Daily Current Affairs : 5th and 6th December 2023

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

1. Tropical Cyclones
2. Post Office Bill
3. United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO Report on Agriculture
4. Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955
5. Global Positioning System

1 . Tropical Cyclones

About Cyclones

• Cyclones are natural disasters characterized by powerful circular storm systems with low-pressure centers. 
• They are known by different names in different parts of the world, such as hurricanes in the Atlantic and northeastern Pacific, typhoons in the northwestern Pacific, and cyclones in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific. 
• Cyclones consist of several key components, including:
  • Eye: The center of the cyclone, which is often calm with clear skies. 
  • Eyewall: A ring of intense thunderstorms surrounding the eye, where the strongest winds and heaviest rainfall occur. 
  • Rainbands: Spiral bands of clouds and rain extending from the eyewall. 

Types

• Cyclones are of two types: Tropical Cyclones: These are intense low-pressure systems that form over warm ocean waters, typically between 5 and 30 degrees latitude in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. They are known as hurricanes in the Atlantic and northeastern Pacific, typhoons in the northwestern Pacific, and cyclones in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific. 
• Extratropical Cyclones: These cyclones develop in higher latitudes, often outside the tropics. They are associated with weather systems that have cold and warm fronts and can affect regions far from the ocean. Extratropical cyclones are responsible for many mid-latitude weather events, including winter storms and the more common types of storms. 

Factors for formation

• Warm Ocean Water: Cyclones require warm ocean water as their energy source. Sea surface temperatures of at least 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher provide the necessary heat and moisture for the development of a cyclone. 
• Atmospheric Instability: Warm, moist air near the ocean surface rises and interacts with cooler, drier air aloft. This difference in temperature and moisture creates atmospheric instability, which encourages the air to rise further. 
• Coriolis Effect: The Coriolis effect is caused by the Earth’s rotation and is essential for cyclone formation. It causes air to rotate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. The Coriolis effect helps establish the cyclonic rotation of the storm. 
• Low-Pressure Center: An initial disturbance or area of low pressure is often needed to kick-start cyclone formation. This can be provided by weather systems like easterly waves or other atmospheric disturbances. 
• Low Wind Shear: Cyclones thrive in environments with low wind shear, which means that wind speeds and directions do not change significantly with altitude. Wind shear can disrupt the development or intensification of a cyclone. 
• Moisture: Adequate moisture in the atmosphere is crucial for fueling the cyclone. As warm, moist air rises and cools, it releases latent heat, which further encourages rising motion. 
• Upper-Level Divergence: Cyclones benefit from upper-level divergence, where air moves away from the storm at higher altitudes. This encourages rising motion in the lower atmosphere. 

Reasons for less cyclones originating in Arabian Sea compared to Bay of Bengal

• Most of Indian coasts lie in tropical region. Tropical cyclones need a temperature of around 25-27 degree Celsius. Greater the temperature over sea, more powerful is cyclone.
• The Arabian Sea is relatively cooler than this temperature range, which the Bay of Bengal offers. This is why Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal face more cyclones than Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
• Greater frequency of Bay of Bengal cyclones and more strength to them come from a foreign source as well. Neighbouring Pacific Ocean seas are more prone to cyclones. Typhoons originating in near Philippines, China, Thailand and Malaysia enter the Andaman Sea of Bay of Bengal after they weaken in their native regions.
• Most of the cyclones in the Arabian Sea are local. They collapse a little after making landfall as there is no back-up supply. Recent Ockhi cyclone was one of the exceptions that remained strong for some time even after hitting Maharashtra and Gujarat coasts.
• Also, the hills along the eastern coasts are not high enough to stop cyclones making much inroad into the coastal states. The Western Ghats run almost the entire distance of the western coasts preventing the cyclonic storms to go in the hinterland.

What is Cyclogenesis? 

• Cyclone-genesis – or cyclogenesis – is an indicator that denotes the chance of a cyclone forming. 
• It depends on some parameters, including the sea surface temperature, the ocean heat content, change in winds from the surface into the upper atmosphere (or the vertical shear), and rotation of winds near the surface. 
• If these conditions line up, they will sow the seed for a cyclone, but we still don’t fully understand why some seeds sprout and grow into cyclones and some don’t. 

