The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 11 Jan, 2023

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis for UPSC

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 10 January 2023

Before the war, Mr. Putin had created an aura of power around himself and Russia. He disrupted Georgia’s ambition to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); made forays into West Asia neutralising Israel and Turkey, both American allies; took Crimea without a fight; and turned Russia again into an energy superpower.
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the U.S. had established a de facto unilateral hierarchy, which is rare in international relations; global politics has historically been dominated by multiple pillars.
America’s wars in the Muslim world did not proceed as Washington had expected. As the U.S. got stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia became more aggressive, Iran more defiant, and China more powerful. If Russia’s intervention in Georgia and its annexation of Crimea; Iran’s growing militancy in West Asia; and America’s defeat in Afghanistan were some signs of a shift in the global order, the Ukraine war, the largest land war in Europe since the end of World War II, was its sharpest manifestation.

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The U.S. seems to have realised that the world has changed. Its response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine is a leaf from its Cold War play book. It has taken pains to keep the Western alliance together. It wants a coalition of democracies against dictatorships. It admits that the ‘rules-based order’ (translation: American-centric world) faces systemic challenges from Russia and China.
Also, one of the reasons for the U.S. pivot from West Asia and Afghanistan was to focus its resources on tackling the rise of China, the only revisionist power with the capabilities to challenge the ‘rules-based order’. But the U.S. last year got dragged more and more into Europe in a Cold War-type entanglement and spent enormous resources on Ukraine. China would like to see the U.S. being distracted in Europe while it strengthens its ties with Russia and spreads its influence elsewhere.

Kashi Tamil Sangamam celebrates many aspects of the historical and civilisational connection between India’s North and South.
The broader objective is to bring the two knowledge and cultural traditions (of the North and South) closer, create an understanding of our shared heritage and deepen the people-to-people bond between the regions.
It is being organized by the Ministry of Education in collaboration with other ministries like Culture, Textiles, Railways, Tourism, Food Processing, Information & Broadcasting etc. and the Government of Uttar Pradesh.
The endeavour is in sync with National Education Policy (NEP), 2020’s emphasis on integrating the wealth of Indian Knowledge Systems with modern systems of knowledge.
IIT Madras and Banaras Hindu University (BHU) are the two implementing agencies for the programme.

Ravi chose to skip portions of the prepared text, including a reference to the “Dravidian model of governance” and words commending the law-and-order situation in the State.
There have been instances of Governors deviating from the prepared texts, but unlike in other States, this evoked an immediate backlash from Chief Minister M.K. Stalin. The constitutional convention is that the President or the Governor should not depart from the text, as it is nothing but a statement of policy of the elected government.
In the longer term, the role of the Governor in the country’s constitutional scheme needs a thorough overhaul, so that incumbents in Raj Bhavan give up their sense of overlordship and focus on their core constitutional functions such as granting assent to Bills.

In a welcome move, the Election Commission of India (EC) has announced its intention of introducing remote voting across the country — a facility to enable voters who are residents elsewhere to vote in their home constituencies. Considering that India has a significant fraction of migrant population, this provision is much required.
The EC proposes using isolated remote voting machines (RVMs), which are multi-constituency extensions of the extant EVMs, to enable voting from remote locations.
First, how will it be ensured that all those who wish to apply for remote voting are able to do so without let or hindrance, and that all applications are processed fairly without inadvertent or selective exclusions?
Second, how will it be ensured that a person allowed to vote remotely is invalidated for local voting and also that nobody is incorrectly invalidated?
Third, how will the votes — both the electronic votes and the VVPAT slips — be consolidated and counted? Will the counting and the VVPAT audit happen at the remote location, or at the home constituency after consolidation?
It is this understanding — and the requirement of public verifiability of elections — that led the German Constitutional Court to pronounce against EVM use in 2009, an exhortation that is honoured not only in Germany but also in many other jurisdictions across Europe and America, and Pakistan. It has also led the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to recommend against pure electronic voting in a public report in 2018. One way out — as an approximation to software-independence — is to audit the electronic results with a count of the VVPATs, either with a complete count or that of a statistically significant sample.
Unfortunately, it appears that election results are declared in India without any VVPAT audits at all.
Even the Supreme Court’s stipulation of auditing five randomly selected EVMs in every Assembly constituency against VVPAT counts appears to be without any sound statistical basis.
The EC has also ignored the plea of a 2020 report of a Citizens’ Commission on Elections, of which I was a part, on verifiability and VVPAT counting.

Four years since the introduction of the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) — India’s first national policy on curbing air pollution — air quality has improved in only 49 out of 131 cities in 2021-22 from the previous financial year’s figure, according to a report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air on Tuesday.
Only 38 of the 131 cities that were given annual pollution reduction targets under agreements signed between State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs), Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) and the Centre managed to meet the targets for 2021-22, the report noted.
The NCAP, announced four years ago, covers 132 of India’s most polluted or so-called non-attainment cities. This is defined as a city whose air quality did not meet the national ambient air quality standards of 2011 to 2015.
The NCAP aims to bring a 20%-30% reduction in pollution levels from PM2.5 and PM10 particles by 2024, using 2017 pollution levels as a base.
For disbursing funds, the Central Pollution Control Board, which coordinates the programme, only considers levels of PM10, the relatively larger, coarser particles.

