📰 Khajaguda rock heritage turning to dust
Illegal quarrying has turned Hyderabad’s geological formation into a moonscape
•A large portion of the Khajaguda heritage rock precinct has been reduced to open ground. Massive dumpers move through the day and night, making quite a racket. Where there used to be rock formations leading to the top, now lies a wide road that is perpetually covered with the haze of fine dust as the vehicles move on a continuous basis.
•“When I used to bring my sheep for grazing here, this used to be a small path with grass growing on the hill between the rocks. Now, this is a plain ground and the hill appears as if it has moved away. Now, I take my sheep to the lake bed for grazing,” says Yadaiah, a shepherd.
•Known as Faqruddin Baba Gutta or Meher Baba’s Cave, the massive rock formation, which is a geological landmark in the evolution of earth, has become one of the prime localities in the city with the Outer Ring Road (ORR) passing through one side and the Old Bombay Highway through the other. Over the past few years, plush schools, apartment blocks and restaurants have opened up in the areas.
Stripped of grassland
•“I have been coming here for the past eight years. It is not just the rock formation that has changed, the grassland habitat has been affected by the changes too. There used to four seasons for wildflower blooms; now, only small patches of grasslands are left,” says Arun Vasireddy, a biologist.
•“Even the hydrology of the area has changed due to the destruction of the hillock. The water cascading down this hill would reach the Nanakramguda lake. But now the water flows in multiple directions, flooding different areas at different times,” adds Mr. Vasireddy.
•How the significant change has been wrought is shared by a resident of the area. “Every night, at 3 a.m., we keep hearing muffled boom-boom sounds. The sound erupts four or five times, and then it becomes quiet. But the dust remains in the air through the day and night,” says Manish, a resident of Khajaguda, who runs an ice-cream parlour on the main road.
Illegal quarrying
•The ‘boom-boom’ has transformed the once scenic area for picnics into an eerie landscape. The earth has been disembowelled to create a valley where multi-axle earth-movers move massive rocks and debris. “The blasting and quarrying are done illegally as these people engage private parties who have mobile magazine licences for using explosives,” says an official of Mines and Geology Department, Telangana.
•On the service road to ORR leading to Gachibowli, traffic police have a thankless job. “Every day, we issue dozens of challans to these heavy-duty vehicles. We seize them. But they are back on the road. Standing here with these masks is very difficult,” says Muhammad Wahiuddin, a police official at the location.
•The ORR service road is one of the central pathways through which the dumpers travel to outlying areas to dump the rocks and the debris.
Pragmatic approach
•“We cannot stop development. The society needs resources to develop infrastructure. We have to be pragmatic and identify rock formations that can be used as raw material and also hills that need to be protected as they are part of important geological history,” says Pranay Lal, who has written a book on India’s geological history.
•Earlier, the Khajaguda rock formation was a listed site under Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority giving it some protection. But the 2017 Telangana Heritage Act does not register this rock formation. The result has been the deletion of a chapter in the earth’s geological history.
📰 ‘Patient’ India to work with China on Azhar
•When asked how long the government’s patience would last, the source said it could take “days or months” but hopefully not years, adding that India was “in this for the long haul”.
•Rejecting recent media reports that India planned to push for an open discussion in Security Council to confront China and force it to accept the designation of Masood Azhar or to be forced to defend the terrorist publicly, the source said this was not India’s strategy, but didn’t rule out the possibility that the listing sponsors U.S., U.K. and France could pursue it.
•On Friday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had issued a series of tweets defending the government against the allegation its efforts on the issue had resulted in “failure”.
•“In 2019, the proposal was moved by USA, France and UK and supported by 14 of the 15 UN Security Council Members and also co-sponsored by Australia, Bangladesh, Italy and Japan - non members of the Security Council,” Ms. Swaraj had tweeted in response to severe criticism by opposition parties on the outcome of the listing effort on Wednesday.
•Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale had also discussed Pakistan-based terrorism with officials of the U.S. administration and members of Congress during his three day visit to Washington this week, the source said.
