Border Roads Organization breaks record at Zoji La battling extreme weather conditions.

Mountain Passes

Chorla Ghat

• Chorla Ghat is an Indian nature destination, located on the intersection of the borders of the states of Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra.
• It is a part of the Western Ghats in the Sahyadri mountain range.
• The ghat boasts of a few rare species of wild-life such as the barred wolf snake (Lycodon striatus) in its sub-tropical forests.

Jelep La

• Jelep La is a high mountain pass between East Sikkim District, Sikkim, India and Tibet Autonomous Region, China.
• It is on a route that connects Lhasa to India.
• The pass is about 4 km (2.5 mi) south of Nathu La and is slightly higher.
• It was frequently used for trade between Tibet and India during the British Raj, with Kalimpong serving as the contact point.

Khyber Pass

• The Khyber Pass is a mountain pass in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, on the border with Afghanistan (Nangarhar Province).
• It connects the town of Landi Kotal to the Valley of Peshawar at Jamrud by traversing part of the Spin Ghar mountains.
• Since it was part of the ancient Silk Road, it has been a vital trade route between Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent and a strategic military choke point for various states that controlled it.

Zoji La

• Zoji La is a high mountain pass in the Himalayas in the Indian union territory of Ladakh.
• Located in the Dras, the pass connects the Kashmir Valley to its west with the Dras and Suru valleys to its northeast and the Indus valley further east.
• The National Highway 1 between Srinagar and Leh in the western section of the Himalayan mountain range traverses the pass.

The body of Nobel Peace Prize winning Anglican archbishop and anti-apartheid campaigner Desmond Tutu underwent aquamation, a green alternative to traditional cremation methods, in Cape Town.

Aquamation

• Aquamation, or alkaline hydrolysis, is a process in which the body of the deceased is immersed for a few hours in a mixture of water and a strong alkali in a pressurized metal cylinder and heated to around 150 degree centigrade.

• The combination of gentle water flow, temperature and alkalinity accentuate the breakdown of the organic materials.
• The Cremation Association of North America (CANA), an international non-profit organisation, defines alkaline hydrolysis as “flameless cremation”.
• Considered to be an environmentally friendly way to dispose of a body, the process is also known as water cremation, green cremation or chemical cremation.
• The process leaves behind bone fragments and a neutral liquid called effluent.
• The decomposition that occurs in alkaline hydrolysis is the same as that which occurs during burial, just sped up dramatically by the chemicals.
• The effluent is sterile, and contains salts, sugars, amino acids and peptides. There is no tissue and no DNA left after the process completes.
• This effluent is discharged with all other wastewater and is a welcome addition to the water systems.

How long has alkaline hydrolysis been in use?

• The process was developed and patented in 1888 by Amos Herbert Hanson, a farmer who was trying to develop an ingenious way to make fertilizer from animal carcasses.
• The first commercial system was installed at Albany Medical College in 1993.
• Thereafter, the process continued to be in use by hospitals and universities with donated body programmes.
• It was only in 2011 that the process was used in the funeral industry, at two funeral homes in Ohio and Florida.

Western Disturbance (WD)

• It is an extra-tropical storm which originates in the Mediterranean region.
• The disturbance travels from the “western” to the eastern direction.
• Disturbance means an area of “disturbed” or reduced air pressure.
• Equilibrium exists in nature due to which the air in a region tries to normalize its pressure.
• In the term “extra-tropical storm”, storm refers to low pressure.
• “Extra-tropical" means outside the tropics.
• As the Western Disturbance originates outside the tropical region, the word “extra-tropical” has been associated with them.
• A Western Disturbance is associated with rainfall, snowfall and fog in northern India.
• Upon its arrival in Pakistan and northern India, clouds along with rain and snow also arrive.
• The moisture which WDs carry with them comes from the Mediterranean Sea and/or from the Atlantic Ocean.

A committee has examined the criteria for determining who is to be included as EWS, and its report is part of the Centre’s affidavit before the SC.

Ajay Bhushan Pande Committee

• The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment announced the committee to “revisit the criteria for determining the economically weaker sections” in terms of the provisions of the explanation to Article 15 of the Constitution.
• It comprised former finance secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey, Indian Council for Social Sciences Research (ICSSR) member secretary V K Malhotra, and Principal Economic Advisor to the Government of India Sanjeev Sanyal.

Recommendations of the Panel

• The “threshold of Rs 8 lakh of annual family income, in the current situation, seems reasonable for determining EWS”.
• It recommends: “The current gross annual family income limit for EWS of Rs. 8.00 lakh or less may be retained.”
• EWS may, however exclude, irrespective of income, a person whose family has 5 acres of agricultural land and above.
• The committee has removed criteria that excluded some categories from EWS: owners of residential properties of 1,000 sq ft and above; residential plots of 100 sq yards and above in notified municipalities; and residential plots of 200 sq yards and above in areas other than the notified municipalities.

Team of fishermen in Visakhapatnam saved the endangered whale shark.

Whale Shark

• Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) are the world’s largest fish. They feed on plankton and travel massive distances to find food to sustain their huge size, and for reproduction.
• They are categorized as Endangered by the IUCN.
• The whale shark, like the world's second largest fish, the basking shark, is a filter feeder.
• In order to eat, the beast juts out its formidably sized jaws and passively filters everything in its path.
• The mechanism is theorized to be a technique called “cross-flow filtration,” similar to some bony fish and baleen whales.
• Found in all the tropical oceans of the world, whale sharks have white spotted colouration which make these gentle giants easy to distinguish.
• They are popular with snorkellers and divers at sites where they aggregate off the coast.
• The presence of whale sharks indicates the availability of plankton and the overall health of the oceans.
• While not exactly known, the maximum size of a whale shark could be as large as 20 metres.
• Gujarat has the maximum density of whale shark population in the Indo-pacific region.