Only six religion options make it to next Census form

• Despite demands from several communities to be counted as a separate religion, the next Census will only count Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh and Jain as options.
• Nature-worshipping Adivasis in Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Odisha have been campaigning to include their Sarna faith as a separate religion, while Karnataka’s Lingayats have been making a similar demand.
• Though respondents can write the name of any other religion, no separate code will be provided.

Digital Census

• The next Census is also set to be the first digital Census, where respondents will have the option to fill in the questionnaire from the comfort of their own home.
• The 31 questions for the first phase — Houselisting and Housing Schedule — were notified on January 9, 2020. As many as 28 questions have been finalised for the second phase — the Population Enumeration — but are yet to be notified.

Directory to reduce bias

It has codes in respect of Relationship to Head, Mother Tongue and Other Languages Known, Occupation, Nature of Industry, Trade or Service, Birth Place/Place of last residence and Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) etc. “Data processing of these descriptive responses required human intervention to codify into required data format as per the tabulation plan... It also involved risk to data bias and errors because of diverse judgement of enumerators and the persons codifying the response as well,” the report said.

Sarna religion:

• Sarnaism is a religious belief based on worship at Sarna, the sacred groves in the Chota Nagpur Plateau region in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha.
  • The highest number of followers of the Sarna religion is in Jharkhand, followed by West Bengal.
• According to local belief, a village deity resides in the sarna, where sacrifice is offered twice a year.
  • Their belief system is alternatively known as "Sarna Dharma", or "Religion of the Holy Woods".
• The followers of Satanism worship a village deity as the protector of a village called Gaon khunt, Gram deoti, Singbonga, or by other names by different tribes.
  • The Supporters also worship Dharti ayo or Chalapachho Devi, the mother goddess identified as the earth or nature.
• The main festival of Sarnaism is Sarhul, a festival in which devotees worship their ancestors.
• The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) has suggested that the Sarna religion be accorded an independent category in the religion code of the Census of India.
  • Several tribal organisations and Christian missionaries are demanding a distinct census code for Sarnaism.
• The followers of the Sarna faith believe in “Jal, Jungle, Zameen” and its followers pray to the trees and hills while believing in protecting the forest areas.
• Nearly 50 lahks tribal in the entire country put their religion as ‘Sarna’ in the 2011 census, although it was not an officially recognised religion.
  • While many follow the Hindu religion, some have converted to Christianity.
• Recently, the Jharkhand government convened a special session and passed a resolution to send the Centre a letter to recognise the Sarna religion and include it as a separate code in the Census of 2021.

European Union official seeks to allay India’s concerns on ‘carbon tax’

• The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is not intended to be “protectionist” and only meant to avoid the problem of ‘carbon leakage,’ European Union
• Indian industries will have nothing to worry if the carbon-intensity of goods, for eg. steel, aluminium and iron, made in India and exported to the EU matches that of the goods made in the bloc.
• ‘Carbon leakage,’ refers to cheaper, more carbon-intensive goods making their way into the EU at the expense of domestically manufactured products that have been manufactured using costlier, renewable energy.
• To check such leakage, the EU brought into force this month the CBAM that, after 2026, will require EU companies to annually declare the quantity of goods imported into the EU in the preceding year and their embedded greenhouse gas emissions and effectively pay for excessive emissions via CBAM certificates that could reflect as taxes paid by importers to the EU.
• Steel, iron exports
• Indian manufacturers have raised concerns that the tax will mean a 20-35% tariff on India’s exports of steel, aluminium and cement, that currently attract a duty of less than 3%.
• As much as 27% of India’s exports of steel, iron and aluminium products, or $8.2 billion, head to the EU.
• The CBAM will initially apply to imports of certain goods and selected precursors whose production is carbon-intensive and at most significant risk of carbon leakage: cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilizers, electricity and hydrogen.

Carbon border tax

• A carbon border tax is a tax imposed on imported goods to equalize the cost of carbon emissions between domestic and foreign producers.
• The tax aims to address the issue of carbon leakage, where companies move their emissions-intensive operations to countries with less stringent regulations, resulting in a net increase in emissions.
• As a cost on carbon, it discourages emissions. It has an impact on exports and production as a trade-related measure.
• As a price on carbon, it discourages emissions. As a trade-related measure, it affects production and exports.

EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism

• CBAM EU’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, in line with the European Climate Law.
• The EU’s primary mechanism for incentivizing industry to decarbonize is through carbon pricing and to meet its 2050 targets; these prices will need to rise substantially.

