Daily Prelims Notes 5 September 2020
- September 5, 2020
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN
Table Of Contents
- SCO meet
- Parliamentary forum
- Project Dolphin
- Hydrophonic,darknet
- Act of God and force majeure
- Habitat corridor
- Indus Valley Civilisation
- Mission Milk
1. SCO meet
Subject: IR
Context:
Peaceful resolution of differences key to ensure regional stability said Indian defence minister at SCO meeting.
Concept:
- The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a permanent intergovernmental international organisation, the creation of which was announced on 15 June 2001 in Shanghai (China) by the Republic of Kazakhstan, the People’s Republic of China, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan, and the Republic of Uzbekistan.
- It was preceded by the Shanghai Five mechanism.
- The SCO’s main goals are as follows: strengthening mutual trust and neighbourliness among the member states; promoting their effective cooperation in politics, trade, the economy, research, technology and culture, as well as in education, energy, transport, tourism, environmental protection, and other areas; making joint efforts to maintain and ensure peace, security and stability in the region; and moving towards the establishment of a democratic, fair and rational new international political and economic order.
- The Heads of State Council (HSC) is the supreme decision-making body in the SCO. It meets once a year and adopts decisions and guidelines on all important matters of the organisation.
- The SCO Heads of Government Council (HGC) meets once a year to discuss the organisation’s multilateral cooperation strategy and priority areas, to resolve current important economic and other cooperation issues, and also to approve the organisation’s annual budget.
- The SCO’s official languages are Russian and Chinese.
- The organisation has two permanent bodies — the SCO Secretariat based in Beijing and the Executive Committee of the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) based in Tashkent.
- SCO comprises eight member states, namely India, Kazakhstan, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Russian, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Subject: Polity
Context:
Discussions in parliamentary forums would have helped the government get feedback on the ground situation across the country and fine-tune its response.
Concept:
- The first Parliamentary Forum on Water Conservation & Management was constituted on 12 August, 2005. Thereafter, four more Parliamentary Forums on Children, Youth, Population & Public Health and Global Warming & Climate Change were also constituted in the Fourteenth Lok Sabha.
- During the term of the Fifteenth Lok Sabha, the Speaker, Lok Sabha constituted three more Parliamentary Forums on Disaster Management on 8 December, 2011, Artisans & Craftspeople on 26 April, 2013 and Millennium Development Goals on 11 December, 2013 there by increasing the number of Parliamentary Forums to eight.
- The Parliamentary Forums do not interfere with and encroach upon the jurisdiction of the Departmentally Related Standing Committees and the respective Ministry/Department.
- The objectives behind constitution of these Parliamentary Forums are to:
- provide a platform to the Members of Parliament to have interaction with the concerned Ministers, Experts and key officials from the nodal Ministries with a view to have a focussed and meaningful discussion on critical issues with a result-oriented approach for speeding up the implementation process;
- sensitize the Members of Parliament about the key areas of concern as well as the ground-level situation and equip them with latest information, knowledge, technical know how and valuable inputs from experts both from the country and abroad for enabling them to raise these issues effectively on the Floor of the House and in the meetings of Parliamentary Committees; and
- prepare a data-base through collection of data/information on critical issues from the concerned Ministries, Internet, NGOs, newspapers, United Nations, etc. and circulation thereof to the Members of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha so that they can meaningfully participate in the deliberations at the meetings of the Forums and seek clarifications from the experts or officials from the Ministry present in the Meetings.
- Composition: The guidelines of the respective Forum provide that the Speaker, Lok Sabha is of all the Parliamentary Forums except the Parliamentary Forum on Population and Public Health where the Chairman, Rajya Sabha is the ex-officio President and the Speaker, Lok Sabha is the ex-officio Co-President of the Forum.
- Apart from President, Deputy Chairman, Rajya Sabha, Deputy Speaker, Lok Sabha, the concerned Ministers and Chairpersons of the respective Departmentally Related Standing Committees are ex-officio Vice-Presidents of the Forum.
- Each Forum consists of not more than 31 members (excluding the President, Co-President and Vice-Presidents) out of whom not more than 21 are from Lok Sabha and not more than 10 are from Rajya Sabha.
- The term of office of the Members of the Forum is co-terminus with their membership in the respective Houses.
Subject: Environment
Context:
In his Independence Day Speech this year, Prime Minister announced the government’s plan to launch a Project Dolphin. The proposed project is aimed at saving both river and marine dolphins.
Concept:
- Project Dolphin will involve conservation of Dolphins and the aquatic habitat through use of modern technology especially in enumeration and anti-poaching activities.
- The project will engage the fishermen and other river/ ocean dependent population and will strive for improving the livelihood of the local communities.
- The conservation of Dolphin will also envisage activities which will also help in the mitigation of pollution in rivers and in the oceans.
- It will include oceanic as well as Gangetic river dolphins, which were declared a National Aquatic species in 2010.
- Dolphins are one of the oldest creatures in the world along with some species of turtles, crocodiles and sharks.
- Ganges river dolphins once lived in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna and Karnaphuli-Sangu river systems of Nepal, India, and Bangladesh. But the species is extinct from most of its early distribution ranges.
- The Ganges river dolphin can only live in freshwater and is essentially blind.
- They hunt by emitting ultrasonic sounds, which bounces off of fish and other prey, enabling them to “see” an image in their mind.