2 . Post Office Bill

Context : The Rajya Sabha passed the Post Office Bill on Monday, which repeals and replaces the Post Office Act of 1898. 

Key features of the bill and contentious provisions:

• The bill, introduced during the Monsoon Session of Parliament, aims to provide a simple legislative framework for post offices, facilitating their evolution into a network for citizen-centric services.
• The contentious provision in the bill allows the central government, through notification, to empower officers to intercept, open, or detain items for reasons related to national security, public order, emergency, or contravention of prevailing laws.
• The existing Indian Post Office Act of 1898 also provides for interception, albeit with some differences. Section 26 of the Act empowered the central government, state government, or a specially authorized officer to issue a written order for the interception, detention, or disposal of any postal article or a specific class or description of postal articles.
• This authority was granted “on the occurrence of any public emergency or in the interest of public safety or tranquillity.” In cases of uncertainty regarding whether an action constituted a public emergency or was in the interest of public safety, a certificate from the relevant government was necessary.
• In contrast, the new Post Office Bill, under clause 9, removes the requirement for a written order for interception. The central government is now empowered to intercept, open, or detain any item without the necessity of issuing a written order.
• Communications Minister Vaishnaw defended the interception provision, stating its necessity for national security in a complex and diverse society. He assured that rules governing interception would be presented before Parliament.
• However, it’s worth noting that the new bill itself does not explicitly provide for the introduction of interception procedures through rules, creating a discrepancy between the minister’s statement and the legislative text.
• The proposed legislation empowers the director general of postal services to frame regulations for providing services and fix charges.
• The bill exempts the government and officers from liability related to the loss, misdelivery, delay, or damage to postal articles.
• However, it introduces the provision that the central government may prescribe liability with regard to services by India Post under the rules.

3 . United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Report

Context : A groundbreaking report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), published earlier this month, has laid bare the staggering hidden costs of our global agri-food systems, surpassing an astonishing $10 trillion. In middle-income countries like India, these costs constitute nearly 11% of the GDP, which manifests as higher poverty, environmental harm, and health-related impacts, including undernourishment and unhealthy dietary patterns. The report blames “unsustainable business-as-usual activities and practices” for these escalating costs, pointing to a need to transform agri-food systems. One way to do so is to shift to multi-cropping systems that have the potential to protect farmers’ well-being, improve nutritional outcomes for our communities, and positively impact ecological health.

What are the impacts of intensive agriculture?

• Impressive improvements in agricultural productivity have been achieved in India over the last five decades by mainstreaming mono-cropping systems and chemical-intensive farming practices.
• The Green Revolution focused on the marketing of high-yielding varieties of paddy and wheat on agricultural lands, which now constitute more than 70% of India’s agricultural production. The infusion of seeds purchased from multinational corporations and fertilizers undermined seed sovereignty, dismantled Indigenous knowledge systems, and fuelled a shift from diverse crop varieties and staples such as pulses and millets to monoculture plantations. This trend also compromised the nutritional needs of households and resulted in adverse ecological consequences including excessive extraction of groundwater.
• This privatisation and deregulation of agricultural inputs also increased indebtedness among agrarian households. In 2013, the debt to asset ratio of a farmer’s household in India was 630% higher than in 1992. Agriculture in India has increasingly become unviable: the average monthly household income of a farming household sits at ₹10,816.

Which are the crops being favoured?

