• A bulk drug park will have a designated contiguous area of land with common infrastructure facilities for the exclusive manufacture of APIs (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients) and also a common waste management system.
• These parks are expected to bring down manufacturing costs of bulk drugs in the country and increase competitiveness in the domestic bulk drug industry.
• Himachal already has Asia’s largest pharma manufacturing hub, that is the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh industrial belt, and the state produces around half of India’s total drug formulations. 
• Government Of India announced to Open its first drug park in Himachal Pradesh.  
• The Centre’s scheme will support three selected parks in the country by providing a one-time grant-in-aid for the creation of common infrastructure facilities. The grant-in-aid will be 70 per cent of the cost of the common facilities but in the case of Himachal Pradesh and other hill states, it will be 90 per cent. The Centre will provide a maximum of Rs 1,000 crore per park. A state can only propose one site, which is not less than a thousand acres in area, or not less than 700 acres in the case of hill states.
• India has one of the largest pharmaceutical industries in the world (third-largest by volume) but this industry largely depends on other countries, particularly China.

Eutrophication is the natural ageing of a lake by nutrient enrichment of its water. Therefore, statement 1 is correct.

• In a young lake, the water is cold and clear, supporting little life.
• With time, streams draining into the lake introduce nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, which encourage the growth of aquatic organisms.
• As the lake’s fertility increases, plant and animal life burgeons, and organic remains begin to be deposited on the lake bottom.
• Over the centuries, as silt and organic debris pile up, the lake grows shallower and warmer, with warm-water organisms supplanting those that thrive in a cold environment.

Marsh plants take root in the shallows and begin to fill in the original lake basin. Eventually, the lake gives way to large masses of floating plants (bog), finally converting into the land.

Depending on the climate, the size of the lake, and other factors, the natural ageing of a lake may span thousands of years.

However, pollutants from man’s activities like effluents from the industries and homes can radically accelerate the ageing process. This phenomenon has been called Cultural or Accelerated Eutrophication.

During the past century, lakes in many parts of the earth have been severely eutrophied by sewage and agricultural and industrial wastes.

The prime contaminants are nitrates and phosphates, which act as plant nutrients. Therefore statement 2 is correct.

They overstimulate the growth of algae, causing unsightly scum and unpleasant odours, and robbing the water of dissolved oxygen vital to other aquatic life.

At the same time, other pollutants flowing into a lake may poison whole populations of fish, whose decomposing remains further deplete the water’s dissolved oxygen content.

In such a fashion, a lake can literally choke to death.

PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction):

• In this reaction, multiple copies of the gene (or DNA) of interest is synthesized in vitro using two sets of primers (small chemically synthesized oligonucleotides that are complementary to the regions of DNA) and the enzyme DNA polymerase. Therefore, statement 1 is correct.
• The enzyme extends the primers using the nucleotides provided in the reaction and the genomic DNA as a template.
• If the process of replication of DNA is repeated many times, the segment of DNA can be amplified approximately a billion times, i.e. 1 billion copies are made. 
• Such repeated amplification is achieved by the use of a thermostable DNA polymerase (isolated from a bacterium, Thermus aquaticus), which remain active during the high temperature-induced denaturation of double-stranded DNA. 
• The amplified fragment if desired can now be used to ligate with a vector for further cloning.

RT-PCR (Real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction):

• Reverse transcription PCR, or RT-PCR, allows the use of RNA as a template. An additional step allows the detection and amplification of RNA.
• The RNA is reverse transcribed into complementary DNA (cDNA), using reverse transcriptase.
• The quality and purity of the RNA template are essential for the success of RT-PCR. 
• The first step of RT-PCR is the synthesis of a DNA/RNA hybrid.
• Reverse transcriptase also has an RNase H function, which degrades the RNA portion of the hybrid.
• The single-stranded DNA molecule is then completed by the DNA-dependent DNA polymerase activity of the reverse transcriptase into cDNA.
• The efficiency of the first-strand reaction can affect the amplification process.
• The standard PCR procedure is used to amplify the cDNA. The possibility to revert RNA into cDNA by RT-PCR has many advantages.
• RNA is single-stranded and very unstable, which makes it difficult to work with.
• Most commonly, it serves as the first step in qPCR, which quantifies RNA transcripts in a biological sample.
• Real-time RT–PCR is a nuclear-derived method for detecting the presence of specific genetic material in any pathogen, including a virus (COVID-19). Therefore, statement 2 is correct.

