UPSC Daily Current Affairs- 11th November 2022 | Current Affairs & Hindu Analysis: Daily, Weekly & Monthly PDF Download

GS-I

Context

On the eleventh hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the guns fell silent over Europe, bringing an end to a brutal first world war that drew in soldiers and contributions from around the world. Indian soldiers and their contribution are not widely recognized in India.

Background of Indian involvement World War II

• Fight against Fascism: Two conflicts and a reticence Indian reticence over these two conflicts arises from the uneasy relationship between the Indian contribution to fighting fascism on a global stage and the nationalist movement for freedom at home.
• Betrayal of nationalistic expectation: The success of the first is seen to have come at the cost of the second. It began with the betrayal of nationalist expectations of greater autonomy for India in return for support during the Great War.
• No consultation with Indian leaders: This was compounded by the bitterness of Viceroy Lord Linlithgow declaring war on Germany on India’s behalf in 1939 without consulting Indian leaders, and further roiled by the pitting of Indian against Indian when Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army sided with the Axis Powers in the hope that this might bring freedom.
• Fighting for India and for World: But the failure of Indian independence to follow automatically from India’s participation in the wars does not mean that the war efforts extended colonial rule, or were all about protecting Britain: there was fighting on Indian soil to defend India.

What is Indian soldiers role in World War II?

• Support of nationalist leaders: Almost 1.5 million men volunteered to fight in the Great War. Indians mobilized four days after Britain declared war on Germany, with the support of nationalist leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi.
• War in Europe, Asia and Africa: Indians fought with valor and distinction in the trenches of Europe, West Asia and North Africa, earning 11 Victoria Crosses along the way. Of those men, about 74,000 never came home.
• Largest volunteer for war: India raised the largest ever volunteer army, of 2.5 million, for the Second World War. More than 87,000 of those men are cremated or buried in war cemeteries around the world and in India.
• Thirty-one Victoria Crosses: 15 % of the total Victoria crosses went to soldiers from undivided India. Without Indian soldiers, non-combatant labourers, material and money, the course of both conflicts would have been very different as acknowledged by Field Marshal Auchinleck, Britain’s last Commander-in-Chief of the Indian.

• The issue of Non-recognition of India’s contribution

• Indian soldiers are honored by Britain: In Britain, the contribution of the Commonwealth including the Indian subcontinent is memorialized in the Commonwealth Memorial Gates that lead up to Buckingham Palace. The Gates commemorate the campaigns where Commonwealth soldiers served with distinction; there is also a canopy inscribed with the names of the Commonwealth recipients of the George and Victoria Crosses.
• Indian soldiers fought the Britain’s war: Much of India’s recent history is encapsulated in these gates, in a spirit of gratitude and equality. Britain, after all, has much to be grateful for, but Indians seem less keen to acknowledge this. British perfidy, however, does not in any way reduce the sacrifices of those who fought for freedom. Those who went abroad to fight alongside white British soldiers returned with the knowledge that they were equal to their colonial masters. In not recognizing and honoring this, we push those men back into colonial subjugation.
• Britain betrayed the hopes of freedom: Some of this ambivalence owes itself to the atrocities of colonial history, which must be acknowledged too. Britain may have handed out 11 Victoria Crosses over the course of the First World War, but it betrayed the hopes of nationalists with the imposition of martial law after the war ended, culminating in the horror of Jallianwala Bagh in April 1919.

Does India fought the war for its own sake?

• Indian fought the Japanese: These were not just European wars to defend foreign lands. India was threatened in the Second World War by advancing Japanese forces who got as far as Burma/Myanmar. They were repulsed in the battles of Imphal and Kohima between March and July 1944. These were brutal battles. In Kohima, the two sides were at one point separated by the width of a tennis court. A Commonwealth cemetery on Garrison Hill, Kohima, contains this epitaph (by John Maxwell Edmonds): ‘When You Go Home, Tell Them of Us, and Say/For Your Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today’.
• Ultimate sacrifice for India’s freedom: The memory of the almost 10 million battlefield deaths in the First World War and the 15 million or more who were killed fighting the Second World War is now honored in countries around the world on November 11, with nationwide silences and the laying of wreaths. Not so much in India apart from in Army cantonments and at the British Consulate in Kolkata even though over 1,61,000 men made the ultimate sacrifice for India’s freedom.

Conclusion

Seventy-five years after Independence, it is time to honor India’s immense contribution to the world wars and move it from a footnote in another country’s history to the main stage, where it belongs. These were India’s wars too.

