UPSC civil services Aspirants-: 2020-21

Question- General Studies
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Question- Current Affairs
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Remembering Bal Gangadhar Tilak on his 100th death anniversary

• Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak was a scholar, mathematician, philosopher and ardent nationalist.
• He founded and served as the president of the Indian Home Rule League.
• He was the founder-editor of Mahratta (English) and Kesari (Marathi).

Who was Bal Gangadhar Tilak?
• Bal Gangadhar Tilak, an Indian nationalist, teacher, social reformer, lawyer and independence activist, passed away on 1 August 1920.
• He was horrified by the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and his health started declining and he passed away soon after.

Early life:
• He was born on July 22, 1856 to a Sanskrit Scholar in Ratnagiri, Keshav Gangadhar Tilak later shifted to Pune.
• A teacher and journalist by profession, he initiated his political life as a social reformer and freedom activist.
• He was one of the first few leaders to advocate for 'swaraj' or self rule.
• He published two newspapers -Kesari (Marathi) and Mahratta (English) -that actively circulated the cause of national freedom.
• His slogan 'Swaraj is my birth right, and I shall have it' inspired millions of youths.

Conferred with the title of 'Lokmanya'
• He was also conferred with the title of 'Lokmanya' and is often regarded as the first leader of the Indian Independence movement.
• Dubbed the 'father of Indian unrest' by the British, he was one of the first and strongest advocates of Swaraj.
• After his death, Gandhi paid tribute to him by calling him ' The Maker of Modern India', while Jawaharlal Nehru described him as 'The father of the Indian Revolution'.

World Population Day, 2020

Focus On "Health, Rights Of Women And Girls"

• World Population Day, 2020 focuses on multiple challenges - health, economic and social - that people across the world are facing amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Human rights can't be quarantined. Reproductive health, family planning and mental health - among other issues - have taken a backseat as medical resources have been stretched due to the pandemic.
• The United Nations Development Programme recommended the introduction of World Population Day in 1989, inspired by the public interest and awareness that was created by "Five Billion Day" on July 11, 1987 when the world's population reached 5 billion.
• Every year, millions of girls are subjected to practices that harm them physically and emotionally, robbing them of their right to reach their full potential.
• According to the State of World Population 2020, released by UNFPA (United Nations Populations Fund), more than 4 million girls will be subjected to female ge***al mutilation and 12 million forced to marry this year.

Question- CSAT
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What is an annular solar eclipse?

• An eclipse happens when the moon while orbiting the Earth, comes in between the sun and the Earth, due to which the moon blocks the sun’s light from reaching the Earth, causing an eclipse of the sun or a solar eclipse.
• There are three types of eclipses:
1. One is a total solar eclipse, which is visible only from a small area on Earth. According to NASA, people who are able to view the total solar eclipse are in the centre of the moon’s shadow as and when it hits the Earth.
• A total solar eclipse happens when the sun, moon and Earth are in a direct line.
2. The second type of a solar eclipse is a partial solar, in which the shadow of the moon appears on a small part of the sun.
3. The third kind is an annular solar eclipse, which happens when the moon is farthest from the Earth, which is why it seems smaller. In this type of an eclipse, the moon does not block the sun completely, but looks like a “dark disk on top of a larger sun-colored disk” forming a “ring of fire”.

Other details:
• Furthermore, during a solar eclipse the moon casts two shadows on the Earth, the first one is called the umbra, which gets smaller as it reaches the Earth.
• The second one is called the penumbra, which gets larger as it reaches the Earth.
• According to NASA, people standing in the umbra see a total eclipse and those standing in the penumbra see a partial eclipse.
• One of the reasons that NASA studies solar eclipses is to study the top layer of the sun called the corona.
• During an annular eclipse, NASA uses ground and space instruments to view this top layer when the sun’s glare is blocked by the moon.