Cyclone Nivar

Why in News?

Recently, the tropical cyclone Nivar made landfall along the Tamil Nadu- Puducherry coast.

Landfall refers to the phenomenon of a cyclone’s outer wall moving over the coastline and beyond.

Key Points

Tropical Cyclone:

• A tropical cyclone is an intense circular storm that originates over warm tropical oceans and is characterized by low atmospheric pressure, high winds, and heavy rain.
• A characteristic feature of tropical cyclones is the eye, a central region of clear skies, warm temperatures, and low atmospheric pressure.
• Storms of this type are called hurricanes in the North Atlantic and eastern Pacific and typhoons in SouthEast Asia and China. They are called tropical cyclones in the southwest Pacific and Indian Ocean region and Willy- willies in north-western Australia.
• Storms rotate anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere.

Cyclone Nivar:

• It is the fourth cyclone that has taken shape in the North Indian Ocean region this year. The first three cyclones were Cyclone Gati (made landfall in Somalia in November), Cyclone Amphan (eastern India witnessed it in May), and Cyclone Nisarga (in Maharashtra).
• Nivar will be the second cyclone to hit Tamil Nadu in two years after Cyclone Gaja in 2018.
• The storm has been named Cyclone Nivar, based on the guidelines of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). Nivara has been selected from the list of names given by Iran.

• According to WMO guidelines, countries in every region are supposed to give names for cyclones.
• The North Indian Ocean Region covers tropical cyclones formed over the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.
• The 13 members, which come under the region, are Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen.
• A total of 169 cyclones were named by these countries for this year, with 13 names from each country.

• It has weakened from a very severe cyclonic storm to a severe cyclonic storm with a wind speed of 100-110 km per hour.

Government Steps:

The Tamil Nadu government has announced a public holiday under the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, in 16 districts, including Chennai, considering the impact of Cyclone Nivar.

Fishing activities have been restricted and residents evacuated in coastal areas hit by the cyclone. The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has deployed its teams in the affected regions.

Protest Against Bru Resettlement

Recently, parts of north Tripura have witnessed violent protests over the proposed resettlement of Bru tribals.

Background:

• Bru or Reang is a community indigenous to Northeast India, living mostly in Tripura, Mizoram and Assam. In Tripura, they are recognised as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group.
• In Mizoram, they have been targeted by groups that do not consider them indigenous to the state.
• In 1997, following ethnic clashes, nearly 37,000 Brus fled the Mamit, Kolasib and Lunglei districts of Mizoram and were accommodated in relief camps in Tripura.
• Since then, 5,000 have returned to Mizoram in eight phases of repatriation, while 32,000 still live in six relief camps in North Tripura.
• In January 2020, a quadrilateral agreement was signed by the Centre, the two state governments and Bru representatives to allow the remaining 32,000 to permanently settle in Tripura.

2020 Agreement:

• After the agreement was made in January 2020, the state has planned 12 resettlement spots across six districts with 300 families each.
• The Centre has announced a special development project with funding of Rs. 600 crores.

Each resettled family will get an estimated 0.03 acres of land for building a home, Rs. 1.5 lakh as housing assistance, and Rs. 4 lakh as a one-time cash benefit for sustenance, a monthly allowance of Rs. 5,000 and free rations for two years from the date of resettlement.

Reason for the Protest:

• The 2020 agreement led to protests from Bengali and Mizo groups in Tripura. They claim that settling thousands of migrants permanently in the Kanchanpur sub-division of North Tripura district would lead to demographic imbalance, exert pressure on local resources and potentially lead to law and order problems.
• They alleged that 650 Bengali families from around Kanchanpur and 81 Mizo families from Jampui Hill range, who fled due to “atrocities” by Brus, were yet to be resettled two decades on.

Conditions of the Brus:

• They are in fear and uncertainty as they suffer an economic blockade due to these protests.
• They haven’t received foodgrains as per their relief package this month and if the protest continues, their condition will deteriorate further.

Sahakar Pragya launched by Ministry of Agriculture

Objective: To impart training to primary cooperative societies in rural areas.

Key takeaways

• There will be 45 new training modules of Sahakar Pragya.
• Training imparted by: National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) and Lakshmanrao Inamdar National Cooperative Research and Development Academy (LINAC).
• Sahakar Pragya shall enhance NCDC’s training capacity by 18-fold through an elaborate network of 18 Regional Training Centres across the country by the dedicated LINAC set up and fully funded by NCDC.

Maharashtra sets up Desalination Plants in Mumbai

It is now the fourth state in India to experiment with the idea.

Features

• A desalination plant turns salt water into water that is fit to drink.
• The most commonly used technique used for the process is reverse osmosis where external pressure is applied to push solvents from an area of high-solute concentration to an area of low-solute concentration through a membrane.
• The microscopic pores in the membranes allow water molecules through but leave salt and most other impurities behind, releasing clean water from the other side.
• Desalination is an expensive way of generating drinking water as it requires a high amount of energy.
• The other problem is the disposal of the by-product — highly concentrated brine — of the desalination process.
• While in most places brine is pumped back into the sea, there have been rising complaints that it ends up severely damaging the local ecology around the plant.

What is desalination?

• Worldwide, desalination is seen as one possible answer to stave off the water crisis.
• These plants are mostly set up in areas that have access to seawater.
• Desalination has largely been limited to affluent countries in the Middle East and has recently started making inroads in parts of the United States and Australia.
• In India, Tamil Nadu has been the pioneer in using this technology, setting up two desalination plants near Chennai in 2010 and then 2013.
• The other states that have proposed these plants are Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.

Essential Services Maintenance Act

The Uttar Pradesh government has extended the Essential Services Maintenance Act in the State, banning strikes in all departments and corporations under it for a period of another six months.

About ESMA, 1968:

The Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) is an act of Parliament of India.

Objective: It was established to ensure the delivery of certain services, which if obstructed would affect the normal life of the people.

These include services like public transport (bus services), health services (doctors and hospitals).

ESMA gives police right to arrest without a warrant anybody violating the Act’s provisions.

Implementation:

• The ESMA is a law made by the Parliament of India under List No. 33 in the Concurrent List of the 7th Schedule of the Constitution of India.
• Although it is a very powerful law, its execution rests entirely on the discretion of the State government. Each state in the union of India hence has a separate state Essential Services Maintenance Act with slight variations from the central law in its provisions. This freedom is accorded by the central law itself.