UPSC Daily Current Affairs- September 11, 2022 | Current Affairs & Hindu Analysis: Daily, Weekly & Monthly PDF Download

GS-I

Context

A statue of Subhas Chandra Bose was unveiled by Prime Minister at India Gate, inaugurated along with the Kartavya Path that was earlier known as Rajpath.

• Subhas Chandra Bose’s early life
• Born to an upper-class Bengali family in 1897 in Cuttack, Subhas Chandra Bose was the ninth child of Janakinath and Prabhavati Bose.
• In 1909, S C Bose moved to Ravenshaw Collegiate School, where he completed his secondary education.
• While he continued his European education throughout his life, he became less drawn to Anglicized ways than his family.
• Influenced by the teachings of Ramakrishna and his disciple Swami Vivekananda, as well as the themes of Bengali novelist Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in his novel Ananda Math, Subhas found what he was looking for: “his Motherland’s freedom and revival”.
• After school, he entered the Presidency College in Calcutta in 1913, where he studied philosophy.
• His earliest battle with British authority occurred while he was a student, against Professor of History E F Oaten, who had once in class spoken about England’s civilizing mission in India.
• Afterwards, Bose went to Cambridge University to prepare for the Indian Civil Services (ICS) exam in 1920.
• But later, determined to join the struggle for India’s freedom, he abandoned the project and resigned from the ICS to join the Mahatma Gandhi-led national movement.

Bose’s Disagreements with Gandhi

• After reaching Bombay, now Mumbai, in 1921, he obtained an audience with Gandhi to get a better understanding of his plan of action.
• While Gandhiji was willing to wait a long time for Independence, Bose wanted immediate action, if not immediate results.
• Gandhiji was anti-materialistic and hostile to modern technology, Bose saw technology and mass production as essential to survival and dignity.
• Gandhiji wanted a decentralized society and disliked the modern state; Bose wanted a strong central government and saw the modern state as the only solution to India’s problems.
• And finally, Bose did not share Gandhi’s dedication to non-violence.
• Despite tensions between the two, Bose was well aware of the significance of a leader like Gandhi. Bose was the first to call him the “father of the nation” during an address from the Azad Hind Radio from Singapore in July 1944.

The rift within the Congress

• Bose devoted his life to the nationalist movement, gaining considerable political influence and becoming one of the most powerful leaders in the Congress party.
• In 1938, he was elected Congress president in the Haripura session, where he tried to push for swaraj as a “National Demand” and opposed the idea of an Indian federation under British rule.
• He stood for re-election in 1939 and defeated Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, the Gandhiji-backed candidate.
• 12 of the 15 members of the Working Committee resigned from their roles
• Bose tried to set up another working committee, but after being unable to do so, was forced to resign and was replaced by Prasad.
• Within a week, he created the “Forward Bloc” within the Congress Party, in order to bring the radical-left elements of the party together.

A dramatic escape

• Bose was arrested in 1940 before he could launch a campaign to remove the monument dedicated to the victims of the Black Hole of Calcutta, an incident when a number of European soldiers died while imprisoned in 1756.
• After going on a hunger strike, he was released from jail in December.
• He soon began his escape from India, travelling by road, rail, air and foot in various disguises to avoid British surveillance.
• He entered Soviet-controlled Kabul via the northwest of India and finally reached Nazi Germany, where he remained for two years.
• He was provided assistance to defeat the British, and Bose was allowed to start the Azad Hind Radio and was provided with a few thousand Indian prisoners of war captured by Germany.
• Bose soon turned his focus to South East Asia, specifically Singapore, a British stronghold that had been taken over by Japan

The INA and World War II

• The Indian National Army was formed in 1942, consisting of thousands of Indian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese, and supported by Japanese troops.
• After his arrival in Singapore, Bose, issued from there his famous call, ‘Delhi Chalo’, and announced the formation of the Azad Hind Government and the Indian National Army on 21st October 1943.
• The headquarters of the provisional government was moved to Rangoon in January 1944, and after fighting at the Arakan Front, the INA crossed the Indo-Burma border and marched towards Imphal and Kohima in March.
• The Chalo Delhi campaign ended at Imphal however, as the British and British Indian armies, were able to defeat the Japanese forces and the INA and push them out of Kohima as well.
• After the Japanese surrendered on August 16, Bose left South East Asia on a Japanese plane and headed toward China. The plane, however, crashed, leaving Bose badly burned and dead.

Context

There was unprecedented flooding in India’s tech capital Bengaluru. 

• Urban Flooding is an inundation of land in a constructed setting, particularly in densely populated areas. 
• Previous such flooding incidents: Kochi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai.

