The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 10 March 2023

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis for UPSC

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 7 March 2023

• Researchers at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), have found that grazing by livestock leads to lower carbon storage in soil compared to grazing by wild herbivores.
• In a study conducted in the Spiti region of the Himalayas and which was published in Global Change Biology, CES researchers found that this difference appears to be due to the use of veterinary antibiotics such as tetracycline on livestock.
• The researchers said that when released into the soil through dung and urine, these antibiotics alter the microbial communities in soil in ways that are detrimental for sequestering carbon.
• “Today, livestock are the most abundant large mammals on earth. If the carbon stored in soil under livestock can be increased by even a small amount, then it can have a big impact on climate mitigation,” said Sumanta Bagchi, Associate Professor at CES and corresponding author of the study.

 The Hindu Editorial Today

• Since 2018, there have been at least 10 reported instances of device searches that impact press freedom. Beginning with the Quint, they have gone on to include the proprietors and senior editors of publications such Alt News, Bharat Samachar, Dainik Bhaskar, NewsClick, The Wire, the Independent and Public-Spirited Media Foundation (IPMSF) and journalists such as Fahad Shah, Rupesh Kumar Singh and Siddique Kappan.
• The first cluster requires the application of the fundamental right to privacy drawn from the Supreme Court’s judgment in S. Puttaswamy vs Union of India(2017).
• The Supreme Court needs to revive and apply the doctrine of “effect and consequence” to consider a broader canvas of executive actions that will shape the practices of our criminal courts. For instance, in the BBC case, a relevant fact for a court to determine is not limited to allegations of tax evasion but whether the scrutiny is prompted by a documentary that is critical of the Prime Minister. Today, for a free and fair press, not only journalists but even our courts need to act without fear or favour.

• The Union Budget 2023 has doubled the PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan to States from ₹5,000 crore to ₹10,000 crore, and has announced an outlay of ₹2.4 lakh crore for the Indian Railways.
• The plan is a “transformative approach for economic growth and sustainable development dependent on the engines of roads, railways, airports, ports, mass transport, waterways and logistics infrastructure”.
• With a target of increasing the share of the railways in freight movement from 27% to 45% and increasing freight movement from 1.2 billion tonnes to 3.3 billion tonnes, by 2030, PM Gati Shakti provides the right platform to address the infrastructural challenges that have hampered the movement of freight by rail.

About PM Gati-Shakti National Master Plan

• PM Gati Shakti Master Plan (2021), is a Rs. 100 lakh-crore project for developing ‘holistic infrastructure’. It aims to ensure the speed (Gati) and Power (Shakti) of infrastructure projects in the next four years, with a focus on expediting works on the ground, saving costs and creating jobs, and bringing down the logistics cost.

 Gati Shakti scheme will give the necessary push to infrastructure development:

• Boost to infrastructure: A plug-and-play model for industrial parks. It will subsume National Infrastructure Pipeline launched in 2019
• Helps solve logistical issues: India’s logistics cost burden is 13-14% of GDP, compared to 6-8% in more competitive economies.
• Curbs red-tapism: g., the Railways has started a ‘Common Drawing Approval System’ on an online platform, so all the approvals can be accessed on one portal.
• Increased coordination: Gati Shakti will bring together 16 infrastructure-related Ministries.
• Incorporation of various projects from different ministries: Gati Shakti will incorporate the infrastructure schemes of various Union ministries and state governments: Bharatmala, Sagarmala, UDAN, inland waterways, dry/land ports, etc.

• The UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, has come down strongly on the U.K. Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak’s plan to pass a new “Illegal Migration Law” that effectively stops the granting of asylum to migrants who reach the U.K. illegally.
• Instead, as Home Secretary Suella Braverman explained while introducing the Bill this week, asylum seekers who try to enter illegally would either be returned to their own countries or a “third country”, presumably Rwanda, that has entered into an agreement to provide processing facilities for them.
• By rejecting asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, nearly all of whom are coming to their shores by braving unsafe routes in search of a better life, they also belittle the real contributions immigrants have made to their societies

About:

• The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the world.

Formation:

• The Council was created by the United Nations General Assembly in 2006. It replaced the former United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
• The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) serves as the Secretariat of the Human Rights Council.
• OHCHR is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

Members:

• It is made up of 47 United Nations Member States which are elected by the UN General Assembly (UNGA).

• Since September 2022, India has translocated eight African cheetahs from Namibia and 12 from South Africa. This is part of a long-term conservation plan to re-introduce the wild cat into the country after it became extinct in the 1950s, primarily due to hunting.
• The aim is to be able to build a self-sustaining population, centred at Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park, which will also contribute to the global survival of the cheetah as a species.
• Maybe yes, because India doesn’t have vast savannah grasslands like Africa from where the animals are coming. We have six or seven of them. Cheetahs have been found in woodlands, but they largely prefer running. So, they do indicate the overall wellness of open areas, meadows and grasslands.

• India, Brazil, and South Africa, which have together formed the tripartite IBSA Forum, may play a prominent role in the process of reforming digital governance, at a time when digital geopolitical tensions are showing no signs of easing, according to the Geneva-based DiploFoundation.

Formation:

• The grouping was formalized and named the IBSA Dialogue Forum when the Foreign Ministers of the three countries met in Brasilia (Brazil) on 6th June 2003 and issued the Brasilia Declaration.

Headquarters:

• IBSA does not have a headquarters or a permanent executive secretariat.
• At the highest level, it counts on the Summits of Heads of State and Government.
• So far Five IBSA Leadership Summits have been held. The 5th IBSA Summit was held in Pretoria (South Africa) in 2011. The 6th IBSA Summit is to be hosted by India.

Joint Naval Exercise:

• IBSAMAR (IBSA Maritime Exercise) is an important part of IBSA trilateral defence cooperation.
• Six editions of IBSAMAR have been held so far, the latest one being off the coast of South Africa in October, 2018.

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