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

Ganga Utsav 2022

Context

• The National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) and the Ministry of Jal Shakti recently organised Ganga Utsav—The River Festivals 2022.

What is the 2022 Ganga Utsav?

• To improve the Public - River Connection, the NMCG celebrates the event each year.
• The National Ganga Council (NMCG) was established in 2016 to take the role of the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NRGBA).
• On the first day of Ganga Utsav 2021, the NMCG was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for posting.
• With a focus on promoting stakeholder engagement and public participation towards the rejuvenation of the river Ganga, it emphasises the importance of Jan Bhagidari (People's Participation) in the resuscitation of Ganga.

2022's Ganga Utsav

• The intention is to hold comparable ceremonies in more than 75 locations throughout states to commemorate India's rivers as part of the major celebration of the country's 75th anniversary of independence (Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav).
• The festival will feature a variety of genres, including poetry, discussion, storytelling, music, art, and culture.
• Districts will host a number of awareness-raising events to engage the populace and spread the word about Namami Gange as a widespread movement.

What are the government's Ganga River initiatives?

• It was the first river action plan to capture, divert, and treat home sewage, which helped to enhance the water quality.
• The Ganga Action Plan phase-2's goal of cleaning up the Ganga River is furthered by the National River Conservation Plan.
• Authority for the National River Ganga: Under Section 3 of the Environment Protection Act of 1986, it was established in 2009.
• In order to clean up the Ganga, establish waste treatment facilities, and preserve the biological diversity of the river, the Clean Ganga Fund was established in 2014.
• Web app for Bhuvan-Ganga: It ensures that the whole population is involved in the surveillance of pollution entering the Ganges River.
• The National Green Tribunal (NGT) prohibited the disposal of any rubbish in the Ganga in 2017.

What are the River Ganga's Main Attractions?

• Hindus consider this river to be the most sacred river in the world. It is the longest river in India and flows over 2,510 km of mountains, valleys, and plains.
• Over a surface area of 10,86,000 square kilometers, the Ganga basin extends into Bangladesh, Nepal, Tibet (China), and India.
• It covers 11 Indian states—Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Delhi—and drains an area of 8,61,452 square kilometers, or about 26% of the nation's total land area.
• It comes from the Gangotri Glacier's snowfields in the Himalayas.
• The river is known as the Bhagirathi at its source. It leaves the valley and travels to Devprayag, where it merges with the Ganga, another mountain stream.
• The Yamuna and the Son are the two main tributaries that join the river from the right.
• From left, the Ramganga, Ghaghra, Gandak, Kosi, and Mahananda join the river. The Betwa and the Chambal are the two additional significant tributaries.
• The Ganga River basin, which spans an area of one million square kilometers, is among the world's most fertile and heavily populated regions.
• An endangered species that only lives in this river is the Ganges River Dolphin.
• In Bangladesh, the Ganga joins the Brahmaputra and continues its course as the Padma or Ganga.
• Before emptying into the Bay of Bengal to conclude its trip, the Ganga widens into the Ganges Delta in Bangladesh's Sundarbans marsh.

Machchhu River

Context
A newly renovated colonial-era suspension bridge collapsed in Morbi, Gujarat

At least 90 were killed and more than 350 people fell into the Machchu river.

• This is the second major tragedy in Morbi, where over 3,000 people died when a dam broke in 1979.
• The bridge was originally built by the erstwhile princely state of Morbi and was considered a marvel of British engineering.

Machchu River:

• It is a river in Gujarat whose origin is Madla hills and disappears in the little Rann of Kachchh.
• This is one of the North flowing rivers of Saurashtra.
• Its basin has a maximum length of 130 km. The total catchment area of the basin is 2515 km2.
• Julto Pool hanging bridge is one of the tourist attractions of Morbi, a major industrial town with thousands of factories making ceramic tiles and bathroom products and wall clocks.
• In 1979, Machchu dam, situated on the Machchu river, failed sending a wall of water through the town of Morbi.

