Web: www.nextias.com 1 Ph. 011-49858612, 8800338066 Time: 45 min Date: 08-11-2021 Governance Haryana Law on Local Hiring Syllabus: GS 2/ Governance In News ● The Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Act, 2020, provides 75% reservations to local people in private-sector jobs. ○ This reservation is only applicable for jobs that offer a salary of less than Rs 30,000 a month. ● The law can trigger an exodus of large domestic and multinational investors across various sectors. About Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Act, 2020 ● The law covers the whole of the State and will be in effect for 10 years. ● It will be applicable to: ○ all the Companies, Societies, Trusts, ○ Limited Liability Partnership firms, Partnership Firm, ○ any person employing ten or more persons and ○ an entity, as may be notified by the Government, from time to time. ● The compliance time period would be 3 months. ● In the case of non Compliance, a fine between ₹ 25,000 and ₹ 1,00,000 would be levied. ● The benefits of the law could be availed by those who have the domicile. ○ The candidates need to register on a designated portal from which recruitments will be done. Reservation in Private Jobs in other states ● Madhya Pradesh (70% reservation to locals) ● Andhra Pradesh (75% private jobs reserved)
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
● Over 90 countries have signed the Global Methane Pledge that was launched at the ongoing UN COP26 climate conference in Glasgow.
What is Global Methane Pledge?
● The pledge was first announced in September by the US and EU. It is not a structured agreement.
● Aim: Reducing the global methane emissions across the globe.
○ To cut down methane emissions by up to 30 per cent from 2020 levels by the year 2030.
● How will the project help?
○ If implemented globally, this would minimise global warming by 0.2
degrees Celsius by the 2040s, compared to projected temperature rises.
○ The planet is presently around 1.2 degrees Celsius hotter than it was before the Industrial Revolution.
● As of now, India, the third-largest source of methane emissions, is not a signatory.
● Independent International Methane Emissions Observatory launched for Methane monitoring at COP26.
What is Methane?
● About:
○ It is the second-most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, after carbon dioxide.
○ It is the simplest hydrocarbon, consisting of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms (CH4).
○ It is a colourless, odourless, and highly flammable gas.
● Sources:
○ These include human/anthropogenic sources and natural. Approximately 40% of methane emitted is from natural sources and about 60% comes from human-influenced sources.
○ Human sources/anthropogenic sources of methane include landfills, oil and natural gas systems, agricultural activities, coal mining, wastewater treatment, and certain industrial processes.
■ Human sources of methane are responsible for 60 per cent of global methane emissions.
■ The oil and gas sectors are among the largest contributors to human sources.
○ Natural sources include decay of plant material in wetlands, the seepage of gas from underground deposits or the digestion of food by cattle.
Impacts
● Potent greenhouse gas: According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) methane has a much shorter atmospheric lifetime (12 years as compared to centuries for CO2), it has a more potent greenhouse potential because it absorbs more energy while it is in the atmosphere.
○ Methane is a powerful pollutant and has a global warming potential that is 80 times greater than carbon dioxide.
● Further increase CO2: As methane is emitted into the air, it reacts in several hazardous ways. For one, methane primarily leaves the atmosphere through oxidization, forming water vapour and carbon dioxide. So, not only does methane contribute to global warming directly but also, indirectly through the release of carbon dioxide.
● Other impacts: Methane also contributes to the forming of the ozone, decreasing air quality and leading to various health issues in animals, premature human deaths, and reduced crop yields.
Reasons for Rising of Methane
● Doesn’t come under any protocol like Paris protocol so no concrete efforts taken
● Increase in anthropogenic activities.
● Lockdown reduced the CO2 level but the emission of methane is significant from the agricultural field and household consumption etc.
○ Atmospheric methane increased during lockdowns imposed to control the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
● The concentration of methane has increased by at least 150% since the industrial revolution.
Government initiative to reduce methane emissions
● National Action Plan on Climate Change: Launched in 2008 NAPCC aims at creating awareness on the threat posed by climate change.
● India Greenhouse Gas Program: Led by WRI India, Confederation of India Industry (CII) and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) is an industry-led voluntary framework to measure and manage greenhouse gas emissions.
● Seaweed-Based Animal Feed: The Central Salt & Marine Chemical Research Institute (CSMCRI) developed a seaweed-based animal feed additive formulation that aims to reduce methane emissions from cattle
● Anti-methanogenic feed supplement ‘Harit Dhara’ (HD): Developed by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), can cut down cattle methane emissions by 17-20%.
● Bharat Stage-VI Norms: Recently, India has shifted from BS-IV to BS-VI emission norms.
