of tons of food grain actually account for
NEWS
much more than it has been estimated as the
1. 2015 the hottest year on record
cost of food grains.
Earth
It is a well known fact that Indian
agriculture practice is highly inefficient
compared to other countries in terms of
water consumption and use of other inputs.
We are not even considering here the health
of soil even. In last three decades huge
draining of groundwater has taken place in
large proportion. It is making India water
scarce country from water stressed country.
The big question is who is responsible for
such
colossal
Government?
waste
–
Farmer
or
Certainly
farmers
or
agriculture is not responsible. It is the poor
policy formulation and poor governance that
lead to loss of national natural resources. It
is equally reflected in water and energy
distribution in urban areas. India presently
requires Smart Governance more than Smart
Cities. The National Natural Resource
Policy must not be based on produce as
much as possible for as many as people but
on optimum efficient production conserving
the finite natural resource base. There need
to be a paradigm shift in policy from 20th
Century to 21st Century. Mere converting
Planning commission to NITI Ayog may not
be sufficient.
has
witnessed
record-breaking
temperatures in seven out of nine months of
2015 in span of 4000 years. This has been
reported by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration recently. Till
now, 1997-98 was the hottest year across the
world
since
the
recording
of
the
temperatures started in 1880. September
2015 was 1.62°F warmer than the average
for the 20th century.
In 2015, only January and April has not
broken the record otherwise all the months
have been hottest months so far.
The
reason
behind
these
abnormal
temperatures has been attributed to the
strong El-Nino in the Pacific Ocean. ElNino is a weather pattern in which ocean
releases immense amount of heat into the
atmosphere. This leads to higher than
average temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.
The other factor behind this is the emission
of greenhouse gasses, where 90% of the
heat is absorbed by the oceans.
Large part of the world witnessed erratic
climate and bear the brunt of soaring
mercury. It also adversely affected the
Southwest Monsoon.
Some of the other incidences were forest
fire in Indonesia, drought in Australia
and Ethiopia and severe heat wave in
2
Integrated River Basin Management Society