National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA):

• NDMA was formally constituted on 27th September 2006, by the Disaster Management Act, 2005.
• NDMA is India’s apex statutory body for disaster management.
• The Prime Minister is its chairperson and it has nine other members. One of the nine members is designated as Vice-Chairperson.
• Disaster Management Act also envisaged the creation of State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMAs) headed by respective Chief Ministers and the District Disaster Management Authorities (DDMA) headed by the District Collectors/ District Magistrate and co-chaired by Chairpersons of the local bodies.
• The primary responsibility for the management of disaster rests with the State Government concerned. However, the National Policy on Disaster Management puts in place an enabling environment for all i.e., the Centre, state and district.
• Aim: to spearhead and implement a holistic and integrated approach to Disaster Management in India. To build a safer and disaster resilient India by a holistic, pro-active, technology driven and sustainable development strategy that involves all stakeholders and fosters a culture of prevention, preparedness and mitigation.
• National Disaster Response Force (NDRF): The Disaster Management Act has statutory provisions for constitution of NDRF for the purpose of specialized response to natural and man-made disasters.
• In 2006 NDRF was constituted with 8 Battalions. At present, NDRF has a strength of 12 Battalions with each Battalion consisting of 1149 personnel.

Functions & Responsibilities:

• Lay down policies on and guidelines for the functioning of Disaster Management.
• Approve the National Plan.
• Approve plans prepared by the Ministries or Departments of the Government of India in accordance with the National Plan.
• Lay down guidelines to be followed by the State Authorities in drawing up the State Plan.
• Lay down guidelines to be followed by the different Ministries or Departments of the Government of India for the Purpose of integrating the measures for prevention of disaster or the mitigation of its effects in their development plans and projects.
• Coordinate the enforcement and implementation of the policy and plans for disaster management.
• Recommend provision of funds for the purpose of mitigation.
• Provide such support to other countries affected by major disasters as may be determined by the Central Government.
• Take such other measures for the prevention of disaster, or the mitigation, or preparedness and capacity building for dealing with threatening disaster situations or disasters as it may consider necessary.

Mauna Loa Volcano

Context 
Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano in the world, may erupt in the near future.

Where is Mauna Loa?

• Mauna Loa is one of five volcanoes that together make up the Big Island of Hawaii.
• It is the southernmost island in the Hawaiian archipelago.
• It’s not the tallest (that title goes to Mauna Kea) but it’s the largest and makes up about half of the island’s land mass.
• It sits immediately north of Kilauea volcano, which is currently erupting from its summit crater.
• Kilauea is well-known for a 2018 eruption that destroyed 700 homes and sent rivers of lava spreading across farms and into the ocean.
• Mauna Loa last erupted 38 years ago.

What about the Other Volcanoes?

Recently Erupted:

• Sangay Volcano: Ecuador
• Taal Volcano: Philippines
• Mt. Sinabung, Merapi volcano, Semeru volcano (Indonesia)

Volcanoes in India:

• Barren Island, Andaman Islands (India's only active volcano)
• Narcondam, Andaman Islands
• Baratang, Andaman Islands
• Deccan Traps, Maharashtra
• Dhinodhar Hills, Gujarat
• Dhosi Hill, Haryana

How are Volcanoes Distributed around the World?

• Volcanoes are distributed all around the world, mostly along the edges of Tectonic Plates, although there are intra-plate volcanoes that form from mantle Hotspots (e.g., Hawaii).
• Some volcanic regions, such as Iceland, happen to occur where there is both a hotspot and a plate boundary.

