 Greetings dear as parents, welcome to today's current affairs session on civil superior. Today we will be discussing about the important bird festivals in India and about the Daman initiative and Korsiya under our prelims topic and regarding removing the roots of farmers agrarian distress under our editorial topic. So let's move on to our first prelims topic of the day important bird festivals of India. If you see the recent current affairs that the Chilika bird festival was celebrated in the state of Odisha and the news was bird watches have flocked to the Chilika lake in order to view the festival. So the key words that you need to know when you are studying about such bird festivals are just remember the place or the state of celebration and if that particular bird festival is being celebrated for the native birds or for the migratory birds because India is also a largest heaven of migratory birds which is located in the Central Asian flyway. So all those birds that come from arctic areas near Russia or Siberia that comes and nest nest in India. So just remember those birds and just remember if there are any sanctuaries that are located near by this particular bird festival where it is being celebrated. So regarding the Chilika bird festival, so it is an annual congregation of migratory birds and it is a two day national festival that is being celebrated in the state of Odisha especially in the area of Mangala Jyoti. So as I told it lies in the Central Asian flyway for birds and just know that Nalbana bird sanctuary is located near to this Chilika lake where this bird festival is being celebrated. And the next festival that we are going to see is the Pakke Paga Hornbill Festival. So don't confuse this hornbill festival with that of the hornbill festival that is being celebrated in the state of Nagaland. So when you remember Pakke just remember Arunachal Pravesh. So it is a state festival of Arunachal Pravesh being celebrated to conserve the hornbill bird. So it also recognizes the role of the Nishi tribes which are who are located in that particular Pakke Tiger Reserve area. And if you see hornbill they are native to the eastern Himalayas which means they are located in the north eastern states and in some eastern states especially in the state of West Bengal. So the next bird festival is the Flamingo Bird Festival. So it is a three day bird festival which was held at Andhra Pradesh. If you see they celebrated this bird festival at Pulikat and Nalapattu bird sanctuaries. So the migratory birds from Ladakh, Tibet and China areas they come to this particular Pulikat and Nalapattu bird sanctuaries. And these sanctuaries are also a part of the Central Asian flyway. And the next bird festival is of high significance. And the next bird festival that is being again celebrated in the state of Andhra Pradesh is the Koringa Bird Festival. So we have Koringa Wildlife Sanctuary which is located near the Kakinada city in the state of Andhra Pradesh. So this particular festival is being organized by the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department, by the Igri Foundation and with collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund at Koringa Wildlife Sanctuary near Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh. If you see around 271 bird species are present in this particular sanctuary of which 95 birds are migratory birds that come every year to this particular sanctuary. So this sanctuary is also equally important along with this bird festival. And the final bird festival that we are going to see is the Amur Falcon Festival which recently initiated, this festival was a recent initiative by the state of Nagaland. So it is being celebrated at an area called Dayong, Dayong in the Boka district of Nagaland. So you need to know something about Amur Falcons. These are again migratory birds that come from the countries of Russia or near the Siberian areas. So they are known for their long travel, the longest ever travel Amur Falcon was around 22,000 kilometers. And as I told this comes from Russia, Siberia to India. So they come and stay for some time in India and they again move to Somalia, Kenya and South Africa and they travel vice versa. So this Amur Falcon festival is also of equal importance. So if they give match the following like Hornbill festival, Pakke Hornbill festival, Arunachal Pradesh, Amur Falcon festival, Nagaland. So you must be able to identify the festivals and associate them with those respective states. So this is all about the important bird festivals that you need to know. So there are some festivals named after the birds and there are some festivals named after those places like Silica bird festival or your Ninetal bird festival for example which was celebrated in 2018. And also this year they have celebrated Flamingo bird festival in 2018, Appalican bird festival was celebrated in Kholerulek in Andhra Pradesh. So there are many such bird festivals that are being conducted by the state governments across the states in every year. So let's move on to our next topic the Daman initiative. So this initiative is by the state of Odisha. So the key words that you need to know about this initiative is what is this particular initiative about and which state government is organizing it and regarding something regarding the India's malaria control program. So what is Daman initiative? Daman initiative is Durgamma Anchalare Malaria Nirakaran. So in 2012, WHO came with a test treat and track initiative for controlling the malaria. So malaria is prevalent in most of those countries that are located close to equator which have a very warm climate. So Odisha similarly came up with this comprehensive case management program in line with this WHO's test treat and track initiative. So this is a malaria control initiative. So on seeing the success of the CCMP, Odisha government started