Newton's First Law of Motion:

• Everybody continues to be in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled by some external force to act otherwise. Therefore, statement 1 is correct.
• The state of rest or uniform linear motion both implies zero acceleration.
• The first law of motion can, therefore, be simply expressed as: If the net external force on a body is zero, its acceleration is zero. 
• Acceleration can be non-zero only if there is a net external force on the body.
• The first law refers to the simple case when the net external force on a body is zero.

Newton's Second Law of Motion:

• The second law of motion refers to the general situation when there is a net external force acting on the body.
• The momentum of a body is defined to be the product of its mass m and velocity v and is denoted by p: [p = mv]        
• Momentum is clearly a vector quantity. 
• The same force for the same time causes the same change in momentum for different bodies.
• The rate of change of momentum of a body is directly proportional to the applied force and takes place in the direction in which the force acts. Therefore, statement 3 is incorrect.

Newton's Third Law of Motion:

• To every action, there is always an equal and opposite reaction. Therefore, statement 2 is incorrect.
• There is no cause-effect relation implied in the third law. 
• Consider a pair of bodies A and B.  According to the third law, F_AB = – F_BA [(force on A by B) = – (force on B by A)]

Recently, 36^th Charter Day anniversary of SAARC was observed.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was established with the signing of the SAARC Charter in Dhaka on 8 December 1985. Therefore, statement 2 is not correct.

The Secretariat of the SAARC was set up in Kathmandu on 17 January 1987. Therefore, statement 1 is not correct.

Decisions at all levels are to be taken on the basis of unanimity; and bilateral and contentious issues are excluded from the deliberations of the Association.

Member nations of SAARC:

• Afghanistan
• Bangladesh
• Bhutan 
• India
• Maldives
• Nepal
• Pakistan
• Sri Lanka

• An important characteristic of all communities is that their composition and structure constantly change in response to the changing environmental conditions.
• This change is orderly and sequential, parallel with the changes in the physical environment.
• These changes lead finally to a community that is in near equilibrium with the environment and that is called a climax community.
• The gradual and fairly predictable change in the species composition of a given area is called ecological succession. Therefore, statement 1 is incorrect.
• During succession, some species colonize an area and their population becomes more numerous whereas populations of other species decline and even disappear.
• The entire sequence of communities that successively change in a given area is called sere(s). Therefore, statement 2 is correct.
• The individual transitional communities are termed seral stages or seral communities.
• In the successive seral stages, there is a change in the diversity of species of organisms, an increase in the number of species and organisms as well as an increase in the total biomass.
• The present-day communities in the world have come to be because of succession that has occurred over millions of years since life started on earth.
• Actually, succession and evolution would have been parallel processes at that time.
• Succession is Therefore a process that starts in an area where no living organisms are there – these could be areas where no living organisms ever existed, say bare rock; or in areas that somehow, lost all the living organisms that existed there. 
• The former is called primary succession, while the latter is termed secondary succession. 

• The SVANidhi ensures a working capital loan up to Rs 10,000 for vendors and rewards digital transactions. All street vendors who have been in the business on or before March 24, 2020, are eligible to avail the benefits. 
• For this scheme launched in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Centre has earmarked a stimulus package of Rs 5,000 crore for nearly 50 lakh vendors. There are an estimated 50-60 lakh street vendors in India, with the largest concentrations in the cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Ahmedabad.
• According to government estimates, street-vending accounts for 14 per cent of the total (non-agricultural) urban informal employment in the country.
• The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 was enacted to regulate street vendors in public areas and protect their rights. The Act defines a “street vendor” as a person engaged in vending of articles of everyday use or offering services to the general public, in any public place or private area, from a temporary built-up structure or by moving from place to place”.
• The Act envisages the formation of Town Vending Committees in various districts to ensure that all street vendors identified by the government are accommodated in the vending zones subject to norms.

