Current Affair 1:

How many revisions of GDP estimates are done, and why?

 

For each financial year, say 2021-22, the GDP estimates go through several rounds of revisions.

1. Each year on January 7, MoSPI releases the FAEs.
2. Then in February end, after incorporating the Q3 data, come the SAEs.
3. By May-end come the Provisional Estimates after incorporating the Q4 (Jan to March) data.
4. Then, in end-January 2023, MoSPI will release the First Revised Estimates for FY22.
5. These will be followed by the Second Revised Estimates (by Jan-end 2024); and
6. The Third Revised Estimates (by Jan-end 2025).
7. Each revision benefits from more data, making the GDP estimates more accurate and robust.

MoSPI: Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation

FAE: First Advance Estimate

SAE: Second Advance Estimate

Quarterly GDP data are released with a lag/delay of 2 months.

Current Affair 2:

Assessment Report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability Report

 

India welcomes the release of the Working Group II (WG2) contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

A delegation from India participated in the final discussions on the Summary for Policymakers of the Report, held online from 14th February to 27th February (extending two days over its scheduled duration) and has joined other nations in approving the Summary for Policymakers of the Report.

 

The following are the key findings of the Report and its Summary for Policymakers:

• The Report affirms that climate change due to historical emissions is leading to serious impacts which are already being felt globally including in developing countries with low contribution to cumulative emissions. These impacts will rise as warming proceeds and will rise rapidly at higher levels of warming.
• The Report emphasizes that action on adaptation is urgently needed – as urgently as action on mitigation.
• The Summary for Policymakers (SPM) underlines the need for climate action on the basis of equity and climate justice to ensure the well-being of humanity and the planet.
• The science of climate resilience now fully acknowledges the importance of equity and climate justice that India has always championed and had brought into the Paris Agreement.
• Further, the SPM clearly acknowledges the importance of Indigenous and Local Knowledge in adaptation to climate change.

The Bengal tiger, Hoolock Gibbon and snow leopard will be greatly affected due to changing climate in south Asia, according to projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Sixth Assessment Report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, released February 28, 2022.

India notes that future reports should strengthen the “solution space” and more comprehensively assess knowledge regarding effectiveness, costs and benefits.

India has taken tremendous actions under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi to combat climate change by taking several initiatives including, inter-alia,

setting up of : International Solar Alliance, Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, ‘One Sun, One World, One Grid’ and Infrastructure for Resilient Island States, raising the domestic renewable energy target to 500 GW by 2030, putting in place an ambitious National Hydrogen Mission and continuing efforts to decouple its emissions from economic growth.

Current Affair 3:

‘Karez’ system of irrigation

 

Karez system is considered as the global human heritage since it is not only a traditional water supply system of exploiting groundwater, but also it reflects the culture, socio-economy, and history of the ancient civilizations that had utilized them for thousands of years in arid and semi-arid regions of the world.

Karez are constructed as a series of well-like vertical shafts, connected by sloping tunnels, which tap into subterranean water in a manner that efficiently delivers large quantities of water to the surface by gravity, without need for pumping. The first well where the water is tapped for a karez is called the mother well, and there is a zone of roughly 1,200 feet in diameter where it is forbidden to dig new wells or otherwise threaten the quality and quantity of the groundwater. The vertical shafts along the underground channel are purely for maintenance purposes, and water is used only once it emerges from the daylight point.

 

This system of underground vertical shafts in a gently sloping tunnel that is built from an upland aquifer to ground level, is in fact present in several countries.

Some historians and archaeologists have attributed people in the southeast Arabian Peninsula as the first developers. Others, however, ascribe it to the ancient Persians.

The Qanat / Karez system, wherever it was developed, soon spread to many Persian, Arab and Turkic lands. It even came to the Indian Subcontinent during the 800-year-old Islamic Period.

<< Previous Next >>