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Opium and cannabis cultivation in area the size of over 89,000 football fields has been destroyed in the past three years as the Union government intensifies its crackdown against drugs.
Aiming to make India “drug-free” by 2047, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) plans to link recovery and usage of narcotics and banned substances in a particular area to the annual appraisal report of a District Superintendent of Police. This will bring accountability and fix responsibility, a senior government official said.
According to the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), in the past three years, 35,592 acres of poppy cultivation and 82,691 acres of cannabis cultivation has been destroyed across the country.
The States where the crops were destroyed are Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tripura, and Telangana.
Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh told The Hindu that from March 20, 2022, to April 20 this year, 4305.1 acres of poppy cultivation in the State have been destroyed.
In relation to this, as many as 110 cases have been registered and 40 persons arrested. Manipur has seen the highest-ever destruction of such crops in the past three years.
Mr. Singh said the State has launched alternate livelihood scheme for farmers growing poppy illegally, and also provides cash incentives to destroy the illegal crops.
Farmers in Peh village of Ukhrul district were given a cash reward of ₹10 lakh for voluntarily destroying cultivated poppy. Winter hybrid vegetable seeds, saplings of pineapple, low chilling apple, and spices, including ginger and turmeric, were distributed to farmers. The scheme covered 600 farmers.
The MHA has constituted a study group to analyse the use of drones in the destruction of illegal crops in remote areas, and the NCB also shares satellite images with the affected States.
Reviving a ‘dead’ river: a cultural event to celebrate legacy of Yamuna (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The Yamuna, a river that environmentalists consider ecologically dead in Delhi, will now be the focus of a cultural push to renew India’s civilisational and socio-religious connect with its waterbodies.
Come September, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) will host a cultural programme on the banks of the river in Delhi, under its special project – Riverine Cultures of India – that began in 2018.
The highlight of the event will be a short film festival on waterbodies like ponds, rivers, streams, and wells, shot by children near their homes in villages, towns, and cities across the country.
Other events and displays will include a photo exhibition comparing the Yamuna of today with what the river was like 50 years ago; symposia on various aspects like ecology and conservation of India’s rivers and their importance in the country’s heritage; and an exhibition themed on 15 ghats across the country in Sanjhi or paper stencil art.
The larger project is focusing on six rivers right now: Ganga, Yamuna, and Sindhu in the north; and Krishna, Godavari, and Kaveri in the South. Dates of similar events on the other rivers are not known.
The project envisages festivals celebrating rivers in different cities, a study on these rivers in their contemporary context, and workshops along the banks involving environmentalists, cultural historians, anthropologists, and folklorists.
They hope to develop a major study on riverine cultures, along with one on the mythical river Saraswati to “understand its importance in the evolution of human cultures”.
Until now, festivals have been organised on the banks of the Ganga in Munger (Bihar), Godavari in Nashik (Maharashtra), Krishna in Vijayawada (Andhra Pradesh), and Hooghly in Kolkata (West Bengal).
Sachchidanand Joshi, Member Secretary, IGNCA, said, “We in Indian culture look at rivers very differently. We have an emotional bond with them. In many places rivers are worshipped; there is a regular connect with society.
A river influences the socio-cultural life of the entire region, whether it is cropping pattern, festivals, or religious rituals.” He also feels that India is “losing that connect very fast” and this project is an effort to reconnect with rivers.
Sources in the Ministry of Culture said that the government has tasked the IGNCA to conduct the cultural festival as a pilot for a bigger project on the Yamuna.
Pushkaralu festival returns to the Ganga after a gap of 12 years (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 1, Culture)
The 12-day Pushkaralu festival of Telugu-speaking people commenced on April 22 in Varanasi, with the Uttar Pradesh Government expecting more than one lakh Telugu-speaking people to visit Kashi in the next 10-odd days for the event, which will run from April 22 to May 3.
The festival, in which pilgrims will worship their ancestors and the river Ganga, is being organised in Kashi this year after a gap of 12 years due to a special combination of planetary transits. It is the second event of the recent past to be organised in Varanasi, after the Kashi-Tamil Sangamam.
A large number of Telugu pilgrims arrived in Varanasi on April 22, with many special trains scheduled for the festival.
The Varanasi district administration has made elaborate arrangements for crowd regulation as well as facilitating visitors in completing their rituals at ghats along the river Ganga, and also offer prayer at the Kashi Vishwanath temple.
People gather to take a bath in the River Ganga during the Ganga Pushkaralu Kumbh, in Varanasi on April 22, 2023.
We have made all the necessary arrangements like drinking water, toilets, changing rooms, rescue teams including divers, medical teams, and the police for crowd regulation etc.
Dedicated teams of sanitary staff will take care of cleanliness works at the ghats between Assi and Dashashwamedh,“ S .Rajalingam, District Magistrate, Varanasi, said.
As per the legend, after severe penance, the devotee Pushkara was blessed by Lord Shiva with the ability to live in water, and purify holy rivers.
On a request from Bṛhaspati (Jupiter), Pushkara decided to enter one of the 12 sacred rivers — Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Krishna, Kaveri, Bhima, Tapti, Narmada, Saraswati, Tungbhadra, Sindhu, and Pranhita. Each river has its zodiac sign. The river for each year’s festival is decided in accordance with Brihaspati travel from one zodiac sign to another.
Science
Seven worst years for polar ice melting in past decade: study (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Scientists report that the seven worst years for polar ice sheets melting and losing ice have occurred during the past decade, with 2019 being the worst year on record.
