Indus treaty notice to Pak

Why in News?

New DelhiI has issued a notice to Islamabad seeking modification of the more than six decade old Indus Waters Treaty that governs the sharing of waters of six rivers in the Indus system between the two countries.

Key Highlights

• Notice follows Pakistan’s continued “intransigence” in implementing the treaty, by raising repeated objections to the construction of hydel project on the Indian side.
• Commissioner for Indus Waters, gives Pakistan 90 days to consider entering into intergovernmental negotiations to rectify the material breach of the treaty.
• Notice has invoked Article XII (3) of the treaty which says:“The Provisions Of this Treaty may from time to time be modified by a duly ratified treaty concluded for that purpose between the two Governments.”

Indus Waters Treaty

• The Indus system comprises the main Indus River, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. The basin is mainly shared by India and Pakistan with a small share for China and Afghanistan.
• Under the treaty signed between India and Pakistan in 1960, all the waters of three rivers, namely Ravi,Sutlej and Beas ( Eastern Rivers) were allocated to India for exclusive use.
• While, the waters of Western rivers – Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab were allocated to Pakistan except for specified domestic , non-consumptive and agricultural use permitted to India as provided in the Treaty.
• India has also been given the right to generate hydroelectricity through run of the river(RoR) projects on the Western Rivers which, subject to specific criteria for design and operation, is unrestricted.

India’s hydroelectric projects

Reason behind serving Notice by India

• It appears to be a fallout of the long standing dispute over two hydroelectric power projects thatIndia is building one on the Kishanganga river, a tributary of the Jhelum, and the other on the Chenab.
• Pakistan has objected to these projects, and dispute resolution mechanisms under the treaty have been invoked multiple times but a resolution has not been reached.

World Bank as a Mediator

• In August 2016,Pakistan approached the World Bank, which had brokered the 1960 treaty, seeking the constitution of aCourt of Arbitration under the relevant dispute redressal provisions.
• India moved a separate application asking for the appointment of a neutral expert,which is a lower level of dispute resolution provided in the treaty.

India’s reaction on Mediator role of World Bank

• India argued that Pakistan’s request for a Court of Arbitration violated thegraded mechanism of dispute resolution in the treaty

Condition of Trigger out from Treaty

• Pakistan-backed terrorist attack in Uri in September 2016 prompted calls within India to walk out of the Indus Waters Treaty, which allots a significantly bigger share of the six river waters to Pakistan.
• The Prime Minister famously said that blood and water could not flow together, and India suspended routine bi-annualtalks between the Indus Commissioners.
• The World Bank, the third party to the treaty and the acknowledged arbiter of disputes was, meanwhile,faced with a unique situation having received two separate requests for the same dispute.
• It declared a ‘pause’ to let India and Pakistan explore alternative routes of dispute resolution.

Resume of Meetings

• Regular meetings of Indus Waters Commissioners resumed in 2017, and India tried to use these to find mutually agreeable solutions.
• Pakistan,however, refused to discuss these issues, sources said. At Pakistan’s continued insistence, the World Bank in March last year initiated actions on the requests of both India and Pakistan.
• In October, it named Michel Linoas the neutral expert and Prof Sean Murphy as chairman of the Court of Arbitration. “They will carry out their duties in their individual capacity as subject matter experts and independently of any other appointment they currently hold,” the World Bank said.

India’s notice and implications

• ArticleXII(3)of theTreaty that India has invoked is not a dispute resolution mechanism. It is in effect a provision to amend the treaty.
• But an amendment or modification can happen only through a “duly ratified Treaty concluded for that purpose between the two governments”.
• Pakistan is under no obligation to agree to India’s proposal.
• As of now, it is not clear what happens if Pakistan does not respond to India’s notice within 90 days.
• India has not spelled out what it wants modified in the treaty
• Since the Uri attack, there has been a growing demand in India to use the Indus Waters Treaty as a strategic tool, consideringthatIndiahasthenaturaladvantagebeing the upper riparian state.
• FollowingtheUriattack,India had established a high-level task force to exploit the full potential of the treaty.
• Accordingly,India has been working to start several big and small hydroelectric projects that had either been stalled or were in the planning stages.

