Prime Minister remembers Rani Velu Nachiyar on her birth Anniversary.

Velu Nachiyar

• During the 18th century, in the Sivagangai estate in present-day Tamil Nadu, there lived a Queen named Velu Nachiyar.
• Trained in martial arts, horse riding and archery, she could also speak several languages including French, Urdu and English.
• The turning point in Velu’s life was when the British - led by the son of the Nawab of Arcot - killed her husband Muthu Vaduganatha Thevar in the Kalaiyar Koil War.
• Velu and her daughter, Vellachi, were then forced to flee from Sivagangai.
• Velu reached Dindigul, a distant land from Sivagangai where she spent eight years under the sanctuary of the then ruler of Dindigul - Gopal Naicker.
• It was at Dindigul that she also met Haider Ali, the Sultan of Mysore, in whose eyes she found favour as she had impressed him with her fluent Urdu and intellect.
• In 1780, with the unwavering support of Gopal Naicker and allied forces of Haider Ali, Velu Nachiyar set out to avenge her beloved’s death and regain control over her kingdom.
• Velu along with her military commander, Kyuili, devised a suicide plan.
• For the plan to be successful, it was important to know where the British had stored their arms and ammunition.
• On the day of Vijayadashami, Kyuili and a few other women set out to the Fort.
• On Kyuili’s command, the women poured ghee on her and drenched in it, Kyuili fearlessly walked into the armoury chamber and set herself on fire, destroying each weapon that was stored there.
• This was the first instance of suicide bombing in Indian history.
• Following Kyuili’s sacrifice, Velu launched an attack on the Fort with the aim of taking over her Kingdom.
• Velu not only fought the British but also the Nawab of Arcot, fearlessly and full of valour and this earned her the title, ‘Veeramangai’ - the brave one.

Abbakka Chowta

• She was the first woman Indian ruler to fight against the colonial powers.
• She fought against the Portuguese army between 1530 to 1599.
• Ullal fort, the capital of Abbakka’s kingdom, is located just a few kilometers away from the city of Mangalore, on the shores of the Arabian Sea.
• Abbakka was an extraordinary child and as she grew up showed signs of being a visionary, there was no equal to her in military science and warfare, mainly in archery and sword fighting. 

• The Portuguese had made several attempts to capture Ullal, strategically placed. 
• But Abbakka had repulsed each of their attack with sheer courage and ingenuity.
• The queen’s story is retold from generation to generation through folk songs and yakshagana, the popular folk theatre, in bootaradhana, (which literally means appeasing the possessed, a local ritual dance) the personal in trance narrates the great deeds of Abbakka Mahadevi.

Quadrantid Meteor Shower occurs tonight.

Meteor Showers

• A meteor is a space rock—or meteoroid—that enters Earth's atmosphere.
• As the space rock falls toward Earth, the resistance—or drag—of the air on the rock makes it extremely hot.
• When Earth encounters many meteoroids at once, we call it a meteor shower.
• Comets, like Earth and the other planets, also orbit the sun.
• Unlike the nearly circular orbits of the planets, the orbits of comets are usually quite lop-sided.
• As a comet gets closer to the sun, some of its icy surface boils off, releasing lots of particles of dust and rock.
• This comet debris gets strewn out along the comet's path, especially in the inner solar system (where we live) as the sun's heat boils off more and more ice and debris.
• Meteor showers are named for the constellation where the meteors appear to be coming from.
• So, for example, the Orionids Meteor Shower, which occurs in October each year, appear to be originating near the constellation Orion the Hunter.

What makes the Quadrantid meteor shower unique?

• Most meteor showers originate from comets, but the Quadrantids originate from an asteroid named 2003 EH1.
• The asteroid takes 5.52 years to orbit our sun and when Earth passes through the particles left by this asteroid, we see the shower.
• The meteor shower gets its name from the constellation of Quadrans Muralis (Mural Quadrant).
• When the shower was first noted, it appeared to be radiating from this constellation.
• It is now a defunct constellation that lies near the constellation of Bootes.

Meteor Showers and the months they are seen in the atmosphere

• Quadrantids – December/ January
• Lyrids - April
• Perseids - August
• Orionids - October
• Leonids - November
• Geminids – December

Liquidity

• Solvency: Solvency is the ability of a company to meet its long-term debts and financial obligations.
• Liquidity refers to the ease with which an asset, or security, can be converted into ready cash without affecting its market price.
• Cash is universally considered the most liquid asset because it can most quickly and easily be converted into other assets.
• There are two main measures of liquidity: market liquidity and accounting liquidity.
• Market liquidity refers to the extent to which a market, such as a country's stock market or a city's real estate market, allows assets to be bought and sold at stable, transparent prices.
• Accounting liquidity measures the ease with which an individual or company can meet their financial obligations with the liquid assets available to them—the ability to pay off debts as they come due.

Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR)

• It is the minimum percentage of deposits that a commercial bank has to maintain in the form of liquid cash, gold or other securities.
• It is basically the reserve requirement that banks are expected to keep before offering credit to customers.

England’s chalk streams support a wide variety of biodiversity; but anthropogenic pressures are destroying these icons of English culture.

Chalk Streams

• These streams occur only where chalk bedrock meets the Earth’s surface, making them globally rare.
• Their stable, cool, nutrient-rich waters allow chalk streams to support an exceptionally high number of species — so much so that these habitats are sometimes described as “England’s rainforests”.
• Elusive mammals, including otters and water voles, sometimes swim alongside lush beds of submerged plants, such as water crowfoot, whose flowers are held expectantly above the water’s surface, attracting bees and other pollinating insects in summer.
• In their headwaters, these streams can naturally disappear during the summer, leaving their channels dry.
• Their waters reappear in winter and so the streams are known locally as winterbournes.
• As these streams naturally shift between wet and dry conditions, they allow aquatic and terrestrial species to share one habitat at different times.

Why are chalk streams special?

• Rainwater drains deep into the chalk landscape of southern and eastern England, forming underground aquifers.
• Filtered by the chalk, the groundwater springs forth in gin-clear, nutrient-rich streams which support photosynthetic plants and microorganisms — the fuel for food webs that feed everything from grazing insects to predatory fish, birds and mammals.

Belagavi Dispute

History

• The erstwhile Bombay Presidency, a multilingual province, included the present-day Karnataka districts of Vijayapura, Belagavi, Dharwad and Uttara-Kannada.
• In 1948, the Belgaum municipality requested that the district, having a predominantly Marathi-speaking population, be incorporated into the proposed Maharashtra state.
• The States Reorganization Act of 1956, which divided states on linguistic and administrative lines, made Belgaum and 10 talukas of Bombay State a part of the then Mysore State (which was renamed Karnataka in 1973).

Mahajan Commission Report

• The Bombay government echoed their demand and lodged a protest with the Centre, leading to the formation of the Mahajan Commission under former Chief Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan in October 1966.
• The Commission, which submitted its report in August 1967, recommended that 264 villages be transferred to Maharashtra (which formed in 1960) and that Belgaum and 247 villages remain with Karnataka.
• Maharashtra rejected the report, calling it biased and illogical, and demanded another review.
• Karnataka welcomed the report, and has ever since continued to press for implementation, although this has not been formally done by the Centre.