• Under the National Food Security Act 2013, 65% of households (around 800 million people) in India are legally assured a right to food at subsidised rates through the Public Distribution System and welfare programmes such as the Integrated Child Development Services and the Mid-Day Meal Scheme.
• To meet this requirement, the procurement of food crops is coordinated by the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which is required to maintain a central pool of buffer stock and to procure, transport, and store foodgrain stocks in the country. However, this procurement policy heavily favours rice and wheat. In 2019-2020, the FCI procured 341.32 lakh million tonnes (MT) of wheat and 514.27 lakh MT of rice. Whole wheat and rice also became export commodities. In contrast, the Indian government approved the procurement of a total of only 3.49 lakh MT of coarse grains such as jowar, bajra, ragi, maize, and barley by State governments for the central pool and local distribution, which is less than 1% of total foodgrain procurement. Not surprisingly, the area under cultivation of coarse grains dropped by 20% between 1966-1967 and 2017-2018, whereas the area under rice and wheat increased by nearly 20% and 56% respectively.
• At the same time, other water-intensive cash crops like sugarcane and areca nut have also flourished under policies favouring investments in dams and canal irrigation (favourable for sugarcane) and free electricity for borewells (favourable for areca nut). This trend threatens food security and the production of nutritional crops. The expansion of sugarcane cultivation affects biodiversity, increases the pressure on groundwater resources, and contributes to air and water pollution. And ironically, small and marginal farmers in India are among the most food and nutrition insecure.
• The global food system structure has a direct impact on the last mile — on both farmers and soil. Between 2012 and 2016, large fluctuations in soya prices in the global market and a glut in supply from Latin American countries eroded income for soy farmers and agro-companies in Malwa. Historically as well, global trade relations have influenced food production systems in the Global South. In the pre-independence era, tax systems were introduced to efficiently collect revenue for British-enforced exports of primary raw materials, such as cotton.

How can crop diversification help?

• A systemic shift in food regimes, from local to global value chains, is essential. The starting point for addressing these complex systemic issues could arise from local efforts, such as the diversification of farms.
• Diversified multi-cropping systems, rooted in agroecology principles, could be a viable solution to revitalise degraded land and soil. Practices known by various names locally, like ‘akkadi saalu’ in Karnataka, involve intercropping with a combination of legumes, pulses, oilseeds, trees, shrubs, and livestock. This approach enables cash provision from commercial crops, food and fodder production, and offers ecosystem services such as nitrogen fixation and pest traps, and supports the local biodiversity. They also collectively contribute to improving soil health.
• Critics have often argued against alternative farming systems, suggesting they may lead to a decline in farmer income even if the environment improves.
• But the FAO report says that there are substantial “hidden costs” associated with the current systems which need to be factored into long-term evaluations of income. Moreover, millets, whose yield per hectare is comparable to those of rice and wheat, are also more nutritious, grow in semi-arid conditions without burdening groundwater tables, require minimal input, and provide a diversified food basket.
• While crop diversification will involve some loss of productivity using a narrow metric of kg/Ha, it would preserve natural capital and allow farmers to become nutritionally secure. By redirecting subsidies, currently accruing to corporations, we can pay farmers for their contribution to sustaining natural capital, instead of incentivising them to deplete it.

How can farmers transition?

• It is unrealistic to expect farmers to shift away from mono-cultivation of rice and wheat overnight. This transition needs to be systematic, allowing farmers to adjust gradually. For instance, moving from chemical-intensive practices to non-pesticide management, then adopting natural farming practices, can reduce input costs.
• Farmers can diversify income through value addition, incorporating livestock and poultry. Some of these practices could be experimented with partially on specific portions of their lands.
• Among the various transition pathways, a visual representation of a diversified farm involves allocating 70% for commercial crops, 20% for food and fodder, and 10% for environmental services like oilseeds (acting as trap crops). Over time, the fraction of commercial crops could be lowered to 50% and border crops could be replaced with locally-suitable tree species for fruits and fodder. Integrating livestock rearing could further improve incomes. Some preliminary economic modelling of these pathways indicates the potential to improve ecological outcomes for the landscape and sustain farm incomes in the short run (up to three years) and the long run (up to 25 years).
• However, addressing challenges related to local seeds, institutional arrangements for market access, drudgery, and the need for farm labour is crucial when envisioning such a transition.
• Scaling up these practices requires collaboration among institutions, policymakers, and social groups to articulate economic incentives for farmers to shift from high-input monoculture to diversified cropping.
• P. Srinivas Vasu is the founder of SOIL, a trust that works on rebuilding soil health and promoting sustainable agriculture. Karishma Shelar is a Senior Programme Manager at the Water, Environment, Land and Livelihoods (WELL) Labs, a research centre at the Institute for Financial Management and Research

4 . Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955

Context : The Chief Justice is heading a Constitution Bench hearing a series of petitions challenging the constitutionality of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955.

