DNA 23rd JULY

EC failed to curb ‘invisible money’ in polls, says Jaitley

Union Minister for Finance, Defence and Corporate Affairs Arun Jaitley on Saturday blamed the Election Commission for failing to check the use of ‘invisible money’ in elections

 He also took on political parties for preferring the status quo instead of suggesting improvements to the electoral bonds scheme proposed in the Budget

He said the government was already seeing the first signs of improvement in direct and indirect tax compliance due to reforms such as demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax, both of which will make it difficult to generate cash in the future.

                                               ELECTORAL BONDS-explained 

A Sunderbans denizen staves of extinction

A critically endangered resident of the Sunderbans is set to get a new home, beginning a slow journey to recovery from a disastrous decline in the wild. It is more threatened than the Bengal tiger, but far less known

Northern river terrapin (Batagur baska), whose presence in the wild in West Bengal and Odisha had declined to undetectable levels a decade ago.

Batagur baska, the 60- cm-long turtle that is presumed extinct in several Southeast Asian countries, is classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature ( IUCN) in its Red List of threatened species

For the past ten years, officials of the Sunderban Tiger Reserve with support from experts at Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA), have coordinated a recovery program for what is described as the world’s second most endangered turtle, through captive conservation breeding.

 FLUOROSIS

• The Hogenakkal water supply & Fluorosis Mitigation Project ,funded by the Japan Bank for International Co-operation ,seeks to provide potable water to Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri Districts of Tamilnadu ,which are Drought-prone and have recorded Fluoride content above the permissible level in the Ground water  
• Fluoride is an important mineral for all children. Our mouths contain bacteria that combine with sugars in the foods we eat and the beverages we drink. The acid that is produced harms tooth enamel and damages teeth. Fluoride protects the teeth and can even help reverse early signs of decay. But the increased availability of fluoride today has resulted in more of something called dental fluorosis.
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What is Fluorosis ?

• Dental fluorosis is a change in the appearance of the tooth's enamel surface. The most common types do not affect the function of the tooth and don't cause pain.
• It is a defect in the tooth enamel caused by the excessive exposure to the high concentration of fluoride .Brown,grey and black teeth patches and pits are common among the people living in this area(Tamilnadu)
• Dental Fluorosis is not treatable and the stains are permanent.Excessive consumption of fluoride-contaminated water over time can lead to skeletal Fluorosis 
• The main source of fluoride in the underground water is the rocks that are rich in it.
• The most seriously affected states are Andhra Pradesh,Odisha,Haryana,Punjab,Uttar Pradesh,Rajasthan ,Gujarat and Tamilnadu.     

Govt. delineates 23,000 hectares for petrochemical complex

• Activists say the project will worsen the situation in Cuddalore, Nagapattinam
• Food security issue: The activist felt that the PCPIR would only turn a bad situation worse. The coastal areas in Cuddalore, including the endangered mangrove forests in Pichavaram, are already under threat due to the petrochemical industries. 

In KG basin, is the sea rising or land sinking?

• Fertile agricultural lands in the Krishna Godavari basin are turning saline, raising questions on what is primarily responsible for the phenomenon.
•  land subsidence could be a greater threat to the eastern coast with its fertile river deltas than sea-level rise of a few millimetres per year expected due to climate change.
• The resulting increase in soil salinity affected farms. Increased coastal erosion had also damaged structures.

Naval safety wing remains a pipe dream

• The Union government is yet to give formal sanction to a dedicated organisation for dealing with naval accidents despite a series of accidents involving submarines and ships and loss of several lives.
• An audit by the Comptroller and Auditor-General also says a series of missteps led to the deadly 2013 accident in a submarine off Mumbai in which 18 people were killed.
• "The Indian Navy, since inception, has no institutionalised framework to deal with safety issues. A dedicated organisation for dealing with safety issues was set up by the Indian Navy only in 2014; however, it awaits government's sanction," the CAG report tabled in Parliament said.
• The explosion aboard INS Sindhurakshakand its sinking off Mumbai in August 2013 resulted from a series of missteps, the audit says.
• The audit found that many recommendations of the inquiries into naval accidents had not been implemented. This included installation of smoke and fire detectors in all compartments of submarines and procurement of extended line breathing apparatus (ELBA) sets, carbon composite submarine breathing apparatus (SBA), light weight breathing sets for submarines etc.
• The idea of creating an Indian Navy Safety Organisation was mooted first in 2006 and ultimately promulgated in October 2012, the audit says. "It was set up in February 2014, though it is yet to be sanctioned by Government," the audit said.
• From 2007-08 to 2015-16, a total number of 38 accidents occurred, which led to a loss of 33 lives of service officers and sailors.
• The Navy lost two ships (INS VindhyagiriandTRV A-72) and one submarine (INS Sindhurakshak) in these accidents.
• The audit points out that out of 38 accidents, 15 (39%) occurred due to fire/explosion/flooding, six (16%) of vessels touching the bottom, another six (16%) were caused by collision of vessels and remaining 11 (29%) were of miscellaneous nature which included accidental stranding and suspended movements, venting of poisonous gas, damages to sonar while docking and damage to aircraft hangar onboard the vessel.