Reasons

• Natural
  • Higher rainfall: As per the IMD, monsoon has become frequent and unpredictable. 
  • Storm surges (for coastal cities): Cyclone Amphan in 2020 flooded the streets of Kolkata. Within eastern India, the storm killed 98 people and caused $13.8 billion (2020 USD). 
  • Groundwater levels: In Chennai, the replenished groundwater table across the city after rains becomes a challenge for several buildings with basements. 
• Anthropogenic
  • Encroachment on Drainage Channels: In Indian cities and towns, due to increased land prices and less availability of land in the city centre. 
  • New developments are coming up in low-lying areas, usually as encroachments over lakes, wetlands and riverbeds. 
  • A large number of wetlands that soaked up the rainwater has encroached. Bangalore had 262 lakes in the 1960s; now only 10 of them hold water. 
  • Climate Change: Exacerbated by changing climate, resulting in extreme events. The climate change has caused an increase in the frequency of short duration heavy rainfall leading to higher water run-off. 
  • Rapid and unplanned urbanization: In Bengaluru, stormwater drains were not directly connected to its water bodies. In some places, the runoff water was flowing into constructed deviation canals. CAG found that this increased the chances of flash floods. 
  • Destruction of mangroves: Mumbai lost about 40% of its mangroves between 1995 and 2005. 
  • Poor civic management of storm water drainage: CAG report (last year) pulled up Bengaluru municipality for this poor management. 
  • Lack of data: CAG also found that the Bengaluru municipality did not maintain proper records of the stormwater management funds allotted to it under the JNNURM. 
  • Lack of coordination: CAG report also noted the lack of coordination between the municipality and the Bangalore Development Authority on drainage-related matters.

Steps to mitigate urban flooding

• Sponge Cities Mission: The idea of a sponge city is to make cities more permeable so as to hold and use the water which falls upon them. 
• Implementation of Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) in a planned manner. 
• Stormwater disposal system: The Brihanmumbai Storm Water Disposal System or BRIMSTOWAD, the project to overhaul Mumbai city’s old stormwater drainage system was started after the 2005 deluge. 
• Water-sensitive urban design (WSUD in Australia): Regards urban stormwater runoff, and waste water as a resource rather than a nuisance or liability. 
• Bioswales or ‘Rain Garden’ (New York): Are landscape features that collect polluted stormwater runoff, soak it into the ground, and filter out pollution. 
• Rainwater harvesting
  • People must invest heavily in rainwater harvesting. 
  • Need to make sure that collection of the rainwater as much as possible, use that to recharge our aquifers and try to design our plots and apartments and gated communities as zero rainfall discharge areas. 
• Design on a watershed basis
  • Every lake is a micro or mini watershed. Authorities must understand that a watershed is a hydrological unit, understand how water flows and ensure that it is drained into channels and flows into the lake. 
  • When the lake overflows, it connects to the next downstream lake, for which they will need sluice gates that they can operate. 

For a city like Bengaluru, it takes a special kind of skill to mitigate floods. The city has an average elevation of 920 metres and cascades down into valleys and rivers on all sides. Unlike Chennai, Mumbai or Kolkata, this city is on a hill or a ridge line. It calls for great incompetence if the city can create floods.
Therefore, there is a need to include public open spaces within the urban fabric in the form of storm management infrastructure, which could help our cities transform into water-sensitive cities.

GS-II

Urban Employment Guarantee

Context

Recently, the government of Rajasthan has launched the flagship scheme for Urban Employment, the Indira Gandhi Shehari Rojgar Yojana.

What do we need to know about the Scheme?

• Aim
  • To provide 100 days of employment to families in urban areas on the lines of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA).
  • The government has allocated Rs 800 crore for the implementation of the scheme.
• Target Population: People in the 18 to 60 age group are eligible for the scheme.
• Employment Opportunities
  • Water Conservation: The renovation work at Khaniyon ki Baori comes under the water conservation works of the scheme.
  • Convergence: People can be employed in other centre or state level schemes, already having a material component, and which require labour work.
  • Other works include:
    • Environmental conservation such as tree plantation in public places and maintenance of parks.
    • Cleanliness and sanitation-related works such as solid waste management.
    • Heritage conservation and work related to security/fencing/boundary wall/guarding of urban civic bodies and public lands, etc.
• Urban Employment Guarantee Schemes of other States:
  • Kerala: Ayyankali Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme (AUEGS), launched in 2010, aims at enhancing the livelihood security of people in urban areas by guaranteeing hundred days of wage employment in a financial year to an urban household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.
  • Himachal Pradesh: Mukhya Mantri Shahri Ajeevika Guarantee Yojna was launched in 2020 to enhance livelihood security in urban areas by providing 120 days of guaranteed wage employment to every household in a financial year.
  • Jharkhand: Mukhyamantri Shramik Yojana was launched in 2020 to enhance livelihood security in Jharkhand State by providing a guaranteed 100 days wage employment in a financial year.

