UPSC Key—9th October, 2023: Israel-Hamas conflict, Trajectory Correction Manoeuvre and Food inflation

Afghanistan quakes: Toll surpasses 2,000

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Indian and World Geography-Physical, Social, Economic Geography of India and the World.

Mains Examination: General Studies I: Important Geophysical phenomena such as earthquakes, Tsunami, Volcanic activity, cyclone etc., geographical features and their location-changes in critical geographical features (including water-bodies and ice-caps) and in flora and fauna and the effects of such changes.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story- Devastating earthquakes struck Afghanistan on Saturday, resulting in the loss of lives of over 2,000 people and more than 9,000 injuries, the Taliban government has said. These seismic events mark the deadliest tremors experienced in the earthquake-prone mountainous region in several years. A 6.3 magnitude earthquake, followed by strong aftershocks, killed several residents and damaged property in western Afghanistan on Saturday.

• What happened exactly?

• Where in Afghanistan did the earthquake happen?

• What was the earthquake’s magnitude?

• Why is Afghanistan so vulnerable to earthquakes?

• Map Work-Herat City

• How has the Taliban responded?

• How have other countries responded?

• Why Earthquakes happen?

• For Your Information-According to the BBC news, earthquakes happen when there is sudden movement along the tectonic plates which make up the Earth’s surface. Fractures called fault lines occur where the plates collide. Afghanistan is very prone to earthquakes because it is located on top of a number of fault lines where the Indian and Eurasian plates meet. The earthquake was caused by stress built up from the collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates. It measured 5.9 in magnitude, according to the US Geological Survey. Tremors were felt as far as 500km away in Pakistan and India.
One of the reasons why it was so destructive is that it happened only 10km (6 miles) underneath the earth’s surface, according to the US Geological Survey’s measurements. Over the past decade more than 7,000 people have been killed in earthquakes in Afghanistan, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports. There are an average of 560 deaths a year from earthquakes. Most recently, back-to-back earthquakes in the country’s west in January killed more than 20 people and destroyed hundreds of houses. The 2015 Hindu Kush earthquake, measuring magnitude 7.5, killed 399 people. The earthquake was felt as far away as Xinjiang province in China, 870 miles (1,400km) away.
In June 2022, a powerful earthquake rocked a remote, mountainous area in eastern Afghanistan, levelling stone and mud-brick houses. This quake claimed the lives of a minimum of 1,000 individuals and left approximately 1,500 injured, as per AP. Afghanistan, surrounded by mountains, has a long history of experiencing powerful earthquakes, particularly in the challenging terrain of the Hindu Kush region, which shares a border with Pakistan. Casualty figures frequently escalate when these seismic events strike remote areas, and the decades of conflict have left the country’s infrastructure in a state of disrepair, significantly hampering relief and rescue efforts.

• Why is an earthquake dangerous?

• What are the Disaster management steps that promote effective earthquake disaster response?

• What are earthquake waves?

• Map Work-Earthquake-prone areas in India and in the World

• Why earthquakes remain unpredictable?

• What exactly causes earthquakes?

• Can earthquakes be predicted?

• What is focus or seismic focus of Earthquake?

• What is epicentre of Earthquake?

• The intensity of earthquake is highest in the epicentre and decreases as one moves away-True or False?

• Earthquakes take place in the lithosphere-True or False?

• What do you understand by tectonic plates and plate boundaries?

• What is seismic waves or earthquake waves?

• What is Body waves and Surface waves?

• Know in detail-Primary waves (p-waves), Secondary waves (s-waves), L-waves and Rayleigh waves

• Why does the earth shake when there is an earthquake?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:  

📍Explained: Understanding the earthquake

📍Afghanistan earthquake kills 2,000: The frequent tremors the country sees

EXPLAINED

Food inflation limited to dal roti, why govt policy may need changes

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Economic and Social Development

Mains Examination: General Studies III: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-With consumer food prices 9.9% higher year-on-year in August and overall retail inflation at 6.8% – well above its target of 4% and upper tolerance limit of 6% – the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is understandably worried.

