Daily Current Affairs : 3rd & 4th January

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

1. M Stripes
2. Motion and Resolution
3. Major General Qassem Soleimani
4. Lord Curzon
5. North East Monsoon
6. Kalapani – Already covered under November Current Affairs
7. Facts for Prelims

1 . M Stripes

About M Stripes

• M-Stripes is a software monitoring system built by the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Wildlife Institute of India
• The system consists of two components
  • Field based protocols for patrolling, law enforcement, recording wildlife crimes and ecological monitoring
  • A customized software for storage, retrieval, analysis and reporting.

Benefits

• Earlier law enforcement and ecological monitoring are being done, but the information generated is ad hoc and rarely available in a format for informed decision making.
• The “MSTrIPES” addresses this void and is a tool for adaptive management. The system uses a holistic approach by integrating ecological insights obtained through the standardized tiger, prey, and habitat assessment protocols (Phase I) to guide protection and management.
• It allows patrol teams to keep a better tab on suspicious activity while also mapping their own patrolling, location, routes and timings for better accountability.
• The system performs statistical computations of occupancy, precision, sample size, and assesses trends over desired time and spatial scales for tigers, other carnivores, prey populations, human impacts, illegal activities, and law enforcement investments.
• MSTrIPES produces easily interpretable reports and maps that are useful for management and policy decisions.
• The system reduces the response time to detrimental events like poaching or habitat degradation and becomes a comprehensive tool to keep the pulse of a tiger reserve.

Tiger Reserves in News

• Satkosia Tiger Reserve in Odisha
• Buxa Tiger Reserve in West Bengal

2 . Motion and Resolution

Context : Kerala Assembly unanimously passed a resolution pressurising the Centre to withdraw the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).

Resolutions

• A resolution can be moved by a member or Minister on a matter of general public interest. 
• While there is no fixed day allotted for moving a resolution by a Minister, a private member can move a resolution only on an allotted day.

Conditions of admissibility

• The admissibility of a resolution is subject to certain conditions:
  • It should be clearly and precisely expressed;
  • It should raise substantially, one definite issue;
  • It should not contain any argument, inferences, ironical expressions, imputations or defamatory statements;
  • It should not refer to the conduct or character of persons except in their official or public capacity; and
  • It should not relate to a matter which is under adjudication by a court of law having jurisdiction in any part of India.  Admitted resolutions are first published in the Bulletin Part-II for the advance information of members and Ministers.

Government resolution

• There are no separate rules regulating the procedure for Government resolutions. 
• Government resolutions are distinguishable from private members’ resolutions in two respects, namely, the origin and the ballot. 
• Government resolutions are not subject to ballot like private members’ resolutions. 
• Though no period of notice has been prescribed for Government resolutions, in actual practice, notices of such resolutions are given much in advance of the date on which the resolutions are included in the list of business. 
• These resolutions, after admission, are also published in Bulletin Part-II.  The time for discussion of Government resolutions is also recommended by the Business Advisory Committee.

3 . Major General Qassem Soleimani Killing

Context : Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, Major General Qassem Soleimani, was killed in a US drone attack in Baghdad.

About the News

• Gen Soleimani was killed in an airstrike, for which the US later claimed responsibility.
• The strike was carried out by a drone on a road near Baghdad’s international airport. Soleimani had reportedly just disembarked from a plane.
• The blast also killed others including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq known as Popular Mobilisation Forces.
• The strike capped a week of conflict between the United States and Iranian-backed militia in Iraq, starting with a rocket attack at a military base on December 27, which killed an American contractor

Who was Gen Soleimani?

• Soleimani was in charge of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which the US designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in April last year.
• The Quds Force undertakes Iranian missions in other countries, including covert ones.
• Soleimani, who had headed the Quds since 1998, not only looked after after intelligence gathering and covert military operations, but also drew immense influence from his closeness to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He was seen as a potential future leader of Iran, according to various reports.

What did the Quds Force do?

