21-22-05-23 Daily-Kerala-KPSC Current Affairs

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said with being the most grievous crisis in the world resulting in natural calamities around the globe, the southern state has become one of the few in India to come up with a policy for electric mobility.

He said subsidies are being offered for purchase of e-autos and for retro-fitting old diesel autorickshaws with electric motors and battery.

Besides that, reduction of road tax on electric vehicles and tax exemption for five years on e-autos is also being offered, he said.

The government is also working to provide more public charging facilities and induct electric buses into the fleet of the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation, he said.

Giving details of other Environment-friendly measures being taken, the Chief Minister said, “The Cochin International Airport Limited is the first airport in the world that is fully powered by Solar Energy. With an installed capacity of 50 MW in solar power alone, it is even power-positive. Our Kochi Metro is giving rainwater harvesting and solar power a major thrust. Fifty-five per cent of KMRL’s power requirements are met through its solar Plants, one of the highest in the country by any standards. KMRL targets to be energy neutral at the earliest as well.”

Groundwater should not be used for farming purposes to prevent arsenic (As)exposure for farm products, especially in the case of rice, a team of researchers has said citing the case of West Bengal where arsenic has been found in high content in groundwater. Large-scale arsenic (As) poisoning, mainly through food chain contamination, is deemed to be a lethal problem in the rice-growing areas of the Bengal Delta Plain (BDP) and other parts of the world.

The study paper by scholars and researchers from the School of Environmental Studies, the National Institute of Biological Genomics and Australias University Of Newcastle pointed out that since groundwater is more prone to arsenic exposure, farm products produced by using that water also become prone to the same exposure.

To prevent this, the report has suggested stressing on rainy season farming so that rainwater can be used. This remedy is extremely important considering that West Bengal is among those states which have extremely high arsenic concentration in groundwater. Historically as many as 83 blocks scattered over seven districts in West Bengal have arsenic levels in groundwater higher than the permissible limits.

The report, published in science magazine Environmental Science & Pollution Research, suggests if rice is cooked using arsenic-free water equivalent to three times of the quantity of rice being cooked, the level of arsenic exposure in that cooked rice comes down substantially.

For this, the Railways will need to create a installed capacity of 30,000 MW as solar and Wind Energy is not available round the clock and the generation varies region to region. Till August 2022, the installed renewable energy capacity of the Indian Railways was only 245 MW.

Myanmars military has imported at least USD 1 billion worth of weapons and related material from Russia, China and other countries since its February 2021 coup, some of which it has used to carry out atrocities against civilians, according to a UN report released on Wednesday. The weapons continue to flow to the military despite overwhelming evidence of its responsibility for the atrocities, including some that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, said Tom Andrews, the UN independent investigator on Human Rights in Myanmar.

Myanmar is mired in strife because of a political crisis unleashed when the military took power. Its takeover prompted widespread peaceful protests that security forces suppressed with deadly force, triggering armed resistance throughout the country that the army has been unable to quell. Andrews said at least 22,000 political prisoners have been detained since the coup, at least 3.500 civilians have been killed and 1.5 million people have been forcibly displaced.