this particular Daman initiative in the year 2016. So it aims to prevent, diagnose and treat malaria and deliver services to the most inaccessible and the hardest people of the state. So this particular initiative has given impressive results to the state of Odisha. Because with the help of ASHA workers, the accredited social health activists in the year 2017, around 11 million bed nets were distributed to all those people who are located in those inaccessible parts of the state. Majorly they reside in the forest areas of the states. So because of these sustained effects, Odisha recorded 80% decline in malaria cases and the deaths only in the year 2017. So with regarding to this, you also need to know about India's malaria control program. So the major turnaround for this India's malaria control program came in the East Asia Summit of 2015, where India pledged to eliminate the malaria disease by the year 2030. So in line with this, India has launched its five year national strategic plan for malaria elimination. So now we have a move from, we have a paradigm shift from malaria control to malaria elimination. So we completely want to eliminate malaria. So the target is to end the malaria in all those 571 malaria affected districts of India out of the total 678 districts in India by the year 2022. So for this, we need around 10,000 crore funds. So this cannot be suffice completely by the central government or the state governments. So all the NGOs and the private organizations must also pitch in to help India combat this particular malaria disease. And if you see in recognition of efforts of India towards eliminating malaria. So we can see in the WHO World Malaria Report of 2018, the World Health Organization, which has recorded a 24% decrease in 2017 in malaria cases compared to the year 2016. So we can see that India's highly improved and India's malaria control program is largely country owned and country led program. So among all those 11 highly burdened countries across the world, India was the only country which saw a sufficient improvement. And you also need to know that health is a state subject. So only the central government cannot push in towards eliminating malaria across the country. It is also the state governments initiatives that help in combating this particular malaria burden, disease burden. So state governments across the country should shoulder a special responsibility in tackling the disease. So this is all you need to know about India's fight against malaria. So with prelims point of view, just know this diamond initiative is for which disease by which state government. And this will be helpful for your mains. So let's move on to our next topic, Corsia. So you need to know what is Corsia, you need to know what is carbon offsetting and regarding the India's membership in this particular Corsia agreement and something about the international civil aviation organization because it deals with something with the civil aviation sector. So the recent news is that the I8E has rebuke India on the Corsias note because India has not joined this particular Corsia agreement. But the international aviation organization wants India to join this particular Corsia agreement. So what is Corsia? Corsia is nothing but carbon offsetting and reduction scheme for international aviation. We all know that the air fuel is also a major pollutant which leads to global warming. So the air companies or this air companies consortium also wants to give something towards eliminating this particular carbon pollution. So it is basically emission mitigation approach for the global airline industry which was developed by the international civil aviation organization. So this consists of all the member nations which means all the countries of the world which operates air traffic. So this particular agreement is applicable only to the international flights. So this is basically an emission mitigation approach, nothing but carbon trading approach or emission trading approach whereby you cannot reduce the usage of your air fuel which is a major cause for pollution. Instead they have to invest in carbon offsetting technologies which is nothing but they have to invest in some other emission trading technologies where they can reduce the emissions at some other sector so that they can equate this which is nothing but your emissions trading. So these standards were adopted in the year 2016 aiming for a carbon neutral growth. But countries like India, China or Russia have not yet joined Corsair because India thinks that it is self-sufficient and because out of the five major airports of India almost four airports are carbon neutral airports and this is not going to bring a significant achievement to India by joining Corsair. So airlines will need to buy carbon offsets to compensate for their growth for carbon dioxide emissions which is nothing but your emissions trading as I explained. So these will be voluntary standards till the year 2026 post which they will become mandatory. So right now India is not willing to join and these standards would kick start from the year 2021 and India is not a member of this particular Corsair and even in this particular year 2019 we cannot see any improvement towards gaining membership in Corsair because the elections are going to come up in the month of April May 2019. So this is all you need to know about Corsair. So let us move on to our editorial topic of the day removing the roots of farmers agrarian distress. So the reason for agrarian distress has been discussed at large the problems. So they have covered three major problems and they have tried to come up with solutions for those three major problems. So the three major problems are income and price, productivity and land size. So let us discuss these three problems in detail which has been discussed by the author in the editorial. So the first