Whatsapp 93125-11015 For Details
Violation of existing agreements has eroded the entire basis of bilateral relations and the development of India-China ties is premised on the prevalence of peace and tranquillity at the borders, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh told his Chinese counterpart General Li Shangfu.
This is the first high-level military visit from China since the start of the Ladakh Standoff in April 2020.
Just five days before the bilateral, the two countries held the 18th round of Corps Commander talks as part of the continuing dialogue to resolve the standoff which remained inconclusive in which both sides agreed that restoring peace along the border areas would “enable progress” in recently strained relations.
The two Ministers had frank discussions about the developments in the India-China border areas as well as bilateral relations,” a Defence Ministry statement said after the bilateral talks.
He reiterated that violation of existing agreements has eroded the entire basis of bilateral relations and disengagement at the border will logically be followed with de-escalation.”
All issues at LAC need to be resolved in accordance with existing bilateral agreements and commitments, Mr. Singh further stated.
Defence sources said that Mr. Singh categorically stated that military cooperation between the two countries can progress “only” if peace and tranquility is established at the border.
He said after disengagement, there should be movement towards de-escalation and expressed hope for positive response. India wants to improve relations with China but it can happen only after peace and tranquility are restored at the border.
The Chinese Minister and State Counsellor is in New Delhi to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Defence Ministers’ meeting scheduled on April 28.
Defence Ministers of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan are set to participate in the SCO meeting. India has also invited Belarus and Iran, currently observers in SCO, for the meeting.
The Defence Minister of Pakistan would be participating virtually. The Ministers will discuss matters related to regional peace and security, counter-terrorism efforts within SCO and effective multilateralism, the Defence Ministry stated.
India became a full member of SCO grouping in 2017. India has ancient civilizational, cultural and spiritual ties with the SCO member countries, the Ministry said in a statement adding that India considers SCO as an “important regional group to promote multilateral, political, security, economic and people-to-people interactions in the region.”
Editorial
Mindless violence (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
Less than two years ago, the Union Home Minister Amit Shah had told leaders and representatives of various States that the influence of the Maoists had reduced from 96 districts in 10 States in 2010 to just 41 by late 2021.
Close observers of the Maoist insurgency had warned that despite the Maoists’ decline, they were still active in South Bastar, the Andhra-Odisha border or in some districts in Jharkhand.
The killing of a District Reserve Guard team of the Chhattisgarh police in a powerful IED blast followed by gunfire is reflective of the threat still posed by Maoists in the south Bastar region.
The fact that these 10 personnel were returning from a counter-insurgency operation that they had conducted after a tip-off indicates that the Maoist attacks could have been a trap and points to a possible intelligence failure.
With the Maoists known to ramp up attacks on security forces before the onset of the monsoon season, the killings suggest a failure in anticipating such an attack. It is incumbent upon the government to investigate the incident, plug security loopholes, find out the Maoist cadre responsible for the attack and to bring them to justice.
But it is a task that is easier said than done as this is tough terrain in a region which could be the last stronghold of the Maoists.
The inability of the Maoists to graduate beyond a violent guerrilla-based movement that utilises the remote and inaccessible forested terrain of central India, and home to tribal communities, is largely because of their incoherent and outdated ideology that has found few takers even among the most marginalised of communities.
Diligent security actions have certainly curbed their presence outside their stronghold even as the responsiveness and penetration of the Indian state into areas where governmental sway was hitherto absent, has had a mitigatory effect.
Yet, it is not just the terrain and topography that have acted as the obstacles in defeating the Maoists in south Bastar. The alienation of a section of tribals caught in the crossfire between security forces and the Maoists has allowed the Maoists to tap into discontent and to retain a presence in the area.
In the years of counter-insurgency, hard-edged strategies of creating wedges among the tribal population to defeat the Maoists have been counter-productive.
The government must continue to try to win the support and confidence of the tribal people of south Bastar as that is the surest way of defeating the Maoist movement.
Any military action that is hastily put together for retribution and which could target innocent tribals will only exacerbate the problem.