•Mr. Gokhale explained to them that steps announced by Pakistan thus far after the Pulwama attack had been “cosmetic” in nature, and amounted to only changing the name boards outside buildings run by Jamaat-ud Dawa and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and changes in leaders, the source added.
📰 EC to meet social media, IMAI officials
•The Election Commission will meet senior functionaries of popular social media platforms on Tuesday to review steps being taken against content that may vitiate the conduct of the Lok Sabha election.
•Representatives of platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google, WhatsApp and Share Chat, and from the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI) will meet the Chief Election Commissioner and two Election Commissioners for the first time.
•In the past few months, they have been interacting with a committee set up to review Section 126 of the Representation of the People Act.
•“With the input of Facebook, Twitter, Google, WhatsApp and Share Chat, the IAMAI has already responded and confirmed its eagerness to cooperate with the EC ,” the Commission had earlier said.
•The intermediaries have started awareness campaigns regarding unlawful conduct during polls, particularly the 48-hour prohibited period under Section 126. The platforms have appointed grievance officers and fact checkers to identify fake news and other malpractices.
What is the basis for challenging the 10% quotafor the economicallybackward sections?
•The story so far: The introduction of a 10% quota for the economically backward through the Constitution (103rd Amendment) Act has been challenged in the Supreme Court. The principal grounds cited in support of the challenge are mainly found in a 1992 judgment of a nine-judge Bench in Indra Sawhney vs Union of India . A look at the context in which Indra Sawhney, or the Mandal Commission case, was decided, its major findings and how they are being cited in the challenge to the 103rd Constitution Amendment.
What is the background of the case?
•In December 1980, the Second Backward Classes Committee, headed by B.P. Mandal, better known as the Mandal Commission, gave its report. It recommended 27% reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and 22.5% for the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes. A decade later, in August 1990, the government issued an office memorandum (OM), providing 27% vacancies for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes to be filled by direct recruitment. Violent protests greeted this memorandum, and a challenge was mounted in the Supreme Court. In 1991, a new government under the Congress issued a second OM notifying an additional reservation of 10% for other economically backward sections. A nine-judge Bench of the Supreme Court pronounced a 6:3 majority verdict in the Mandal Commission case, upholding the 27% quota in the first OM, but struck down the 10% quota based on economic criteria.
What were its main findings?
•The majority judgment held that “a backward class cannot be determined only and exclusively with reference to economic criterion”. “It may be a consideration or basis along with, and in addition to, social backwardness, but it can never be the sole criterion,” Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy wrote for the majority. It said backward classes could be identified on the basis of caste. The Bench also laid down that reservation not cross the 50% limit, unless a special case was made out for extraordinary situations and peculiar conditions to relax the rule. It wanted the ‘creamy layer,’ the advanced sections of the backward classes, excluded from reservation and asked the government to evolve suitable criteria to exclude the ‘creamy layer’.
Why cite the Indra Sawhney case?
•After 27 years, the Constitution (103rd Amendment) Act, 2019, provides for 10% reservation in government jobs and educational institutions for the “economically backward” in the unreserved category. The Act amends Articles 15 and 16 of the Constitution by adding clauses empowering the government to provide reservation on the basis of economic backwardness. The 10% economic reservation is over and above the 50% cap. The Constitution does not define the term ‘backward classes,’ though it endorses the role of the state in ensuring and promoting social equality. Over the years, caste has been a constant factor in identifying social and educational backwardness. As the Mandal Commission case discusses the basis for identifying OBCs, its findings are being cited by those who have challenged the amendment. They say the amendment violates the bar on quotas solely based on economic criteria and breaches the 50% quota limit which, they argue, is part of the Basic Structure of the Constitution.
•The petitions, including those by Youth for Equality and activist Tehseen Poonawala, argue that the amendment excludes the OBCs and the SCs/STs from the scope of economic reservation. They contend that the high creamy layer limit of Rs. 8 lakh a year ensures that the elite capture the reservation benefits. They argue that the amendment does not clearly define the term “economically weaker sections.”
What is the government’s response?