Nilekani moots new data protection law

• Former UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani has proposed a new data protection and empowerment law to ensure that individuals have control over their data and can ask service providers to return the data stored with them.
• Terming data the most important resource in the current century, Mr. Nilekani said India must have a strategic policy position on data related issues. Mr Nilekani also backed China's approach of compelling companies to host Chinese users' data within the country, instead of overseas.
• Companies or governments must return user data on demand' under law, says ex-UIDAI chief
• He backed China's approach of compelling companies to host Chinese users' data within the country, instead of overseas.
• "This way, you address the issue of privacy, data colonisation and competition. This is what can be called a data democracy. The time is now because India is now adopting digital at an unprecedented pace," Mr. Nilekani asserted.

What is minimum support price for crops?

• Amid farmers' unrest in many parts of the country, the demand for an increase in minimum support price (MSP) has been voiced regularly.
• A part of the agricultural price policy, MSP is the price at which the government offers to procure farmers' produce during the season.
• While farmers are free to sell their produce to government agencies or in the open market, it is when market prices fall below the MSP that government agencies step in to buy the crop to protect the growers.
• Also, the aim is to safeguard the interest of the consumer by ensuring supplies at a reasonable price.
• The Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs announces the MSP at the start of each sowing season, taking into account the recommendations of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP).
• The key considerations, while recommending the MSP for crops, are :

(1)  demand and supply,

(2)  production cost,

(3)  price trends in the domestic and international market and the

(4)  likely implications of the price on consumers.

• The CACP's recommendations are in the form of price policy reports every year, separately for five groups of commodities:

(1)  kharif crops,

(2)  rabi crops,

(3)  sugarcane,

(4)  raw jute and

(5)  copra.

• At present, agricultural commodities for which MSP is given include paddy, wheat, maize, sorghum, pearl millet, barley, ragi, gram, tur, moong, urad, lentil, groundnut, rapeseed-mustard, soyabean, sesamum, sunflower, safflower, nigerseed, copra, sugarcane, cotton and raw jute.

History

• Recognising the need to evolve a balanced and integrated price structure to serve the interests of both producers (farmers) and consumers, the Union government set up a committee on August 1, 1964 to advise the Agriculture Ministry to determine the prices of rice and wheat.
• The domain of coverage was expanded to coarse cereals.
• Later, the government decided to set up a permanent body, called the Agricultural Prices Commission, in 1965.
• This was renamed as the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices in 1985.
• To ensure remunerative price to farmers, the government procured 38.65 million tonnes of rice, 22.93 million tonnes of wheat and 1.3 million tonnes of pulses during 2016-17 in various States.

Concerns:

• Agricultural experts point out that there is hardly any dependable mechanism of government procurement for crops on the MSP in most parts of the country.
• Problems like delay in the setting up of procurement centres by government, exploitation by commission agents (Arthiyas), who most of the time buy the produce from farmers below MSP on one pretext or the other, defeat its purpose.

Way ahead:

• Farming for a majority of small and marginal farmers has not been remunerative.
• Taking advantage of the complexities in the supply chain, middlemen appear to be causing disparities in the price.
• There's a gap between the price of the produce got from the farmer and the price it is sold to the consumer.
• Even though the long-term answer to farmers' indebtedness and distress is a rise in their income, the government till then should either purchase all major crops at the MSP, as is done in the case of wheat and rice in Punjab and Haryana, or subsidise the input costs.
• The concern that a rise in MSP would push up the prices seems unfounded.

Tiger reserves: Economic and environmental win-win

• Tigers are what conservationists call "umbrella" species. By saving them, we save everything beneath their ecological umbrella - everything connected to them - including the world's last great forests, whose carbon storage mitigates climate change.

• What all does a tiger reserve offer?

(1)       employment generation,

(2)       agriculture (incidentally the famous IR-8 rice was discovered from the wild rice plants found in one such reserve),

(3)       fishing,

(4)       fuel wood,

(5)       fodder and grazing,

(6)       timber,

(7)       pollination of plants,

(8)       kendu leaves,

(9)       carbon storage and sequestration (vital for climate protection against global warming), (10) water and its purification by filtering organic wastes,

(10)    soil conservation,

(11)    nutrient cycling, and

(12)    moderation of extreme events such as cyclone storms, flash floods.

(13)    tourism,

(14)    education, research and development, and

(15)    spiritual ones (like visiting temples within some of them)

Heard of this deafness test?

• Inspiration gripped engineer-cum-industrial designer Nitin Sisodia has made a diagnostic device SOHUM to check if babies as young as three months may have a hearing problem.
• The device, comprising a headset connected to an iPad-like monitor, can be used as preliminary tool to check for early signs of deafness.
• Globally, 8,00,000 hearing-impaired babies are born annually, nearly 1,00,000 in India.
• The so-called auditory brainstem response (ABR) test involves placing electrodes on a baby's forehead and ears and sending an electronic "click".
• The brain's response, in the form of electrical waves, provides information on the time it takes for structures of the auditory pathway to respond and thus can be used to identify an underlying hearing problem.
• However, a drawback of using an ABR is that it needs to be done in an extremely quiet room.
• Mr. Sisodia's system, which he developed as part of a fellowship at the Stanford Biodesign programme, claims to eliminate the latter requirement. "We have made a novel algorithm that can extract the relevant signal even in noisy surroundings," he says.
• Results from the test are available immediately as a PASS or REFER.
• The latter means that the child needs to go in for further tests with audiologists to confirm the diagnosis and begin remedial measures such as a cochlear implant or appropriate hearing aids.