Source: Indian Express

Context

At the 27th Session of the Conference of Parties (COP27), this year’s UN climate summit, the Mangrove Alliance for Climate (MAC) was launched with India as a partner.

Mangrove Alliance for Climate (MAC)

• An initiative led by the UAE and Indonesia, the MAC includes India, Sri Lanka, Australia, Japan, and Spain.
• It seeks to educate and spread awareness worldwide on the role of mangroves in curbing global warming and its potential as a solution for climate change.
• Under MAC, UAE intends to plant 3 million mangroves in the next two months, in keeping with UAE’s COP26 pledge of planting 100 million mangroves by 2030.

Working of MAC

• MAC would work on a voluntary basis. It means that there are no real checks and balances to hold members accountable.
• Instead, the parties will decide their own commitments and deadlines regarding planting and restoring mangroves.
• The members will also share expertise and support each other in researching, managing and protecting coastal areas.

Why protect mangroves?

• Infrastructure projects — industrial expansion, shifting coastlines, coastal erosion and storms, have resulted in a significant decrease in mangrove habitats.
• Between 2010 and 2020, around 600 sq km of mangroves were lost of which more than 62% was due to direct human impacts, the Global Mangrove Alliance said in its 2022 report.

Importance of mangroves

• Biodiversity: Mangrove forests — consisting of trees and shrub that live in intertidal water in coastal areas — host diverse marine life.
• Fishing grounds: They also support a rich food web, with molluscs and algae-filled substrate acting as a breeding ground for small fish, mud crabs and shrimps, thus providing a livelihood to local artisanal fishers.
• Carbon sinks: Equally importantly, they act as effective carbon stores, holding up to four times the amount of carbon as other forested ecosystems.
• Cyclone buffers: When Cyclone Amphan struck West Bengal in May, its effects were largely mitigated by the Sundarbans flanking its coasts along the Bay of Bengal.

Threats to Mangroves

• Anthropogenic activities: They are a major threat to the mangroves. Urbanization, industrialization and the accompanying discharge of industrial effluents, domestic sewage and pesticide residues from agricultural lands threaten these fragile ecosystems.
• Saltpan and aquaculture: This causes huge damage to the mangroves. Shrimp farming alone destroyed 35,000 hectares of mangroves worldwide.
• Destruction for farming: 40% of mangroves on the west coast has been converted into farmlands and other settlements in just 3 decades.
• Sea-level rise: This is another challenge to these mangroves- especially on the Bay of Bengal coast.

Mangroves in India

• India holds around 3 percent of South Asia’s mangrove population.
• Besides the Sundarbans in West Bengal, the Andaman region, the Kutch and Jamnagar areas in Gujarat too have substantial mangrove cover.

How can India benefit from MAC?

• India is home to one of the largest remaining areas of mangroves in the world — the Sundarbans.
• It has years of expertise in restoration of mangrove cover that can be used to aid global measures in this direction.
• The move is in line with India’s goal to increase its carbon sink.

Source: The Hindu

GS-II

Context

Recently, the Supreme Court of India (SCI) discussed an important matter concerning the rights of persons with disabilities where the blanket exclusion of disabled persons from services such as the IPS, IRPF, DANICS, and Lakshadweep Police Service was challenged.

• As per the Census 2011, there are 26.8 million persons with disabilities in India, making up 2.21 per cent of the total population.
• The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment established the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (Divyangjan) to ensure focused attention to policy issues related to persons with disabilities and work towards their empowerment.
• There has been no mention of disabled persons either in the constitution or the preamble.

About Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016:

• It is the disability legislation passed by the Indian Parliament to fulfil its obligation to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which India ratified in 2007.

Features:

Expansion of Disability Criteria:

• Disability has been defined based on an evolving and dynamic concept.
• The types of disabilities have been increased from the existing 7 to 21 and the Central Government has been given the power to add more types of disabilities.

Reservation:

• Benefits such as reservation in higher education, government jobs, reservation in the allocation of land, poverty alleviation schemes, etc. have been provided for persons with benchmark disabilities and those with high support needs.
• Reservation in vacancies in government establishments has been increased from 3% to 4% for certain persons or classes of persons with benchmark disabilities.

Inclusive Education:

• Government-funded educational institutions as well as government-recognized institutions will have to provide inclusive education to the children with disabilities.

Right to Free Education:

• Every child with a benchmark disability between the age group of 6 and 18 years shall have the right to free education.

Central & State Advisory Boards on Disability:

• Broad-based Central & State Advisory Boards on Disability are to be set up to serve as apex policy-making bodies at the Central and State level.

