The Hindu PDF 10 April 2023 Analysis

The Hindu PDF Newspaper is considered an important source of news and information for UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) aspirants in India. This The Hindu PDF newspaper covers a wide range of topics that are relevant to the UPSC exam, including politics, economics, international relations, governance, and social issues.

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Key points for UPSC:

• The latest tiger census conducted in India has estimated the country’s tiger population to be at least 3,167.
• While this number shows an increase from the 2018 census (which recorded 2,967 tigers) and the 2014 census (which recorded 2,226 tigers), the numbers are not strictly comparable as a key calculation is yet to be done.
• The tiger population has grown the most in the Shivalik hills and the Gangetic flood plains, followed by central India, the northeastern hills, the Brahmaputra flood plains, and the Sundarbans. However, there was a decline in the Western Ghats numbers.
• The tiger numbers are estimated by adding animals caught in camera traps and those estimated by statistical techniques. For the latest census, the estimates of tigers outside camera traps and the state-wise break-up of tigers are yet to be computed, which may affect the final numbers.
• The figures are provisional and subject to revision.
• The tiger population numbers were made public by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Mysuru on Sunday, at an event to mark the International Big Cat Alliance conference and the 50th anniversary of Project Tiger.

Key points for UPSC:

• The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) is planning to create a pool of experts in languages spoken in countries with which India has historical ties to expand its cultural footprint in these nations.
• The project is called ‘The Language Friendship Bridge’ and aims to train five to 10 people in the official languages of countries such as Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan and Indonesia.
• The ICCR has zeroed in on 10 languages for this project, including Kazakh, Uzbek, Bhutanese, Ghoti, Burmese, Khmer, Thai, Sinhalese and Bahasa.
• The focus in India has been on learning European and major Asian languages such as Spanish, French, German, Chinese and Japanese. Only a handful of universities and institutes teach any of the 10 languages on the ICCR list.
• The project aims to enable India to translate its epics and classics, as well as contemporary literature, into these languages for people to read.
• The ICCR is in discussion with universities and institutes, including foreign language departments at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University, Hyderabad’s English and Foreign Languages University, Banaras Hindu University and Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwa Vidyalaya at Wardha, on implementing the project. The possibilities include tie-ups with teachers from these countries to teach courses in India or offering scholarships to Indian students to study these languages in the countries where they are spoken.

Key points for UPSC:

• The Indian government has added a provision of a fact-check unit in the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2023, to identify fake or misleading online content related to the government.
• Intermediaries such as social media companies or net service providers will have to take action against such content identified by the fact-check unit, or risk losing their “safe harbour” protections in Section 79 of the IT Act.
• The lack of right to appeal or judicial oversight raises concerns about misuse of power to prevent questioning or scrutiny by media organisations, which threatens the right to free speech and expression on online platforms.
• The government’s role should be kept at arm’s length from the media to ensure sufficient freedom, and being the arbiter of “fake” or “false” news amounts to draconian censorship.

Key points for UPSC:

• The Space Age began in 1957 with the launch of satellite Sputnik 1, and in 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the world’s first person in space. Neil Armstrong made history by walking on the moon in 1969.
• The Second Space Age is marked by the dominance of private companies in the space domain. Last year, there were 180 rocket/space launches, 61 by Elon Musk’s Space X, and 90% of global space launches since 2020 are by and for the private sector.
• India made a modest entry into the First Space Age in the 1960s. Its first major project was Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) that involved leasing a U.S. satellite in 1975-76 for educational outreach across 2,400 villages covering five million people. Following this, the INSAT series in the 1980s and GSAT provided the backbone for the country’s tele-communication and broadcasting infrastructure. Remote sensing capability development also followed.
• The demand for satellite transponders and ground-based services exploded as private TV channels emerged in India. The age of mobile telephony, followed by smartphones has shown the world what a data-hungry and data-rich society India is. Broadband, OTT and now 5G promise a double-digit annual growth in demand for satellite-based services.
• In 2020, the global space economy was estimated at $450 billion, growing to $600 billion by 2025. The Indian space economy, estimated at $9.6 billion in 2020, is expected to be $13 billion by 2025. However, the potential is much greater with an enabling policy and regulatory environment.
• The Indian private sector is responding to the demands of the Second Space Age, and its growth potential is significant. The Indian space industry could easily exceed $60 billion by 2030, directly creating more than two lakh jobs. However, creating an enabling policy and regulatory environment is crucial for the growth of the industry.