Union Food Ministry counters opposition says fortified rice is safe

• The Union Food Ministry on Friday countered the Opposition allegation that the distribution of fortified rice through fair price shops is being done despite multiple warnings by experts and institutions such as NITI Aayog and the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).
• The Ministry has been maintaining, citing various studies, that consumption of fortified rice resulted in significant improvement in haemoglobin levels and reduction in the prevalence of anaemia.
• The Ministry said rice fortification has been adopted by seven countries, including the U.S., since 1958.
• “Concurrent evaluation is being done by NITI Aayog in association with the Indian Council of Medical Research. Evaluation study of some pilot districts are also under way,” the official said.
• Meanwhile, the Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) said in a statement that the Centre, in a unilateral decision, has been supplying iron-fortified rice in public safety net programmes such as the PDS, mid-day meals, and anganwadis, reaching crores of Indians.
• These are mostly poor citizens who rely on State subsidised food and for whom iron-fortified rice has become mandatory since they cannot afford to buy other (non-fortified) rice in the open market.
• The scaling up of this programme came before a pilot scheme in 15 States was completed, or evaluated independently and rigorously. The evaluation of these pilots was due in late 2022 as per an RTI response by the government

Fortification:

• Fortification is the addition of key vitamins and minerals such as iron, iodine, zinc, Vitamin A & D to staple foods such as rice, milk and salt to improve their nutritional content.
• These nutrients may or may not have been originally present in the food before processing.

Fortification of Rice:

• According to the Food Ministry, fortification of rice is a cost-effective and complementary strategy to increase vitamin and mineral content in diets.
  • According to FSSAI norms, 1 kg fortified rice will contain iron (28 mg-42.5 mg), folic acid (75-125 microgram) and Vitamin B-12 (0.75-1.25 microgram).
• In addition, rice may also be fortified with micronutrients, singly or in combination, with zinc, Vitamin A, Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3 and Vitamin B6.

XPoSat, India’s first polarimetry mission

The Indian Space Research Organisation is collaborating with the Raman Research Institute (RRI), Bengaluru, an autonomous research institute, to build the X-Ray Polarimeter Satellite (XPoSat) that is scheduled to be launched later this year.

XPoSat mission

• According to ISRO, “XPoSat will study various dynamics of bright astronomical X-ray sources in extreme conditions.”
• It has been billed as India’s first, and only the world’s second polarimetry mission that is meant to study various dynamics of bright astronomical X-ray sources in extreme conditions. The other such major mission is NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) that was launched in 2021.
• IXPE carries three state-of-the-art space telescopes. Each of the three identical telescopes hosts one light-weight X-ray mirror and one detector unit. These will help observe polarized X-rays from neutron stars and supermassive black holes. By measuring the polarisation of these X-rays, we can study where the light came from and understand the geometry and inner workings of the light source

How are X-Rays witnessed in space?

• X-rays have much higher energy and much shorter wavelengths, between 0.03 and 3 nanometers, so small that some x-rays are no bigger than a single atom of many elements. The physical temperature of an object determines the wavelength of the radiation it emits. The hotter the object, the shorter the wavelength of peak emission.
• X-rays come from objects that are millions of degrees Celsius — such as pulsars, galactic supernova remnants, and black holes.
• Like all forms of light, X-rays consist of moving electric and magnetic waves. Usually, peaks and valleys of these waves move in random directions. Polarised light is more organised with two types of waves vibrating in the same direction.
• (Fishermen use polarised lenses to reduce glare from sunlight when they are near water.)
• The field of polarimetry studies the measurement of the angle of rotation of the plane of polarised light (that is, a beam of light in which the vibrations of the electromagnetic waves are confined to one plane) that results upon its passage through certain transparent materials

XPoSat’s payloads

• The spacecraft will carry two scientific payloads in a low earth orbit. The primary payload POLIX (Polarimeter Instrument in X-rays) will measure the polarimetry parameters (degree and angle of polarisation).
• The payload is being developed by RRI in collaboration with ISRO’s U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) in Bengaluru. POLIX is expected to observe about 40 bright astronomical sources of different categories during the planned lifetime of XPoSat mission of about 5 years. This is the first payload in the medium X-ray energy band dedicated for polarimetry measurements.
• The XSPECT (X-ray Spectroscopy and Timing) payload will give spectroscopic information (on how light is absorbed and emitted by objects). It would observe several types of sources, such as X-ray pulsars, blackhole binaries, low-magnetic field neutron star, etc.