District-level Committees:

• District-level committees will be constituted by the State Governments to address local concerns of PwDs.

National and State Funds

• Creation of National and State Funds will be created to provide financial support to persons with disabilities.

Penalty:

• It provides penalties for offenses committed against persons with disabilities and also violations of the provisions of the new law.

Special Courts:

• Special Courts will be designated in each district to handle cases concerning the violation of rights of PwDs.

SC Observations:

First Observation:

• By referring to V Surendra Mohan v. State of Tamil Nadu (2019) case, the court observed that disabled judge was 100 percent blind. he would be cheated by juniors; people would make him sign all kinds of wrong documents, and therefore, it caused problems.
• This observation warrants a deeper analytical response since just because someone was cheated in one instance, it does form a valid basis for the deprivation of rights to an entire class of citizens (persons with disabilities).

Second Observation:

• It was observed that the reserved seats for the disabled were filled up just for the sake of it.
• Such an observation does not align with ideas of sensitivity and the human dignity of persons with disabilities.

Third Observation:

• The third observation was, “Sympathy is one aspect, practicality is another aspect”.
• The petitioners are not seeking sympathy. They are rather making a legal, rights-based approach. It is the recognition of their legal rights that they are fighting for.

Way Forward:

• Reasonable accommodation is necessary to help persons with disabilities exercise their rights and participate in society equally with others.
• It’s not about sympathy but Person with Disabilities requires empathy and understanding.
• The practicality aspect has to be assessed on the basis of the legal test of “undue burden”.
• Whether providing reasonable accommodation is imposing too much of a burden on the duty bearer, only then can reasonable accommodation be refused for being impractical.

The citizens of the country should not leave any stone unturned to make the lives of the differently abled ones much easier.

Additional Information:

About United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD)

• The Convention was adopted by the General Assembly in December 2006 and it came into force on in May 2008.
• Parties to the convention are required to promote, protect, and ensure the full enjoyment of human rights by persons with disabilities and ensure that persons with disabilities enjoy full equality under the law
• It is intended to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities.
• The convention is monitored by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Source: Indian Express

Recently the Dharwad Bench of the Karnataka High Court, while dismissing a case filed under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, said the Law Commission of India would have to rethink the age criteria, to take into consideration the ground realities.

• The aspect of consent by a girl of 16 years, but who is below 18 years, would have to be considered, it said, if it is indeed an offence under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and/or the POCSO Act.

About POCSO Act 2012:

• This comprehensive law provides for protection of children from sexual assault, sexual harassment and pornography, while safeguarding the interests of children at every stage of the judicial process through child-friendly mechanisms for reporting, recording of evidence, investigation and speedy trial through special courts.

Salient Provisions of the Act:

• “Children” according to the Act are individuals aged below 18 years. The Act is gender-neutral.
• Different forms of sexual abuse including but not limited to sexual harassment, pornography, penetrative & non-penetrative assault are defined in the Act.
• Sexual assault is deemed to be “aggravated” under certain circumstances such as when the child is mentally ill. Also, when the abuse is committed by the person in a position of trust such as a doctor, teacher, policeman, family member.
• The Act assigns a policeman in the role of child protector during the investigation process. The investigation and trial are to be done in a way to minimise further trauma on the child.
• Any case under POCSO is mandated to be disposed of within one year from the date of reporting of the offence.
• The Act provides for the establishment of Special Courts for the trial of such offences and matters related to it.
• The power to make rules lies with the central government. To monitor the implementation of the Act, the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and State Commissions for the Protection of Child Rights (SCPCRs) have been made the designated authority. Both being statutory bodies.
• Section 42 A of the Act gives POCSO Act overriding powers over other acts.
• The Act calls for mandatory reporting of sexual offences. A false complaint with intent to defame a person is punishable under the Act.

Drawbacks of the POCSO Act:

• Under the POCSO Act, 2012, and under several provisions of the IPC, whoever commits a penetrative sexual assault on a child — anyone below 18 years of age — can be “imprisoned for a term which is not less than seven years but which may extend to imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.”
• Even if the girl is 16 years old, she is considered a “child” under the POCSO Act and hence her consent does not matter, and any sexual intercourse is treated as rape, thus opening it up to stringent punishment.
• There have been several instances in the past few years when the courts have quashed criminal proceedings of rape and kidnapping, after being convinced that the law was being misused to suit one or the other party.
• The act also does not recognise consensual sex between pre-adult teenagers, often putting the boy in this case as an accused of rape charges.

