The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 5 May 2023

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis for UPSC

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 4 May 2023

• The Manipur government on Thursday issued a shoot-at-sight order in “extreme cases”, as escalating ethnic violence following a tribal solidarity march displaced over 9,000 people in the State.
• There was no official confirmation of the number of people killed or injured in the violence, but Chief Minister Nongthombam Biren Singh admitted that “some precious lives were lost”.
• Clashes initially broke out during the course of Wednesday’s solidarity march, called by the All Tribal Students’ Union, Manipur. The Scheduled Tribe communities, mostly from the Kuki-Zomi group, are protesting against a move to grant a long-standing demand for ST status to the Meitei community, which makes up the majority of the State’s population.
• The Kukis are an ethnic group of multiple tribes inhabiting the North-Eastern states of India-Manipur, Mizoram and Assam; parts of Burma (now Myanmar), and Sylhet district and Chittagong hill tracts of Bangladesh. ‘MimKut’ is the main festival of the Kuki tribe. In Manipur, the various Kuki tribes, living mainly in the hills, currently make up 30% of the total population.
• Manipur’s two major tribal communities – Naga and Kuki – live in the hill districts, which account for about 90% of the state’s area.
• The Meiteis account for roughly 64.6% of the state’s population and are largely concentrated in the Imphal Valley.
• They are currently categorised as OBCs or SCs, the Meitei people dominate in more than half the State’s Assembly constituencies. A majority of them identify as Hindu while about 8% are Muslim.

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• The unresolved three-year-old military stand-off at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) remained the “focus” of India-China talks as External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang here on Thursday, and held a “detailed” discussion on bilateral ties.
• This is the second time the two Ministers have held talks this year, as Mr. Qin had earlier attended the G-20 Foreign Ministers Meeting in Delhi in March.
• Jaishankar also met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Uzbekistan counterpart Bakhtiyor Saidov, after which he hosted them and all the other Foreign Ministers from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), at this Goan beach resort for a meeting on Friday.
• However, no bilateral meeting was held or planned by officials between Mr. Jaishankar and Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, although the two Ministers greeted each other and shook hands at the dinner event, sources said.
• Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a permanent intergovernmental international organization.
• Its creation was announced on 15 June 2001 in Shanghai (China) by the Republic of Kazakhstan, the People’s Republic of China, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan, and the Republic of Uzbekistan.
• It was preceded by the Shanghai Five mechanism.
• Prior to the creation of SCO in 2001, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan were members of the Shanghai Five.
• Shanghai Five (1996) emerged from a series of border demarcation and demilitarization talks which the four former Soviet republics held with China to ensure stability along the borders.
• Following the accession of Uzbekistan to the organization in 2001, the Shanghai Five was renamed the SCO.
• India and Pakistan became members in 2017.
• The SCO’s official languages are Russian and Chinese.

• Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO for short)
• Albert Einstein’s 1916 general theory of relativity first predicted the phenomenon of gravitational waves.
• The project aims to detect gravitational waves from the universe.
• The Indian LIGO would have two perpendicularly placed 4-km long vacuum chambers, that constitute the most sensitive interferometers in the world.
• It is expected to begin scientific runs from 2030.
• It will be located in the Hingoli district of Maharashtra, about 450 km east of Mumbai.
• Besides the United States (in Hanford and Livingston), such gravitational wave observatories are currently operational in Italy (Virgo) and Japan (Kagra).

• Russia on Thursday accused the U.S. of masterminding a drone attack on the Kremlin and said sabotage attacks by Ukraine behind Russian lines had reached “unprecedented momentum”.
• The Kremlin has said Ukraine carried out the attack with two drones aiming to kill President Vladimir Putin — a charge which Kyiv has denied. “Decisions on such attacks are made in Washington,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

• According to the declaration, an American nuclear ballistic submarine would be deployed in the Korean peninsula; a nuclear consultative group would be formed to formulate principles of joint response tactics; South Korea would receive Intel from the U.S. regarding nuclear advancements; and the U.S. will strengthen South Korea’s nuclear deterrence capabilities through joint military training programs and an annual intergovernmental simulation.
• South Korea’s nuclear development programme supported by former president Park Chung Hee was hindered due to U.S. pressure. In the 1990s, the U.S. withdrew one hundred nuclear weapons from South Korea as part of their “Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty”. The U.S. was hoping to make North Korea unarm itself. Washington made an erroneous assumption that it could deter the weapons production of North Korea by extracting South Korea’s nuclear capacity.

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