That’s apparent from its monetary policy committee’s statement on Friday: “…the unprecedented food price shocks are impinging on the evolving trajectory of inflation and [the] recurring incidence of such overlapping shocks can impart generalisation and persistence”.

• “With consumer food prices 9.9% higher year-on-year in August and overall retail inflation at 6.8% – well above its target of 4% and upper tolerance limit of 6% – the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is understandably worried”-Why?

• Food inflation being increasingly driven by two items-Which are those items?

• What happens when inflation goes up?

• Inflation and Purchasing power-connect the dots

• But food inflation is not new?

• Why food inflation appear to be hurting people’s pockets more this time?

• How does food inflation affect the average Indian consumer’s cost of living?

• How policy makers deal with this situation?

• What factor distinguishes Indian inflation from many other developed countries?

• What is Inflation?

• Know the Types of Inflation like Moderate Inflation, Galloping Inflation, Hyper-Inflation, Stagflation, Deflation, Core Inflation etc.

• What are the causes of Inflation in the present situation

• How Inflation is Measured in India?

• What is the Long term, Medium Term and Short-term impact of Inflation?

• New Standard for Measuring Inflation in India and Old Standard for Measuring Inflation-Key Differences

• Steps or Measures Taken by GOI to Control Inflation

• What do you understand by Wholesale Price Index (WPI) and Consumer Price Index? WPI and CPI is published by whom?

• What is the Monetary Policy Committee?

• The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is a Statutory Body-True or False?

• What is the Primary Objective of monetary policy in India?

• There are several direct and indirect instruments that are used for implementing monetary policy-What are they?

• What is REPO rate?

• What is Current Repo Rate?

• What’s the RBI assessment on inflation?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍ExplainSpeaking: What is the link between rising food prices and central banks raising interest rates?

Aditya-L1 corrects trajectory as it moves closer to Sun: why, how this was done

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies III: Achievements of Indians in science & technology; indigenization of technology and developing new technology.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story- As India’s first solar mission Aditya L1 continues its 110-day journey towards the L1 point which is 1.5 million kilometres away, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Sunday updated that a Trajectory Correction Manoeuvre (TCM) was performed earlier in the week. The space agency said this was “originally provisioned” for.

The spacecraft propulsion system was fired for 16 seconds on October 6 to correct its trajectory towards the L1 point. The space agency said that the manoeuvre “was needed” to correct the trajectory of the spacecraft was evaluated after it was inserted in the path towards the L1 point on September 19.

• What is Trajectory Correction Manoeuvre (TCM)?

• What is Supra Thermal and Energetic Particle Spectrometer (STEPS)?

• What is the orbit that Aditya L1 must achieve around the L1 point?

• When has ISRO performed TCMs in the past?

• What is ISRO’s Aditya-L1?

• ‘L’ stands for what in Aditya-L1?

• What is Lagrange Point?

• Aditya-L1 Mission-Know the key features

• Aditya-L1 Mission-What makes this Mission very Unique?

• Know the significance and Importance of the Aditya-L1 Mission

• What are the Challenges which were faced during Aditya-L1 Mission?

• For Your Information-“Aditya-L1, the first space-based Indian observatory to study the sun, is getting ready for the launch. The satellite realised at the U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC), Bengaluru, has arrived at SDSC-SHAR, Sriharikota,” said ISRO during its launch. Just like the ongoing Chandrayaan-3 mission, the satellite will go around the earth gathering speed and then slingshot towards the sun. It will then cruise the 1.5 million kilometres in around four months. And, then it will be inserted into a halo-shaped orbit around the L1 point. The solar mission will not see the spacecraft actually go to the sun, it will instead create a space observatory at a point from which the sun can be observed even during an eclipse. To get this unobstructed, continuous view of sun, the satellite will travel to L1 or Lagrange point between the sun and the earth. Lagrange points — there are five between any two celestial objects — are referred to as parking spots in space because gravitational pull of celestial objects equals force required to keep it in orbit. “Even after travelling the 1.5 million kilometres, we would have covered only 10% of the distance to the sun. This will allow the main payload VLEC to look directly into the source of coronal mass ejection. Once at L1, it will be the best instrument observing the solar corona. Although there are observatories studying the solar corona even on ground, but the weather conditions and atmospheric interference does not allow it to see this as clearly,” said Prof Dipankar Banerjee, director of Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), which will host the support cell for the Aditya-L1 mission. Aditya-L1 aims to study the solar corona, solar emissions, solar winds and flares, Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), besides carrying out imaging of the sun, round-the-clock, ISRO said. After Astrosat, this is ISRO’s second astronomy mission/ observatory done in collaboration with scientific and research institutes. The main collaborators in the solar mission with seven payloads are Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad; Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru; Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune; and the Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata.

