Friday Factly 10 September 2021

General Studies – 1

According to the latest data, 37.9 per cent of children under five are stunted, and 20.8 per cent are wasted — forms of malnutrition in which children are too thin for their height. This is much higher than in other developing countries where, on average, 25 per cent of children suffer from stunting and 8.9 per cent are wasted.
According to the World Health Organization, 50 per cent of all mal- and under-nutrition can be traced to diarrhoea and intestinal worm infections, which are a direct result of poor water, sanitation and hygiene.
According to NFHS 4, approximately 9 per cent of children under five years of age in India experience diarrhoeal disease.

According to IUCN report, nearly 30 per cent of the 138,374 species assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List are at risk of extinction.

For every rupee the government invests in early intervention for disabled children, you’d get a 13 per cent annual return.

According to a report released by Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), Air pollution is likely to reduce the life expectancy of about 40% of Indians by more than nine years.
The recent World Health Organisation and Global Burden of Disease report, including the ‘Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health’ also links air pollution to over 7 million premature deaths globally.

According to Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) More than 70 per cent of Indian households use LPG as their primary cooking fuel and nearly 85 per cent have LPG connections, according to an independent study released. However, as many as 57 percent households in the country still continue to use traditional solid fuels either exclusively or in combination with LPG. The study noted that of the47 per cent of households that use only LPG, nearly 91per cent are located in urban areas and 28 per cent in rural regions.

Indian Institute of Oil Palm Research estimates the country’s oil palm cultivation potential at 28 lakh ha. India is currently the largest importer and the second-largest consumer of palm oil globally.
However, it has lagged Nigeria, Guatemala, and Papua New Guinea in palm oil production. India imports about 7.1 million tonnes of palm oil (55 per cent of 13 million tonnes of edible oil imports).
India imports palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia, which account for 85-90 per cent of the world’s palm oil production.
On average, 2.5-3 tonnes of more oil can be extracted from oil palm as compared to] sunflower, soyabean, and rapeseed, that yield roughly 0.5, 0.4, and 0.7 tonnes of oil per hectare, which is about 4-7 times higher

The PLFS data shows that the share of the labour force engaged in agriculture rose to 45.6 per cent in 2019-20, up from 42.5 per cent in 2018-19 — an abrupt reversal of the decades-long decline in the labour force participation in agriculture

Low research and development expenditure at 0.8% of GDP, vis-àvis higher value for other fast emerging economies such as South Korea (4.5%), China (2.1%) and Taiwan (3.3%), is resulting in lower capacity for innovation in technologies and reduced ‘technology readiness’, especially for manufacturing.