The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 26 June 2023

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis for UPSC

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 24 June 2023

 The Hindu Editorial Today

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday received the ‘Order of the Nile’ award, the country’s highest state honour, from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.

Question:-

• Discuss the significance of Egypt’s strategic location for India?  How it can benefit India in terms of trade and access to markets. (10 Marks, 150 Words)

• Manipur’s unfolding and extended tragedy, in which two of the State’s major communities, the Kukis and Meiteis, have been on a bloody communal clash since May 3.
• After nearly two months, the State remains tense, with over 120 lives lost.
• The emphasis on consensus is important. The truth is what one community does impacts other communities even if they live separately. The integral geography of hills and valleys, and rivers and lakes predestines this, and any move to disrupt this integrity can be an affront on the sense of security of another.

Which are the major communities residing in Manipur?

• The State is like a football stadium with the Imphal Valley representing the playfield at the centre and the surrounding hills the galleries.
• The valley, which comprises about 10% of Manipur’s landmass, is dominated by the non-tribal Meitei.
• This area yields 40 of the State’s 60 MLAs.
• The hills comprising 90% of the geographical area are inhabited by more than 35% recognised tribes.
• This area sends only 20 MLAs to the Assembly.

Why does the Meitei community want ST status?

• There has been an organised push in support of this demand since 2012, led by the Scheduled Tribes Demand Committee of Manipur (STDCM).
• Recognised as tribe before merger with India
• In their plea before the High Court, it was argued that the Meitei community was recognised as a tribe before the merger of the princely state of Manipur with the Union of India in 1949.
• It lost its identity as a tribe after the merger.
• Need to preserve tradition and culture
• The demand for ST status arose from the need to preserve the community, and save the ancestral land, tradition, culture and language of the Meiteis.
• As per the arguments forwarded by the community in the court:
• The community has been victimised without any constitutional safeguards to date.
• The Meitein/Meetei have been gradually marginalised in their ancestral land.
• Their population which was 59% of the total population of Manipur in 1951 has now been reduced to 44% as per 2011 Census data.

• India’s third moon exploration mission, slated for a mid-July launch, will share the names associated with the 2019 Chandrayaan-2 lunar adventure.
• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans to retain the names of the Chandrayaan-2 lander and rover for their Chandrayaan-3 equivalents as well, ISRO Chairman S. Somanath told The Hindu. T
• his means, the Chandrayaan-3 lander will bear the name Vikram (after Vikram Sarabhai, the father of the Indian space programme) and the rover, Pragyan.
• The lander will have four payloads — Radio Anatomy of Moon Bound Hypersensitive Ionosphere and Atmosphere (RAMBHA), Chandra’s Surface Thermo physical Experiment (ChaSTE), Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) and the LASER Retroreflector Array (LRA).
• The six-wheeled rover will have two payloads — the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and the LASER Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS).
• In addition to these, there will be one payload on the propulsion module, the Spectro-polarimetry of HAbitable Planet Earth (SHAPE).

• Chandrayaan-1 mission
• It was launched in October 2008 and it orbited the Moon and performed a number of scientific experiments and observations.
• It was India’s first lunar mission and the first to discover water on the Moon.
• Involved an orbiter and an impactor, both built by Isro
• It was launched by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle and made more than 3,400 orbits around the Moon.
• It carried 11 scientific instruments on board, five of which were Indian while the others were from the European Space Agency (ESA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
• It was operational for 312 days till August 29, 2009.
• Chandrayaan-2 mission
• It was launched in July 2019, and involves an orbiter, a lander (Vikram), and a rover (Pragyaan), all built by ISRO.
• It was India’s first to attempt a soft landing near the south pole of the Moon.
• It was launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh by the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk-III.
• It aimed to land the Vikram lander on the lunar surface and deploy the Pragyaan rover.
• It carried eight scientific payloads for mapping the lunar surface and studying the exosphere (outer atmosphere) of the Moon.
• It’s lander Vikram crashed into the lunar surface apparently because of an issue with its braking rockets.

• The MQ-9 Reaper, also known as Predator B, is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capable of remotely controlled orautonomous flight operations.
• It is developed by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI), primarily for the United States Air Force (USAF).

• Need For India:
• India needs MQ-9B armed drones to enhance its surveillance and strike capabilities across its land and maritime borders, especially in the context of the ongoing standoff with China in Ladakh and the rising tensions with Pakistan.
• India also needs MQ-9B armed drones to counter the growing presence of Chinese submarines and warships in the Indian Ocean Region, and to protect its vital sea lanes of communication and trade.
• India also needs MQ-9B armed drones to support its counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir and other regions.
• At least two persons have died of the H3N2 subtype of seasonal influenza, which has infected rising numbers of people since mid-December last year, the Health Ministry has confirmed. After a nationwide surveillance exercise, the Ministry said it had found at least 451 confirmed cases of H3N2 virus since the beginning of this year.
• H3N2 patients display symptoms similar to COVID-19: fever, cough, breathlessness, wheezing and pneumonia. The Health Ministry has advised social distancing and mask wearing to prevent the spread of the virus.
• “Young children and old age persons with co-morbidities are the most vulnerable,” the Ministry’s statement said.

• What are Submersibles?
• Submersibles are small, limited range watercrafts designed for a set mission, that are built with characteristics that allow them to operate in a specific environment
• These vessels are typically able to be fully submerged into water and cruise using their own power supply and air renewal system.
• While some submersibles are remotely-operated and essentially manually controlled or programmed robots, these usually operate unmanned.
• Vessels like the missing Titan are known as human-occupied vehicles.
• The Titan:
• It was designed to transport five people to depths of around 4,000m in order to reach the Titanic shipwreck, which lies approximately 370 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada.
• Made of titanium and carbon fiber, it weighs around 10,432 kgs and can also take on speeds of about 3 knots/5.5 km per hour.
• It doesn’t have a lot of propulsion so it can’t sail great distances but it has just enough propulsion to sail and operate in and around the wreck and then come back to the surface.
• Experts believe that the Titan likely lost power or communication with its mother ship, the Polar Prince.
• In this case, the Titan’s safety mechanism would activate, causing the ship to release the weight that it had been using to descend to the shipwreck.
• How are Submersibles different from Submarines?
• The primary difference between a submersible and a submarine is that the former is launched from a mother vessel, or home vessel.
• Submersibles are typically launched on a raft or platform which is placed into water and ultimately descends down via four electric thrusters which help it to reach speeds of 3 knots.
• When it returns to the surface, it must be loaded back onto the surface platform.
• Submersibles don’t have things like typically large propulsion systems, they don’t have ballast systems. They also have limited power reserves.
• Unlike submarines, submersibles also have a viewport and external cameras to view the outside space surrounding the vessel.

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