topic is the income and the price. So the price plays a key role in affecting the income of the farmers. If you see the data for the last two years inflation and agriculture is lower than the overall inflation which means overall there is a price rise but there is no significant price rise in the agricultural commodities because how much ever you produce the price of a particular agricultural commodity say onion is hovering only about 15 to 20 kgs per kg and they have also taken some data economic data. So one data is the agriculture gross value added growth was projected to be at 3.8 percent for 2018-19 years at nominal and constant prices giving the price deflator at 0 percent which means they are telling that value addition in the agriculture sector will be around 3.8 percent compared to the previous year but the price is not going to increase or decrease it will remain at 0 percentage. So you can see that there is a value addition in agriculture but it is not reflecting in the prices. Only if prices are quite renumerative only then the farmers will be happy and they have also taken one more economic indicator data the consumer price index where they tell that the agriculture inflation is lesser than the overall inflation. So they have also noted that the market prices are lesser than the minimum support prices. So minimum support prices as it denotes it is a minimum price which is being indicated by the government to be renumerated to farmers but the market prices are always lesser than these MSPs. So say for a particular crop if 2500 is the minimum support price the market price will always be hovering about 1800 to 1900. So this is not quite renumerative for farmers it will just change between which means nothing but a change of fans between the intermediaries only the intermediaries are going to benefit and finally the consumer will have a price more than this 2500. So the farmers are also not being renumerated properly and the consumers will are also affected. The intermediaries in this particular agriculture commodities market are highly profited. So this particular farm distress is because of the absence of effective price support policy which is affecting the small farmers at large. You have to take the farmers into different classification with your large farmers, small farmers and marginal farmers which will be discussing in detail. So they have the authors have given some existing policies and they have also suggested some policies. So they have discussed in large about the Telangana's Ritubandu scheme and the similar income support scheme of the state of Odisha where they have told that this input support scheme is not really going to help the farmers and they have also discussed some other policies that have been proposed by the government. So second thing is the price deficiency compensation. So if the farmers are facing any price deficiency from the MSP support price which I was telling this would be compensated by the government but this is also not going to help at the long term and they have also proposed open procurement system at the MSP rates. So whenever the production exceeds the demand, production exceeds the demand, the prices are going to fall, the prices are going to fall and we also have the MSP component. So the market prices will be lesser than these MSP component. So one solution was the price deficiency compensation where the government will pay whatever deficiency in the prices or else the government would procure all those crops at the MSP rates. So which will, the both of these which would add financial burden to the government. So they have suggested limited procurement scheme. So there is a production demand if say it is 1010 and the production is 1210 for example. So until this overall production that the market requires, the overall productivity that the market requires is the 1010. So until this 200 ton, the government will support towards procuring them at a limited basis. So this is called the limited procurement. So the market requirement is 1000 tons and the production demand will also reduce to 1000 tons. So those excess 200 tons will be procured by the government which is nothing but the limited procurement. So this will be helpful for both the farmers and also for the government. From the government side it will reduce the financial burden for the farmers also the prices would be remunerative because they did not sell every entire crop to the government out to some market dealer. So continued procurement until the market prices equals the MSP. So this is the concept behind the limited procurement. So the government can sell the procured grain in later years or use them in the welfare scheme. So it is up to the government to consume those excess 200 tons that has been procured by the government from the farmers. So apart from this there are also some of the sustainable solutions that have been suggested by the authors. One thing was the limited procurement scheme in the short and the medium term. At the long term the markets have to be sustainable. For this the market has to go enhance reforms in order to enable the better market price discovery. So this market should be competitive. It should be stable and it should be a unified national market. And along with this they have also suggested that the government should have long term trade policies favorable to exports which means they should have some bilateral ties with all those countries that lastly require India's excess crop. So this should be a long term trade policy. And why we need a market reform that has been discussed by the authors. So we have inefficient physical operations at presence and there is an excessive crowding of intermediaries as I told how the price shoots where it is not a remunerative for both the farmers and the consumers. And the market chains are highly fragmented because only the state