, many indigenous communities view nearby volcanoes as sacred places. For example, Halema’uma’u crater at Kilauea is considered the home of Pele, the native Hawaiian goddess of fire and the area around the crater is sacred to native Hawaiians. Throwing trash into volcanoes would be a huge insult to those cultures.

To know about Volcanoes, please refer August 2021 DPN.

10. Saint Kuriakose Elias Chavara

Subject – Art and Culture

Context – 150th death anniversary of Saint Kuriakose Elias Chavara, which was commemorated on January 3

Concept –

• Saint Chavara was a social reformer, an educationist, a social entrepreneur, and a prolific poet.
• He deserves a place in the pantheon of socio-religious reformers that includes Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda, JyotiraoPhule, Swami Dayananda Saraswati and Sree Narayana Guru.
• Millions, irrespective of caste and creed, benefited from his work, which triggered a social, cultural and intellectual awakening in Kerala.
• Saint Chavara was a pioneer of education reforms. When education was the privilege of the social elites, his Pallikkoodam movement (setting up schools in church premises) enabled universal access to education.
• The practice initiated by Saint Chavara in Christian schools influenced the diwan of Travancore, C P RamaswamyIyer, to plan mid-day meals in government schools in 1936.
• In 1846, Saint Chavara established a Sanskrit school in Mannanam in Kerala, that enabled ordinary people to study the sacred Hindu literature in Sanskrit.
• The first indigenous Catholic religious congregation for men (CMI) he founded in 1831 supplied dedicated and highly-skilled personnel for managing the schools and institutions.
• The first religious congregation for women (CMC-CTC) he founded in 1866 established schools to promote education for women with boarding facilities. It was a starting point for women’s empowerment in Kerala.
• In 1846, Saint Chavara founded a printing press in Mannanam, and published educational materials and books to promote social harmony.
  • Deepika, the oldest Malayalam newspaper now in circulation, was started from this press in 1887.
• As a mark of his exceptional altruism, Chavara founded a House of Charity in 1869 in Kainakari, his native village, for the aged, the abandoned and the sick.
• His poem AnasthasyayudeRakthasakshyam (The Martyrdom of Anastasia, 1862) is considered the first minor epic in Malayalam.
• Atmanutapam(Compunction of Heart) reveals the yogic poet in him exploring the rumblings of the inner self.
• OruNallaAppanteChavarul (Testament of a Loving Father) is a treatise on the upbringing of children, settling family disputes and the importance of writing wills.
• In his autobiography, Nalagamam (Chronicles), Saint Chavara vividly narrates how Hindus, Muslims and Christians together toiled hard to establish his monastery in Mannanam.
• He was a true karma yogi, contemplative in action and working tirelessly to liberate people from the tyrannies of ignorance, poverty, and sickness.

11. Multi Agency Centre (MAC)

Subject – Defence and Security

Context – States told to share Intel on common grid

Concept –

• Multi Agency Centre (MAC) is a common counter-terrorism grid under the Intelligence Bureau that was made operational in 2001 following the Kargil War.
• As many as 28 organisations, including the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), armed forces and State police, are part of the platform.
• Now functioning 24×7 as the nodal body for sharing intelligence inputs, MAC coordinates with representatives from numerous agencies, different ministries, both central and state.
• Various security agencies share real-time intelligence inputs on the MAC.
• The state offices have been designated as subsidiary MACs (SMACs).

12. Mud Crab Reovirus (MCRV)

Subject – Science and Tech

Context – ‘Reovirus’ hits mud crab cultivation in A.P.

Concept –

• Mud Crab Reovirus (MCRV) has been found to be the reason for the mass mortality of crabs (Scylla serrate) in Andhra Pradesh.
• MCRV, also known as the “sleeping disease”, has taken a toll on crabs in every farming method; crab fattening and crab polyculture, in which shrimp and crab are cultured in the same pond, and exclusive mud crab ponds.
• The viral pathogen belongs to the family of ‘Reoviridae’. It mainly affects the connective tissue of hepatopancreas, gills, and intestine.
• In 2007, the MCRV paralysed the crab species cultivation in China.

About wild crab or mud crab

• Wild Crab are scientifically called as Scylla serrata.
• They are ecologically important species of crab and are found in the estuaries and mangroves of Africa, Asia and Australasia.
• The shell colour varies from deep, mottled green to dark brown, In their most common form.