World Distribution of Volcano:

• Circum-Pacific Belt:
  • The Pacific "Ring of Fire" is a string of volcanoes and sites located on most of the Earth's subduction zones having high seismic activity, around the edges of the Pacific Ocean.
  • The Pacific Ring of Fire has a total of 452 volcanoes.
  • Most of the active volcanoes are found on its western edge, from the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, through the islands of Japan and Southeast Asia, to New Zealand.
• Mid-Continental Belt:
  • This volcanic belt extends along the Alpine Mountain system of Europe, north America, through Asia Minor, Caucasia, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Himalayan Mountain system, including Tibet, the pamir, Tien-Shan, altai, and the mountains of China, Myammar and eastern Siberia.
  • This belt includes the volcanoes of Alps mountains, Mediterranean Sea (Stromboli, Vesuvius, Etna, etc.), volcanoes of Aegean Sea, Mt. Ararat (Turkey), Elburz, Hindukush and Himalayas.
• Mid Atlantic Ridge:
  • The Mid-Atlantic Ridge separates the North and South American Plate from the Eurasian and African Plate.
  • Magma rises through the cracks and leaks out onto the ocean floor like a long, thin, undersea volcano. As magma meets the water, it cools and solidifies, adding to the edges of the sideways-moving plates.
  • This process along the divergent boundary has created the longest topographic feature in the form of Mid oceanic ridges under the Oceans of the world.
• Intra-Plate Volcanoes:
  • The 5% of known volcanoes in the world that are not closely related to plate margins are generally regarded as intraplate, or “hot-spot,” volcanoes.
  • A hot spot is believed to be related to the rising of a deep-mantle plume, which is caused by very slow convection of highly viscous material in Earth’s mantle.
  • It can be represented by a single oceanic volcano or lines of volcanoes such as the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chains.

Rare Earth Metals

Context

Amid India's reliance on China for rare earth minerals imports, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has urged the government to encourage private mining in the sector and diversify supply sources.

• Though India has 6% of the world’s rare earth reserves, it only produces 1% of global output, and meets most of its requirements of such minerals from China.
• In 2018-19, for instance, 92% of rare earth metal imports by value and 97% by quantity were sourced from China.

What are the Suggestions of CII?

• CII suggested that an 'India Rare Earths Mission' be set up manned by professionals, similar to the India Semiconductor Mission, as a critical component of the Deep Ocean Mission.
• The industry group has also mooted making rare earth minerals a part of the ‘Make In India’ campaign, citing China’s ‘Made in China 2025’ initiative that focuses on new materials, including permanent magnets that are made using rare earth minerals.

What are Rare Earth Metals?

• They are a set of seventeen metallic elements. These include the fifteen lanthanides on the periodic table in addition to scandium and yttrium that show similar physical and chemical properties to the lanthanides.
• The 17 Rare Earths are cerium (Ce), dysprosium (Dy), erbium (Er), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd), holmium (Ho), lanthanum (La), lutetium (Lu), neodymium (Nd), praseodymium (Pr), promethium (Pm), samarium (Sm), scandium (Sc), terbium (Tb), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb), and yttrium (Y).
• These minerals have unique magnetic, luminescent, and electrochemical properties and thus are used in many modern technologies, including consumer electronics, computers and networks, communications, health care, national defense, clean energy technologies etc.
• Even futuristic technologies need these REEs.
• For example, high-temperature superconductivity, safe storage and transport of hydrogen for a post-hydrocarbon economy etc.
• They are called 'rare earth' because earlier it was difficult to extract them from their oxides forms technologically.
• They occur in many minerals but typically in low concentrations to be refined in an economical manner.

How China Monopolised Rare Earths?

• China has over time acquired global domination of rare earths, even at one point, it produced 90% of the rare earths the world needs.
• Today, however, it has come down to 60% and the remaining is produced by other countries, including the Quad (Australia, India, Japan and United States).
• Since 2010, when China curbed shipments of Rare Earths to Japan, the US, and Europe, production units have come up in Australia, and the US along with smaller units in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
• Even so, the dominant share of processed Rare Earths lies with China.

What is India's Current Policy on Rare Earths?

