Topic 1: Why India is heating up slower than the world average
Context: The global warming trends over the Indian region are very different.
Key details:
- An assessment of climate change over the Indian subcontinent, published by the Ministry of Earth Sciences in 2020, said annual mean temperatures had risen by 0.7 degree Celsius from 1900.
- This is significantly lower than the 1.59 degree Celsius rise for land temperatures across the world.
Why is warming over India lower?
- The increase in temperatures is known to be more prominent in the higher altitudes, near the polar regions, than near the equator.
- This is attributable to a complex set of atmospheric phenomena, including heat transfers from the tropics to the poles through prevailing systems of air circulation.
- India happens to be in the tropical region, quite close to the equator.
- The planet as a whole has warmed by 1.1 degree Celsius compared with preindustrial times.
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Different regions have seen very different levels of warming.
- The polar regions, particularly the Arctic, have seen significantly greater warming.
- The IPCC report says the Arctic region has warmed at least twice as much as the world average.
- Its current annual mean temperatures are about 2 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial times.
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Reason:
- Transfer of heat through air circulation.
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Albedo effect, or how much sunlight a surface reflects.
- The ice cover in the Arctic is melting, because of which more land or water is getting exposed to the Sun.
- Ice traps the least amount of heat and reflects most of the solar radiation when compared with land or water.
- Changes in clouds, water vapour and atmospheric temperatures.
Higher warming over land than oceans
- The 0.7 degree Celsius temperature rise over India has to be compared with the warming seen over land areas, not the entire planet.
- Land areas have become warmer by 1.59 degree Celsius.
- Land areas have a tendency to get heated faster, and by a larger amount, than oceans.
- Daily and seasonal variations in heating over land and oceans are usually explained in terms of their different heat capacities.
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Oceans have a higher capacity to cool themselves down through the process of evaporation.
- The warmer water evaporates, leaving the rest of the ocean relatively cooler.
- However, longer-term enhanced heating trends over land have to be attributed to other, more complicated, physical processes involving land-ocean-atmospheric interactions.
Impact of aerosols
- Aerosols refer to all kinds of particles suspended in the atmosphere.
- Many of these scatter sunlight back, so that lesser heat is absorbed by the land.
- Aerosols also affect cloud formation.
- Clouds, in turn, have an impact on how much sunlight is reflected or absorbed.
- Aerosol concentration over the Indian region is quite high, due to natural as well as man-made reasons.
- Emissions from vehicles, industries, construction, and other activities add a lot of aerosols in the Indian region.
- A reduction in warming could be an unintended but positive side-effect.
Tropical location key
- A major part of India’s relatively lesser warming can be attributed to its location in the lower latitudes.
- A majority of the global landmass is concentrated in the northern latitudes.
- In the tropics and along the equator, it is mostly oceans.
- Land areas are also prone to faster, and greater, heating.
- Because of both these reasons the average warming over global land areas has become more pronounced.
- For a country like India, located in the tropics, the deviation in temperature rise from the global average is not surprising.
Topic 2: Exercise CORPAT
Context: The 35th edition of India-Thailand Coordinated Patrol (Indo-Thai CORPAT) between the Indian Navy and the Royal Thai Navy was conducted recently.
Key details:
- Indian Naval Ship (INS) Kesari and Thai Ship (HTMS) Saiburi participated in the CORPAT in the Andaman Sea.
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Aim:
- Keeping the Indian Ocean safe and secure for international trade.
- The Indian Navy and the Royal Thai Navy have been undertaking CORPAT bi-annually since 2005 along the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL).
Topic 3: iDrone initiative
Context: Trial Run of Blood Bag Delivery under the iDrone Initiative of Indian Council of Medical Research successfully conducted
Key details:
- The project ‘i-DRONE’(ICMR’s Drone Response and Outreach for North East) assessed the feasibility of using drone to deliver vaccines and medical supply.
- This was carried out in difficult geographical terrains including land, island, foothills and across the hills.