• What is solar activity, solar prominence, solar flare and coronal mass ejection or CME?

• How solar activity, solar prominence, solar flare and coronal mass ejection or CME impacts Earth?

• Does all solar activity impact Earth? Why or why not?

• For Your Information- Solar activity associated with Space Weather can be divided into four main components: solar flares, coronal mass ejections, high-speed solar wind, and solar energetic particles. Solar flares impact Earth only when they occur on the side of the sun facing Earth. Because flares are made of photons, they travel out directly from the flare site, so if we can see the flare, we can be impacted by it.
Coronal mass ejections, also called CMEs, are large clouds of plasma and magnetic field that erupt from the sun. These clouds can erupt in any direction, and then continue on in that direction, plowing right through the solar wind. Only when the cloud is aimed at Earth will the CME hit Earth and therefore cause impacts. High-speed solar wind streams come from areas on the sun known as coronal holes. These holes can form anywhere on the sun and usually, only when they are closer to the solar equator, do the winds they produce impact Earth.
Solar energetic particles are high-energy charged particles, primarily thought to be released by shocks formed at the front of coronal mass ejections and solar flares. When a CME cloud plows through the solar wind, high velocity solar energetic particles can be produced and because they are charged, they must follow the magnetic field lines that pervade the space between the Sun and the Earth. Therefore, only the charged particles that follow magnetic field lines that intersect the Earth will result in impacts.

• What are coronal holes?

• What is a geomagnetic storm?

• What is a sunspot?

• What is solar maximum and solar minimum?

• What is the solar cycle?

• Do space weather effects / solar storms affect Earth?

• What are some real-world examples of space weather impacts?

• In what ways will the Aditya L1 Mission contribute to our understanding of the Sun and its phenomena?

• What are the other solar missions by different countries?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Solar Storm and Space Weather

📍The Sun up close: Aditya-L1 mission and its objectives

FRONT PAGE

Israel to launch tougher military action, toll rises to nearly 1,000

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies II: Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests, Indian diaspora.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-The Israeli government formally declared war Sunday and gave the green light for “significant military steps” to retaliate against Hamas for its surprise attack from the Gaza Strip, portending greater fighting ahead as the toll from the conflict passed 900 dead and thousands wounded on both sides.

• What is ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’?

• Know the legacy of Al-Aqsa Mosque

• For Your Information-A surprise attack by Hamas on Israel, which combined gunmen breaching security barriers with a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza, was launched at dawn on Saturday during the Jewish high holiday of Simchat Torah.
The attack came 50 years and a day after Egyptian and Syrian forces launched an assault during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur in an effort to retrieve territory Israel had taken during a brief conflict in 1967.

• What Is Hamas?

• For Your Information-Hamas is the largest Palestinian militant Islamist group and one of the two major political parties in the region. Currently, it governs more than two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The organisation, however, is also known for its armed resistance against Israel
Hamas as a whole, or in some cases its military wing, is designated a terrorist group by Israel, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and other countries.
Hamas is essentially “the internal metamorphosis” of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, which was established in Jerusalem in 1946, according to the book, ‘Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide’, by Khaled Al Hroub, professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Northwestern University of Qatar.
“The Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood remained on the margins of Palestinian politics for decades till the 1980s and the reason for this was their strategy, which was non-confrontational… They believed they needed to Islamise the Palestinian society and it was a prerequisite for an engagement with the wider battle against Israel. In brief, they didn’t use armed struggle,” Khaled told Al Jazeera in an interview.
But in 1987, when the first Palestinian intifada took place, the organisation decided to transform itself — and “established Hamas as an adjunct organisation with the specific mission of confronting the Israeli occupation,” the professor wrote in his book.
The main reason for Hamas’ creation was a deep sense of failure that had been set within the Palestinian national movement by the late 1980s. This primarily happened after the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — involved in the armed struggle against Israel from the mid-1960s to ‘liberate Palestine’ — made two massive concessions.
Hamas gained prominence after it opposed the Oslo Peace Accords signed in the early 1990s between Israel and the PLO, the body representing most Palestinians. The accords aimed to bring about Palestinian self-determination, in the form of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

• What are the group’s origins?