- IUCN status of Ganges river dolphin:
Subject: Science and tech
Context:
Hydroponic weed has seen a high demand and is ordered through the Darknet, Narcotics Control Bureau found in drug racket
Concept:
Hydroponic
- Hydroponics is the cultivation of plants without using soil.
- Hydroponic flowers, herbs, and vegetables are planted in inert growing media and supplied with nutrient-rich solutions, oxygen, and water.
- This system fosters rapid growth, stronger yields, and superior quality.
Darknet
- The “dark net,” also known as the “dark web,” is part of the greater “deep web,” a network of secret websites that exist on an encrypted network.
5. Act of God and force majeure
Subject: Economy
Context:
Amid disruptions caused by Covid-19, the Finance Minister has referred to an Act of God while businesses are looking at a legal provision, force majeure, to cut losses
Concept:
- The law of contracts is built around a fundamental norm that the parties must perform the contract. When a party fails to perform its part of the contract, the loss to the other party is made good.
- However, the law carves out exceptions when performance of the contract becomes impossible to the parties.
- A force majeure clause is one such exception that releases the party of its obligations to an extent when events beyond their control take place and leave them unable to perform their part of the contract.
- FMC is a clause that is present in most commercial contracts and is a carefully drafted legal arrangement in the event of a crisis. When the clause is triggered, parties can decide to break from their obligations temporarily or permanently without necessarily breaching the contract. Companies in such situations use the clause as a safe exit route, sometimes in opportunistic ways, without having to incur the penalty of breaching the contract.
- Generally, an “Act of God” is understood to include only natural unforeseen circumstances, whereas force majeure is wider in its ambit and includes both naturally occurring events and events that occur due to human intervention. However, both concepts elicit the same consequences in law.
- War, riots, natural disasters or acts of God, strikes, introduction of new government policy imposing an embargo, boycotts, outbreak of epidemics and such situations are generally listed. If an event is not described, then it is interpreted in a way that it falls in the same category of events that are described.
- Indian Contract Act, 1872 provides that a contract becomes void if it becomes impossible due to an event after the contract was signed that the party could not prevent.
Subject: Environment
Context:
The Assam government has approved the addition of 30.53 sq km to the 884 sq km Kaziranga National Park.
Concept:
- The additions are habitat corridors and would help provide connectivity to Orang and Nameri National Parks across river Brahmaputra from KNPTR besides the hills of KarbiAnglong to the south of the park, where the rhino, tiger, deer and other animals take refuge during the floods
- A wildlife corridor is a link of wildlife habitat, generally native vegetation, which joins two or more larger areas of similar wildlife habitat.
- Corridors are critical for the maintenance of ecological processes including allowing for the movement of animals and the continuation of viable populations.
- By providing landscape connections between larger areas of habitat, corridors enable migration, colonisation and interbreeding of plants and animals.
Subject: History
Context:
Shifting monsoon patterns linked to climate change likely caused the rise and fall of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, according to a study by an Indian-origin scientist which analysed data from North India covering the past 5,700 years.
Concept:
- The Indus Valley Civilization was an ancient civilization located in what is Pakistan and northwest India, on the fertile flood plain of the Indus River and its vicinity
- Two cities, in particular, have been excavated at the sites of Mohenjo-Daro on the lower Indus, and at Harappa, further upstream.
- The evidence suggests they had a highly developed city life; many houses had wells and bathrooms as well as an elaborate underground drainage system.
- The social conditions of the citizens were comparable to those in Sumeria and superior to the contemporary Babylonians and Egyptians. These cities display a well-planned urbanization system
- There is evidence of some level of contact between the Indus Valley Civilization and the Near East. Commercial, religious, and artistic connections have been recorded in Sumerian documents, where the Indus valley people are referred to as Meluhhaites and the Indus valley is called Meluhha.
- The Indus Civilization had a writing system which today still remains a mystery: all attempts to decipher it have failed. This is one of the reasons why the Indus Valley Civilization is one of the least known of the important early civilizations of antiquity. Examples of this writing system have been found in pottery, amulets, carved stamp seals, and even in weights and copper tablets.
8. Mission Milk
Subject: Schemes
Context:
In order to make our country self-reliant and self-sufficient in milk NDDB has launched second phase of National Dairy Plan(NDP) , which is promoted as ‘ Mission Milk’. The project target will be to enhance milk processing capacity, infrastructure of dairy cooperatives and also attempts will be made to establish milk quality testing equipment at critical points in procurement area.
Concept
National Dairy Plan Phase I is a central sector scheme for a period of 2011-12 to 2018-19. NDP I is a scientifically planned multi-state initiative with the following Project Development Objectives:
- To help increase productivity of milch animals and thereby increase milk production to meet the rapidly growing demand for milk
- To help provide rural milk producers with greater access to the organised milk-processing sector
NDP I was focussed on 18 major milk producing states namely Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujrat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerela, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Telangana, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhatisgarhwhich together account for over 90 per cent of the country’s milk production.
National Dairy Plan Phase II will spread over five years from 2020 -2025, with a financial outlay of Rs 8,000 crore. The targeted growth in milk production is 6 per cent plus with 12 institutes with mass embryo production and 1.20 lakh villages with milk potential. Dairy development has seen uneven growth across the country. Some eastern, north -eastern states and aspirational districts are lagging behind. To ensure inclusive growth in milk production and procurement, it would be necessary to promote the creation of alternative producer owned institutions in these areas where cooperatives are absent or weak.