GS PAPER II NEWS

Irula community

Why in News?

Two snake catching experts from the Irula community Vadivel Gopal and Masi Sadaiyan were chosen to be honored with the Padma Shri awards.

Key Highlights

• Irula community, the second largest of the 36 tribal communities in Tamil Nadu. They are traditional healers, snake and rat catchers, but now primarily migrate to different places to work in brick kilns, rice mills, etc.
• Irulas also continue to suffer the stigma of criminality due to the Habitual Offenders Act, 1952, which replaced the colonial Criminal Tribes Act, 1871.
• Study in 2018 on the rate of the formal distribution of rights claims under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, commonly known as the Forest Rights Act, found that no title rights were issued in Tamil Nadu because of a ban on the issuance of titles by the High Court till early 2016. The ban was stayed only after the intervention of the Supreme Court.

Creation of Scheduled Areas

• The Fifth Schedule had been also termed by the Mungekar Committee in 2009 for tribal development as a “Constitution within Constitution”.
• It allows for the creation of Scheduled Areas by the President of India.
• There are no criteria mentioned regarding the creation of Scheduled Areas, it has become the norm to use four factors, following the Dhebar Commission (1960­61), for the creation of these areas: preponderance of the tribes in the population; compact and reasonable size; underdeveloped nature of the area; and marked disparity in the economic standards of the people.

Census of ST

• According to the 2011 Census, with a 1.1% ST population in Tamil Nadu, Community Development (CD) blocks like Kalrayan hills in Viluppuram district, Kolli Hills in Namakkal district, Yercaud in Salem district and Jawadhu Hills in Tiruvannamalai district have a ST population of 80%, 96%, 67% and 91%, respectively.
• The literacy rate in the four CD blocks range between 44% and 62%, whereas the overall literacy rate in Tamil Nadu as per the Census was around 80%.
• The proportion of non­agricultural main workers, an important marker of urbanisation, is less than 10% in three out of the four CD blocks, whereas it is 60% in Tamil Nadu overall.
• The comparative economic backwardness of the STs living in Tamil Nadu is evident from the fact that as per the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) in 2015­16, only 55%, 65% and 37% of ST households compared to 75%, 78% and 61% of all the households in Tamil Nadu had access to clean fuel, concrete houses and sanitation facilities, respectively.
• The primary survey conducted by the Madras Institute of Development Studies in 2014­15 also revealed that the average size of agricultural land among all landowning sample tribal households in Tamil Nadu was a mere 1.42 acres with a landlessness of 52%. The landlessness among the Irula and Paniyan communities was 89% and 68%, respectively.

 

Current Status

• Till now, areas with more than 50% ST population had been declared Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP) areas in Tamil Nadu.
• With the enforcement of the Fifth Schedule, not only are Panchayati Raj Institutions reserved for STs under the Panchayat (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, but three kinds of autonomy are made available to the STs through the gram sabhas: developmental autonomy pertaining to land alienation, land acquisition, tribal sub­plan, social sector institutions, etc.
• Autonomy over the resolution of disputes as per tribal laws and customs; and autonomy over the ownership and management of natural resources.

 

Need to be reconfigured

• Compact tribal areas of reasonable size, constituting villages with no less than 50% tribal population, can be identified in CD blocks with a significant tribal population to demarcate new administrative areas, which can then be brought under the purview of the Fifth Schedule by declaring them Scheduled Areas.
• Apart from the Scheduled Areas, villages where STs are in minority but still in sizeable numbers should be brought under already existing ITDP areas, which are being governed in Tamil Nadu with the advice of the Tribes Advisory Council (TAC).
• The TAC is an advisory body and the ­fourth of its members must be from ST communities.
• The Tamil Nadu Government needs to show political will and set aside its electoral interest to create a self­-governed path for tribal development. Of course, these measures alone are not the panacea to all tribal problems.
• It should be complemented with clear policies and a plan for tribal development reflected in the yearly Tribal Sub­Plan (TSP).
• The formulation of this plan must include representatives of different tribes in Tamil Nadu. In this context, the promulgation of the Tamil Nadu State Commission for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act, 2021, is a step in the right direction.