Good ozone is found in the upper part of the atmosphere called the stratosphere, and it acts as a shield absorbing ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Therefore, statement 1 is incorrect.

UV rays are highly injurious to living organisms since the DNA and proteins of living organisms preferentially absorb UV rays, and it's high energy breaks the chemical bonds within these molecules.

The thickness of the ozone in a column of air from the ground to the top of the atmosphere is measured in terms of Dobson units (DU). Therefore, statement 2 is correct.

Ozone gas is continuously formed by the action of UV rays on molecular oxygen and also degraded into molecular oxygen in the stratosphere.

There should be a balance between the production and degradation of ozone in the stratosphere. Of late, the balance has been disrupted due to the enhancement of ozone degradation by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

CFCs find wide use as refrigerants. CFCs discharged in the lower part of the atmosphere move upward and reach the stratosphere.

In the stratosphere, UV rays act on them releasing Cl atoms.

• Cl degrades ozone releasing molecular oxygen, with these atoms acting merely as catalysts;
• Cl atoms are not consumed in the reaction.

Therefore, whatever CFCs are added to the stratosphere, they have permanent and continuing effects on Ozone levels. 

Although ozone depletion is occurring widely in the stratosphere, the depletion is particularly marked over the Antarctic region.

This has resulted in the formation of a large area of the thinned ozone layer, commonly called the ozone hole. 

UV radiation of wavelengths shorter than UV-B is almost completely absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere, given that the ozone layer is intact.

But, UV-B damages DNA and mutation may occur. It causes ageing of the skin, damage to skin cells, and various types of skin cancers. In the human eye, the cornea absorbs UV-B radiation, and a high dose of UV-B causes inflammation of the cornea, called snow-blindness, cataracts, etc. Such exposure may permanently damage the cornea.

Recognizing the deleterious effects of ozone depletion, an international treaty, known as the Montreal Protocol, was signed at Montreal (Canada) in 1987 (effective in 1989) to control the emission of ozone-depleting substances.

Subsequently, many more efforts have been made and protocols have laid down definite roadmaps, separately for developed and developing countries, for reducing the emission of CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals.

The size of a population for any species is not a static parameter. 

It keeps changing with time, depending on various factors including food availability, predation pressure, and adverse weather. 

In fact, it is these changes in population density that give us some idea of what is happening to the population – whether it is flourishing or declining. 

Whatever might be the ultimate reasons, the density of a population in a given habitat during a given period fluctuates due to changes in four basic processes, two of which (natality and immigration) contribute to an increase in population density and two (mortality and emigration) to a decrease.

• Natality refers to the number of births during a given period in the population that are added to the initial density. Therefore, statement 1 is correct.
• Mortality is the number of deaths in the population during a given period. Therefore, statement 2 is correct.
• Immigration is the number of individuals of the same species that have come into the habitat from elsewhere during the time period under consideration.
• Emigration is the number of individuals of the population who left the habitat and gone elsewhere during the time period under consideration.

• Launched under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan, the PM-FME Scheme is a centrally sponsored scheme. It aims to enhance the competitiveness of existing individual micro-enterprises in the unorganized segment of the food processing industry and promote formalization of the sector. This scheme was launched by the Ministry of Food and Processing. Therefore statement A is Incorrect.
• It seeks to provide support to Farmer Producer Organizations, Self Help Groups, and Producers Cooperatives along their entire value chain.
• Under the PM-FME scheme, capacity building is an important component. The scheme envisages imparting training to food processing entrepreneurs, various groups, viz., SHGs / FPOs / Co-operatives, workers, and other stakeholders associated with the implementation of the scheme. Therefore statement B and C are correct.
• The Scheme adopts One District One Product (ODODP) approach to reap the benefit of scale in terms of procurement of inputs, availing common services and marketing of products. The States would identify food product for a district keeping in view the existing clusters and availability of raw material. The ODOP product could be a perishable produce based product or cereal-based products or a food product widely produced in a district and their allied sectors.