Misuse of the act:

• In its order, and several other courts have passed similar judgments too, the Karnataka High Court said the effect of such criminal prosecution of a minor girl or boy is causing severe distress to all concerned, including the families. Sometimes, disgruntled parents file a case to foil a relationship between two adolescents.
• In 2019, a study, Why Girls Run Away to Marry – Adolescent Realities and Socio-Legal Responses in India, published by Partners for Law in Development, made a case for the age of consent to be lower than the age of marriage to decriminalise sex among older adolescents to protect them from the misuse of law, sometimes by parents who want to control who their daughters or sons want to marry.
• The study noted that in many cases, a couple elopes fearing opposition from parents resulting in a situation where families file a case with the police, who then book the boy for rape under the POCSO Act and abduction with the intent to marry under IPC or the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006.

Case study: Vijaylakshmi vs State Rep case 2021

• The Madras High Court said the definition of ‘child’ under Section 2(d) of the POCSO Act can be redefined as 16 instead of 18.
• It said that any consensual sex after the age of 16 or bodily contact or allied acts can be excluded from the rigorous provisions of the POCSO Act.
• The court suggested that the age difference in consensual relationships should not be more than five years to ensure that a girl of an impressionable age is not taken advantage of by “a person who is much older.

Way forward:

• With the courts and rights activists seeking amendment to the age of consent criteria, the ball lies in the government’s court to look into the issue.
  • In the meantime, adolescents have to be made aware of the stringent provisions of the Act and also the IPC.
• The Karnataka High Court Bench directed the Principal Secretary of the Education Department to constitute a committee to formulate suitable education material for adolescents on the law on sexual offences and its consequences.
• Adolescents have to be made aware of the stringent provisions of the Act and also the IPC.
• There is a compelling need for law reform to revise the age of consent and prevent the criminalisation of older adolescents engaging in factually consensual and non-exploitative acts.
• Even as activists are calling for a tweak to the POCSO Act, and raising awareness about its terms, a parliamentary committee is looking into the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, 2021 which seeks to increase the minimum age of marriage for women to 21 years.
  • Rights activists feel instead of helping the community, raising the age may force vulnerable women to remain under the yoke of family and social pressures.

Government should examine the provisions of the POCSO Act which are being misused and amend them. The principles of Right to life and survival and the best interests of all children concern, should be protected.

Source: The Hindu

GS-III

Context

Ecologists at Michigan State University (MSU) and collaborators in Ecuador have found 32 species of an amphibian genus — Atelopus or harlequin frogs — still surviving in the wild. 

• Since the 1980s, a fungus called Bd — short for Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis — has been killing off members of more than 500 species of amphibians.
• Humans are responsible for the spread the fungus around the world.
• The harlequin frog genus was hit exceptionally hard by the fungus.
• Over the past four decades 80 per cent of its species were driven to extinction.

About Atelopus:

• Atelopus is a large genus of Bufonidae, commonly known as harlequin frogs or toads, from Central and South America, ranging as far north as Costa Rica and as far south as Bolivia.
• Atelopus species are small, generally brightly coloured, and diurnal.
• Most species are associated with mid-to-high elevation streams.
• This genus has been greatly affected by amphibian declines, and many species are now considered endangered, while others already are extinct.
• While threatened by habitat loss, pollution, and introduced species, the primary cause of these declines appears to be the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.

Source: DownTo Earth

 Recently the Central government released the Sovereign Green Bonds Framework. The revenue generated from the issuance of sovereign green bonds will be deployed in public sector projects that help in reducing the carbon intensity of the economy.

About Green Bonds:

• Green bonds are issued by companies, countries and multilateral organisations to exclusively fund projects that have positive environmental or climate benefits and provide investors with fixed income payments.
• The projects can include renewable energy, clean transportation and green buildings, among others.

Examples of Green Bonds:

• The World Bank is a major issuer of green bonds and issued $14.4 billion of green bonds between 2008 and 2020.
• These funds have been used to support 111 projects around the world, largely in renewable energy and efficiency (33%), clean transportation (27%), and agriculture and land use (15%).
• By the end of 2020, 24 national governments had issued Sovereign Green, Social and Sustainability bonds totalling a cumulative $111 billion, according to the London-based Climate Bonds Initiative.

About India’s Sovereign Green Bonds Framework:

• First announced in the Union Budget 2022-23, the proceeds of these green bonds will be issued for mobilising resources for green infrastructure.
• Aim –
• To mobilise Rs 16,000 crore through the issuance of green bonds in the current fiscal ending March 2023.
• Under the framework, the Finance Ministry will, every year, inform the RBI about spending on green projects for which the funds raised through these bonds will be used.

