🔆Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD):

✅It is a progressive and fatal neurological disease affecting deer, elk, moose, and other cervids (members of the deer family).
✅It's caused by abnormal proteins called prions that damage brain tissue, leading to severe neurological symptoms, weight loss, and eventually death.
✅CWD is part of a group of diseases known as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs), which also include mad cow disease in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.

✅Transmission:
CWD spreads between animals through bodily fluids, like saliva, urine, and feces, as well as contaminated soil and plants.

✅There is currently no evidence that CWD can infect humans.

✅Treatment: It is always fatal in infected animals. There is no vaccine or treatment.

Biodiversity Hotspot

🌿What are Biodiversity Hotspots?

- Regions with high species diversity and endemism
- Facing significant threat of habitat loss
- Identified by Conservation International
- 36 such hotspots globally, 4 in India

🌿Major Biodiversity Hotspots in India:

1. Eastern Himalayas
2. Western Ghats
3. Indo-Burma
4. Sundaland

🌿Key Facts to Remember:
- India has 4 of the world's 36 biodiversity hotspots
- These regions cover just 2.4% of the Earth's surface
- Yet, they host over 60% of all plant and animal species
- Face rapid habitat loss and destruction

🔆Post-independence poverty estimates:

📍Planning Commission

✅Planning Commission Expert Group (1962), constituted by the Planning Commission formulated the separate poverty lines for rural and urban areas (Rs.20 and Rs.25 per capita per year respectively).

📍Y. K. Alagh Committee (1979)
✅By 1979, it was decided that poverty should be measured precisely based on starvation. Committee was constituted which gave its recommendation as the people consuming less than 2,100 calories in the urban areas or less than 2,400 calories in the rural areas are poor.

📍Lakdawala Committee (1993)
✅In 1993, an expert group constituted to review methodology for poverty estimation, chaired by D.T.

✅Lakdawala, made the following suggestions:
🔰Consumption expenditure should be calculated based on calorie consumption as earlier;
🔰State specific poverty lines should be constructed and these should be updated using the Consumer Price Index of Industrial Workers (CPI-IW) in urban areas and Consumer Price Index of Agricultural Labour (CPI-AL) in rural areas; and
🔰Discontinuation of ‘scaling’ of poverty estimates based on National Accounts Statistics. This assumes that the basket of goods and services used to calculate CPI-IW and CPI-AL reflect the consumption patterns of the poor.