•In its response by affidavit, the government says the amendment was “necessitated to benefit the economically weaker sections of the society who were not covered within the existing schemes of reservation, which, as per statistics, constituted a considerably large segment of the Indian population.” It quoted the 2010 report of the Commission for Economically Backward Classes, chaired by Major General S.R. Sinho (retired), which said 18.2% of the general category came under the below poverty line. It has said the economically weaker sections required as much attention as the backward classes. The government said the 50% ceiling applies to the SCs/STs and the OBCs. The new provisions separately deal with the economically weaker sections. It argued that a “mere amendment” to an Article would not violate the basic feature of the Constitution. The matter is likely to be referred to a Constitution Bench.
📰 Pilgrims hit as drought reduces Pampa to a trickle
Water scarcity has forced animals out of forests
•The Pampa river is facing acute water scarcity in the foothills of Sabarimala despite the Kerala State Electricity Board periodically releasing water from its Kullar dam in the upstream forest reaches.
•But the KSEB is not in a position to release huge quantities of water from its dams into the Pampa during the summer months.
•Pilgrims find it difficult to have their customary holy dip in the river prior to trekking to Sabarimala owing to the low water level, which is ankle-deep on many stretches.
•The drought in the forest interiors is forcing wild animals to stray into human habitations in the forest fringes of Sabarimala, Ranni, and Konni.
•A tiger was spotted in the forests behind the Ayyappa Seva Sanghom camp on the banks of the Pampa on Friday night. There were also reports of leopards and elephants straying out of the forests at Pampa, Plappally, and Sabarimala in search of food and water.
No attack reported
•Forest officials attribute this to the acute water scarcity and shortage of food inside the forests during the summer months. However, no wild animal attack on humans has been reported.
•The changes in the forest ecosystem owing to climate change and excessive human intervention have been identified as the major factors forcing wild animals to stray into human habitations, where they can pick cattle and dogs as easy prey.
•The pressure on the forest fringes due to cultivation and an increase in wildlife population is another factor.
•The mushrooming of granite quarries along the forest borders has also contributed to the situation. Unscrupulous quarrying has reportedly led to depletion of the groundwater table in the region.
📰 Low conviction hinders fight against spurious drugs
Parliamentary committee ‘dismayed’ at pendency of cases
•Spurious drugs can have harmful side-effects and can even kill. Yet India has been able to decide only 35 cases of the 606 prosecutions launched against the manufacture, sale and distribution of spurious or adulterated drugs from 2015 to 2018, according to figures provided by the State Drugs Controller.
•During this time, 328 arrests were made.15,749 samples were declared not of standard quality and 593 samples were declared spurious or adulterated, while a total of 2,33,906 drug samples were tested during the three-year period.
‘Sample size inadequate’
•The 54th Parliamentary Standing Committee on Chemicals and Fertilizers noted that “considering the size of the country and the huge quantum of medicines being distributed and sold in the country, this sample size is not adequate to measure the actual problem of spurious and non-standard quality drugs in the country.
Special courts sought
•“We are dismayed to note that the decision is pending in most cases. There is an urgent need for time-bound decisions on prosecutions launched against manufacture, sale and distribution of spurious and non-standard quality drugs. Special courts should be opened in all states/UT and these courts may also impressed upon the need for timely disposal of cases,” the Committee noted.
•“Previously the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had conducted a country-wide survey for the years 2014-16 to determine the extent of spurious/ not of standard quality of drugs in the country. Total 47,012 drug samples were tested/analysed out of which 1,850 samples were declared as not of standard quality and 13 samples were declared spurious,” noted data provided by the Union Health Ministry.
•Meanwhile the Parliamentary Committee has strongly recommend that the government should take adequate measures to considerably increase the number of samples of drugs to be tested so as to instil fear in those who indulges in sale/distribution of spurious/non-standard quality drugs.
📰 UN meet dilutes Indian plan to phase out single-use plastics
Final document at Nairobi tones down language, avoids timeline
•An ambitious resolution piloted by India to phase out single-use plastics by 2025, was watered down at the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) that concluded on Friday in Nairobi.
•At the World Environment Day summit on June 5, 2018 here, Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had pledged to eliminate single-use plastics from India by 2022. This was lauded by then UN Environment Chief, Erik Solheim.