Implementing Agency:

• The Ministry of Finance has constituted a Green Finance Working Committee (GFWC) including members from relevant line ministries and chaired by the Chief Economic Advisor.
• The GFWC will meet at least twice a year to support the Ministry of Finance with selection and evaluation of projects and other work related to the Framework.
• Initial evaluation of the project will be the responsibility of the concerned Ministry/Department in consultation with experts.
• The allocation of the proceeds will be reviewed in a time-bound manner by the GFWC to ensure that the allocation of proceeds is completed within 24 months from the date of issuance.

Eligible Projects:

• All eligible green expenditures will include public expenditure undertaken by the government in the form of investment, subsidies, grants-in-aid, or tax foregone (or a combination of all or some of these) or select operational expenditures.
• R&D expenditures in public sector projects that help in reducing the carbon intensity of the economy and enable country to meet its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are also included in the framework.
• The eligible expenditures will be limited to government expenditures that occurred maximum 12 months prior to issuance of the green bonds.
• Sectors not included –Nuclear power generation, landfill projects, alcohol/weapons/tobacco/gaming/palm oil industries and hydropower plants larger than 25 MW have been excluded from the framework.

Source: Indian Express

The commercial cultivation of flame lily had attracted many in Tamil Nadu since the 1980s as a kilogram of the seeds of the flower, with its therapeutic properties, fetched up to ₹8,000 in a pharmaceutical-driven market. That’s no longer the case at present.

About flame lily

• Flame lily occupies a special place in Tamil literature.
• The Sangam-era poet, Kapilar, refers to it in his Kurinchipattu that describes the landscape of the mountainous terrain.
• When the State of Tamil Nadu was formed in 1956, flame lily was named as its official flower.
• It is also known as: Gloriosa superba/Kanvali kizhangu/Karthigaipoo/Senkanthalpoo
• It is commonly found in scrubland, forests, thickets and even sand dunes.
• Both the roots and the seeds are important pharmaceutical ingredients in indigenous Indian and African medicine.
• They have been part of therapies to treat or manage ailments such as cancer, gout, arthritis, leprosy and dyspepsia.

Source: The Hindu

Context

International Crops Research Institute for The Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has published a modelling study that revealed how the right combination of fertilisers, biochar, and irrigation could potentially increase soil carbon by 300%.

• The study was conducted in some districts of Maharashtra and Odisha with semi-arid climate (annual rainfall 600 -1,100 mm).
• A new gaming app, ‘Mrida’, has been launched to promote behavioural change among farmers and will be released in English, Marathi and Odiya.

About Carbon sequestration:

• Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
• The carbon sequestration increased by more than 300 per cent in combination with fertiliser, biochar, and irrigation.
• Biochar is a charcoal-like substance that burns organic material (biomass) from agricultural and forestry wastes in a controlled process called pyrolysis.
• Biochar has safely reduced contamination and stored carbon.
• Biochar increased carbon value in the soil by 130-300 per cent over 30 years with little difference in yield.
• Optimal use of fertilizers increased the carbon and output by up to 30 per cent.
• Improved nutrients, crop/variety, landform, minimum tillage and residue addition led to a significant increase in soil carbon.
• Carbon sequestration increased by 100 kg ha per year with the improved practices of landform management, fertilizers and crop varieties over 45 years.
• Two major types: geologic and biologic
  • Geologic carbon sequestration is the process of storing carbon dioxide (CO2) in underground geologic formations like rocks.
  • Biologic carbon sequestration refers to storage of atmospheric carbon in vegetation, soils, woody products, and aquatic environments.
• Carbon sequestration occurs both naturally and as a result of anthropogenic activities.
• The Kyoto Protocol under UNFCCC allows countries to receive credits for their carbon-sequestration activities in the area of land use, land-use change, and forestry.
• Carbon capture and storage (CCS): carbon dioxide is first separated from other gases contained in industrial emissions. It is then compressed and transported to a location that is isolated from the atmosphere for long-term storage.

Carbon cycle is as follows:

Significance:

• Food systems account for nearly one-third of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
• In 2015, food-system emissions amounted to 18 Gt CO2 equivalent per year globally, representing 34 per cent of total GHG emissions.
• Soil carbon is critical for crop yield and climate adaptation or mitigation measures, which are heavily reduced by both intensive agriculture and indiscriminate use of chemicals leading to increased carbon emissions.
• Carbon sequestering can provide an additional source of income for the farmers.

Source: DownToEarth