Category Geography

Kashmiri saffron has a Geographical Indication tag marking its ingenuity and making it illegal for anyone outside the valley to sell a similar product under the “Kashmiri saffron” name. Jammu & Kashmir is the only state in India that produces saffron, also known as ‘red gold’. Pampore is known as the ‘saffron bowl’; the town’s saffron is considered to be of superior quality because of the high concentration of crocin (8.72%) – which gives the saffron its darker colour and medicinal value – as compared to the Iranian variety (6.82%).

The saffron available in Kashmir is of three types — ‘Lachha Saffron’, with stigmas just separated from the flowers and dried without further processing; ‘Mongra Saffron’, in which stigmas are detached from the flower, dried in the sun and processed traditionally; and ‘Guchhi Saffron’, which is the same as Lachha, except that the latter’s dried stigmas are packed loosely in air-tight containers while the former has stigmas joined together in a bundle tied with a cloth thread.

Saffron cultivation is believed to have been introduced in Kashmir by Central Asian immigrants around 1st Century BCE. In ancient Sanskrit literature, saffron is referred to as ‘bahukam’.

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Dewri village in Ranchi is known as ‘Aloe Vera village’ after the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Birsa Agricultural University (BAU) motivated villagers to take up aloe vera plantation to boost their income. Aloe vera takes 18 months to grow fully and the first lot of leaves were sold profitably as aloe vera is in high demand for its medicinal and cosmetic properties. The villagers saw their income increase from Rs 3,000 per month from paddy cultivation to s 5,000-6,000 per month.

Villagers are happy with the increase in their income.

“Earlier, we used to earn around Rs 3,000 per month from paddy cultivation if we were able to get work for all the 30 days. However, this year, apart from working in paddy fields, we were able to boost our income by selling aloe vera leaves. Our income has increased between Rs 5,000 and 6,000 per month,” said Manju Kachyap, mukhiya of the Dewri village and a woman farmer.

Manju said out of the 90 families belonging to the Oraon tribe residing in their village, nearly 40 families had taken part in planting aloe vera.

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The Piraha tribe in the Amazon region of Brazil does not have words for specific numbers nor do they count. The Piraha language contains just three words for quantities: Hoi for “small size or amount”, hoi for “somewhat larger amount”, and baagiso for “many”. Linguists refer to languages that do not have number-specific words as anumeric.

There’s still much to learn about this niche language. Although the 2016 MIT study was the most extensive to date on Piraha, analyzing 1,100 translated sentences, deeper research is required to say with certainty that recursion doesn’t exist.

The strongest statement researchers could make: “It’s plausible.”

Although Daniel Everett has studied Piraha longer than any other known researcher, his findings are often called into question. He has suggested the tribe does not have words to describe colors, for example, and that idea has also been challenged. Other researchers have started to study Piraha, but there’s little agreement thus far on much of anything.

Despite the uncertainty, Piraha serves as a fascinating reminder that perhaps we haven’t unraveled the mystery that is human language. With such a small Piraha population remaining, linguists and translators face a race against time to learn everything they can about one of the world’s most isolated languages before it disappears entirely.

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What is the course of the river Brahmaputra?

The Brahmaputra (called Yarlung Tsangpo in China) is one of the longest rivers in the world. Starting in the Himalayas in Tibet it enters India in Arunachal Pradesh, then passes through Assam, Bangladesh, and empties into the Bay of Bengal. The Brahmaputra, a perennial river, is the lifeline for communities living along its banks. They use it for irrigation, fisheries and inland water transport, In its lower course, the river is both an advantage and a disadvantage. On the one hand, it deposits huge quantities of fertile alluvial soil suitable for agriculture, but on the other, due to geographical and climatic conditions, it causes periodical disastrous floods in Assam and Bangladesh.

Where is China planning to build the dam?

The dam is to be built on the river in Medog county, where it drops by 2,000 metres, making it an ideal place to harness hydropower. This region is located in the Tibet Autonomous Region, governed by China.

Why is China building it?