GS PAPER – II

Holocaust education

Why in News?

International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27), recently celebrated for those who became the victims of the unprecedented and systematic killings.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

• Every year around 27 January, UNESCO pays tribute to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and reaffirms its unwavering commitment to counter antisemitism, racism, and other forms of intolerance that may lead to group-targeted violence.
• The date marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops on 27 January 1945.
• It was officially proclaimed, in November 2005, International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust by the United Nations General Assembly.

Theme

• The theme of International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2023 is “Ordinary People”. This theme aims to point out the fact that it was “ordinary people” who let the mass killings of Jews happen in Nazi Germany.
• The theme aims to educate people on how remaining silent as an ordinary observer in the wake of crime happening around you makes you as guilty as the actual murderers.

The need to counter disruptive behaviours

• Violence and hatred are learned behaviors that disrupt the core humanitarian principles of peaceful co existence and acceptance of differences.
• The Holocaust stands as a jarring example of the deadly consequences of hate crimes and antisemitism that made their way from the fringes to the mainstream.
• With antisemitism as the case in point, this is particularly dangerous when used for power­related purposes, or to appease anxieties during times of crisis and uncertainty.
• Ideologies of hate can permeate the social fabric as human frailty gets exploited.
• Unfortunately, the world is still struggling with inequality, intolerance, and injustice in many places.
• As evidence suggests, a host of grave economic, cultural, religious and ethnic issues continue to provoke division, hate crimes, and violence in many parts of the globe.
• There has been a dramatic increase in the number of antisemitic incidents against Jews all around the world.
• Most of these were incidents of harassment but hate speech on social media, assaults and antisemitic vandalism have also spiked in recent years.
• We must counter these phenomena, to avoid wider societal tension and conflict.

A path of remembrance

• International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, recall the systematic murder of six million Jews.
• The Shoah or the Holocaust, in which Jews were systematically targeted solely for being born Jewish, stands out as a defining moment in history.
• Education about the Holocaust helps us understand the processes and factors that lead to the eradication of human rights and democratic values, and identify circumstances that can lead to the increase in hate speech, violence, and even mass atrocities.
• It is our duty to remember the past in order to understand that the relevance and impact of the Holocaust transcend time and history.
• This path of remembrance is a moral imperative for many countries in Europe, and around the world.

Dehumanisation and discrimination

• Instead of erasing the past, we must educate people to ensure that there is no residue of this deep­rooted history of discrimination and build up resilience to ideologies of hate and a cognisance of the effects.
• Drawing from the concept of ‘reparative futures’, we must find ways to talk about the past by imbuing the responsibility to ‘never forget’ and developing competencies to fulfil the promise of ‘never again’ among the youth.

Initiatives

• Important UNESCO initiatives such as the International Program on Holocaust and Genocide Education (IPHGE) are a step in the direction of fostering reparative justice.
• By teaching the youth to view this catastrophe as a watershed moment in history with the possibility of its recurrence in other shapes and forms elsewhere, we can equip them with fundamental skills, values, and dispositions to address future challenges, such as critical thinking, empathy, tolerance, and respect for human rights.

For teachers and youth

• Coming to terms with this past is equally important for countries that are seemingly unaffected by Nazism and antisemitism.
• It is unsurprising that for the academic community in India, the Holocaust remains a geographically and emotionally distant historical event.
• At a time when antisemitism and other forms of discrimination, Holocaust denial, and distortion are on the rise globally, we must provide the youth with opportunities to engage with this history and interrogate the injustices of the past to create a just present.
• Teachers need to be equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to develop and deliver lessons about the history of the Holocaust that resonate with their students in today’s world.
• Education suffused with learnings from the past can demonstrate, as Jean­Paul Sartre very rightly said, that individual choices or the lack thereof can indeed make a difference.

GS PAPER III NEWS

India’s first Solar Mission

Why in News?

The Indian Institute of Astrophysics handed over the primary payload of the country’s first mission to sun to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for integration with the other payloads on board the satellite.

