Whatsapp 93125-11015 For Details
Despite production of coal reaching a record this year, global demand is expected to decline by 2026, a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) says.
While the decline is expected to be due to a shift towards renewable energy and plateauing demand in China, India will remain the “driving force” for the fuel until that year.
The report, released on December 15, sees the global demand for coal rising by 1.4% in 2023, surpassing 8.5 billion tonnes for the first time. This increase, however, masks stark differences among regions.
While demand in the European Union and United States is expected to drop by 20% each, it is expected to rise by 8% in India and 5% in China in 2023 due to demand for electricity and diminished generation of hydroelectric power.
Editorial
An uphill struggle to grow the Forest Rights Act (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
On December 18, 2006, the Rajya Sabha endorsed the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, enacted by the Lok Sabha.
This Act, commonly known as the Forest Rights Act, or FRA, marks a watershed in India’s socio-environmental legislation, as it attempts to put an end to the long-drawn conflict over supposed ‘forest encroachments’. Simultaneously, it seeks to create a much more democratic, bottom-up forest governance.
Unfortunately, the implementation of the FRA has been plagued by political opportunism, forester resistance and bureaucratic apathy, and the discourse around it by deliberate canards and misconceptions.
Hence, 17 years after it was enacted, the FRA has barely begun to deliver on its promise of freeing forest-dwellers from historic injustices and democratising forest governance. To understand why this is so, we must first delve into what it sought to do and how.
The stormy Red Sea, the complexities of global events (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
At the end of October, after the audacious terror attack by Hamas against Israel, which has upended a renewed sense of regional stability, the Yemen-based and Iran-aligned Houthi militia announced that it would join the war to support the people of Gaza.
This brought the critical waterways of the Red Sea, which connects the Suez Canal, into the middle of the conflict. The Suez by itself carries nearly 15% of all global trade between the West and the East.
In mid-November, the Houthis released a video of armed men in a helicopter raiding a cargo vessel that reportedly had Israeli links, which was travelling through the Red Sea towards India.
While the Strait of Hormuz on the other side of the region, bordering Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Qatar, is seen as a major geopolitical chokepoint, the Red Sea is increasingly being seen as an alternative.
Saudi Arabia’s new futuristic city of Neom, a pet project of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman which represents the rapidly changing face of the kingdom, is based off the coast of the Red Sea from where vast amounts of oil are also shipped.
Opinion
One person, one vote, one value (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
Political equality in liberal democracies is not only about equality of opportunity to participate in the political decision-making process, but also about carrying a vote value that is equal to that of other members of the community.
According to the legal scholar Pamela S. Karlan, the right to vote can be diluted quantitatively and qualitatively by redrawing the boundaries of the constituency in an electoral system.
Quantitative dilution happens when votes receive unequal weight due to huge deviations in the population among the constituencies.
Qualitative dilution happens when a voter’s chance of electing a representative of their choice is reduced due to gerrymandering (redrawing of boundaries to favour a candidate/party). Thus, delimitation of constituencies plays a major role in strengthening or weakening democracy.
Text & Context
On selecting Election Commissioners (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
On December 12, the Rajya Sabha passed The Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Office and Terms of Office) Bill, 2023.
It is likely to be enacted into a law after being passed by the Lok Sabha in the current winter session. It provides for the procedure for appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and the other two Election Commissioners (ECs).
Article 324 provides for the composition of the Election Commission of India (ECI). It consists of the CEC and two other ECs.
The Constitution provides that the appointment of the CEC and EC shall, subject to the provisions of any law made by Parliament, be made by the President.
While the existing parliamentary law provides for their conditions of service, it is silent with respect to appointments.
The appointments till date are made by the President, that is the Central Government and there is no mechanism for ensuring independence during the appointment process.
News
Bhutan to have massive green city along Assam border (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Bhutan plans to build a massive “international city” in an area of over 1,000 sq. km on its border with Assam, Bhutanese King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck announced to applause from a packed audience of 30,000 at the Changlimathang stadium in Thimpu, pitching the project as an “economic corridor connecting South Asia with Southeast Asia via India’s northeastern States”.
“Around two billion people live in South Asia,” King Jigme Wangchuck said, thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Government of India for agreeing to build the first India-Bhutan railway line to Gelephu, which will also connect with roadways and border-trading and crossing points into Assam and West Bengal, and over time, he said, give Bhutan access to Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Singapore.
Indigenously built Unit-4 at Kakrapar attains criticality (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The fourth unit of the Kakrapar Atomic Power Project (KAPP) in Gujarat started controlled fission chain reaction and thus became critical at 1.17 a.m. on Sunday. Kakrapar is about 80 km from Surat.
The project’s units with a capacity of 700 MWe each are the largest indigenous nuclear power reactors to be built by Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL), a public sector undertaking of the Department of Atomic Energy.
Unit-3 of the KAPP started generating commercial electricity from August 30. These reactors are pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs), which use natural uranium as fuel and heavy water as coolant and moderator.
The NPCIL is already operating indigenous PHWRs with 220-MWe and 540-MWe capacity at other facilities. The reactor’s first criticality was ascertained after it met all the conditions set out by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), India’s nuclear safety watchdog.
SCs were never counted in Andaman, now a House committee sits up and takes notice (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
Nearly 20 years after the never-accounted-for Dalit population of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands was clubbed with the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category by the Union Territory administration, and a decade after the Centre did the same, a parliamentary committee has called for a special panel to evaluate the issues faced by the Scheduled Castes in particular, and ensure their representation in services on the islands.
The Parliamentary Committee on Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, headed by BJP MP Kirit Premjibhai Solanki, has noted that there is a “significant presence of Scheduled Castes in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands”, also suggesting that they should be considered for welfare schemes and service matters.
But no census has ever recorded any Scheduled Caste population on the Andaman and Nicobar (A&N) Islands and neither has the Constitution (SC) Order ever listed any community as SC on the islands — something that was flagged by the erstwhile National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (NCSCST) as far back as in 1999 as a “vital problem”.
World
Putin says ‘problems’ started with Finland after it joined NATO (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned of “problems” with neighbouring Finland after it joined NATO earlier this year, saying Moscow will create a new military district in north-west Russia in response.
Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometre border with Russia, joined NATO in April this year in the midst of Moscow’s Ukraine offensive.
They (the West) dragged Finland into NATO. Did we have any disputes with them? All disputes, including territorial ones in the mid-20th century, have long been solved.
“There were no problems there, now there will be, because we will create the Leningrad military district and concentrate a certain amount of military units there.”
The comments come as Finland again shut its border with Russia this week, accusing it of orchestrating a migrant crisis on its border. Moscow has warned of counter-measures to Helsinki’s NATO accession.
Science
The era of CRISPR therapeutics is here – what can we expect? (Page no. 20)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Imagine a future where genetic anomalies can be precisely targeted and corrected using genome editing – a giant leap from our ability to sequence or read human genomes two decades ago.
The world of medicine is currently abuzz with news of regulatory agencies’ approval for two highly anticipated CRISPR-based therapies for sickle-cell disease and thalassaemia in the U.K. and the U.S.
The approval is groundbreaking because it signals an era that could transform the lives of millions of patients and families grappling with these inherited blood disorders.
To put this in perspective, more than a million people worldwide suffer from thalassemia, of whom 100,000 depend on regular blood transfusions. Another 20 million people around the world are estimated to be suffering from sickle-cell anaemia.
The discovery of the CRISPR system was the result of almost three decades of pure academic pursuit. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) are DNA elements that Spanish researchers discovered in archaea in 1993, and named and described later in a number of bacterial genomes.