Cyclone Gulab
- The name Gulab is from the list of cyclone names that is maintained by the World Meteorological Flood management-India and Nepal Organisation/United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (WMO/ESCAP) Panel on Tropical Cyclones (PTC).
- The panel comprises 13 countries namely, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Maldives, Oman, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, who choose the names of cyclones in the region.
- Pakistan, not India, proposed this name.
- The names are chosen keeping in mind they are simple to use and do not carry any inflammatory meaning.
- As per guidelines, the name should be neutral to politics, political figures, religious beliefs, cultures, and gender.
- Amphan, the cyclone that hit India in May 2020 was the last name on the list developed in 2004.
- With as many as eight countries, the group finalized 64 names, with each country pitching eight names
THE HINDU
Flood management-India and Nepal
- Some of Nepal’s biggest river systems originate in the Himalayan glaciers which then flow into India through Bihar. During the monsoons, these river systems flood causing many problems for Bihar.
- It is a necessity that there is process-driven coordination between the Centre and the Government of Bihar to handle the flooding in Nepal’s Terai and North Bihar, As in the existing India-Nepal Agreement on water resources, the State government is authorised to execute flood protection works up to critical stretches inside Nepal territory along the India-Nepal border.
- In recent years, all such flood protection works have had to be carried out in the face of increasing local resistance. After sustained coordination between the Centre and the State (Bihar) and expedited interventions by India with Nepal, Kathmandu gave its conditional permission for manpower and machinery operation in the Nepal area of Kosi basi.
- Nepal’s attitude towards mutual issues (water sharing, flood control, etc.) has been short of collaboration, unlike in the past.
- In the best spirit of friendship, Nepal and India should restart the water dialogue and come up with policies to safeguard the interests of all those who have been affected on both sides of the border.
- It is time the two friendly countries come together and assess the factors that are causing unimaginable losses through flooding every year. Optimisation of the infrastructure will be decisive in finding an alternative paradigm of flood management.
- Moreover, it is also linked to how the Himalayan glaciers and the green cover are managed.
- Water cooperation should drive the next big India-Nepal dialogue, and despite the challenges, wisdom should prevail to turn the crisis into an opportunity, for the sake of development and environmental protection
THE HINDU
India and USA
- At the heart of the two leaders’ meeting was the issue of vaccine availability — and a critical victory for the Biden administration as it received indian PM assurance that as the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, India would resume supplies to the global COVAX pool under its ‘Vaccine Maitri’ programme.
- Around the same time the U.S. also invoked its Defence Production Act, effectively preventing the export of raw materials for vaccine manufacture in a bid to prioritise domestic production.
- Around the same time the U.S. also invoked its Defense Production Act, effectively preventing the export of raw materials for vaccine manufacture in a bid to prioritise domestic production.
- reaffirmation by Mr. Biden that India remained a ‘Major Defence Partner’, making it a key nation with which Washington could share information and strengthen cooperation in advanced military technologies, including, for example, a recent project to codevelop air-launched unmanned aerial vehicles. Issues of global concern, including the ongoing pandemic, climate change, technology cooperation, supply chains and security, and preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific were themes that came up at the Quad gathering.
- This meeting builds upon the intention of the Quad member nations — India, the U.S., Australia, and Japan — to ensure an Indo Pacific region “free from coercion and disputes… solved in accordance with international law”.
- While India has sought to disassociate its role as a member of the Quad from the recently announced Australia-U.K.- U.S. (AUKUS) partnership, there is little doubt that the creation of a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines for Australia under the AUKUS framework will have significant and positive implications on India’s strategic calculus regarding the Indo-Pacific region,
- This is a time for India to rapidly deepen cooperative initiatives with the U.S. regarding vaccines and trade and continue engaging vigorously with the Quad for regional stability.
- Topic-Identity Based policy
- Some political parties have demanded that caste be enumerated in the Census.
- The demand has been accompanied by the argument that the efficacy of public policy for enhancing well-being across the population is tied to the enumeration of Indians by their caste
- One approach to assessing this argument would be to compare development outcomes in States where political parties have adopted caste-based mobilisation with those in States where political programmes for ending deprivation have taken the social democratic route, without resorting to identity politics.
