Daily Current Affairs including static notes - 23 MAY

The Hindu -

'AIR QUALITY CAUSES PREMATURE DEATHS’ (ENVIRONMENT)

An IIT-CEED study in 11 north Indian cities has found that worsening air quality in the last two decades has emerged as one of the major reasons for high numbers of premature deaths.
The research by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi in collaboration with environmental NGO, Centre for Environment and Energy Development (CEED) published its findings in a report titled ‘Know what you breathe’. The report found annual mortality linked to air pollution to be in the range of 150-300 persons per 1 lakh population.
👉Numbers
The study was conducted in seven cities of Uttar Pradesh, three cities of Bihar and the capital of Jharkhand, Ranchi.
And it was Kanpur which recorded the highest number of premature deaths per year (4,173) due to chronic exposure to air pollution, followed by Lucknow (4,127), Agra (2,421).
👉What were the parameters used?
To calculate the annual “mortality burden” the study resorted to the averages of recorded deaths caused due to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Acute Lower Respiratory Infection (ALRI), coronary disease, stroke, and lung cancer, in the selected cities.
Among these COPD was the largest cause of the deaths (at 29.7%) and lung cancer the lowest (0.6%).
However the report clarifies that the estimates should not be perceived as instant deaths. What they represent by ‘premature’ is deaths that are earlier than the expected lifetime of the Indian population, due to chronic exposure from pollution.
The reports estimates that the premature mortality burden would reduce by 14%-28% annually if Indian air quality standards can be achieved in these cities.
👉Pollutants
PM.25 is the single major reason for poor air quality in the North Indian cities. The study has attributed residential (cooking, heating and lighting) sources as the largest contributors to annual ambient PM2.5 concentration (73.8%).
The analysis of aerosol composition also indicates a higher percentage of pollutants like sulphates, organic carbons and black carbon emitted primarily from anthropogenic sources

APP TO HELP SHARE MALPRACTICE PROOF (GOVERNANCE)

The Election Commission will launch a multi-lingual mobile application empowering people across the country to directly share with the electoral body, evidence of malpractice by political parties, their candidates and activists, ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
It’s another attempt by India’s election commission to ensure a fairer elections. Such an application, called ‘Model Code of Conduct Violation Reporting App’, was made available for the first time, recently in Bengaluru in the run-up to the recently concluded Karnataka Assembly polls.
The app received good response from the voters, users have filled complaints of alleged misconducts. Based on these action was taken by the officials concerned in all the cases. Through such a mechanism, the Election Commission was able to encourage larger public participation in checking corrupt practices and while ensuring that the primary target of a free and fair election process are also met.
👉What does the App it do
The application allows for sharing of photos and short audio and video clips from the spot itself.
It also records the Geo-location of the reported incidents and the officials concerned will immediately receive the alerts, ensuring an effective response.
The EC will make the application operational in the coming Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, before its implementation in general elections.
In the light of empirical studies establishing that bots and other cyber mechanisms are being used for manipulating public discourse, Election commission is looking into an array of challenges to be tackled in the cyber world.

MODEL LAW FOR CONTRACT FARMING (AGRICULTURE)

The agriculture ministry on Tuesday released the Model Contract Farming Act, 2018, which lays emphasis on protecting the interests of farmers, considering them as weaker of the two parties entering into a contract.
This is the third such draft issued by the ministry, after two drafts that received wide criticism from both industry and farmers groups. And this time the ministry says that it is a promotional and facilitative Act and not regulatory in its structure.
👉What are the provision in the act?
The law is aimed at reducing farmers’ risks by creating an assured market for their produce at a pre-agreed price, while encouraging investment from agribusiness and food processing industries by enhancing productivity and cost efficiency.
  • It provides for State-level boards to be set-up to promote and facilitate — rather than regulate — contract farming, and sets out a framework for registering and recording agreements.
  • It also provides for a dispute settlement authority. The model law stipulates that the sponsor will not be allowed to build any permanent structure on the farmers’ land.
  • The Act says that the contracted produce will be covered under crop/ livestock insurance in operation. Also, contract framing will be outside the ambit of APMC Act.
  • In addition to contract farming, services contracts all along the value chain, including pre-production, production and post-production, have been included in the Act
👉What is Contract Farming?
Contract farming is a system in which companies enter into a contract with farmers to purchase a specific quantity of agricultural commodities at a pre-agreed price and quality. The rationale of contract farming was envisaged to ensure mutual benefits to the farmers as well as the companies on price risk and supply risk respectively.
Under such type of farming, the farmers are given seeds, fertilizers, technical knowhow etc. so as to get a desired quality of agricultural produce. In turn it helps farmers in getting better price for their produce especially perishable commodities, avoid price volatility problems as well as reduce post-harvest losses.

NEW SATELLITES TO KEEP TRACK OF EARTH’S WATER (SCITECH AGRI)

A pair of European-built, NASA-backed research satellites set for launch Tuesday from California will extend 15 years of global gravity field measurements collected by the GRACE mission before it ended last year, supplying scientists with data to help track the melting of Earth’s ice sheets and chart the impacts of floods and droughts.
Points to be noted are
  • Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) — By measuring gravity anomalies, GRACE showed how mass is distributed around the planet and how it varies over time. And this way helped in understanding ice melt in Poles.
  • GRACE-FO (GRACE-Follow O ) — will replace the earlier GRACE, that monitored change in glacial and sea levels
The prior mission, GRACE, allowed scientists to gain an understanding of how much ice Greenland was losing. It was more than they thought, based on ground-observations.
Renewing the mission will allow scientists to continue to track trends in sea level rise, glacial and ice melt, and the drying up of certain aquifers.

SMALL FARMERS GET A RAW DEAL ( AGRICULTURE)

As per a report submitted by the RBI to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, the small and marginal farmers are missing out on the bulk of agricultural credit, they are receiving only 30-40% of loans meant for the sector.
👉What is the mandate by RBI and how is it implemented?
The RBI’s rules are that 18% of a bank’s Adjusted Net Bank Credit must go to the agricultural sector and within this, 8% must go to small and marginal farmers. While banks have met the first target, there is still an inherent targeting problem arising out of the costs of lending to the sector. And because of this factor the small and marginal farmers would be at the receiving end.
As mentioned above banks has some costs of lending to agriculture. And because of this banks choose to lend to those areas where the cost of lending is lower, such as those close to urban areas, or to those farmers who are more credit-worthy. That is, the medium and large farmers.
But the point is that these big farmers would get credit even without the priority sector lending mandate, given their better of financial conditions. And therefor it’s the small and marginal farmers who should have the priority sector lending been catering to and is not right now. ‘
👉Conclusion
 To improve the conditions of farmers and realize PM’s aim of doubling farmer’s income among others availability of cheap credit to farmers is crucial. This calls for a deeper examination of the priority sector lending mandates, so that it be reoriented towards small and marginal farmers instead of the large farmers.

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