Opinion
Should India consider phasing out nuclear power? (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Germany has shut down the last of its nuclear power plants; France, the nuclear powerhouse of the world, is struggling to replenish its stock of ageing reactors.
With solar and wind power becoming more popular globally, there are questions on whether nuclear power, with its attendant concerns on cost and safety, remains a relevant option for a future that is fossil-free, particularly in India.
In a conversation moderated by Jacob Koshy, R. Srikanth and Rahul Tongia discuss whether nuclear energy should be phased out. Edited excerpts:
A lot has happened in the last two years. Particularly after the Ukraine war, nuclear power is seeing a renaissance, even in Europe and the U.S. China has anyway been surging ahead on nuclear power.
South Korea’s new president has changed the energy policy and committed to increasing the share of nuclear power in the country’s energy mix to 30% by 2030. Japan, which should have completely shut down reactors after the Fukushima (accident), is restarting them — 10 have been restarted following years of inspection and upgrading safety systems.
Japan had to do that because it was otherwise dependent either on expensive, imported coal or on natural gas (LNG). Beyond Germany, the U.K. has said that without scaling up nuclear power, it won’t be possible to decarbonise the electricity sector.
A lot of countries are saying that nuclear would be good to have in the mix because it is firm, dispatchable power, while wind and solar are intermittent or variable. (Firm power is power that can be sent to the electric grid to be supplied whenever needed.) And what do you do if you get days and days of no-wind spells? Some people say batteries will be the answer. But batteries are very expensive and have an environmental impact. There is no free lunch.
Resistance to nuclear energy is also driven by fears about safety, nuclear proliferation, or some other concern. Some of those remain, but a lot has been diminished, partly post-Ukraine but also because the nuclear industry is moving towards ‘passive safety’ designs (for nuclear reactors). Older designs required active cooling pumps, but you can now have systems which, even if the power fails, will gradually and gracefully control temperature, waste-heat and things like that.
The worst sort of accident in history, Chernobyl, was a design that will never get repeated again. So, these (passive safety designs) are standard, including at Kudankulam. Is anything fail-safe? No, but then you have to put it in context — there are coal mine disasters, transport disasters, local air pollution.
Another challenge is cost. And that is an area where nuclear has yet to fully prove itself, partly because of cost overruns and partly because of other things. But now we’re looking at new designs like small modular reactors. And there is a belief that this will address the cost structure quite a bit going forward.
Text and Context
The threat of rising sea levels (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has found in a new report that the world’s sea level is rising at an unprecedented rate, portending potentially disastrous consequences for the weather, agriculture, the extant groundwater crisis, and social disparities.
The report, entitled ‘State of the Global Climate 2022’, was published last week. Along with accelerating sea-level rise, it focused on a consistent rise in global temperatures, record-breaking increases in the concentration of greenhouse gases as well as glacier loss, sustained drought-like conditions in East Africa, record rainfall in Pakistan, and unprecedented heatwaves that struck Europe and China in 2022.
A release said “droughts, floods and heatwaves affected communities on every continent and cost many billions of dollars. Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent on record and the melting of some European glaciers was, literally, off the charts.”
While the sea-level rise is one of several compounding disasters, it also merits individual attention for the unique crises it can precipitate, especially for coastal areas, the communities there that depend on life in the sea, and its ability to render the loss of land.
The rate of global mean sea-level [GSML] rise has doubled between the first decade of the satellite record and the last. Since the 1990s, scientists have been measuring sea-level rise using satellite altimeters.
These instruments send radar pulses to the sea surface and measure the time they take to get back and the change in their intensity. The higher the sea level, the faster and stronger the return signal.
Researchers are able to determine GSML by collecting this data from different points on earth and calculating the average. To calculate the rate of change in the GSML — i.e. how fast or slow the sea level is changing — we can calculate the difference in the GSML across a few years, usually a decade, and then divide the difference by the number of years. This provides an estimate of the rate of sea-level change.
According to the WMO report, the sea level has been rising in the three decades for which satellite altimeter data is available (1993-2022). But, while the rate of sea-level rise was 2.27 mm/year in 1993-2002, it shot up to 4.62 mm/year in 2013-2022.