Wednesday, September 1, 2010

State of Environment Report

The main objective of the State of Environment Report of India is to bring out an overview of the environmental scenario of India that serves as a baseline document and assists in logical and information-based decision-making.
The SoE Report aims to provide policy guidelines and strategies for resource allocation for the coming decades, based on analysis of the state and trends of the environment and provide guidance for national environmental action planning.
The State of the Environment Report for India covers the state and trends of the environment (land, air, water, biodiversity) and five key issues viz. Climate Change, Food Security, Water Security, Energy Security and Managing Urbanization.
The report provides an insight on various priority issues for India related to the current status of environment and natural resources, the pressures behind environmental changes and the impacts associated with these changes. The report also assesses the Government's current and proposed policy initiatives or programmes as a response to check and monitor further degradation of environment and also suggests policy options.
Salient points of State of Environment Report 2009:
 
  • About 45 percent of India's land is degraded due to erosion, soil acidity, alkalinity and salinity, water logging and wind erosion. The prime causes of land degradation are deforestation, unsustainable farming, mining and excessive groundwater extraction. However, over two-thirds of the degraded 147 million hectares can be regenerated quite easily. India's forest cover is also gradually increasing (currently about 21%).
  • Air pollution is increasing in all its cities. The level of respirable suspended particulate matter (the small pieces of soot and dust that get inside the lungs) had gone up in all the 50 cities across India. The main causes of urban air pollution were vehicles and factories.
  • India is using 75 percent of the water it can use, and it has "just enough for the future if it is careful. Lack of proper pricing of water for domestic usage, poor sanitation, unregulated extraction of groundwater by industry, discharge of toxic and organic wastewater by factories, inefficient irrigation and overuse of chemical fertilisers and pesticides are the main causes of water problems in the country.
  • While India remains one of the world's 17 "megadiverse" countries in terms of the number of species it houses, 10 percent of its wild flora and fauna are on the threatened list. The main causes for this were habitat destruction, poaching, invasive species, overexploitation, pollution and climate change.
  • About one-third of India's urban population now lives in slums.
  • India contributes only about five percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions that are leading to climate change. However, about 700 million Indians directly face the threat of global warming today, as it affects farming, makes droughts, floods and storms more frequent and more severe and is raising the sea level.

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CURRENT AFFAIRS PREPARATION PLAN

“Current Affairs” and “General Knowledge” cover many topics like from economy to sports or education to politics, or even technology to automobiles. In every second some issues are happening around the world in these sectors, and to accumulate the excerpt of some highlighted news, and memorize it is a good plan to prepare current affairs and GK.

Some Important Tips to Follow:

Read Newspapers regularly

We all know that “Old is Gold”, same thing applies here too. We need to make a habit of reading newspapers regularly. I’ll suggest you to read more than one newspaper. It will be better if you read one newspaper of your mother language, and other of English. Some useful newspapers are “The Times of India”, “The Hindu”, “The Telegraph” etc. You need to start this habit at least 6 months before the actual exam that will help you to get access to all the important events of that period of time.

You need to keep an eye on what’s happening around you in your country and world as well. Trust me guys, you will surely find it interesting after several days. We all know that staying updated is always a good idea, as it will stand you apart from the rest.

Read Magazines thoroughly

This is another great option to prepare the subject we are talking about. There are many leading magazines that focus on current affairs and General Knowledge. You need to buy it from your local magazine seller, and start reading it thoroughly. These magazines beautifully categorize the articles with its genres to make it interesting to read on. Some of the useful magazines are Pratiyogita Darpan andManorma.

Try to read some business magazines and sports magazines too along with a general magazine. This will increase your chances of cracking the competitive exams with ease. Some useful business magazines areBusiness Today, Business Line etc.

Follow News Channels

You will need to follow news channels at least once a day. Now most of the leading news channels are active for 24*7. You need to pick up a suitable time for yourself to watch any favorite news channel of yours. You can watch ABP News, NDTV, Times Now, ET Now, Zee News etc. Try to go through all the breaking and highlighted news, and make it a habit.

I know that watching news channels for long will bore you, so I’ll suggest you to allocate only 30 minutes for it in a whole day. All the leading ones shows the glimpses of all important events of the day quite frequently, so 30 minutes will be enough for you to boost up your current affairs and GK knowledge.

Maintain a Diary

My teacher used to tell me that whenever you learn something try to write it down in your diary, as it will help you to memorize it in a better manner. He is so right, as this method helped me a lot to score good marks in every exam that I appeared for. As I already mentioned before that a lot of events are occurring in the country and around the world, so it is easily understandable that it is not easy to remember everything. It’s always a superb idea to maintain a diary of current events.

You need to update this diary on a daily basis with all the events that you consider as important ones. This diary will become quite useful for the revision part, as it will provide you information about all the important events at a place. You should keep revising the diary frequently, as it will help you to memorize important names, dates, awards etc.

Channelize your Preparation Accordingly

All the competitive exams are not same, as all of them have different pattern, even when it comes to the same topic as ‘Current Affairs’ or ‘GK’. For example for civil services exam, you need to give importance on events of National value. On the other scenario, in matter of bank job exam, the focus should be on the news on banking sectors, and economic and business news.

Thus I’ll suggest you to prepare as per the exams you are appearing for, as channelizing your preparation according to the pattern of the exam will accelerate your chance of getting selected.

Use Internet Resources

“Google, YouTube and Wikipedia are my favorite teachers’; one of my friends told me this once. This is quite true indeed, so you should use all the available online resources to study current affairs and GK for exams. For example this blog is all about “Current Affairs”, so you can check this blog regularly by subscribing to us (check the sidebar for subscription options). You can actively take part some forums that are focusing on current events. The good part is you can follow the websites of all leadingnewspapers online if you don’t have enough time to read newspapers.

Use Social Networking Sites for Good

Believe me or not you can surely use social networking sites to your benefits. Especially to prepare current affairs and General knowledge Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon may help you a lot. You can join some Facebook pages, or follow some twitter accounts that are related to current affairs. You can join our Facebook Page too for this matter, or connect with me at LinkedIn or circle me in Google Plus for all the information on recent happenings to boost up your General Knowledgeability.

Give Priority to your Strength

We usually find difficulties when we try to learn everything at once. In that process basically we study a lot, but remember a little. We need to first select our strength areas for our preparation. Try to givepriority to your strength areas. It may be Sports, economy, Government Affairs or technology. Suppose you are applying for Bank exams, then you should prepare industry related news. Along with that you may pick any 2-3 areas of your strength like sports or technology. You need to prepare these sections to the utmost level. I can assure you that these strategies will help you to score much better in Current Affairs section.

Participate in Online Quizzes

You should participate in some free quizzes that are available online to evaluate yourself. For this matter you can easily access our “Quiz Section”. This will give you proper idea whether you are ready for the big exam day or not. As an added factor it will also provide you confidence i.e. very much essential. You can download Monthly-wise current affairs questions from Here.