Key points for UPSC:

• On March 27, 2023, two researchers from Kristiania University College, Oslo, and the BI Norwegian Business School, published a report on population predictions as part of the Earth4All Initiative.
• They modelled birth rates as a function of GDP per person, which shows a negative correlation between income and fertility rate.
• They advanced two scenarios: “Too Little, Too Late” predicts that if economic development continues as it has, the world’s population would peak at 8.6 billion in 2050 and decline to 7 billion by 2100. “The Giant Leap” scenario predicts that the population will peak at 8.5 billion by 2040 and then rapidly decline to around 6 billion by 2100 due to investments in poverty alleviation, gender equity, education and health, ameliorating inequality, and food and energy security.
• The report clarifies that population alone was never the problem for sustainability, nor will it be for the climate crisis.
• The equitable distribution of resources globally can alleviate extreme poverty, even exceeding the United Nations’ minimum levels.
• The report contradicts the UN ‘World Populations Prospects 2022’ report, which predicted that the global population would steadily rise to 10.4 billion in 2080 and then stabilize around that number in 2100.
• Population predictions and the kind of politics, scholarship, and policies they engender are wearing thin. Population size, especially in post-colonial nations, has become a locus for international aid agencies as well as for local elite narratives of “small families, happy families” leading to “modern nations”. These narratives essentially blame the poor for the conditions of their everyday lives and further disenfranchise them from the polity.

Key points for UPSC:

• The Centre is considering a comprehensive livestock insurance scheme modelled on the Prime Minister’s Fasal Bima Yojana.
• The Union Animal Husbandry Ministry’s move is to roll out the scheme ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
• Initial proposals to waive off premium for cattle rearers from Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities.
• Less than 1% of the country’s cattle is insured and the average yearly premium is 4.5% of the insured amount.
• The Animal Husbandry Ministry recently held a meeting with various insurance companies and other stakeholders to reduce the premium and replace the present Livestock Insurance Scheme.
• The panel on Demands for Grants of the Ministry submitted a report to Parliament, stating that not even a single animal was insured during 2022-23.
• The official said high premium rate and general economic conditions of farmers are reasons for lower enrolment in such schemes.
• During the lumpy skin disease pandemic, about two lakh cattle died, and farmers had demanded compensation from the government for the loss.
• The Centre’s attempt is to keep the premium low and ensure maximum coverage of livestock.
• Several farmers’ organisations had also demanded comprehensive livestock and crop insurance in the background of pandemics such as lumpy skin disease.

Key points for UPSC:

• Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, an Indian-American statistician, has been awarded the 2023 International Prize in Statistics.
• The award is considered equivalent to the Nobel Prize for statistics and is given every two years to an individual or team for their significant contribution to the advancement of science, technology, and human welfare using statistics.
• Rao’s work has influenced various fields such as economics, genetics, anthropology, geology, national planning, demography, biometry, and medicine.
• Professor Rao’s groundbreaking paper, “Information and accuracy attainable in the estimation of statistical parameters,” was published in 1945 when he was only 25 years old and continues to exert a profound influence on science.
• He contributed to the development of modern statistics and its application in research with his novel generic approach to testing hypotheses called the “Rao score test.”
• Rao also contributed to orthogonal arrays, a concept in combinatorics used to design experiments with qualitatively good results, as early as 1949.
• He spent four decades at the Indian Statistical Institute after a chance meeting led him to enroll there since he could not secure a scholarship at Andhra University for administrative reasons and was rejected for a job at an Army survey unit.
• Rao’s contribution made the first half of the 20th century the golden period of statistical theory, and he continued P.C. Mahalanobis’s work as a leader of statistics in India.

Key points for UPSC:

• Saudi officials are in Yemen’s capital to hold talks with Houthi rebels in an effort to find a settlement to Yemen’s nine-year conflict.
• The talks are part of international efforts led by Oman to settle the conflict that began in 2014 when the Houthis seized Sanaa and much of the country’s north, ousting the internationally recognised government.
• Saudi Arabia and the Houthis reached a draft deal last month to revive a ceasefire that expired in October.
• The conflict has turned into a regional proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Source: The Hindu Epaper

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