Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE
Topics Covered
- Elephant Bonds
- Iterative evolution
- Crested ibises
- Groundwater Assesment
- CFC 11
- Facts for Prelims – RISAT 2B, Bhawana kanth, Contribution of Fr Beschi
1 . Elephant Bonds
Context : A government-appointed advisory group has suggested issuance of ‘Elephant Bonds’ wherein people declaring undisclosed income will have to mandatorily invest half of that amount in these securities. The high-level panel also recommended a host of other measures that include a road map for doubling India’s exports of goods and services to over USD 1,000 billion by 2025.
About Elephant Bonds
- Suggesting amnesty-like scheme, the panel asked the government to create “Elephant Bonds” (25-year sovereign bonds) in which people declaring undisclosed income will be bound to invest 50 per cent. The fund will be utilised only for infrastructure projects.
Other Recommendations
- The high-level panel also recommended a host of other measures that include a road map for doubling India’s exports of goods and services to over USD 1,000 billion by 2025.
- The other key recommendations include lowering effective corporate tax rate, bringing down cost of capital and simplifying regulatory and tax framework for foreign investment funds. These are aimed at increasing India’s exports of goods and services from USD 500 billion in 2018 to over USD 1000 billion in 2025.The report argued that India’s competitors have less than 20 per cent effective tax rates.
- The panel also recommended increasing capital base of EXIM Bank by another Rs 20,000 crore by 2022, setting up of empowered investment promotion agency and seeking inputs from industry and MSMEs before signing free trade agreements (FTAs) and sensitising them of its benefits.
- The nine non-industry specific recommendations also include building a comprehensive export strategy and rationalise tariff structure.
- Further, the seven industry specific suggestion include separate regulation for medical devices and a single ministry for the sector.
- For textiles and garments sector, it suggested modification in labour laws (like the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947) to remove limitation on firm size and allow manufacturing firms to grow.
- To promote tourism and medical value tourism, the group recommended simplification in medical visa regime, setting up of a pan-India tourism board.
- Similarly, to promote agriculture exports, it has asked for abolishing Essential Commodities Act and the APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committee)
2 . Iterative evolution
Context : The white-throated rail is the only flightless bird known in the Indian Ocean area. New research has found that it had once gone extinct, but rose from the dead thanks to a rare process called “iterative evolution”
About White Throated Rails
- The white-throated rail is a chicken-sized bird, indigenous to Madagascar.
- It found that on two occasions, separated by tens of thousands of years, a rail species was able to colonise an island called Aldabra
- In the absence of predators on the island the re-evolved species of the rail has lost its ability to fly
- However, Aldabra disappeared under the the sea during an inundation event around 136,000 years ago.
- The researchers studied fossil evidence from 100,000 years ago when the island was recolonised by flightless rails, and compared with fossils from before the inundation event.
- They concluded that one species from Madagascar gave rise to two different species of flightless rail on Aldabra in the space of a few thousand years.
- IUCN Status – Least Concern
What is iterative evolution
- Iterative evolution means the repeated evolution of similar or parallel structures from the same ancestor but at different times.
3 . Crested ibises
Context : An endangered bird was reintroduced to the wild by South Korean authorities on Wednesday, four decades after it went extinct on the peninsula.
About Crested ibises
- The crested ibis was last seen in the wild in 1979 in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Korean peninsula.
- Its head is partially bare, showing red skin, and it has a dense crest of white plumes on the nape
- Threats : China and Japan are also part of the species’ natural range, but the species was driven to the edge of extinction — partially because pesticide use eliminated its food sources — until captive breeding programmes were set up.
- IUCN Status – Endangered
4 . Ground Water Assessment
Context : The Union Water Ministry is finalising an updated estimate on the state of groundwater reserves in the country.
About the Assessment
- The groundwater assessment was last done in 2013. It is undertaken by Central Ground Water Board (CGWB)
- It is a survey that samples a sliver of blocks in each State and counts how many blocks have critically low levels of water and how many are well-stocked.
Key Findings of Previous Year Reports
- In 2013, the CGWB assessed 6,584 units across the country and found 4,520 to be “safe,” 681 to be “semi-critical” 253 to be “critical” and 1,034 to be “overexploited.” About 96 blocks were “saline”.
- The overall contribution of rainfall to the country’s annual ground water resource is 68%.
- The share of other resources, such as canal seepage, return flow from irrigation, recharge from tanks, ponds and water conservation structures taken together is 32%.
- The national per capita annual availability of water has reduced from 1,816 cubic metres in 2001 to 1,544 cubic metres in 2011 — a reduction of 15%.
Concerns
- India’s groundwater has been depleting at a worrying rate since 1995
- In 1995, only 3% of districts had overexploited their groundwater reserves whereas by 2011, that had increased to 15%.
5 . CFC 11
Context : Emissions of banned chemical CFC-11 traced to eastern China
About CFC 11
- CFC-11 is also known as trichlorofluoromethane, and is one of a number of chloroflurocarbon (CFC) chemicals that were initially developed as refrigerants during the 1930s.
- It took many decades for scientists to discover that when CFCs break down in the atmosphere, they release chlorine atoms that are able to rapidly destroy the ozone layer which protects us from ultraviolet light
- They are also potent greenhouse gases that contribute to atmospheric warming.
- Excessive amounts of some types of UV radiation can cause skin cancer and eye damage in people and are harmful to crops and other vegetation.
- Chlorofluorocarbons were outlawed for almost all uses by the Montreal Protocol, an international pact negotiated decades ago to preserve the layer of ozone that blocks ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
Current Issue
- CFC-11 was the second most abundant CFCs and was initially seen to be declining as expected.
- However in 2018 a team of researchers monitoring the atmosphere found that the rate of decline had slowed by about 50% after 2012.
- The team reasoned that they were seeing new production of the gas, coming from East Asia. The authors of that paper argued that if the sources of new production weren’t shut down, it could delay the healing of the ozone layer by a decade
- Further detective work in China by the Environmental Investigation Agency in 2018 seemed to indicate that the country was indeed the source.
- They found that the illegal chemical was used in the majority of the polyurethane insulation produced by firms they contacted.
- One seller of CFC-11 estimated that 70% of China’s domestic sales used the illegal gas. The reason was quite simple – CFC-11 is better quality and much cheaper than the alternatives.
6 . Facts for Prelims
RISAT 2B
Contribution of Father Beschi
- Fr Constanzo G Beschi, the polyglot Jesuit of “Madura Mission” was appointed as his Diwan by Chanda Sahib
- The Italian Jesuit had fallen in love with Tamil, so much so that he rechristened himself as Veera Mamunivar.
- His work includes First Tamil lexicon, a Tamil-Latin dictionary, translations of a number of ancient Tamil literary works into various European languages, composing many Tamil literary works himself.
- Among his various Tamil literary works, Thembavani (The Unfading Ornament) is considered a great Tamil epic.
Bhawana Kanth
- Flight Lieutenant Bhawana Kanth Wednesday became the first woman pilot of the Indian Air Force to qualify to undertake combat missions on a fighter jet.
- Last year, Bhawana became the second woman pilot of the Indian Air Force to fly solo in a fighter aircraft.