Way Ahead & Conclusion
● Reducing methane would help in preventing 260,000 premature deaths, 775,000 asthma-related hospital visits, 73 billion hours of lost labour from extreme heat, and 25 million tonnes of crop losses annually
● It is important to monitor and calculate methane emissions.
● A structured agreement is needed like the Paris protocol.
○ Decomposition or breakdown of organic waste matter, gas exchange with the atmosphere, forest fires, and nitrogen fixation processes.
Effects of Rising Ammonia
● Biochemical oxygen Demand:
○ Ammonia reduces the amount of oxygen in the water as it is transformed into oxidised forms of nitrogen.
○ Hence, it also increases Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD).
■ Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) represents the amount of oxygen consumed by bacteria and other microorganisms while they decompose organic matter under aerobic (oxygen is present) conditions at a specified temperature.
● Biomagnification and Bioaccumulation
○ If the concentration of ammonia in water is above 1 ppm, it is toxic to fish.
○ In humans, long term ingestion of water having ammonia levels of 1 ppm or above may cause damage to internal organs.
Steps taken earlier
● Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti v. Union of India case
○ SC directed that the purpose of setting up Common Effluent Treatment Plant and Sewage Treatment Plants plants.
■ The state government will prioritise such cities, towns and villages, which discharge industrial pollutants and sewer directly in rivers and water bodies.
● Constitutional Provisions
○ Article 243W of the Constitution vests municipalities and local authorities with the performance of functions and implementation of schemes
■ as may be entrusted to them, including those in relation to the matters listed in item 6 of the 12th schedule.
■ Item 6 of the Schedule includes “public health, sanitation conservancy and solid waste management”.
○ Article 21
■ The right to clean the environment, and further, pollution-free water, have been protected under the broad rubric of the right to life.
Way Ahead
● Ozone-based treatment units
○ It can treat ammonia levels up to 4 ppm
○ The DJB at present does not have any specific technology to treat ammonia.
Solar Flare Syllabus: GS3/ Awareness in the fields of Space
In News
● Recently, a solar flare that occurred on the Sun triggered a magnetic storm and it arrived at the Earth in the early hours of November 4.
About
● Scientists had predicted that the magnitude of this storm would be such as to trigger spectacular displays of aurora (the coloured bands of light seen in the North and South poles) in the high-latitude and polar regions, just in time for the Deepavali celebrations in India.
● This prediction, which was based on models built by them and data from NASA’s observatories, seems to have come true, as people from several countries were tweeting pictures of aurorae.
Effect on atmosphere
● Judging by data from the NASA DSCOVR satellite, the scientists observed a steep jump in transverse magnetic fields, density and speeds of the plasma wind that are tell-tale signatures of the arrival of a coronal mass ejection shock front
● These observations are taken at Lagrange Point L1.
Sunspots and Solar Flares
● The solar magnetic cycle that works in the deep interior of the Sun creates regions that rise to the surface and appear like dark spots. These are the sunspots.
● Solar flares are highly energetic phenomena that happen inside the sunspots.
○ In a solar flare, the energy stored in the sun’s magnetic structures is converted into light and heat energy.
○ This causes the emission of high energy x-ray radiation and highly accelerated charged particles to leave the sun’s surface.
● Sometimes solar flares also cause hot plasma to be ejected from the Sun, causing a solar storm, and this is called Coronal Mass Ejection (CME).
○ Coronal Mass Ejections can harbour energies exceeding that of a billion atomic bombs.
○ Very powerful Earth-directed coronal mass ejections can cause the failure
of power grids and affect oil pipelines and deep-sea cables.
○ They can also cause spectacular aurorae in the high-latitude and polar countries.
● The energy and radiation and high energy particles emitted by flares can affect Earth bound objects and life on Earth – it can affect the electronics within satellites and affect astronauts.
Image Courtesy: TH
Solar Storm Prediction
● The process of prediction takes place in two steps:
○ Step 1:
■ The researchers analyse the possibility of a strong solar flare from an active region – that is, clusters of sunspots – using a machine learning algorithm that has been developed in CESSI, IISER Kolkata.
■ This algorithm needs observations of the sunspot magnetic fields, from which we extract various parameters to train the algorithm.
○ Step 2:
■ Estimating the time of arrival on Earth of coronal mass ejections and forecasting the geomagnetic storm.
■ The group uses the near-Sun evolution of the coronal mass ejections through European Space Agency’s SOHO satellite and NASA's STEREO satellite to extract their speed.
Image Courtesy: NASA
Aurora
● An aurora is a natural phenomenon that is characterised by a display of a natural-
coloured (green, red, yellow or white) light in the sky.
● It is a light show which is caused when electrically-charged particles from the sun collide with particles from gases such as oxygen and nitrogen present in the Earth’s atmosphere.