• Exploration in India has been conducted by the Bureau of Mines and the Department of Atomic Energy. Mining and processing has been performed by some minor private players in the past, but is today concentrated in the hands of IREL (India) Limited (formerly Indian Rare Earths Limited), a Public Sector Undertaking under the Department of Atomic Energy.
• India has granted government corporations such as IREL a monopoly over the primary mineral that contains REEs: monazite beach sand, found in many coastal states.
• IREL produces rare earth oxides (low-cost, low-reward “upstream processes”), selling these to foreign firms that extract the metals and manufacture end products (high-cost, high-reward “downstream processes”) elsewhere.
• IREL’s focus is to provide thorium — extracted from monazite — to the Department of Atomic Energy.

What are the Related Steps taken?

• Globally:
  • The Multilateral Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) was announced in June 2022, with the goal of bringing together countries to build robust critical minerals supply chains needed for climate objectives.
  • Involved in this partnership are the United States (US), Canada, Australia, Republic of Korea, Japan, and various European countries.
  • India is not included in the partnership.
• By India:
  • Ministry of Mines has amended Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) (MMDR) Act, 1957 through the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2021 for giving boost to mineral production, improving ease of doing business in the country and increasing contribution of mineral production to Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
  • The amendment act provides that no mine will be reserved for particular end-use.

Way Forward

• India must take lessons from other advanced economies on how they are planning to secure their mineral needs and attempt to join multinational fora on assuring critical mineral supply chains – or use existing partnerships, such as Quad and BIMSTEC, to foster such dialogues.
• There must also be top-level decision making within the government to strategize on how to create vertically integrated supply chains of green technologies manufacturing, or we may be in serious danger of missing out on our climate change mitigation targets.
• India needs to create a new Department for Rare Earths (DRE), which would play the role of a regulator and enabler for businesses in this space.

Trends in Demography

Context
According to the projection by the United Nations, in 2022, China will for the first time register an absolute decline in its population and in 2023, India’s population to reach 1,428.63 million, will surpass China’s 1,425.67 million.

What are the Drivers of Population Change?

• Total Fertility Rate (TFR):
  • TFR has fallen for India in the last three decades.
  • Between 1992-93 and 2019-21, it came down from 3.4 to 2; the fall was especially significant in the rural areas.
  • In 1992-93, the average rural Indian woman produced one extra child compared to her urban counterpart (3.7 versus 2.7). By 2019-21, that gap had halved (2.1 versus 1.6).
  • A TFR of 2.1 is considered as “replacement-level fertility”.
  • The TFR is the average number of births by women aged 15-49 based on surveys for a particular period/year.
• Fall in Mortality:
  • Crude Death Rate (CDR) fell to single digits for China first in 1974 (to 9.5) and for India in 1994 (9.8), and further to 7.3-7.4 for both in 2020.
  • The CDR was 23.2 for China and 22.2 for India in 1950.
  • CDR is the number of persons dying per year per 1,000 population.
  • Mortality falls with increased education levels, public health and vaccination programmes, access to food and medical care, and provision of safe drinking water and sanitation facilities.
• Life Expectancy at Birth:
  • Between 1950 and 2020, life expectancy at birth went up from 43.7 to 78.1 years for China and from 41.7 to 70.1 years for India.
  • Reduction in mortality normally leads to a rising population. A drop in fertility, on the other hand, slows down population growth, ultimately resulting in absolute declines.

What are the Implications of the Trends for China?

• China’s TFR was 1.3 births per woman, marginally up from the 1.2 in the 2010 and 2000 censuses, but way below the replacement rate of 2.1.
• From 2016, China officially ended its one-child policy which was introduced in 1980.
• The UN, nevertheless, projects its total population at 1.31 billion in 2050, a 113 million-plus drop from the 2021 peak.
• The decline in China's population of prime working age is concerning as it creates a vicious cycle wherein the number of working people to support dependent decreases but the number of dependents starts increasing.
• The proportion of the population aged between 20 and 59 years crossed 50% in 1987 and peaked at 61.5% in 2011.
• As the cycle reverses, China's working-age population will fall below 50% by 2045.
• Moreover, the average (median) age of the population, which was 28.9 years in 2000 and 37.4 years in 2020, is expected to soar to 50.7 years by 2050.