Why are Urban Employment Guarantee Schemes emerging in India?

• Absence of “Guarantee” Schemes
  • Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY), launched in 1997, provided employment to the unemployed and underemployed urban poor through self-employment and wage employment.
    • In 2013, the SJSRY was replaced by the National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM).
  • India has had a history of urban employment schemes, but none of them were employment “guarantee” schemes.
• Urban unemployment Rates: Most unemployment data, be it from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) or the Periodic Labour Force Survey shows that the unemployment rates are typically higher in urban areas.
  • As per August 2022 data (CMIE), unemployment rate in urban India stands at 9.57% (Rural 7.68%).
• Vulnerable Informal Sector
  • According to the International Labour Organization, of the 535 million labour force in India in 2019, around 398.6 million have poor quality jobs. Further, the lockdown exposed the state of vulnerable employment in urban low-end informal jobs.
  • Vulnerable employment is characterised by inadequate earnings, low productivity and difficult conditions of work that undermine the basic rights of workers.
• Rural Centric Schemes
  • Most of the government schemes providing relief, be it from the Union government or state, prioritize rural unemployment and poverty like MGNREGA.
  • Prime Minister Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan, launched in 2020, with an allocation of Rs 50,000 crore, to boost employment and livelihood opportunities for migrant workers returning to villages in the wake of the Covid outbreak.

Can UEG Scheme be an Extension of MGNREGA?

• Existing Scheme’s Framework: Currently in India, most UEGs appear to be a mere extension of MGNREGA to the urban areas.
  • Being the UEG in Himachal Pradesh, Odisha or Kerala, one common feature among them is providing employment for a specific number of days during the year to the urban households.
• However, UEGs cannot be mere extension of MGNREGA due to following reasons:
  • Rural unemployment is mostly seasonal.
    • During peak farming season, very few rural people may be unemployed.
    • But there is no such seasonality in urban unemployment.
  • Capacity of the Panchayati Raj Institutions in rural and urban areas.
    • Urban local bodies are poorly funded and have little capacity to provide help.
    • The public works in which the labour is involved are different in rural and urban economies.

Context

The President of India virtually launched the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan.

TB in India

• India has a little less than 20 percent of the world’s population, but has more than 25 percent of the total TB patients of the world. 
• Every day 1,200 Indians die of TB — 10 every three minutes. According to Health Ministry data, only 63% of the patients infected with the airborne disease are currently under treatment. 
• Further, 1,47,000 patients are resistant to first- and second-line TB medicines.

Elimination of TB

• According to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, all nations have set the goal of eradicating TB by the year 2030. But the Government of India has set the target of eradicating TB by the year 2025. 
• At the current rate of progress, global targets to eliminate TB by 2030 will be missed by a 150 years.

What is TB?

• Tuberculosis (TB) is caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis, belonging to the Mycobacteriaceae family consisting of about 200 members. 
• In humans, TB most commonly affects the lungs (pulmonary TB), but it can also affect other organs (extra-pulmonary TB). 
• TB is a treatable and curable disease.

Infection

• Infection occurs when TB bacilli are inhaled. 
• Bacilli may stay in the lungs or travel to other organs. 
• Infection is lifelong, with bacilli lying dormant. 
• This phase is “latent TB”, diagnosed by a tuberculin skin test (TST). 
• The “annual rate of TB infection” (ARTI) is about 1%. Cumulatively, 40% to 70% of us are living with latent TB. 
• From this reservoir pool, a few progress to TB disease, one by one, 5-30 years, average 20 years, later. 
• Transmission: TB is spread from person to person through the air. When people with lung TB cough, sneeze or spit, they propel the TB germs into the air. 
• Common symptoms of active lung TB are cough with sputum and blood at times, chest pains, weakness, weight loss, fever and night sweats. 
• Eight countries accounted for two thirds of the new TB cases: India, Indonesia, China, Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and South Africa. 
• MultiDrug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB)is a strain of TB that cannot be treated even with the two most powerful first-line treatment anti-TB drugs. 
• Extensively Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (XDR-TB)is a form of TB caused by bacteria that are resistant to several of the most effective anti-TB drugs. 
• Vaccine used against TB: Bacillus Calmette–Guérin vaccine (BCG) Vaccine