• Khomeini had created the prototype in 1979, with the goal of protecting Iran and exporting the Islamic Revolution.
• In 1982, Revolutionary Guard officers were sent to Lebanon to help organise Shia militias in the civil war, which eventually led to the creation of Hezbollah.
• IRGC including the Quds Force has contributed roughly 125,000 men to Iran’s forces and has the capability of undertaking asymmetric warfare and covert operations.
• As Quds head, Soleimani briefly worked in cooperation with the US. This was during the US crackdown in Afghanistan following 9/11; Soleimani wanted the Taliban defeated. The cooperation ended in 2002 after President George W Bush branded Iran a nuclear proliferator, an exporter of terrorism, and part of an “Axis of Evil”. By 2003, the US was accusing Soleimani of plotting attacks on US soldiers following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which eventually toppled Saddam Hussein. And in 2011, the Treasury Department placed him on a sanctions blacklist.
• In recent years, Soleimani was believed to be the chief strategist behind Iran’s military ventures and influence in Syria, Iraq and throughout the Middle East.

4 . Lord Curzon

Context : West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar drew widespread condemnation over his tweet referring to a table, apparently used by Lord Curzon to sign papers pertaining to the Partition of Bengal in 1905, as “iconic”. Dhankhar later deleted the tweet.

Who was Lord Curzon?

• Born in 1859 into British nobility, Curzon was educated at the elite Eton College school and attended Oxford. In 1891, he became Under-Secretary of State for India (the deputy minister in the British cabinet responsible for India). He became the youngest Viceroy of India in 1899 at age 39, and remained in office until his resignation in 1905.
• Curzon was deeply racist, and convinced of Britain’s “civilising mission” in India. In 1901, he described Indians as having “extraordinary inferiority in character, honesty and capacity”. He said, “It is often said why not make some prominent native a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council? The answer is that in the whole continent there is not an Indian fit for the post.”
• Expectedly, the Viceroy was intolerant of Indian political aspirations. In a letter to the British Secretary of State in 1900, Curzon wrote, “(The Indian National) Congress is tottering to its fall, and one of my greatest ambitions while in India is to assist it to a peaceful demise.”

What was Curzon’s role in the partition of Bengal?

• In July 1905, Curzon announced the partition of the undivided Bengal Presidency. The Presidency was the most populous province in India, with around 8 crore people, and comprised the present-day states of West Bengal, Bihar, parts of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Assam, as well as today’s Bangladesh.
• A new province of East Bengal and Assam was announced, with a population of 3.1 crore, and a Muslim-Hindu ratio of 3:2. Bengal, the western province, was overwhelmingly Hindu. While the move was ostensibly aimed at making the administration of the large region easier, Curzon’s real intentions were far less benign.
• He recorded in a letter: “The Bengalis like to think of themselves as a nation… If we are weak enough to yield to their clamour now we shall not be able to dismember or reduce Bengal again, and you will be cementing and solidifying on the eastern flank of India a force almost formidable, and certain to be an increasing trouble in the future.”

What happened after the partition was announced?

• The partition provoked great resentment and hostility in Bengal. It was clear to the Bengal Congress and patriotic Indians in both Bengal and elsewhere that Curzon’s motive was to crush the increasingly loud political voices of the literate class in the province, and to provoke religious strife and opposition against them. But the protests against the partition did not remain confined to this class alone.
• A campaign to boycott British goods, especially textiles, and promote swadeshi began. There were marches and demonstrations with the protesters singing Bande Mataram to underline their patriotism and challenge the colonialists. Samitis emerged throughout Bengal, with several thousand volunteers.
• Rabindranath Tagore led the marches at many places, and composed many patriotic songs, most famously ‘Amar Sonar Bangla’ (My Golden Bengal), which is now the national anthem of Bangladesh. The message of patriotism and Bengali nationalism was showcased in Jatras, or popular theatre.

What impact did the protests have?

