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Friday, October 09, 2020
THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT ARTICLES 09.10.2020
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NATIONAL
OPINION
Thursday, October 08, 2020
Daily Current Affairs, 08th October 2020
VisionIAS
19:02
1) Indian Air Force Day: 08 October
•Indian Air Force Day is celebrated every year by the Indian Air Force on 8th of October. This year Indian Air Force celebrated its 88th anniversary. Indian Air Force was officially established on 8 October 1932 by the British Empire as the Royal Indian Air Force. The name was changed to Indian Air Force in 1950.
•The special occasion will be celebrated with a ceremonial parade and flypast involving a variety of aircraft at the Hindon airbase. IAF’s frontline warplanes like Rafale, Su-30MKI, Apache, Tejas, ‘Gajraj’ will showcase its lethal firepower. 56 aircraft, including 19 fighters and seven transport aircraft along with 19 helicopters, would be taking part in aerial display during this year’s Air Force Day Parade. The Rafale fighter aircraft would fly in the ‘Vijay’ formation along with the Jaguars and then in the ‘Transformer’ formation with the Sukhoi-30 MKI and Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas fighter aircraft during the IAF Day parade this year.
2) Gujarat govt to launch ‘Digital Seva Setu’ programme
•The state government of Gujarat has announced a ‘Digital Seva Setu’ programme to ensure optimum utilisation of technology for public welfare in rural areas. The program has been initiated under the Centre’s BharatNet Project.
3) GoI launches online startup platform ‘Startup India Showcase’
•The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has launched an online discovery platform for startups called “Startup India Showcase”. The main aim of this website is to make a repository of India’s most promising startups that have proved their capabilities, from across sectors such as fintech, enterprise tech, social impact, health tech, and edutech, among others.
4) Kuwait Prime Minister Sabah Al Khalid Al Sabah Resigns
•The Kuwaiti government, headed by Prime Minister(PM) Sabah Al Khalid Al Sabah submitted its resignation to Emir Nawaf Al Ahmed Al Jaber Al Sabah in anticipation of the upcoming general elections that are due to be held in November 2020. He took charge as the PM in 2019.
5) Smriti Irani launches first ever Brand & Logo for Indian Cotton
•Union Minister of Textiles, Smriti Irani has launched the first-ever Brand and Logo for Indian Cotton on Second World Cotton Day through video conferencing. Now India’s premium cotton would be known as ‘Kasturi Cotton’ in the world cotton trade. The Kasturi Cotton brand will represent Whiteness, Brightness, Softness, Purity, Luster, Uniqueness and Indianness.
6) Russia successfully test-fires Tsirkon hypersonic missile
•Russia successfully test-fired a Tsirkon hypersonic cruise missile in the Arctic. The Missile was fired from the Admiral Gorshkov frigate in the White Sea, Russian Arctic. The missile covered a distance of 450 km with the maximum altitude of its trajectory at 28 km. The flight lasted 4.5 minutes and the missile reached a hypersonic speed of over Mach 8. The Missile is a scramjet-powered manoeuvring anti-ship hypersonic cruise missile.
7) API integration between PM SVANidhi, SBI portal launched
•The Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs will integrate the application programming interface (API) between SVANidhi portal and various banks to expedite loan sanctioning and disbursement process under Modi government’s PM SVANidhi scheme for nano entrepreneurs.
•To begin with, the ministry launched the API integration between the PM SVANidhi portal and SBI’s eMudra portal. Ministry would perform similar integration with other banks as well for which a consultative meeting will be held shortly.
8) GoI appoints M Rajeshwar Rao as the RBI Deputy Governor
•The Centre has appointed M Rajeshwar Rao as the new deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India on 7th October 2020. Prior to this, M Rajeshwar Rao was an executive director at RBI. He succeeds NS Vishwanathan as the central bank’s fourth deputy governor. NS Vishwanathan resigned from the post in March 2020 before the completion of his term in June, citing health reasons.
