Daily Mains Practice Questions 15-02-2023

Q .1

KEY POINTS

·        A tunnel boring machine in Joshimath, Uttarakhand, hit an aquifer about three kilometres from Selang village.

·        This resulted in the loss of nearly 800 litres of water per second (enough to sustain the needs of nearly 30 lakh people per day).

·        Ongoing infrastructure projects (the Tapovan Vishnugad dam and the Helang-Marwari bypass road) may also worsen the situation.

·        Consequently, land use planning in India’s Himalayan towns and the Western Ghats is often ill-conceived, adding to slope instability.

·        As a result, landslide vulnerability has risen, made worse by tunnelling construction that is weakening rock formations.

·        The Geological Survey of India has conducted a national mapping exercise (1:50,000 scale, with each centimetre denoting approximately 0.5 km).

·        An earthquake with a magnitude greater than 7 on the Richter scale would easily trigger over 1,000 landslides and cause large-scale damage to buildings.

·        But the city has developed a landslide action plan (with a push to reach 1:500 scale), with updated regulations to guide construction activities in hazardous zones.

·        Finally, each city needs to have a disaster management framework in place, with large arterial roads that allow people and goods to move freely.

·        India’s urban journey is not limited to an election cycle. It must plan for a multi-generational process.

KEY POINTS

·        A team discovered 92 dinosaur nesting sites with 256 fossilised eggs of the titanosaurus — among the largest of its kind, from 100-66 million years ago, when ‘India’ was a continent and yet to merge into the Eurasian land mass.

·        Similarly, the deserts of Kutch, Gujarat and the Deccan traps in Maharashtra bear witness to the forces that shaped the diverse geography, and tangentially history, of the most populous country.

·        For decades now, researchers have been warning that this neglect is leading to an erasure of this history from the public mind and a destruction as well as appropriation of this natural wealth.

·        To that end, the draft Geo-heritage Sites and Geo-relics (Preservation and Maintenance) Bill, 2022, piloted by the Ministry of Mines, is seen as a step to give the process of such conservation firmer footing.

·        They demand a more inclusive body, on the lines of a National Geoheritage Authority, that can, more democratically, decide on declaring sites as being of ‘geohistorical’ importance and how best to preserve artefacts and finds.

·        Given the premium for land and India’s economic needs, there will be conflict over questions of preservation and livelihood, but any legislation must endeavour to balance these forces and enable consensus.

KEY POINTS

·        Burdened by massive import of vegetable oil amounting to 13-14 million tonnes and valued at over $14 billion to meet chronic domestic shortage, the government is keen to boost domestic production and reduce the dependence on imports.

·        In the medium-to-long term, the country must move towards substantial self-reliance, but in the short-term import is inevitable.

·        But the present import policy, while advancing consumer interest, has failed to protect the interests of domestic oilseed growers.

·        Boosting domestic oilseeds production is inevitable, for which effective policy measures are critical.

·        Currently, policy interventions are often knee-jerk and reactive, and bereft of supportive data.

·        Bank loans to importers can turn into NPA anytime. Reduced credit period will automatically slow the pace of import and make the importer more responsible and accountable.

·        Bring cooking oil under PDS. Support vulnerable sections of consumers with supply of edible oil under welfare programmes at subsidised rates. PDS and private trade supplies can co-exist. Both help advance consumer interest.

·        Backward integration: Large processing units dependent on import must establish backward linkages to produce oilseeds by working with FPOs.

·        Finally, policymakers must demonstrate strong ‘political will’ to creatively disrupt the debilitating status quo. The country’s oilseeds sector deserves policy, investment and research support.

Q. 2) GSI

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