Combining 50 satellite surveys of Antarctica and Greenland taken between 1992 and 2020, the international team of researchers have found that the melting ice sheets now account for a quarter of all sea level rise, a fivefold increase since the 1990s.
The findings of the team, led by the Northumbria University’s Centre for Polar Observations and Modelling, U.K., were published in the journal, Earth System Science Data.
In their study, the researchers found that earth’s polar ice sheets lost 7,560 billion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2020, which is equivalent to an ice cube that would be 20 km in height.
They also found that the polar ice sheets have together lost ice in every year of the satellite record, and the seven highest melting years have occurred in the past decade.
The satellite records showed that 2019 was the record melting year when the ice sheets lost a staggering 612 billion tonnes of ice.
They said that the loss, driven by an Arctic summer heatwave, led to record melting from Greenland peaking at 444 billion tonnes that year.
Antarctica was found to have lost 168 billion tonnes of ice, the sixth highest on record, due to the continued speedup of glaciers in West Antarctica and record melting from the Antarctic Peninsula.
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet was found to remain close to a state of balance, as it had throughout the satellite era.
Melting of the polar ice sheets has found to cause a 21 millimetres (mm) rise in global sea level since 1992, almost two thirds, or 13.5 mm, of which has originated from Greenland and one third, or 7.4 mm, from Antarctica.
The researchers say that there has been a fivefold increase in melting since the early 1990s. While ice sheet melting accounted for only a small fraction (5.6% of sea level rise), they are now responsible for more than a quarter (25.6% of all sea level rise).
Microbes at the top of the world (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Genetic analysis of the frozen microbiome at 7,900 metres above sea level on the South Col of Sagarmatha (Mount Everest), by Dr. N.B. Dragone and others in journal Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research examines the human microbiota on the inhospitable slopes of Mount Everest.
They were able to collect microbial communities in sediment samples left by human climbers on the South Col of Mount Everest, 7,900 metres above sea level (msl).
The South Col is the ridge which separates Mt. Everest from Lhotse — the fourth highest mountain on earth. The two peaks are only three kilometres apart. At 7,900 msl, the South Col is rather inhospitable — a heat wave in July 2022 led to a record high temperature of minus 1.4 degree Celsius.
Barring humans, visible signs of life have been left behind. The last visible residents are seen at 6,700 msl — a few species of moss and a jumping spider that feeds on frozen insects carried by the wind.
At high altitudes, there is low oxygen (7.8% against 20.9% at sea level), strong winds, temperature usually below minus 15 degree Celsius, and high levels of UV radiation.
All these make life processes difficult. And as there is an interdependence among species of all sizes in all ecosystems, even microbes cannot sustain themselves.
But microbes keep arriving, carried by either birds, animals, or winds. Up to about 6,000 msl, dust particles, less than 20 micrometre in diameter, are blown in by the winds.
Some of this dust originates in the Sahara Desert, which explains why a wide range of microflora are found at these altitudes. Above 7,000 msl, it is mostly winds and humans that act as carriers.
Using sophisticated methods such as 16S and 18S rRNA sequencing, the microbe hunters were able to identify the bacteria and other microorganisms found on the South Col.
A cosmopolitan human signature is seen in the microbes collected here. Also found are modestobacter altitudinis and the fungus, naganishia, which are known to be UV-resistant survivors.
In 1847, Andrew Waugh, British Surveyor General of India, found a peak in the eastern end of the Himalayas which was higher than the Kangchenjunga — considered as the highest peak in the world at that time.
His predecessor, Sir George Everest, was interested in high-altitude hills and had deputed Waugh to take charge. In true colonial spirit, Waugh called it the Mount Everest.
Stray dog population control is dogged by bad science (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The horror stories continue to pour in. Children, usually from poor families or in rural areas, are being hunted and killed by homeless dogs. State and central governments seem to be helpless to ensure the safety of people on the streets, from what has clearly become a human rights issue and a public health crisis.
The main culprit behind this is the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules that were first introduced in 2001 by the Ministry of Culture, and now replaced by even more absurd ABC Rules, 2023. This policy, despite the protestation by those who promoted it, is completely lacking in both science as well as logic.
The policy aims to implement a technique called ‘catch-neuter-vaccinate-release’ to control populations of free-ranging dogs and cats.
However, despite 20 years of this policy and hundreds of crores of rupees being spent, dog population in India is now more than 65 million.
Proponents of this method aver that the only reason it did not work is because it has not been implemented properly. But what they fail to understand is that it is unimplementable from a scientific, logistic and economic perspective.
The ABC programme does not seem to have any benchmarks or targets. For example, before the start of the programme, a municipal corporation would be required to estimate the base population of dogs to be sterilised.
It would then need to set targets for population reduction within a reasonable time period, say five years, and then calculate how many would need to be sterilised to achieve this objective.
However, municipalities set targets for sterilisation based on budgets and available facilities. In most cases, only a small fraction of the population is sterilised, and in many cases, the programme itself is discontinued after a few cycles.
Dogs are incredibly fecund animals, and reproduce at a high rate if enough resources are available. Both field and modelling studies show that nearly 90% of the dog population needs to be sterilised over a short period of time to achieve a sustained population reduction over a 10-15-year period. This ‘minor’ detail is conveniently skipped by most proponents of the ABC programme.
The other major problem is that the ABC Rules, 2023, bizarrely require people to feed dogs, wherever they may be. The concept of feeding animals in India is associated either with religious beliefs, a false sense of compassion, or at its egregious worst, a wilful misinterpretation of Article 51G of the Constitutional duty to be compassionate to all living beings.