• Curzon left for Britain in 1905, but the agitation continued for many years. Partition was finally reversed in 1911 by Lord Hardinge in the face of unrelenting opposition.
• The Swadeshi movement, which had grown significantly during the agitation, later reached nationwide proportions. The partition of Bengal and the highhanded behaviour of Curzon fired the national movement and the Congress.
• In ‘Lion and the Tiger : The Rise and Fall of the British Raj, 1600-1947’, Denis Judd wrote: “Curzon had hoped… to bind India permanently to the Raj. Ironically, his partition of Bengal, and the bitter controversy that followed, did much to revitalize Congress. Curzon, typically, had dismissed the Congress in 1900 as ‘tottering to its fall’. But he left India with Congress more active and effective than at any time in its history.”

5 . North East Monsoon

Context : The northeast, or winter, monsoon has ended on a high, with an overall surplus rainfall being recorded for the season.

This year the rare meteorological coincidence of the northeast (winter) monsoon making its onset on the same day as the southwest monsoon withdrew officially happened

The two events rarely happen simultaneously, although the three-month winter monsoon season is supposed to begin almost immediately after the end of the June-September summer monsoon season.

In 2019, the retreat of the southwest (summer) monsoon was delayed by a record margin, while the northeast (winter) monsoon set in on time.

So, what is the northeast (winter) monsoon?

• Southwest summer monsoon is the main monsoon season, which brings widespread rain across the country.For many parts of India, this is the only time they receive rain. These four months bring about 75 per cent of India’s annual rainfall.
• However, for some regions of South India, it is the winter monsoon that is much more important. Northeast monsoon is as permanent a feature of the Indian subcontinent’s climate system as the summer monsoon.
• The India Meteorological Department (IMD) recognises October to December as the time for the northeast monsoon.
• During this period, rainfall is experienced over Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh, along with some parts of Telangana and Karnataka.

So why are these two monsoons named thus?

• Northeast monsoon derives its name from the direction in which it travels — from the northeast to the southwest. (In fact, all winds are named for the direction from which they blow. Thus the westerlies blow from the west, and the easterlies from the east.)
• Similarly, the summer monsoon (at least the Arabian Sea branch of it; there is also a branch that swerves in an anticlockwise direction in the Bay of Bengal before entering the Indian landmass and bringing rain to the eastern, northeastern and northern parts of the country) moves in exactly the opposite direction — from the southwest to the northeast. That is why it is called the southwest monsoon.

When does the northeast monsoon set in?

• Although October, November, and December are supposed to comprise the northeast monsoon season, the rains normally set in only around October 20.
• The southern peninsular region receives rain in the first half of October as well, but that is attributable to the retreating summer monsoon. The summer monsoon season ends on September 30 but the withdrawal does not happen overnight.
• The southward withdrawal takes place over a period of three to four weeks. It usually starts around the second week of September and continues till about the second week of October, bringing rain as it retreats. 2019 was unusual in that the withdrawal was completed in just eight days, beginning on October 9.

Where does it rain during the northeast monsoon season?

• The northeast monsoon brings rain to just five of the 36 meteorological divisions in the country — Tamil Nadu (which includes Puducherry), Kerala, Coastal Andhra Pradesh, Rayalaseema and South Interior Karnataka.
• The northeast monsoon is particularly important for Tamil Nadu, which receives almost half its annual rainfall during this season.
• The southwest monsoon contributes just 35 per cent to Tamil Nadu’s annual rainfall (the rest comes in other non-monsoon months). Within the state, some districts get up to 60 per cent of their annual rainfall during this time.

6 . Facts for Prelims

Air Defence Command

• Air defence refers to protecting military assets from an aerial threat by the enemy.
• An Air Defence command will include air defence resources of all the three services.

Extracocular Vision

• The ability to see without eyes is known as extraocular vision. 
• Researchers have shown that a species of brittle stars, which are relatives of starfish, can see even though it does not have eyes. The red brittle star (Ophiocoma wendtii), which lives in the coral reefs of the Caribbean Sea, becomes only the second creature, after a sea urchin species, known to have this ability (barring freak cases in other species).
• In sea urchins and brittle stars, researchers suspect that extraocular vision is facilitated by the photoreceptor cells found on their bodies.