● Aurora is sometimes referred to as ‘polar light’.
● It is predominantly seen in regions of high altitudes like the Arctic and Antarctic.
● Caused by:
○ An aurora is caused by the streams of electrified particles (which are emitted by the sun) trapped in the magnetic field of the earth.
○ It is produced when this magnetosphere is disturbed by the solar wind carrying the charged particles.
● Auroras are seen in latitudes of around 70 degrees.
● They generally occur in a band known as the ‘auroral zone’. The auroral zone is 3 to 6 degrees wide in latitude. It lies between 10 and 20 degrees from the geomagnetic poles.
● This is visible quite clearly during the night.
● Auroras can sometimes be seen at latitudes below the actual auroral zone. They can appear in various forms like streamers, patches, arcs, scattered light, diffused light etc.
● The brightest and the most distinctive of all forms of auroras are the ones that are curtain-like in the shape of an arc, extending in the east-west direction. This natural light effect is known as ‘Aurora Borealis in northern altitudes, while the effect in the southern latitudes is known as ‘aurora australis.
● Open radio access network (RAN) is a term for industry-wide standards for RAN interfaces that support interoperation between vendors’ equipment.
● The flexible and scalable architecture of O-RAN will create new opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses.
● O-RAN allows you to use standard, ‘template-ised’, readily available off-the-shelf hardware and then put software on top of it and use that as a part of the network.
● Both Airtel and Jio are working actively on O-RAN.
● One big advantage that O-RAN architecture brings is the scalability of the network. So, instead of investing heavily in infrastructures like network towers and masts, telecom operators can use O-RAN small cells fitted on the existing infrastructure like light poles, and then scale it up as and when required.
5Gi
● 5Gi is basically a Made in India 5G standard created through a joint collaboration between IIT Hyderabad and Madras (Chennai).
● 5Gi uses millimetre wave technology to provide high-speed internet connectivity.
● 5Gi offers more range at a lower frequency, which is the opposite of 5G.
● It can play a big role in giving rural India access to a faster telecom network.
● “The greatest advantage of this technology is that it increases coverage to nearly 6km.
● This is sufficient to cover 95 per cent of India’s villages since they lie within 6km of BharatNet PoPs (points of presence).
● This also reduces the number of base stations required to provide rural coverage and thus the cost of total deployment will come down significantly.
What is the global progress on 5G?
● Global telecom companies: More than governments, global telecom companies have started building 5G networks and rolling it out to their customers on a trial basis.
● USA: In countries like the US, companies such as AT&T, T-mobile, and Verizon have taken the lead when it comes to rolling out commercial 5G for their users.
● Low Latency: Latency measures how long a signal takes to go from its source to its receiver, and then back again. One of the goals for each wireless generation has been to reduce latency. New 5G networks will have even lower latency than 4G LTE, with the round-trip transmission of data taking less than five milliseconds.
● Increased Bandwidth: The combination of increased speed and network capacity on 5G networks will create the potential for larger amounts of data to be transmitted than was possible with 4G LTE networks.
● Revenue: Commercial 5G networks began to be deployed in 2020 and are expected to reach 12% of world mobile connections (1.1 billion) and generate revenues up to the U.S. $1.3 trillion by 2025 for operators.
Issues/challenges
● Lack of flow of cash and adequate capital: One big hurdle, however, is the lack of flow of cash and adequate capital with at least two of the three players, namely Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea.
● Poor financial condition of telecom companies: the Supreme Court of India’s ruling on the dues being sought by the Department of Telecommunications (estimated to be more than RS. 90,000 crore) has further exacerbated the financial condition of telecom companies.
● Less number of players: It is no wonder then that the number of telecom operators has come down to a handful from around 15 a few years back.
● High investments required: The trial run of 5G in developed countries such as Japan and the United States reveals that the investment is very high, ranging from $6 million per small city to $60 million per large or densely populated city.
● Independent economic assessment: it is imperative to undertake an independent economic assessment, city wise, beginning with the metro cities, to assess the commercial viability for 5G deployment in India.
● Very expensive: As the deployment of 5G network is expensive, both the Central and State governments may need to consider measures that stimulate fibre investment, attract investment through public-private partnerships (PPPs) and facilitate investment funds on a nominal interest basis.
● Tax issues: The Government also needs to address information asymmetry and negative externalities through laws and regulations/taxes and subsidies.
● Low fiberization footprint: We need to upgrade fibre connectivity across India, which at present connects only 30% of India’s telecom towers. For an efficient 5G India launch and adoption, this number has to double.
● ‘Make in India’ hardware challenge: The ban on certain foreign telecom OEMs upon which most of our CSPs depend means the country needs to encourage and boost its local 5G hardware manufacturing at an unprecedented rate if it needs to realize the 5G India dream.