About Aditya-L1

• The mission called Aditya-L1 will observe the sun from a vantage point 1.5 million kilometers from the earth.
• Aditya L1 will be ISRO’s second space-based astronomy project, following the launch of AstroSat in 2015.
• Aditya 1 has been renamed Aditya-L1. The Aditya 1 was designed to solely observe the solar corona.
• The satellite will be carried by India’s trusted rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.
• To get an unobstructed, continuous view of the sun, the satellite will travel to the L1 or Lagrange point between the sun and the earth.

What is Lagrange point 1? Lagrange Points are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two-body system (such as the Sun and the Earth) generate enhanced zones of attraction and repulsion. They are named after the Italian-French mathematician Josephy-Louis Lagrange. The L1 point is approximately 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, or one-hundredth of the way to the Sun. L1 denotes Lagrangian/Lagrange Point 1, one of five places in the Earth-Sun system’s orbital plane. These can be employed by spacecraft to minimise the amount of fuel required to stay in orbit. A satellite in halo orbit around the Lagrangian point 1 (L1) has the significant benefit of continually observing the Sun with no occultation/ eclipses. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Satellite (SOHO) is housed at the L1 point, which is part of an international collaboration project between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Key Highlights

• Launch Vehicle: Aditya L1 will be launched with 7 payloads (instruments) aboard the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) XL.
• Objective: Aditya L1 will examine the Sun’s corona (visible and near-infrared rays), photosphere (soft and hard X-rays), chromosphere (Ultra Violet), solar emissions, solar winds and flares, and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), as well as perform round-the-clock photography of the Sun.
• Visible Emission Line Coronograph (VELC): The payload called ‘Visible Emission Line Coronograph’ (VELC) will be the main payload among seven designed to study various aspects of the sun like its atmosphere, solar wind acceleration and the origin of coronal mass ejection.

Importance of the mission

• Every planet, including Earth and the exoplanets outside the Solar System, is regulated by its parent star, which in our case is the Sun. The weather and atmosphere of the Sun influence the weather of the whole system. As a result, it is critical to study the Sun.
• Variation in the Solar Weather System: Variations in this weather can cause satellites’ orbits to shift or their lifetimes to be cut short, interfere with or damage onboard electronics, and cause power outages and other disruptions on Earth.
• Understanding space events requires knowledge of solar occurrences.
• Continuous sun observations are required to learn about, track, and anticipate the impact of Earth-directed storms.
• Many of the instruments and their components for this mission are being built in the nation for the first time.

Challenges

• The Sun’s distance from Earth (approximately 15 crore kms on average, compared to the only 3.84 lakh kms to the Moon). This enormous distance presents a scientific problem.
• Due to the hazards involved, payloads in previous ISRO missions were largely remained stationary in space; however, Aditya L1 will include some moving components, increasing the possibility of collision.
• Other concerns include extremely high temperatures and radiation in the solar atmosphere. Aditya L1 will, however, stay considerably farther away, and the heat is not likely to be a serious issue for the instruments on board.

 

 

GS PAPER III NEWS

Japan to flush Fukushima wastewater

Why in News?

Japan is expected to start flushing 1.25 million tonnes of wastewater from the embattled Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean this year, as part of a $76­billion project to decommission the facility.

Why is the water a problem?

• In March 2011, after an earthquake of 9 magnitude, a tsunami flooded the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma and damaged its diesel generators.
• The loss of power suspended coolant supply to reactors at the facility , and the tsunami also disabled backup systems.
• Radioactive materials leaked from reactor pressure vessels, exploded in the facility’s upper levels, and exposed themselves to the ambient air, water, soil, and local population.
• Winds also carried radioactive material thrown up into the air into the Pacific.
• Since then, the power plant and its surrounding land have been uninhabitable.
• The water that the Japanese government wants to flush from the plant was used to cool the reactors, rainwater and groundwater.
• It contains radioactive isotopes from the damaged reactors and in itself is radioactive.
• Japan will release this water into the Pacific Ocean over the next 30 years.

Can the water be treated?