- Tamil Nadu would be an example of the former, while Kerala would be an example of the latter.
- As the availability of data across social groups is limited, we focused on three variables.
- These were adult literacy, infant mortality and consumption.
- identity-based public policy may not be as effective as one based on an identity less or universalist approach that is the hallmark of a social democracy. Counting the number of women through a census has proved insufficient to eliminate the deprivation and inequality they face.
- Politics and not the availability of information drives public policy.
THE HINDU
Appointment of SCALE
- A meeting between industry captains and Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal soon after the national lockdown was announced in 2020, has led to the setting up of the Steering Committee for Local Value Addition, Manufacturing and Exports, or SCALE, aimed at navigating Indian manufacturing away from the import-dependence pitfall.
- The SCALE includes the top brass from the industry bodies
- The SCALE group is different for a few reasons. First, it has no deadlines and drafts and no voluminous reports all its proposals are laid out in a presentation at best.
- Second, it doesn’t just gather up ideas from various sectoral players and splash them together for the government to consider, as usual industry representations tend to be.
- Third, it follows a rigorous process of consultations to align different factions of industry with varying agendas at multiple levels. Topic-National mission on cultural mapping. Having made little progress since its launch in 2017, the National Mission on Cultural Mapping (NMCM) has now been handed over to the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), which is gearing up for a trial run in 75 villages in October, according to officials.
- The Culture Ministry had approved the mission in 2017 with a ₹469 crore budget from 2017-18 to 2019-20,
- He work on creating a database for folk arts and mapping of heritage of villages would be carried out over five years.
- Volunteers from the Nehru Yuva Kendra Sanghathan, the National Service Scheme and students of sociology and social work would be deputed to collect such data from villages, Topic-Vampire bat Social bond. Scientists have shown how those bats that have forged “friendships” with others will rendezvous with these buddies while foraging for a meal.
- “Each bat maintains its own network of close cooperative social bonds.
- Social bonds among vampire bats as they roost in trees include grooming one another and regurgitating blood meals for hungry pals.
- Vampire bats, which inhabit warmer regions of Latin America and boast wingspans of about 18 cm, are the only mammals with a blood only diet.
- They reside in colonies of thousands.
THE HINDU
Rainy September
- For the first time since 2010, India is poised to see three consecutive Septembers with excess rainfall.
- Experts say that this is a sign of a change in monsoon patterns though it is too early yet to demonstrably prove that is a lasting consequence of global warming. A rain-bearing circulation is forming in the Bay of Bengal unusual for this time of the year and is expected to bring significant rain over several parts of India for most of the coming week.
- “The most obvious reason is that the monsoon is withdrawing much later than usual,” “Overall global warming is increasing moisture levels during the monsoon period but this is affecting the distribution of the rain,”
- monthly variability of the summer rainfall was due to changing patterns of low pressure over the Indian landmass as well as fluctuations in moisture distribution
OTP memory
- IIT Bombay researchers have developed a “memory technology” that can, in principle, revolutionise Indian industry and the many applications that need semiconductor chips, such as in the defence sector, automobiles and future aspirations in cell phone manufacturing.
- Hard disks, flash memory, etc, are examples of memory technology. There is also another form of memory called the one-time programmable memory (OTP) where the memory is written once, stored for a lifetime, and retrieved and used many times.
- This finds varied uses, one of which is in correcting faulty chips that have been mass produced for specific applications.
- For instance, think of a chip that helps read off the temperature. Due to a manufacturing defect, the chip may read 100 degree Celsius as 101 degree Celsius. This “offset” of 1 degree may be corrected by storing the error correction parameter in the OTP memory.
- This is done uniquely for each chip and once stored, the memory corrects the chip’s output for its lifetime.
- “OTP memories are also used for other purposes, mainly three: chip identity, secure information storage and chip calibration for error correction, This technology is the first indigenous semiconductor memory technology adoption to manufacturing at 180-nanometre node.
- Thus, this is a major national milestone for semiconductor innovation
THE HINDU