Initiatives by India

• Eliminating TB by 2025: India is committed to eliminating tuberculosis by 2025, five years ahead of the global target of 2030.
• National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme: To align with the ambitious goal, the programme has been renamed from the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) to National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP). 
  • Addressing all co-morbidities and goes beyond medical interventions to tackle the social determinants of TB while minimizing access barriers to diagnosis and treatment. 
  • Through the Nikshay Poshan Yojana, nutritional support is extended to all TB patients for the entire duration of their treatment. 
  • Rigorously working towards Airborne Infection Control in hospital wards and outpatient waiting areas. 
• Introduction of Cartridge-Based Nucleic Acid Amplification Test (CBNAAT) 
  • It is a revolutionary rapid molecular test which simultaneously detects Mycobacterium tuberculosis and rifampicin drug resistance. 
  • This test is fully automated and provides results within two hours. 
  • It is a highly sensitive diagnostic tool and can be used in remote and rural areas without sophisticated infrastructure or specialised training.

How to eradicate TB from the society?

• Spread Awareness about the Results from Treatment 
• People have to be informed that prevention of this disease is possible. 
• Its treatment is effective and accessible. 
• The government provides free-of-cost facilities for prevention and treatment of this disease 
• Eradicate the Stigma attached with the Disease 
• Equipping the patients with vocational skills to help them join the workforce and live a prosperous and productive life. 
• The governments, pharma/biotech companies, and foundations must increase investment in TB research, at least to the levels laid out in the UN High Level Meeting Report and make TB a central element in global pandemic response strategies. 
• Include Private Sector in this fight. 
• The private sector has a very crucial role to play in checking the rise of TB as it is the first place a patient from an urban area visits. We need to make them a partner in this fight. 

Advances in TB diagnostics, treatments and prevention need to be pursued and scaled up with the urgency they deserve. If we do not behave like TB is a global health emergency, we will continue to experience unacceptable suffering from a disease that has killed more than 20 million people in this century alone.

GS-III

Context

India, the world’s largest exporter of rice, has banned exports of broken rice.

Key details

• It has banned the exports amid a 6 per cent reduction in paddy acreage in the ongoing Kharif season and increase in rice prices. 
• It has also imposed a 20 per cent duty on exports of various grades of rice, except basmati. 
• Area sown under paddy has dipped by 2.2 million hectares this Kharif over the last amid a shortfall of rain in major rice-producing states like West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh. 
• India exports 20-22 million tonne rice annually, including 4 million tonne basmati rice.

Rice Growing Regions of India

The rice growing areas in the country can be broadly grouped into five regions as given below: 

• North-Eastern Region
  • This region comprises of Assam and North eastern states. 
  • In Assam rice is grown in the Basin of Brahmaputra River. 
  • This region receives very heavy rainfall and rice is grown under rain fed condition. 
• Eastern Region
  • It region comprises of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Eastern Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. 
  • In this region rice is grown in the basins of Ganga and Mahanadi rivers and has the highest intensity of rice cultivation in the country. 
  • This region receives heavy rainfall and rice is grown mainly under rainfed conditions. 
• Northern Region
  • This region comprises of Haryana, Punjab, Western Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu & Kashmir. 
  • The region experiences low winter temperature and single crop of rice from May-July to September- December is grown. 
• Western Region
  • This region comprises of Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan. 
  • Rice is largely grown under rainfed condition during June-August to October – December. 
• Southern Region
  • This region comprises of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. 
  • Rice is mainly grown in deltaic tracts of Godavari, Krishna, and Cauvery rivers and the non-deltaic rainfed area of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

Why India is so crucial for global rice supply?

• India’s rice exports touched a record 5 million tonnes in 2021, more than the combined shipments of the world’s next four biggest exporters of the grain: Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, and the United States. 
• India, the world’s biggest rice consumer after China, has a market share of more than 40% of the global rice trade. 
• High domestic stocks and low local prices allowed India to offer rice at deep discounts over the past two years, helping poorer nations, many in Asia and Africa, grapple with soaring wheat prices. 
• India exports rice to more than 150 countries, and any reduction in its shipments would fuel food inflation. 
• The grain is a staple for more than 3 billion people, and when India banned exports in 2007, global prices shot to new peaks. 
• It would also allow rival suppliers Thailand and Vietnam to raise prices that are already more than 30% above Indian shipments. 
• Other than serving Asian buyers like China, Nepal, Bangladesh and the Philippines, India supplies rice to countries such as Togo, Benin, Senegal, and Cameroon.