The Central Bank has four Deputy Governors. Other three Deputy Governors of RBI:
•M. D. Patra
•B. P. Kanungo
•M. K. Jain
9) J Venkatramu appointed MD and CEO of India Post Payments Bank
•J Venkatramu has been appointed the managing director and chief executive officer of India Post Payments Bank (IPPB). He will succeed Suresh Sethi, who served the post till March 2020. Venkatramuis presently working as the chief digital officer in Equitas Small Finance Bank. He has been appointed to the post of MD and CEO of IPPB for a period of three years.
10) FM launches Indian Bank’s business mentoring programme ‘MSME Prerana’
•Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman has launched ”MSME Prerana”, an online business mentoring programme for MSMEs by state-run Indian Bank. The programme, to be made available in local languages, is aimed at empowering entrepreneurs through skill development and capacity building workshops.
11) Nobel Prize in Literature 2020 announced
•The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2020 is awarded to the American poet Louise Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”. The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded by The Swedish Academy, Stockholm, Sweden.
12) Noted Odia Poet Nityananda Nayak to receive Sarala Puraskar
•Noted Odia poet, Nityanand Nayak will be conferred the prestigious Sarala Puraskar for his poetry work ‘Setebelaku Nathiba’, published in 2017. The poet will be felicitated with a cash award of `5 lakh and a citation.
•Two other eminent personalities from the State – Ranjit Kumar Nag and Shyamsundar Pattanaik – will be felicitated for their contribution to fields of music and art respectively. While Nag will be awarded the Ila Panda Sangeet Samman, Pattanaik would be felicitated with Ila Panda Chitrakala Samman. The awards comprise a cash award of `1,50,000 and a citation.
The HINDU Notes – 08th October 2020
VisionIAS
18:48
📰 Playing catch up in flood forecasting technology
India needs a technically capable workforce that can master ensemble weather and flood forecast models
•Have you ever wondered how a local agency makes a decision if a flood forecast merely uses the words “Rising” or “Falling” above a water level at a river point? Especially when the time available to act is just 24 hours, there is no idea of the area of inundation, its depth, and when the accuracy of the forecast decreases at 24 hours and beyond?
•There are many times this happens in India during flood events, when the end users (district administration, municipalities and disaster management authorities) receive such forecasts and have to act quickly. These compelling scenarios are often experienced across most flood forecast river points, examples readers will be familiar with — in Assam, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala or Tamil Nadu.
•Compare this with another form of flood forecast (known as the “Ensemble forecast”) that provides a lead time of 7-10 days ahead, with probabilities assigned to different scenarios of water levels and regions of inundation. An example of the probabilities ahead could be something like this: chances of the water level exceeding the danger level is 80%, with likely inundation of a village nearby at 20%. The “Ensemble flood forecast” certainly helps local administrations with better decision-making and in being better prepared than in a deterministic flood forecast.
•The United States, the European Union and Japan have already shifted towards “Ensemble flood forecasting” alongwith “Inundation modelling”. India has only recently shifted towards “Deterministic forecast” (i.e. “Rising” or “Falling” type forecast per model run).
•The shortcomings with Indian flood forecasting are glaring.
A case of multiple agencies
•The India Meteorological Department (IMD) issues meteorological or weather forecasts while the Central Water Commission (CWC) issues flood forecasts at various river points. The end-user agencies are disaster management authorities and local administrations.
•Therefore, the advancement of flood forecasting depends on how quickly rainfall is estimated and forecast by the IMD and how quickly the CWC integrates the rainfall forecast (also known as Quantitative Precipitation Forecast or QPF) with flood forecast. It also is linked to how fast the CWC disseminates this data to end user agencies.
•Thus, the length of time from issuance of the forecast and occurrence of a flood event termed as “lead time” is the most crucial aspect of any flood forecast to enable risk-based decision-making and undertake cost-effective rescue missions by end user agencies.