• How is Hamas funded?

• How do Palestinians view Hamas?

• How does Hamas challenge Israel?

• Map Work-Israel, Palestine and Gaza Strip

• What are the realistic possibilities for Netanyahu and Israel?

• What is India’s political attitude towards Israel?

• What is India’s political attitude towards Palestine?

• Why is the current violence being compared with the Yom Kippur war?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Tensions at Lebanon border too: Israel trades fire with Hezbollah

📍Arc of India’s ties with Israel

📍THE YOM KIPPUR WAR

📍A TRAGIC RETURN

📍Israel’s moment of reckoning

EXPRESS NETWORK

Ken-Betwa river linking: Push helps clear project in time for elections

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance

Main Examination: General Studies-II: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story- It took government push over the last few weeks for the Rs 44,605-crore Ken-Betwa Link Project (KBLP) to secure the final forest clearance, six years after it got the provisional nod, and just in time for the upcoming Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh.

• What is the Ken Betwa River Interlink Project?

• Know the geography of Bundelkhand region

• Map Work-Ken, Betwa and Bundelkhand region

• Why Ken-Betwa link project is critical for the water security and socio-economic development of Bundelkhand region?

• Know in detail Ken-Betwa River linking project

• What are the legal problems?

• Which are the clearances required for a river-linking project?

• What clearances has the Ken-Betwa link project received?

• How Panna tiger reserve will be affected?

• For Your Information-The Ken-Betwa Link Project is the first project under the National Perspective Plan for interlinking of rivers. Under this project, water from the Ken river will be transferred to the Betwa river. Both these rivers are tributaries of river Yamuna.
The Ken-Betwa Link Project has two phases. Under Phase-I, one of the components — Daudhan dam complex and its appurtenances like Low Level Tunnel, High Level Tunnel, Ken-Betwa link canal and Power houses — will be completed. While in the Phase-II, three components — Lower Orr dam, Bina complex project and Kotha barrage — will be constructed.
According to the Union Jal Shakti Ministry, the project is expected to provide annual irrigation of 10.62 lakh hectares, drinking water supply to about 62 lakh people and also generate 103 MW of hydropower.

• What are the other river linking projects?

• What are the challenges associated with river linking projects?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Explained: What is the Ken-Betwa Link Project; which regions will benefit from it?

ECONOMY

Loans from the Centre keep state govts’ capex strong

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Economic and Social Development

Main Examination: General Studies III: Government Budgeting and Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story- Aided by the front-ending of capex loans by the Centre, the state governments’ capital expenditure seem to have grown at a much higher pace than last year in April-August period of the current financial year.

The combined capex of 17 big states, whose finances were reviewed by FE, rose by 45% to around Rs 1.67 trillion in the first five months of the current fiscal, compared with Rs 1.15 trillion in the year-ago period.

• What do you understand by Capital Spending? How Capital spending or Capital investments impact an Economy?

• What Are Capital Expenditures (CapEx)?

• Capital Investment’s Relationship to Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

• What is capital expenditure or Capex?

• What are the types of capital expenditures?

• What is the difference between capital and revenue expenditure?

• How does capital spending help the government produce more revenue if it is related with investment or development spending?

• What role does capital spending have in the Indian economy?

• “Experts said better certainty for states’ revenue flow in terms of growth in tax collections and devolution from the central pool has worked in favour of higher capital expenditure by states”-What do you make of this statement?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Capital Expenditure (CapEx)

For any queries and feedback, contact priya.shukla@indianexpress.com
The Indian Express UPSC Hub is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel and stay updated with the latest Updates.

Subscribe to our UPSC newsletter and stay updated with the news cues from the past week.