• The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which operates the Fukushima facility, has said that it has treated the water to remove most radioactive isotopes.
• Former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said in 2021 that the water will be “far above safety standards”.
• His government required the water to have 1/40th as much tritium as the permitted limit. Officials have defended the plan saying the TEPCO is running out of room for the water tanks and that nuclear plants around the world regularly release water containing trace amounts of radionuclides into large water bodies.
• There is no known threshold below which radiation can be considered safe.
• Any discharge of radioactive materials will increase the risk of cancer and other known health impacts to those who are exposed

What if the water is released in a trickle?

• Smaller discharges will obviously help with the extent of the risk if you measure expected numbers of cancers that might result but it wouldn’t necessarily affect the impact on the reputations of fisherfolk in the region,”.
• Experts expect the affected water to poison the fish; “anyone who knows this is happening will, or should, avoid eating fish caught in the vicinity of the discharge point”.
• South Korea banned seafood imported from around Fukushima, to Japan’s displeasure, from 2013.
• TEPCO has not removed tritium from the water because this is very difficult to do so.
  • Tritium is “easily absorbed by the bodies of living creatures” and “rapidly distributed… via blood,” In 2018, reported that there were other radionuclides in the water that TEPCO’s treatment procedure could not entirely remove.
• These include isotopes of ruthenium and plutonium, which could persist for longer in the bodies of marine creatures and on the seafloor.

What are Japan’s other options?

• There is always a question that why the Japanese government can’t store the water for longer and then discharge it.
• This is because tritium’s half­life the time it takes for its quantity to be halved through radioactive decay is 12­13 years.
• The quantity of any other radioactive isotopes present in the water will also decrease in this time (each isotope has its own half­life).
• At the time of discharge, the water could be less radioactive.
• The Japanese government has also declared land around the Fukushima facility to be uninhabitable.
• The thousand or so tanks to hold the water, each with a capacity of 1,000 metre cube, can be situated here.
• But in 2020, authorities determined that flushing the water would be the way forward, over storage and vapourisation.
• After visiting Fukushima in February 2020, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials also said the discharge would be “technically feasible and would allow the timeline objective to be achieved”.

Will the Pacific Ocean be affected?

• There are concerns about the water body as well as the region.
• China, South Korea and Taiwan have expressed concerns over Japan’s plan.
• A representative of the Pacific Islands Forum, the bloc of Oceania countries including Australia, has called it “simply inconceivable” based on their experience with “nuclear contamination”. Researchers have also called for more studies to understand the precise composition of each tank before it is flushed and for more details about the TEPCO’s water treatment process.
• The National Institute of Marine Laboratories, a nonprofit group of more than a hundred research centres across the United States, published a position paper in December 2022 excoriating the plan:
• The supporting data provided by the TEPCO and the Japanese Government are insufficient and, in some cases, incorrect, with flaws in sampling protocols, statistical design, sample analyses, and assumptions”.
• Joe Biden government in the U.S. voiced support for Japan’s plan to discharge the water.

How will the rest of the world be affected?

• The Fukushima Daiichi accident triggered an avalanche of public opposition to nuclear power worldwide, especially in Europe, diminishing its contribution to the clean energy power generation mix.
• In Japan itself, the accident reduced nuclear power’s contribution to electricity generation from 30% before 2011 to 5% in 2022.
• Both India and China doubled down on their domestic commitments.
• The then UPA Prime Minister called nuclear energy an “essential option” for India’s climate action and energy security.
• His successor, NDA Prime Minister, has clarified that India plans to expand its nuclear power programme with Russia’s help.
• Then again, the accident also revived concerns about some existing nuclear power plants, especially the Department of Atomic Energy’s Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) facility in Tamil Nadu.
• In October 2012, police arrested nearly 2,000 protests after they attempted to march to the Secretariat in Chennai against the KKNPP, in response to the Fukushima accident and what they said were parallels between the two sites.
• Japan is also concerned about its reputation.
• An official committee including scientists, consumers’ representatives and Ministry officials wrote in a 2020 report: “It is important to dispose of the… treated water as part of the decommissioning work… taking into account the reputational impact when the disposal method for the… treated water is examined.”