NCAP:

It was launched by the MoEFCC in January 2019.
It is the first-ever effort in the country to frame a national framework for air quality management with a time-bound reduction target.
It seeks to cut the concentration of coarse (particulate matter of diameter 10 micrometer or less, or PM10) and fine particles (particulate matter of diameter 2.5 micrometer or less, or PM2.5) by at least 20% in the next five years, with 2017 as the base year for comparison.
The plan includes 102 non-attainment cities, across 23 states and Union territories, which were identified by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) on the basis of their ambient air quality data between 2011 and 2015.
- Non-attainment cities: These are those that have fallen short of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for over five years.

The Tamil Nadu government’s decision to shun the usage of the term ‘Central government’ in its official communications and replace it with ‘Union government’ is a major step towards regaining the consciousness of our Constitution.
Seventy-one years since we adopted the Constitution, it is time we regained the original intent of our founding fathers beautifully etched in the parchment as Article 1: “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States”.
If a student of Indian polity attempts to trace the origin of the term ‘Central government’, the Constitution will disappoint him, for the Constituent Assembly did not use the term ‘Centre’ or ‘Central government’ in all of its 395 Articles in 22 Parts and eight Schedules in the original Constitution.
What we have are the ‘Union’ and the ‘States’ with the executive powers of the Union wielded by the President acting on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister.
Even though we have no reference to the ‘Central government’ in the Constitution, the General Clauses Act, 1897 gives a definition for it. The ‘Central government’ for all practical purposes is the President after the commencement of the Constitution. Therefore, the real question is whether such definition for ‘Central government’ is constitutional as the Constitution itself does not approve of centralising power.
On December 13, 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru introduced the aims and objects of the Assembly by resolving that India shall be a Union of territories willing to join the “Independent Sovereign Republic”.
Many members of the Constituent Assembly were of the opinion that the principles of the British Cabinet Mission Plan (1946) be adopted, which contemplated a Central government with very limited powers whereas the provinces had substantial autonomy.
The possibility of the secession of States from the Union weighed on the minds of the drafters of the Constitution and ensured that the Indian Union is “indestructible”.
Ambedkar justified the usage of ‘Union of States’ saying that the Drafting Committee wanted to make it clear that though India was to be a federation, it was not the result of an agreement and that therefore, no State has the right to secede from it. “The federation is a Union because it is indestructible,” Ambedkar said .
The sharing of powers between the Union and the States is not restricted to the executive organ of the government. The judiciary is designed in the Constitution to ensure that the Supreme Court, the tallest court in the country, has no superintendence over the High Courts. Though the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction — not only over High Courts but also over other courts and tribunals — they are not declared to be subordinate to it.

Q) The Brasilia Declaration, which was sometimes seen in the news, is related to which of the following?

Water Pollution Abatement
Road Safety
Net-Zero emission target
Women’s rights

ब्रासीलिया घोषणा, जो कभी-कभी समाचारों में देखी जाती थी, निम्नलिखित में से किससे संबंधित है?

जल प्रदूषण कमी
सड़क सुरक्षा
नेट-शून्य उत्सर्जन लक्ष्य
महिलाओं के अधिकार

Explanation:

The Brasilia Declaration, adopted at the second global high-level conference on road safety held in Brazil, lays down recommendations on strengthening existing legislations, adopting sustainable transport and strengthening the post-crash response.
In the declaration, participants reasserted their commitment to reducing the deaths caused due to traffic accidents to half by the year 2020.
This target was set under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Q) Navtej Singh Johar and others Vs Union of India, in this case Supreme Court give importance judgment related with:

Freedom of Religion
Right to Education
Homosexuality
Right to Marriage

नवतेज सिंह जौहर और अन्य बनाम भारत संघ, इस मामले में सर्वोच्च न्यायालय ने निम्नलिखित से संबंधित महत्वपूर्ण निर्णय दिया है:

धर्म की स्वतंत्रता
शिक्षा का अधिकार
समलैंगिकता
विवाह का अधिकार

Explanation:

Navtej Singh Johar & Ors. v. Union of India thr. Secretary Ministry of Law and Justice (2018) is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of India that decriminalized all consensual sex among adults, including homosexual sex.

Q) A report titled ‘Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World’ has been recently released by the

WEF
UNDP
WTO
ILO

हाल ही में ‘वर्किंग टाइम एंड वर्क-लाइफ बैलेंस अराउंड द वर्ल्ड’ शीर्षक से एक रिपोर्ट जारी की गई है

डब्ल्यूईएफ
यूएनडीपी
विश्व व्यापार संगठन
आईएलओ

Explanation:

A report titled ‘Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World’ has been recently released by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
This first-ever ILO global report on working time focuses on the actual number of hours of work, working-time arrangements and their implications for work-life balance.

Q) Sunni Dam project is being executed on the