Slender Loris
Category: Environment
- Commonly found in the tropical scrub and deciduous forests as well as the dense hedgerow plantations bordering farmlands of Southern India and Sri Lanka, the Slender Loris is a small, nocturnal primate.
- It prefers to inhabit thick, thorny bushes and bamboo clumps where it can evade predators and also find insects, which is the main diet.
- These animals are about 25 cm long and have long, thin arms. They weigh around 275 grams. They have a small, vestigial tail.
- Their most prominent feature is the pair of two large, closely set, brown eyes.
- Being arboreal, they spend most of their life on the trees.
- These animals face a threat from poachers due to the misplaced belief that these animals have magical and medicinal powers. This hunting, along with destruction of their habitat, is their major threat.
- IUCN has listed them as Endangered, whereas they are listed under the Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act of India, 1972, according them the highest level of legal protection.
- WWF-India is working to protect the habitats of the Slender Loris through its wider conservation work in the Western Ghats – Nilgiris Landscape.
Crop Insurance
Category: Agriculture
- Out of ₹1,400 crore earmarked annually for the north-eastern States under the Centre’s flagship Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, only ₹8 crore — or just over half a per cent — was actually spent last year.
- Four north-eastern States — Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram — are not covered under the scheme at all.
- Some large States like Bihar and West Bengal have withdrawn from PMFBY to set up their own State-level schemes and Punjab has never participated in the scheme, while UTs like Delhi and Chandigarh are largely urban spaces.
- Although the north-eastern States have only 2.5% of the country’s cultivable area, 10% of the budget for PMFBY and RWBCIS [Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme] is earmarked for them. But all the funds are lapsed.
Risk officers for NBFCs
Category: Economy
- The RBI has asked all shadow banks with a size of over ₹5,000 crore to appoint chief risk officers (CROs) with clearly specified roles and responsibilities.
- The CRO is required to function independently so as to ensure highest standards of risk management.
- Removal or transfer will need the board’s approval and has to be reported to the regulator.
Teen Pregnancies
Category: Health
- Teen pregnancies contribute to under-nutrition in babies.
- Children born to adolescent mothers (10-19 years) are 5 percentage points more likely to be stunted (shorter for their age) than those born to young adults (20-24 years) and 11 percentage points more stunted than children born to adult mothers.
- Children born to adolescent mothers also had 10 percentage points higher prevalence of low weight as compared to those born to adult mothers.
- Lower education levels among adolescent mothers had the strongest impact on stunting levels, followed by socioeconomic status.
- Teen mothers were also likely to be underweight, exacerbating the stunting among their children.