History of Section 6 A

• Section 6A was a special provision inserted into the 1955 Act in furtherance of a Memorandum of Settlement called the ‘Assam Accord’ signed on August 15, 1985 by the then Rajiv Gandhi government with the leaders of the Assam Movement to preserve and protect the Assamese culture, heritage, linguistic and social identity.
• The Accord came at the end of a six-year-long agitation by the All Assam Students Union (AASU) to identify and deport illegal immigrants, mostly from neighbouring Bangladesh, from the State.

Provisions

• Under Section 6A, foreigners who had entered Assam before January 1, 1966, and been “ordinarily resident” in the State, would have all the rights and obligations of Indian citizens.
• Those who had entered the State between January 1, 1966 and March 25, 1971 would have the same rights and obligations except that they would not be able to vote for 10 years.
• All those who came to Assam on or after 1 January, 1966, but before 25th March, 1971 must register themselves under section-18 for citizenship.
• Therefore, this act fixes March 25, 1971 as the cut-off date for granting citizenship to Bangladeshi migrants in Assam.

Objections

• Petitions were filed challenging the discriminatory nature of Section 6A in granting citizenship to immigrants, illegal ones at that.
• The petitioners, including Assam Public Works and others, argued that the special provision was in violation of Article 6 of the Constitution which fixed the cut-off date for granting citizenship to immigrants at July 19, 1948.
• One of the petitioners, Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha, had sought the updation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) for Assam on the basis of the 1951 NRC and not on the electoral rolls of March 1971.

About Assam Accord

• The then Rajiv Gandhi government signed a Memorandum of Settlement (MoS) with the leaders of the Assam movement on 15 August 1985 called Assam Accord.
• As per this accord-
  • all those foreigners who had entered Assam between 1951 and 1961 were to be given full citizenship including the right to vote.
  • Migrants those who had done so after 1971 were to be deported.
  • Those who entered between 1961 and 1971 were to be denied voting rights for ten years but would enjoy all other rights of citizenship.

5 . Global Positioning System

Context : Few everyday technologies have had the kind of revolutionary impact that the Global Positioning System (GPS) has. From civilians to the military, from precision scientific studies to urban planning and disaster risk estimation, GPS has significantly changed our expectations of where we are and our sense of place.

What is GPS?

• The U.S. Department of Defence started the GPS programme in 1973 and launched the first satellite in 1978. The modern GPS satellite constellation consists of 24 satellites moving around the earth in six orbits. Each satellite completes two orbits in a single day. The overall programme has three main components — the space segment, the control segment, and the user segment.
• The space segment, of course, consists of the 24 satellites. The six orbits they occupy are all 20,200 km above the earth, and each orbit has four satellites at all times. In this configuration, anyone on the earth will be able to ‘see’ at least four satellites at a time, which is a crucial requirement.
• The control segment consists of a global network of ground-based control stations and antennae that track the 24 satellites, make sure their performance is as expected at all times, and transmit commands. The services provided by the GPS system are designed to meet the Standard Positioning Service (SPS) performance standard, the latest edition of which was published in April 2020. In essence, the SPS standard tells application developers and users anywhere in the world what they can expect from the GPS system. The control segment ensures these commitments are kept. The master control station is located at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, and the alternate master control station is at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The ground antennae are in Florida (Cape Canaveral), Ascension Island, Diego Garcia island, and Kwajalein Atoll. There are monitoring and tracking stations in Hawai’i, Alaska, New Hampshire, Washington, D.C., Colorado, and Florida in the U.S., and in Greenland, Ecuador, Uruguay, the U.K., South Africa, Bahrain, South Korea, Guam, Australia, and New Zealand.
• The user segment pertains to the use of GPS in various sectors and applications. The major sectors include agriculture, construction, surveying, logistics, telecommunications, power transmission, search and rescue, air travel, meteorology, seismology, and military operations. In 2021, according to one estimate, there were 6.5 billion Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) devices installed worldwide. The figure is expected to rise to 10 billion by 2031.

How does GPS work?