What are the Steps taken by India to Control Population?

• India became one of the first developing countries to come up with a state-sponsored family planning programme in the 1950s.
• A population policy committee was established in 1952.
• In 1956, a Central Family Planning Board was set up and its focus was on sterilisation.
• In 1976, GOI announced the first National Population Policy.
• National Population Policy, 2000 envisaged achieving a stable population for India.
• The Policy aims to achieve stable population by 2045.
• One of its immediate objectives is to address the unmet needs for contraception, health care infrastructure, and personnel and provide integrated service delivery for basic reproductive and child health care.
• National Family Health Survey (NFHS) is a large-scale, multi-round survey conducted in a representative sample of households throughout India.
• NFHS has had two specific goals:
• To provide essential data on health and family welfare needed for policy and programme purposes.
• To provide information on important emerging health and family welfare issues.
• Realising the potential of education in tackling the problems of growing rate of population, the Ministry of Education launched a Population Education Programme with effect from 1980.
• The Population Education programme is a central sector scheme designed to introduce Population Education in the formal education system.
• It has been developed in collaboration with the United Nations Funds for Population Activities (UNFPA) and with the active involvement of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Way Forward

• There is an opportunity for India to reap a demographic dividend as its working-age population's share of the overall population reached 50% only in 2007 and will peak at 57% by the mid-2030s.
• But reaping demographic dividend is contingent upon the creation of meaningful employment opportunities for a young population.
• There needs to be preparedness with suitable infrastructure, conducive social welfare schemes and massive investment in quality education and health.
• For those already in the 25-64 age bracket, there is a need for skilling, which is the only way to ensure they are more productive and have better incomes.
• New skills and opportunities for women and girls befitting their participation in a 3 trillion dollar economy is urgently needed.

Fujiwhara Effect

Context

• Recently, two cyclones, namely super typhoon Hinnamnor & tropical storm Gardo started hovering around the central line between them, showcasing the Fujiwhara Effect. 

About the Fujiwhara Effect

• Definition:
  • The Fujiwhara Effect is any interaction between tropical storms formed around the same time in the same ocean region with their centers or eyes at a distance of less than 1,400 km, with intensity that could vary between a depression (wind speed under 63 km per hour) and a super typhoon (wind speed over 209 km per hour).
• Propounder:
  • The Fujiwhara effect was identified by Sakuhei Fujiwhara, a Japanese meteorologist whose first paper recognising the Fujiwhara cases was published in 1921. 
• Known examples:
  • The first known instance of the effect was in 1964 in the western Pacific Ocean when typhoons Marie and Kathy merged.
• What it may lead to:
  • The interaction could lead to changes in the track and intensity of either or both storm systems. 
  • In rare cases, the two systems could merge, especially when they are of similar size and intensity, to form a bigger storm.
  • There are five different ways in which the Fujiwhara Effect can take place. 
• The first is elastic interaction: 
  • In this only the direction of motion of the storms changes and is the most common case. 
  • These are also the cases that are difficult to assess and need closer examination.
• The second is partial straining: 
  • In this a part of the smaller storm is lost to the atmosphere.
• The third is complete straining out: 
  • In this the smaller storm is completely lost to the atmosphere. The straining out does not happen for storms of equal strength.
• The fourth type is partial merger: 
  • In this the smaller storm merges into the bigger one and 
• The fifth is complete merger: 
  • It takes place between two storms of similar strength.
  • During a merger interaction between two tropical cyclones the wind circulations come together and form a sort of whirlpool of winds in the atmosphere.