•This pushed several States — notably Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh — to enforce previous commitments to ban plastic bags and similar disposables.
•Ahead of the UNEA, the UN secretariat had invited inputs from member states to forge a common declaration regarding addressing a host of environmental challenges. India’s inputs on the February 16 read:
•“…We will decisively address the damage to our ecosystems caused by the unsustainable use and disposal of single-use plastic products, including by phasing-out most problematic single-use plastic products as early as 2025, and we encourage the private sector to find affordable and eco-friendly alternatives…”
Deadline pushed back
•However, the final declaration on March 15 removed the firm timelines and edited out the “decisively” and only committed to a “reduction by 2030.”
•“…We will address the damage to our ecosystems caused by the unsustainable use and disposal of plastic products, including by significantly reducing single-use plastic products by 2030, and we will work with the private sector to find affordable and environment friendly alternatives…” says the document available on the UNEA website.
•The UNEA, however, lauded India for playing a key role in advocating a time-bound ban on single use plastic. A person privy to negotiations told The Hinduthat India didn’t work enough to garner international support to carry it all the way through. “We didn’t have enough subject experts at Nairobi,” he added.
Nitrogen pollution
•Along with plastic, India also piloted a resolution on curbing nitrogen pollution.
•“..The global nitrogen-use efficiency is low, resulting in pollution by reactive nitrogen which threatens human health, ecosystem services, contributes to climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion. Only a small proportion of the plastics produced globally are recycled, with most of it damaging the environment and aquatic bio-diversity. Both these are global challenges and the resolutions piloted by India at the UNEA are vital first steps towards addressing these issues and attracting focus of the global community,” said a press statement by the Union Environment Ministry.
•A top official in the Ministry told The Hindu that India’s commitment to phase out plastic would continue irrespective of the global resolution. “It’s a significant step that such a resolution was accepted at the UN. Timelines per se are matters of further negotiation and debate,” Secretary, Union Environment Ministry C.K. Mishra said. “However, our commitments and efforts to reduce plastic use will continue at our pace.”
•A Central Pollution Control Board estimate in 2015 says that Indian cities generate 15,000 tonnes of plastic waste daily and about 70% of the plastic produced in the country ends up as waste. Seventeen States have plastic bans, on paper. Experts have rued the inadequacy of collection and recycling systems to address the burgeoning plastic waste problem.
📰 A gel to selectively remove oil or water
IIT Guwahati’s material can switch from being water-repelling to oil-repelling and vice versa
•A natural biopolymer, chitosan (a kind of polysaccharide obtained from a chitin shell such as the shrimp’s), which is water-soluble, has been chemically modified by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati to selectively remove either an oil or water phase from an oil-water mixture. This becomes possible by making the chitosan-based material, also biodegradeable, to exhibit either an extremely water-repelling property in air (like the lotus leaf) or an extremely oil-repelling property under water (like a fish scale).
•In a breakthrough, the researchers have also made it possible to switch the chitosan-based material’s property — from being extremely water-repelling to extremely oil-repelling and vice-versa — by treating it with certain chemicals. It is also possible to repeatedly switch from one property to another.
Fabrication
•To prepare the water or oil repelling chitosan, a team led by Dr. Uttam Manna from the institute’s Department of Chemistry and Centre for Nanotechnology first converted the material into nanoparticles and then to a stable gel material by treating it with a chemical (5Acl). This gel was found to have chemically active residues (amines and acrylate), which when treated with a small amine resulted in optimisation of the two very different properties in the same material.
•Says Nirban Jana from the institute’s Department of Chemistry and first author of a paper published in the journal Chemistry of Materials, “This is the first time that the liquid repellency property of the material is made switchable, from superhydrophobic to superoleophobic under water and back to superhydrophobic by treating the material at low pH and ethanol, respectively.”
•The chitosan — which is converted into a stable gel — allows the researchers to selectively remove the oil or water phase from an oil-water mixture by making the material either superhydrophobic or superoleophobic, respectively. For example, if the oil spill (in water) is less, the material can be made water-repelling to remove or collect the oil. In case the spill is huge and the water phase relatively less, the material can be made extremely oil-repelling to collect or remove water.
