Flash floods led to landslides

GS Paper - 1 (Geography)

The Chandigarh-Manali highway was blocked following flash floods and landslides in parts of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Flash floods were witnessed in Khotinallah near Aut (in HP) on the Pandoh–Kullu stretch due to a heavy downpour and the commuters have been stranded as a result.

What are flash floods and how are they different from floods in general?

• Excessive or continuous rainfall over a period of days, or during particular seasons, can lead to stagnation of water and cause flooding.
• Flash floods refer to such a situation, but occurring in a much shorter span of time, and are highly localised.
• For instance, the US’s meteorological agency, the National Weather Service, says flash floods are caused when rainfall creates flooding in less than 6 hours.
• It adds that flash floods can also be caused by factors apart from rainfall, like when water goes beyond the levels of a dam.
• In India, flash floods are often associated with cloudbursts – sudden, intense rainfall in a short period of time. Himalayan states further face the challenge of overflowing glacial lakes, formed due to the melting of glaciers, and their numbers have been increasing in the last few years.
• Frequently, flash floods are accompanied by landslides, which are sudden movements of rock, boulders, earth or debris down a slope.
• It is common in mountainous terrains, where there are conditions created for it in terms of the soil, rock, geology and slope.
• Natural causes that trigger landslides include heavy rainfall, earthquakes, snowmelting and undercutting of slopes due to flooding.
• Landslides can also be caused by human activities, such as excavation, cutting of hills and trees, excessive infrastructure development, and overgrazing by cattle.

How common are flash floods and floods?

• According to government data from a project by the Assam State Disaster Management Authority, India is the worst flood-affected country in the world, after Bangladesh, and accounts for one-fifth of the global death count due to floods.
• Flash floods have been commonly witnessed in cities like Chennai and Mumbai. Depression and cyclonic storms in the coastal areas of Orissa, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, and others also cause flash floods.
• Further, data from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) states that one of the reasons for flood situations occurring so frequently are that nearly 75 per cent of the total Indian rainfall is concentrated over a short monsoon season of four months (June to September).
• As a result, the rivers witness a heavy discharge during these months. About 40 million hectares of land in the country are liable to floods according to the National Flood Commission, and an average of 18.6 million hectares of land is affected annually.
• Flash floods may in the future, begin to take place after wildfires that have been taking place more frequently.
• This is because wildfires destroy forests and other vegetation, which in turn weakens the soil and makes it less permeable for water to seep through.

Rani Durgavati Gaurav Yatra

GS Paper - 1 (History)

The Madhya Pradesh government launched the six-day Rani Durgavati Gaurav Yatra. Home Minister Amit Shah inaugurated the rally in Balaghat – when the queen is believed to have died while fighting the Mughals in the mid-16th century — as a day of sacrifice

More about yatra

• Starting from Balaghat, Chhindwara, Singrampur (Damoh district), Dhauhani, and Kalinjar Fort in Uttar Pradesh – the natal home of the queen – the five yatras reached Shahdol in MP on 27 June 2023.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present on the day to conclude the Gaurav Yatra. He was also flaged off two Vande Bharata trains from Bhopal as part of the visit to the state.
• Madhya Pradesh has its tribal population which makes up around 21% of the state’s total population. It is also the largest tribal population among all Indian states.

Who was Rani Durgavati?

• The queen was a “symbol of India’s self-determination”, saying she fought Mughal emperor Akbar and his commander Asaf Khan and gave the ultimate sacrifice.
• Rani Durgavati is said to have been born in 1524, in Mahoba’s Chandela dynasty. The region comes under present-day Uttar Pradesh, near the southern border with MP.
• Her father was Raja Salbahan of Ratha and Mahoba, and the Chandelas were known for building the famous Khajuraho temples in the 11th century.
• She was later married to Dalpat Shah, the son of the Gond King Sangram Shah of the kingdom of Garha-Katanga. This kingdom included the Narmada Valley and parts of northern MP. 
• It was first welded together by Sangram Shah and is noted as one of the most powerful kingdoms of the Gond tribe.
• Durgavati, however, was widowed in 1550, a few years after her marriage. Her young son Bir Narayan presided over the throne in name and she then “ruled the country with great vigour and courage.”
• Historian Satish Chandra, in his book Medieval India, describes her as a good marksman, skilled at using guns, bows, and arrows.
• It was noted at the time that she was so intent on hunting tigers that “whenever she heard that a tiger had appeared she did not drink water until she shot it.”

First edition collection of Robert Frost’s work

GS Paper - 1 (Art and Culture)

Among the many gifts received by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his three-day State visit to the United States of America is an autographed first-edition copy of Collected Poems of Robert Frost, published in 1930 by Henry Holt and Company.

Who was Robert Frost?

• The only writer to have been awarded four Pulitzer Prizes (in 1924, 1931, 1937, 1943), Robert Frost was one of the 20th century’s most popular poets.
• Recognised as a poet whose work represented the quintessential American life, his poetry combined elements of romanticism and modernism in theme and style.
• Born in San Francisco in 1874, Frost spent a large part of his childhood in New England. He studied at Dartmouth College and Harvard University.
• His first book of poems, A Boy’s Will, was published in 1913 in the United Kingdom, where he had moved with his family the year before.
• It won him instant critical appreciation. In 1914, another volume of poetry, North of Boston, came out in the UK, cementing his position as a literary voice of heft. Frost was 40 at the time. Frost died in 1963 at the age of 88.

His notable works

• Generations of students of English Literature would recognise some of Frost’s most well-known poems such as Mending Wall (1914), The Road Not Taken (1916) and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923).
• Frost won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1924 for New Hampshire: A Poem With Notes and Grace Notes; then for Collected Poems. He won his third Pulitzer for A Further Range in 1937 and, finally, in 1943, for A Witness Tree.

Frost’s India connection

• The gifting of a first edition collection of Frost’s work to the PM may be emblematic of the poet’s stature in American literary life, but much before that Frost had found an admirer in India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
• Anecdotes of Nehru’s friends and close associates mention his particular fondness for the poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
• Towards the end of his life, beset by health issues and troubled by the result of the Sino-Indian War (1962), Nehru is said to have kept a copy of Frost’s poems by his bedside, with the last stanza of Stopping by Woods… that read, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,/ But I have promises to keep,/ And miles to go before I sleep, /And miles to go before I sleep” heavily underlined.
• Nehru’s friend, the poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan, is also known to have rendered the poem in Hindi.

Sale of cell-cultured chicken approved

GS Paper - 3 (Science)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved the sale of cell-cultured chicken in a landmark decision that clears the path for consumers to try it out themselves, the two startups that received the first approvals.

More about the cultured meat

• Cultured meat, also known as cultivated, cell-based or lab-grown protein, is made by putting stem cells from the fat or muscle of an animal into a culture medium that feeds the cells, allowing them to grow.
• The medium is then put into a bioreactor to support the cells’ growth, creating an end product that looks and tastes like traditional meat.
• Proponents of cultured meat say it’s healthier and more environmentally friendly than traditional meat. Outside the U.S., only Singapore has cleared the sale of cell-cultured meat.
• The USDA issued approval to Good Meat, a subsidiary of Eat Just, along with Upside Foods. Both companies had already received the go-ahead months earlier from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which said each company’s lab-grown chicken is safe for human consumption.
• Good Meat has also received approval to sell its cultured meat in Singapore, where it’s been available to consumers since December 2020.