•Technology plays a part in increasing lead time. Reports suggest that the IMD has about 35 advanced Doppler weather radars to help it with weather forecasting. Compared to point scale rainfall data from rain gauges, Doppler weather radars can measure the likely rainfall directly (known as Quantitative Precipitation Estimation or QPE) from the cloud reflectivity over a large area; thus the lead time can be extended by up to three days.
•But the advantage of advanced technology becomes infructuous because most flood forecasts at several river points across India are based on outdated statistical methods (of the type gauge-to-gauge correlation and multiple coaxial correlations) that enable a lead time of less than 24 hours. This is contrary to the perception that India’s flood forecast is driven by Google’s most advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques!
•These statistical methods fail to capture the hydrological response of river basins between a base station and a forecast station. They cannot be coupled with QPF too.
•Google AI has adopted the hydrological data and forecast models derived for diverse river basins across the world for training AI to issue flood alerts in India. This bypasses the data deficiencies and shortcomings of forecasts based on statistical methods.
Not uniform across India
•A study by the National Institute of Technology, Warangal, Telangana shows that it is only recently that India has moved to using hydrological (or simply rainfall-runoff models) capable of being coupled with QPF. So, a lead time of three days is sporadic in India, and at select river points.
•Just as the CWC’s technological gap limits the IMD’s technological advancement, the technological limitations of the IMD can also render any advanced infrastructure deployed by CWC infructuous. Here is another example. The United States which is estimated to have a land area thrice that of India, has about 160 next generation S-band Doppler weather radars (NEXRAD) with a range of 250-300 km. India will need at least an 80-100 S-band dense radar network to cover its entire territory for accurate QPF. Else, the limitations of altitude, range, band, density of radars and its extensive maintenance enlarge the forecast error in QPF which would ultimately reflect in the CWC’s flood forecast. Conspicuously, the error margin is always away from the public gaze.
•Therefore, outdated technologies and a lack of technological parity between multiple agencies and their poor water governance decrease crucial lead time. Forecasting errors increase and the burden of interpretation shifts to hapless end user agencies. The outcome is an increase in flood risk and disaster.
Ensemble technology
•Global weather phenomenon is chaotic. For instance theoretically, “the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Chennai can create a Tornado in Tokyo” according to MIT’s Edward Lorenz. In simple terms and scientifically, any small change in the initial conditions of a weather model results in an output that is completely unexpected. Therefore, beyond a lead time of three days, a deterministic forecast becomes less accurate.
•The developed world has shifted from deterministic forecasting towards ensemble weather models that measure uncertainty by causing perturbations in initial conditions, reflecting the different states of the chaotic atmosphere. Probabilities are then computed for different flood events, with a lead time beyond 10 days.
•India has a long way to go before mastering ensemble model-based flood forecasting.
•Although, the IMD has begun testing and using ensemble models for weather forecast through its 6.8 peta flops supercomputers (“Pratyush” and “Mihir”), the forecasting agency has still to catch up with advanced technology and achieve technological parity with the IMD in order to couple ensemble forecasts to its hydrological models. It has to modernise not only the telemetry infrastructure but also raise technological compatibility with river basin-specific hydrological, hydrodynamic and inundation modelling. To meet that objective, it needs a technically capable workforce that is well versed with ensemble models and capable of coupling the same with flood forecast models. It is only then that India can look forward to probabilistic-based flood forecasts with a lead time of more than seven to 10 days and which will place it on par with the developed world.
•With integration between multiple flood forecasting agencies, end user agencies can receive probabilistic forecasts that will give them ample time to decide, react, prepare and undertake risk-based analysis and cost-effective rescue missions, reducing flood hazard across the length and breadth of India.
📰 Four for one
UPSC CSE Mains 2020: Detailed Syllabus for GS Paper I (History, Geography & Indian Society)
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07:31
UPSC IAS Mains General Studies – I Syllabus
History | Modern Indian History India Post Independence World History Art & Culture |
Geography | Indian Geography World Geography |
Indian Society | Social Issues, and Developments in Indian Society |
UPSC IAS Mains General Studies I - History Syllabus