Property switch
•By treating the material with acid (pH 1) for about 15 minutes, the team (led by Dr. Uttam Manna from the institute’s Department of Chemistry) was able to completely switch the property of the material — from being extremely water-repelling to becoming extremely oil-repelling under water.
•Similarly, by treating the biopolymer with ethanol for 10 minutes followed by air drying, the team was able to switch the property from being oil-repelling to becoming water-repelling.
•Says Dr. Manna, “The water contact angle of the superhydrophobic biopolymer is over 152º and the oil contact angle under water is nearly 159º.” The higher the contact angle the greater is the liquid repellency of the material.
Superior performance
•The researchers tested the ability of the biopolymer to separate oils — kerosene, motor oil, olive oil and even crude oil — of different densities from water. Says Dr. Manna, “Under water, we were able to completely remove even crude oil from the water phase. The selective separation efficiency for both oil and water phases was above 95% immaterial of the viscosity of the oil.”
•The biopolymer’s superhydrophobic property remained intact under diverse chemical conditions such as extreme pH (pH 1 and pH 13), sea and river water for seven days, and high (100º C) and low (10º C) temperatures.
•The material was found to retain both hydrophobicity and oleophobicity even when the top surface of the biopolymeric material was physically abraded using sand paper. Despite the abraded surface being cleaved through manual peeling using an adhesive, the liquid repellence property remained intact. No change in this was seen after the mechanically damaged material was subjected to even a continuous stream of sand grains. Exposure to UV light for a month too did not destroy this repellence property.
📰 Solar tsunami can trigger the sunspot cycle
According to the model, the next sunspot cycle can be expected to begin in 2020
•It is believed that the “solar dynamo” — a naturally occurring generator which produces electric and magnetic fields in the sun — is linked to the production of sunspots. What kick-starts the 11-year sunspot cycle is not known. Now, a group of solar physicists suggests that a “solar tsunami” is at work that triggers the new sunspot cycle, after the old one ends.
•The extreme temperature and pressure conditions that prevail some 20,000 km below the sun’s surface cause its material to form a plasma consisting primarily of hydrogen and helium in a highly ionised state. The plasma is confined with huge magnetic fields inside the sun. Explains Dr. Dipankar Banerjee from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, and one of the authors of the paper published in Scientific Reports, “The [sun’s] toroidal magnetic field, from which sunspots get generated, wraps around the sun in the east-west direction.”
Celestial rubber bands
•These magnetic fields behave like rubber bands on a polished sphere. They tend to slip towards the poles. Holding these fields in their place requires that there is extra mass (plasma mass) pushing at the bands from higher latitudes. Thus, a magnetic dam is formed which is storing a big mass of plasma. At the end of a solar cycle, this magnetic dam can break, releasing huge amounts of plasma cascading like a tsunami towards the poles.
•These tsunami waves travel at high speeds of about 1,000 km per hour carrying excess plasma to the mid-latitudes. There they give rise to magnetic flux eruptions. These are seen as the bright patches that signal the start of the next cycle of sunspots. The tsunami waves can traverse the required distance in a few weeks, unlike in earlier models.
Humongous calculation
•To arrive at this simulation, the group used data from the Kodaikanal observatory of sunspots recorded over 100 years and the Cheyenne supercomputer belonging to National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, U.S. Mausumi Dikpati of NCAR and first author of the paper said in an email to The Hindu, “Cheyenne has 1,45,000 processors, and is a 4.5 petaflop machine. Each of these processors can perform 184 million arithmetic operations per second,” says Mausumi Dikpati of NCAR, the first author of the paper.”
•She adds “We used about 100,000 processor cores of the supercomputer to perform about 100 simulations to conclude our results. This means in each of these hundred simulations, we performed about 66,000 trillion arithmetic operations per hour.”
•Adds Dr. Banerjee, “The solar cycle and sunspot activity are intimately connected with space weather. The model provides a sound physical mechanism supporting why we should expect the next sunspot cycle 25 to begin in the year 2020, followed by a strong increase in space weather shortly after the trigger of a series of new sunspots in that year.”