• Each GPS satellite continuously broadcasts a radio signal containing information about its location in orbit, operational status, and the time at which the signal is emitted. The signals are transmitted at the L1 (1,575.42 MHz) and the L2 (1,227.6 MHz) frequencies at 50 bits/second. The signals are encoded with code-division multiple access. This allows multiple signals to be transmitted in the same channel and for a receiver to be able to disentangle them. There are two encoding types: the coarse/acquisition mode, which civilians can use to access coarse GPS data, and the precise mode, which is encrypted and is for military use.
• Being an electromagnetic signal, the radio waves travel at the speed of light. On your smartphone, a GPS receiver picks this signal up and uses it to calculate its precise distance from the satellite. The distance is equal to the speed of light times the signal’s travel time. The signal’s travel time is equal to the time on the receiver’s clock minus the time at which the signal was emitted. If the receiver has access to signals from four satellites, it will have the information required to calculate its location in four dimensions — three of space plus one of time relative to the satellite clock — and can thus accurately triangulate its location on the ground. This informs the need for every point on the earth being able to ‘see’ four satellites at a time.
• Some adjustments are required to ensure the measurements are as error-free as possible. For example, the satellites around the earth are in a region of weaker gravitational potential, so their onboard clocks run 38 microseconds faster than those on the ground. This is explained by the general theory of relativity. The special theory of relativity requires engineers to account for the relative velocities of the satellite and the receiver.

How do the satellites keep time?

• Good timekeeping is essential to ensure the GPS system works as well as possible. For example, not adjusting for the 38-microsecond offset between the clocks on the satellites and on the ground could lead to an error of 10 km within a single day. An offset of one millisecond can lead to an error of a full 300 km. For this reason, the satellites are all equipped with atomic clocks. In 1974, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory first launched an atomic clock into space on board the NAVSTAR NTS-1 satellite. The clocks onboard the modern-day GPS constellation are all synchronised to within just 10 nanoseconds of each other, and with reference clocks on the ground.
• An atomic clock takes advantage of a simple but profound fact. The atoms of all elements have some number of electrons around the nucleus. Each of these electrons can have a specific amount of energy, no more and no less. Imagine these amounts of energy to be steps on a staircase. An electron can occupy only these particular steps; it can’t have some energy in between two steps. The size of these steps is the same for all atoms of a given element. For example, all caesium atoms in the universe have the same jump size between steps 2 and 3.
• When radiation containing the exact amount of energy these electrons require to jump between two states — called the resonant frequency — is supplied, the electrons absorb it and jump. If too much or too little energy is supplied, fewer electrons will jump. So scientists begin with a radiation source and keep fine-tuning it to the frequency that causes the maximum number of electrons to jump. Once they have the frequency, they use it to measure time. For example, if it is 50 Hz, then one second will have passed when the radiation has completed 50 cycles. This is how an atomic clock works. Simply put, the electrons tell the source which frequency is ‘correct’. The scientists can check the frequency at regular intervals to make sure that the source producing it isn’t drifting off and losing/gaining time.

Do other countries have GNSS?

• According to the U.S. Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Policy, the GPS system will cooperate with the operation of other GNSS. Such systems are currently operated by Australia, China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the U.K. Of these, Russia’s GLONASS, the E.U.’s Galileo, and China’s BeiDou systems are global. Officials of the U.S. government and their counterparts in other countries meet regularly to ensure their technologies are compatible with each other. There is also an International Committee on GNSS, operating under the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs. According to its website, it “promotes voluntary cooperation on matters of mutual interest related to civil satellite-based positioning, navigation, timing, and value-added services”.
• India mooted its own Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System in 2006, later rechristened Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC).
• Its space segment consists of seven satellites: three in geostationary orbits and four in geosynchronous orbits. As of May 2023, the minimum number of satellites (four) could facilitate ground-based navigation. The master control facilities are located in Hassan in Karnataka and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh.
• The NavIC satellites use rubidium atomic clocks and transmit data in the L5 (1,176.45 MHz) and the S (2,492.028 MHz) bands, with newer satellites also transmitting in the L1 band. They include a messaging interface that can receive messages from control stations and transmit them to specific areas, like warning fishers about being close to international borders, etc. India also operates the GPS-Aided Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) system, which was developed by the ISRO and the Airports Authority of India. According to the ISRO website, GAGAN’s primary purpose is “safety-of-life civil aviation applications catering to the Indian airspace” and for providing “correction and integrity messages for GPS”.