Culture and Border management
- With a view to orienting its officers and men posted along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Tibetan culture and also preparing them to better understand the information warfare, the Army has begun a course in Tibetology in a tie-up with the Central Institute of Himalayan Cultural Studies in Arunachal Pradesh.
- The first batch of 15 participants was trained from March to May this year.
- “Understanding Tibetan traditions, cultural peculiarities, democracy and political influence and so on empowers our men and officers to understand where we are going and where we are operating.
THE HINDU
System science
- The 2021 Nobel Prize for Physics has been shared by three physicists (with one half jointly to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann) “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming” and (and the other half to Giorgio Parisi) “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales”
- Physicists had realised the limitations of human minds to understand how the world really works a century ago.
- Systems’ sciences have advanced since the seminal meeting at the Santa Fe Institute in 1987.
- Engineers design machines, applying the laws of mechanics, to produce greater outputs with lesser inputs.
- Systems Science, also referred to as Systems Research, or, simply, Systems, is an interdisciplinary field concerned with understanding systems from simple to complex in nature, society, cognition, engineering, technology and science itself.
- The field is diverse, spanning the formal, natural, social, and applied sciences.
- To systems scientists, the world can be understood as a system of systems.
- The field aims to develop interdisciplinary foundations that are applicable in a variety of areas, such as psychology, biology, medicine, communication, business management, technology, computer science, engineering, and social sciences.
- Themes commonly stressed in system science are (a) holistic view, (b) interaction between a system and its embedding environment, and (c) complex (often subtle) trajectories of dynamic behaviour that sometimes are stable (and thus reinforcing), while at various ‘boundary conditions’ can become wildly unstable (and thus destructive).
- Concerns about Earth-scale biosphere/geosphere dynamics is an example of the nature of problems to which systems science seeks to contribute meaningful insights.
THE HINDU
Monsoon and disaster
- The Indian monsoon is an invaluable resource that sustains hundreds of millions of people, but variations in its patterns and intensity pose a rising challenge.
- Kerala, which hosts a vast stretch of the Western Ghats, is having to contend with these changes with almost no respite between severe spells.
- The recurrent bursts show that anomalies in precipitation over the State, spectacularly demonstrated by the inundation of idyllic towns in 2018 and by mudslides that killed many a year later, require a comprehensive adaptation plan.
- This year’s torrential rain in the State, which has killed at least 35 people so far, is causing alarm as large reservoirs in mountainous reaches start filling up fast, while the Northeast monsoon lies ahead.
- The Government has responded by issuing alerts for several dams, including Idukki, and put in place plans to release water to avoid a repeat of the flooding witnessed three years ago
- Nurturing the health of rivers and keeping them free of encroachments, protecting the integrity of mountain slopes by ending mining, deforestation and incompatible construction hold the key.
- The ecological imperative should be clear to Kerala with successive years of devastation, echoing the warnings in the Madhav Gadgil committee report on the Western Ghats.
- Land may be an extremely scarce resource, but expanding extractive economic activity to montane forests is certain to cause incalculable losses.
- One estimate by researchers in 2017 put quarrying area in Kerala at over 7,157 hectares, much of it in central districts that were hit later by mudslides.
- It should be evident to governments that it is unconscionable to allow the pursuit of short-term profits at the cost of helpless communities.
- A more benign development policy should treat nature as an asset, and not an impediment. Accurately mapped hazard zones should inform all decisions.
- There is a similar threat from extreme weather, breaking glaciers and cloudbursts to Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.
- Several States face climate change impacts and extreme weather, and the response must be to strengthen natural defences.
THE HINDU
Shadow government
- The shadow government (crypto racy, secret government, or invisible government) is a family of conspiracy theories based on the notion that real and actual political power resides not with publicly elected representatives but with private individuals who are exercising power behind the scenes, beyond the scrutiny of democratic institutions.
- According to this belief, the official elected government is subservient to the shadow government, which is the true executive power.
THE HINDU
NLM and livestock breeding
- Livestock breeding in India has been largely unorganized because of which there have been gaps in forward and backward integration across the value chain.
- Such a scenario impacts the quality of livestock that is produced and in turn negatively impacts the return on investment for livestock farmers. Approximately 200 million Indians are involved in livestock farming, including around 100 million dairy farmers.
- Roughly 80% bovines in the country are low on productivity and are reared by small and marginal farmers.
- To enhance the productivity of cattle, the Rastriya Gokul Mission was initiated in 2014 with a focus on the genetic upgradation of the bovine population through widespread initiatives on artificial insemination, sex-sorted semen, and in vitro fertilization
- The revised version of the Rashtriya Gokul Mission and National Livestock Mission (NLM) proposes to bring focus on entrepreneurship development and breed improvement in cattle, buffalo, poultry, sheep, goat, and piggery by providing incentives to individual entrepreneurs, farmer producer organisations, farmer cooperatives, joint liability groups, self-help groups, Section 8 companies for entrepreneurship development and State governments for breed improvement infrastructure.
- The breed multiplication farm component of the Rashtriya Gokul Mission is going to provide for capital subsidy up to ₹200 lakh for setting up breeding farm with at least 200 milch cows/ buffalo using latest breeding technology.
- The grassroots initiatives in this sphere will be further amplified by web applications like e-Gopala that provide real-time information to livestock farmers on the availability of disease-free germplasm in relevant centres, veterinary care, etc.
- The poultry entrepreneurship programme of the NLM will provide for capital subsidy up to ₹25 lakh for setting up of a parent farm with a capacity to rear 1,000 chicks
- In the context of sheep and goat entrepreneurship, there is a provision of capital subsidy of 50% up to 50 lakh.
- For piggery, the NLM will provide 50% capital subsidy of up to ₹30 lakh. Each entrepreneur will be aided with establishment of breeder farms with 100 sows and 10 boars, expected to produce 2,400 piglets in a year
- The revised scheme of NLM coupled with the Rashtriya Gokul Mission and the Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund has the potential to dramatically enhance the productivity and traceability standards of our livestock.
THE HINDU
Judiciary as super legislature
- A “distressed” government has taken a leaf from former United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech to indicate that the judiciary ought not to act as a “super-legislature” by entertaining a challenge to the Tribunal Reforms Act by Rajya Sabha member Jairam Ramesh.
- The Union Government, in an affidavit in the Supreme Court, said it was “confused” why the judiciary thinks that the law made by Parliament and implemented by the executive is an attack on judicial independence.
- Some of the provisions of the Act under challenge include the reduction of the tenure of chairpersons and members of key tribunals from five years to four.
- The Act mandates their minimum age for appointment be 50 years.
- The new law said the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), headed by the Prime Minister, may “preferably” make the appointment within three months of the recommendation by the Search-cum-Selection Committee (SCS
- The government said it was the “exclusive right” of Parliament and the executive to frame policy and execute it.
- The affidavit said it is significant that the separation of powers entrusts to Parliament and the executive the exclusive jurisdiction to decide as to what would be the best policy.
THE HINDU