Answered: Mains Marathon – UPSC Mains Current Affairs Questions – April 14

1.The effective management of land and water resources will drastically reduce the human miseries. Explain. (GS 1)
Mains Previous Year Question Paper

Why effective management of water and land is necessary?

• Without having an efficient water resources management system,it would be difficult to talk about food security, environment and safe future of man kind on planet earth.
• Watershed based management: It will improve quantity and quality of water available to residents by rainwater harvesting, afforestation, cleaning and desilting of tanks
• Use of pesticides for better crops but in the end it is degrading soil nutritious value .
• Improving quality by strict CPCB/SPCB enforcement will reduce water pollution in river that infect the local dwellers.
• Over crowding, excessive exploitation of ground water, land degradation resulting in droughts.

Way forward:-

• Reducing excessive usage, recycling and reusing of resouces.
• Groundwater recharge measures needs to be undertaken, reckless pumping of ground water should be avoided, sprinkler and drip irrigation methods should be employed widely.
• Preventing forest degradation, increasing the expanse of forests and habitation of wild.
• Consolidation of agriculture land: it will reduce input cost of farming thereby reducing farmer misery.
• Water harvesting method should be made mandatory for all municipalities.

The management requires involvement of communities and local bodies as Bottom up approach is more feasible in these cases. SDG-12 calls for sustainable consumption and production. The initiatives towards this goal can be way forward for effective management.

2.To what extent globalization has influenced the core of cultural diversity in India? Explain. (GS 1)
Mains Previous Year Question Paper

Introduction:

Not only in India, but the interchange of world views and ideas has resulted in a major transformation of the lifestyle and living standard of people globally.

How globalisation has affected the core of cultural diversity in India:-

• Deep rooted traditions and customs have loosened up their hold with the emergence of globalization.
• Globalization has not only inculcated the westernization in India, but conversely the Indian culture has also spread its impact globally.
• The traditional joint family setup is neglected and nuclear families are rising more and more parents and grandparents are kept in old age homes .
• Marriages have also lost their values. It is very much evident from the increasing number of divorce cases .
• Even the Indians are not very much in favour of promoting their mother tongue or our national language. Instead the youth today consider it to be a shameful condition to speak their native languages.
• India was predominantly an agricultural based country. With the advanced globalization and cropping up of MNCs, the farming has lost its prime value in India.
• Folk art, theatres and music are facing extinction due to the onslaught of cosmopolitan culture.

Other changes are:

• Lifestyle of people has changed in way of dressing, food.
• Celebration of western festivals.
• New cuisines from europe, east asia, south east asia have grown in influence and traditional food like lintel soup etc have seen reduced popularity.
• Traditional dance like bharatnatyam etc has seen intense competition from new dance styles like salsa, break dance etc.fusion is getting popular.

Positives:-

• Proliferation of modern ideas such as education, sanitation, liberty, equality.
• Globalisation has helped in breaking the barriers of medievalism and feudalism in the Indian society through industrialisation and rationalism.

But it has still not impacted these areas:-

• Despite globalising India has not changed its core areas like marriages are still mostly arranged in India.Inter caste marriages and inter religious marriages are still considered a taboo.
• Honour killings,child marraiges still take place.
• The families are still closely knit despite staying away from one another.

India needs to move very cautiously with the globalization process and preserve its nation’s pride and maintain cultural prestige.

3.Discuss the concept of air mass and explain its role in macro-climatic changes. (GS 1)
Mains Previous Year Question Paper

Concept of air mass:-

An air mass is a large body of air in which vertical gradient of physical properties such as temperature, moisture, lapse rate are fairly uniform over a large.

Role in macro climatic changes:-

• While the major, readily observable effects of air masses are mostly in the realm of daily weather, the reliability of air-mass incursions in many regions make them important contributors to regional climate conditions.
• Maritime air masses also contribute to a moderating climatic influence on coastal temperatures, as oceans heat up and cool down more slowly and less dramatically than landmasses.
• The mixing of air masses achieved along the alternating warm and cold fronts of a mid-latitude cyclone is part of the process by which the heat of the lower latitudes is transferred poleward.
• In maritime arctic and polar regions, the moist air is cool and the maritime tropical air mass produces the warm, humid conditions along the tropics, like Florida and the Caribbean.
• Continental tropical air masses produce hot, dry conditions in the Southwest U.S. and Mexico.
• Dry continental air mass from Mexico moves to Great Plains causes aridity which may lead to drought in the region.
• Cold and heavy air mass in northern India during winter makes weather foggy.
• The eastern coast of India experiences cyclonic events towards September-October is due to moist marine air mass hitting the coast under the influence of Easterlies.
• South-west monsoon of India: The maritime tropical air mass in summer converges with continental polar air mass from China produces summer monsoon in India.
• The cold continental air mass of Central Asia, the cold Siberian winds, is responsible for extremely cold weather conditions in the region.
• The erratic climatic conditions of British isles is a result of interaction of different air masses.
• Lake-snow effect: Continental polar cold mass of Canada touches the shores of Great lakes thus becoming moist and unstable and produces snowfall in the region.
• When warm air masses move over cold air mass then warm air rises and if there is enough moisture present it may cause a thunderstorm.
• Similarly when cold air mass moves over warm air mass then bottom cold air mass gets warm and if enough humidity is present there it can cause rain.

Thus air masses have a huge role in macro-climatic changes which produces various phenomenons from Thunderstorms to Droughts all over the world. Study of air masses can play a crucial role in predicting the weather patterns and analysing the impact of climate change n the long run.