governments are taking care of the marketing of these agricultural commodities. There is no proper linking between the agricultural markets of different states. And if you see they have proposed that this agriculture should not only focus on forming it should focus the entire value chain. So it has to transform itself from only a farming limited agriculture to a value chain perspective of agriculture which will include your entire supply chain that includes logistics your seeds and other agricultural inputs and your entire market the wholesale, retail, etc. So this was discussed by the authors in terms of income and price. So the second thing which they have discussed is the productivity. So the authors have called in for investment excessive investment in infrastructure development and also in the research and development. They have discussed that water is the leading input for agriculture and more than 60% of the input water is being consumed only by the two crops that is rice and sugarcane. And if you also see India's usage of water is three times when it when it is compared to countries like USA, China or Brazil. And they have discussed two terms. One is the water use efficiency and second thing is the yield gaps. So they have told that the water use efficiency can be improved significantly with better use of technologies that includes your drip irrigation. It is not that agriculture can be done only with flooding of water but also with the help of technologies like drip irrigation. And the yield gaps should also be addressed with the technology inputs in order to improve the productivity. Nothing but coming up with eye-healing varieties. Now research is being done at large by the state agricultural universities and also by the national institute for agriculture. And the government policies bias towards rice and wheat is what the point of authors. So this particular change in approach is required. Since government is largely focusing on improving the productivity of rice and wheat all the farmers are orienting themselves towards producing rice and wheat which is an input which requires larger inputs. So input intensive crops, larger inputs. So rice and wheat are input intensive crops. So government policies should be focusing towards the entire crop chain which also includes your millets, pulses, your horticultural crops and also your livestock and fishes, etc. And the third topic that a problem that they have discussed with regards to the land size. They have told that the shrinking size of farms is responsible for lower incomes and which ultimately leads to the farm distress. And they have given some data. The first data is the average size of land holdings which they have compared year wise. In the year 1970 to 71, it was 2.3 hectares but if you see in the year 2015-16 which is a very recent it is 1.08 hectares. So the land holding size on average has decreased. And also the share of small and marginal farmers towards occupying that particular land. If you see in the year 1980-81 it was 70% of the farmers only were small and marginal. But now their composition has increased to 86% which means which denotes that the land is getting fragmented year on year. So the large farmers are getting their land fragmented. This is because of your family issues. So the average size of marginal land holdings is 0.8 hectares only in the year 2015-16. So marginal are those farmers which have land size less than 1 acres. So it should be around 1 acres but it is around 0.8 hectares. And they have also given the monthly income data of a different classification of farmers. If you see for the large farmers it is around 41,000 which is their monthly income. And for marginal farmers it is around 5000 rupees. And for small farmers it is around 4000 rupees. So here you can see the discrepancies in the data. Only the large farmers who have their land bank consolidated are earning a lot. In the other case the small and the marginal farmers where their lands are fragmented are having lesser earnings only. So the small farmers cannot get full income in the non-farm sector as well because there was a plan by the government to help the farmers towards earning income in the non-farm sectors. But that is not going to help a lot because the employment opportunities will not really suffice for the entire farming community. So they have to focus their employment on orient themselves only towards the agriculture. So in this step land consolidation is very crucial. So it was also discussed since the 1970s regarding the land consolidation. So for the previous 3 to 4 decades it was not being discussed. But now again it is in the topic that the lands needs to be consolidated in order to help the small and the marginal farmers. In order to reap the economies of scale both in your input procurement and also in your marketing. Because once you consolidate the land it will be easy for you to market. But it also requires the teamwork of those small and marginal farmers. So this was the third problem which was discussed by the author. So they have discussed 3 problems at large. So first one is the income and price. So the solution they have given for combating the income and price problem is the limited procurement scheme of by introducing the limited procurement scheme. So the second problem they have discussed is the productivity. So this can be negated only with the technological interventions. And the third problem they have discussed is the land size which requires a policy intervention by the government. So this is possible only with the consolidation of land holdings. So these were the solutions that have been given by the authors. With this we are winding up today's topic. Please do like, comment and share the video. And please subscribe to Shankar IAS Academy channel for latest videos and updates. Stay focused and motivated friends. Thank you.