The proposal to build a dam on Yarlung Tsangpo featured in China’s 14th Five Year Plan announced in 2020. According to the Chinese officials, the hydroelectric project in the Medog county is part of the country’s renewable energy generation initiatives and that it will help China achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 and also pave way for development in the Tibet Autonomous Region.

In 2010, China began construction of small dams along the mainstream of the Yarlung Tsangpo, two of them have already been completed and at least three are under construction, according to reports. The proposed one is the largest of them all.

How big is this project?

The new dam could help generate up to 60 gigawatts of power three times that of central China’s Three Gorges Dam, which has the largest installed hydropower capacity in the world now. The new dam could provide 300 billion kWh of dean, renewable and zero carbon electricity annually. The power generated would help Beijing meet its clean energy goals and strengthen water security, according to Yan Zhiyong, chairman of the Power Construction Corporation of China.

What will be its impact on India?

Agriculture

Such a huge dam could hold back massive amount of silt carried by the river (silty soil is more fertile than other types of soil and it is good for growing crops.) This could affect farming in the areas downstream.

Water resources

The construction of dams upstream will have a significant effect on areas downstream. China has claimed that it is building a run of the river hydropower project, which do not involve storage or diversion of the waters of the Brahmaputra (Run of the river hydroelectric systems are hydroelectric systems that harvest the energy from flowing water to generate electricity). However, experts say it could still reduce water flow downstream, especially during the dry season.

India is also worried about the release of water during the monsoons, when northeastern states such as Assam experience floods. If China released water from the dam, it could be disastrous for an already inundated Assam.

Water as a weapon?

Being an upstream area, China has a dear advantage in building dams and other infrastructure to store or divert the flow of the river system

There is the potential to significantly change the flow rate during times of standoff between the countries. India has agreements with China that require the latter to share hydrological data of the river during monsoon season between May and October. The data is mainly of the water level of the river to alert downstream areas in the event of floods. However, during the 2017 Doklam border standoff between India and China, China stopped communication of water flow levels from its dams. Though data sharing resumed in 2018, India has reasons to believe that China may withhold data.

Seismological impact

The Himalayan region is vulnerable to earthquakes and other seismic activities. The sheer size of the infrastructure projects undertaken there poses a significant threat to the populations living downstream

Ecological impact

Several species of flora and fauna are endemic to this part of the world and some of them are critically endangered. The ecosystem in the Himalayan region is already on the decline. The glaciers have been retreating due to climate change. Deforestation soil erosion and landslides are some of the other issues here. The combined dam plans of China and India (See net question) could have disastrous consequences in this ecologically sensitive zone.

What is India’s response?

India has urged China to ensure that the interests of downstream states are not harmed by any activity in upstream areas. Meanwhile, India is considering building a 10 gigawatts (GW) hydropower project in the Dibang valley in Arunachal Pradesh, to mitigate the adverse impact of the Chinese dam.

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Scientists have wanted that a weather phenomenon called the polar vortex could bring frigid temperatures and stormy weather to the Northern Hemisphere this year too. The phenomenon is a fairly Common occurrence and meteorologists keep a dose watch on the stratosphere for signals on potential Arctic air invasions and predict their severity,

The polar vortex is a large area of low pressure that consistently overlies the North and the South poles. They are called vortexes because of the mass of cold, dense air that spins counter clockwise like a hurricane. Sometimes during winter in the Northern Hemisphere, this vortex becomes weak and expands, sending the Arctic cold air southward into the United States, Europe and Asia. Ironically, the cause of this chill is a sudden heat seeping into the whirling currents. That is, the temperature surge in the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere, which is located between 10 and 50 km above the ground leads to the weakening of the polar vortex. And it wobbles off the pole.

The polar vortex is capable of delivering subzero temperatures for several days together In the recent past, the 2014 polar vortex is remembered as it gave rise to record low temperatures which lasted until March.

Some scientists suggest that warming in the Arctic and climate change could make the polar vortex unstable in the coming years, leading to potentially serious consequences.

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