- ‘i-DRONE’ was first used during covid19 pandemic by ICMR for distributing vaccines to unreachable areas.
| About ICMRThe Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is the apex body in India for the formulation, coordination and promotion of biomedical research.The ICMR is funded by the Government through the Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.The governing body of the council is presided over by the Union Health Minister. |
Topic 4: SAKSHAM
Context: Union Health Ministry launches SAKSHAM Learning Management Information System.
Key details:
- This digital learning platform has been developed by the National Institute of Health & Family Welfare.
- SAKSHAM is a dedicated and unified platform for providing online training and medical education to all health professionals in the country.
- This digital learning platform will ensure inclusive capacity building of health professionals from primary health centres to tertiary care and corporate hospitals in metropolitan cities.
Topic 5: SVASTIK initiative
Context: As a part of the Svastik initiative, CSIR-National Institute of Science Communication and Policy Research (NIScPR) hosted the first meeting of the Water, Ecology & Environment Sub-committee chaired.
Key details:
- SVASTIK (Scientifically Validated Societal Traditional Knowledge) is a national initiative for communicating India’s scientifically validated traditional knowledge to the society branded as,
- As a part of this initiative, simplified creative content on Traditional Knowledge is being disseminated through digital platforms in English, Hindi, and different regional languages.
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Aim:
- To conserve the practice of the right tradition, inculcate scientific temper of verifying tradition in a scientific manner and instil confidence in citizens regarding the scientific value of our traditional knowledge/practices.
Topic 6: The law on polygamy among religious groups in India
Context: Assam Chief Minister has said that the state government will move to ban the practice of polygamy through “legislative action.
Practice of polygamy
- Polygamy is the practice of having more than one married spouse — wife or husband.
- The issue is governed both by personal laws and the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
- Traditionally, polygamy (mainly the situation of a man having more than one wife) was practised widely in India.
- The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 outlawed the practice.
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IPC Section 494penalisesbigamy or polygamy.
- This provision does not apply to a marriage which has been declared void by a court — for example, a child marriage that has been declared void.
- The law also does not apply if a spouse has been continually absent for the space of seven years. This means a spouse who has deserted the marriage or when his or her whereabouts are not known for seven years, will not bind the other spouse from remarrying.
Under Hindu law
- The Special Marriage Act, 1954, was a radical legislation that proposed the requirement of monogamy.
- Parliament passed the Hindu Marriage Act in 1955, outlawing the concept of having more than one spouse at a time.
- Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs are also included under the Hindu Marriage Code.
- The Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, 1936, had already outlawed bigamy.
- Under the HMA bigamy is an offence, and the provisions of sections 494 and 495 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, shall apply accordingly.
- However, despite bigamy being an offence, the child born from the bigamous marriage would acquire the same rights as a child from the first marriage under the law.
- A crucial exception to the bigamy law for Hindus is Goa, which follows its own code for personal laws.
- A Hindu man in the state has the right to bigamy under specific circumstances mentioned in the Codes of Usages and Customs of Gentile Hindus of Goa.
- These circumstances include a case where the wife fails to conceive by the age of 25 or if she fails to deliver a male child by the age of 30.
- No one has been given the benefit of it since 1910.
Under Muslim law
- Marriage in Islam is governed by the Shariat Act, 1937.
- Personal law allows a Muslim man to have four wives.
- To benefit from the Muslim personal law, many men from other religions would convert to Islam to have a second wife.
- In a landmark ruling in 1995, the Supreme Court in Sarla Mudgal v Union of India held that religious conversion for the sole purpose of committing bigamy is unconstitutional.
- Any move to outlaw polygamy for Muslims would have to be a special legislation which overrides personal law protections like in the case of triple talaq.
Prevalence of polygamy
- The National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-20) showed the prevalence of polygamy was:
- 2.1% among Christians,
- 1.9% among Muslims,
- 1.3% among Hindus, and
- 1.6% among other religious groups.
- The data showed that the highest prevalence of polygynous marriages was in the Northeastern states with tribal populations.