● Choosing the optimal 5G technology standard: The tussle between the home-grown 5Gi standard and the global 3GPP standard needs to be concluded in order to hasten 5G technology implementation. While 5Gi brings obvious benefits, it also increases 5G India launch costs and interoperability issues for telcos –something we can’t afford right now.
Way Forward
● The immediate priority for India: will be in identifying end-users and population to be covered, analysis of the existing network and operators, identification of cities for the 5G roll out, working out an investment model, and minimisation of the digital risk and pricing based on the externalities and usage of various sectors.
● Cost-benefit analysis: The deployment of 5G in India needs to be carefully planned after a cost-benefit analysis by independent experts which will create a level-playing field through market mechanisms such as facilitating, simulating, auctioning, ensuring competition, functioning markets, etc.
● Spectrum road map: Once a case is made for 5G, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) may consider preparing a foolproof spectrum road map with a predictable renewal process which will compensate for the huge investment required for deployment and ensure coverage.
● A level-playing field should be created for all telecom companies: with more focus on companies that have the experience of ensuring telecom networks to remote areas and the potential to provide affordable coverage.
● Sharing of the available spectrum: to maximise its efficient use especially in rural areas, and spectrum allocation procedures that favour investment, need to be considered.
● Reducing spectrum charges: Steps such as a moratorium on dues, redefining adjusted gross revenue, and reducing spectrum charges will help all telecom companies, more so Airtel and Vodafone Idea who face precarious financial situations.
● 100% foreign direct investment: Further, allowing 100% foreign direct investment in the telecom sector under the automatic route along with these policy reforms augurs well for the sector to attract investment.
● Relief package: Implementation of 5G requires huge investment and the relief package is a welcome step.
Source: TH
Facts In News
Place In News
Kaho Village
Syllabus: GS1/ Places in News
In News
● Arunachal Pradesh aims to make a documentary on Kaho village located near the Chinese border.
About
● History:
○ Residents of Kaho had helped Indian armed forces during the 1962 Chinese aggression.
○ Its people had assisted the Indian soldiers who had been outnumbered.
● Location:
○ On the China border.
○ Lies in Anjaw, one of the 11 districts of Arunachal Pradesh that share their border with China.
○ One of seven villages in the Kibithoo block bisected by the Lohit river.
● Demography:
○ According to the 2011 census, Kaho has only 65 residents and a literacy rate of 64.15%.
○ The people of Kaho village belong to the Meyor community.
● Other Place in News: Dipa village in Lower Siang district.
● The National Sports Awards for the year 2021 were announced by the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports.
○ The President of India will felicitate the awardees on November 13, 2021.
About
● National Sports Awards are given every year to recognize and reward excellence in sports.
● Announced by: Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports
● Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award 2021:
○ It is given for the spectacular and most outstanding performance in the field of sports by a sportsperson over a period of the previous four years.
○ This year, it will be given to 12 Sportspersons.
● Arjuna Awards for outstanding performance in Sports and Games 2021:
○ It is given for good performance over a period of the previous four years and showing qualities of leadership, sportsmanship and a sense of discipline.
○ This year, 35 Sportspersons will receive this award.
● Dronacharya Award for outstanding coaches in Sports and Games
○ It is given to coaches for doing outstanding and meritorious work on a consistent basis and enabling sportspersons to excel in International events.
● Dhyan Chand Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sports and Games
○ It is given to honour sportspersons who have contributed to sports by their performance and continue to contribute to the promotion of sports events after their retirement.
● Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puruskar
○ It is given to corporate entities (both in the private and public sector), sports control boards, NGOs including sports bodies at the State and National level who have played a visible role in the area of sports promotion and development.
● Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (MAKA) Trophy:
○ Overall top performing university in inter-university tournaments is given this award.
● The Kameng river is changing colour which has turned black and muddy.
About
● It is a major tributary of the Brahmaputra river in Arunachal Pradesh’s East Kameng district.
● Called Jia Bhorelli in Assam.
● It is a lifeline for many and has its source in a glacial lake near the Nyegi
Kangsang, one of the highest mountains in Arunachal Pradesh.
● Concerns:
○ It continues to remain black, muddy and unsuitable for use.
○ The water was reporting a high level of turbidity (suspended particulates in a liquid) leading to the change in colour.
○ This depletion in oxygen levels had led to the death of thousands of fish.
● Reasons:
○ Some sort of a landslide/avalanche in the upper reaches of the river.
○ There was intense erosion along the Warriyang Bung — a tributary of the river upstream in the Khenewa Circle — which had led to the deposition of mud, debris, boulders and trees that the river carried downstream.