UPSC: EDITORIALS AND CURRENT AFFAIRES; TRUMP AND INDIA;FOOD SECURITY;ENERGY SECURITY;RIGHT TO DISCONNECT; SECULARISM; INS-TUSHIL

Places and worship

A special Bench of the Supreme Court of India, headed by Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna, will begin hearing on December 12 a batch of petitions that question the validity of the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991,
a law that freezes the status of places of worship in the country as on the day of its independence and bars suits that seek to alter such status.
The outcome may well decide the trajectory of communal relations and the future of secular thought in the country.
The 1991 Act does have some exemptions: it did not apply to what was then the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute, which ended in favour of the Ram temple.
Nor does it apply to monuments, sites and remains covered by the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958.
It will also not apply to any suit that has been finally settled or disposed of, any dispute that has been settled by the parties before the 1991 Act came into force, or to the conversion of any place that took place by acquiescence. The challenge has come in the backdrop of a renewed attempt through motivated litigation by some Hindu organisations and devotees to target mosques such as the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, the Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura and the Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal, among others.
Any order that strikes down or dilutes the 1991 law is likely to have a malign influence on these proceedings.
The petitions highlight the demolition of temples by invaders in the past and contend that many mosques have been built on their ruins.
The Places of Worship Act, they claim, legalises such depredations, and also violates the right of Hindus and other communities to reclaim their places of worship through legal proceedings.
It also violates the right to practise and propagate religion and manage and administer places of worship of hindus
Fortunately, there are some clearly established principles in favour of the Act. In its Ayodhya judgment, a five-member Bench observed that the law “imposes a non-derogable obligation towards enforcing our commitment to secularism”. It also called it a “legislative intervention that preserves non retrogression as an essential feature of our secular values”.
For the present, it does not seem likely that the Court will depart from the Constitution’s secular vision and Parliament’s mandate against misusing judicial fora to remedy historical wrongs.

In energy-dependent world, the issue of food security

Q.) Addressing food insecurity and energy poverty is central to achieving global stability, but tackling these issues independently is no longer sufficient. explain.

the World Bank in its latest report on climate and development warns about The intertwined crises of food and energy security are defining the trajectory of the 21st century, casting a long shadow over global stability.
Both systems are under siege —
1.food production is strained by climate change, population growth, inequality,
2. energy systems face geopolitical tensions, outdated infrastructure, and the slow transition from fossil fuels.

Yet, their interconnectedness presents an even greater challenge:
agriculture, a lifeline for humanity, is both a significant energy consumer and a contributor to climate change.
As the world teeters on the edge of multiple tipping points, can we truly address one without confronting the other?
Dependency on carbon-intensive energy Agriculture consumes nearly 70% of global freshwater resources and is responsible for over 20% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Its dependence on fossil fuels — for mechanisation, irrigation, fertilizer production, and transportation —has created a vicious cycle of environmental degradation.
This reliance also exposes food systems to energy price shocks, threatening global stability.
Rising temperatures and erratic weather patterns further disrupt agricultural output, putting the livelihoods of 2.5 billion people at risk.
Between 2020 and 2023, nearly 11.8% of the global population faced severe food insecurity, a figure projected to rise to 956 million by 2028.
Renewable energy investments reached $500 billion in 2022, but fossil fuel consumption remains robust due to short-term economic and geopolitical pressures.
Nations such as the United States, Brazil, and Guyana continue to expand oil and gas production, prioritising exports and domestic energy security.
This ongoing dependency on carbon-intensive energy exacerbates the vulnerability of global food systems, particularly in regions with limited resources.
There is a need to reimagine agriculture, with the twin crises of food and energy insecurity set to challenge global priorities access to reliable energy.
Energy poverty reveals sharp global inequities.
Low-income countries account for a small fraction of global energy demand but suffer disproportionately from supply disruptions.
Extreme weather events frequently damage energy infrastructure in regions where power grids are already unreliable.
In rural areas, energy deficits hinder agricultural productivity, leading to higher food prices and deepening poverty.
In sub-Saharan Africa, per-hectare fertilizer usage remains far below the global average, contributing to food insecurity despite $1.9 billion spent on fertilizer imports by the top 10 African importing countries in 2021 — more than double the amount in 2016.
Agriculture’s reliance on fossil fuels further highlights its vulnerability.
Natural gas, critical for fertilizer production, is both a feedstock and an energy source, with 80% of it used for ammonia synthesis and 20% powering the process.
Volatility in natural gas prices directly impacts fertilizer costs and global food prices. Geopolitical actions, such as China’s 2021 ban on phosphate fertilizer exports, disrupt agricultural supply chains.
India, which imports 60% of its diammonium phosphate (DAP) fertilizers, experienced significant delays during critical cropping seasons, exposing its vulnerability to external shocks.
Renewable energy offers a glimmer of hope, but its deployment remains uneven.
High-income countries installed 83% of new renewable capacity in 2022, leaving low-income nations reliant on outdated, carbon-intensive systems.
While solar-powered irrigation and biomass energy solutions could transform agriculture, high costs and inadequate infrastructure limit their reach.
The transition risks bypassing those who need it most.
Demands on agriculture Meanwhile, agriculture is being increasingly burdened with competing demands.
Beyond feeding a growing population, it is expected to support the global energy transition by producing biofuels.
This dual role often pits food security against energy needs, as biofuel production requires vast land and water resources.
In a world where nearly 12% of the population faces hunger, is prioritising energy over food morally defensible?
The financial costs of addressing food and energy insecurity are substantial yet achievable. The World Food Security Outlook estimates that ensuring basic caloric needs for the world’s most vulnerable populations will require $90 billion annually until 2030.
Tackling malnutrition among women and children demands an additional $11 billion per year, while transforming global food systems could cost $300 billion–$400 billion annually — just 0.5% of global GDP.
However, for low-income nations, these costs are staggering, with food insecurity expenses in some cases surpassing 95% of GDP.
The implications of inaction are dire.
Food insecurity is projected to cost the global economy trillions in lost productivity and adverse health outcomes.
Climate-induced energy disruptions threaten to destabilise entire regions, driving social unrest and mass migration.
For example, Africa’s mineral wealth, essential for renewable technologies, is often extracted without benefiting local economies, perpetuating cycles of poverty and underdevelopment.
Need for inclusivity Despite record investments in renewables, fossil fuel expansions continue unabated.
Every delay compounds the human, environmental, and economic costs, narrowing opportunities for a resilient future.

conclusion/way forward

Clean energy solutions must address structural barriers to inclusivity, ensuring that the most vulnerable communities are not left behind.
Ultimately, the twin crises of food and energy insecurity challenge global priorities.
The solutions are within reach, but they require a fundamental shift in perspective.
Agriculture must be reimagined as both a source of sustenance and a cornerstone of sustainable development.
Failure to act will create the risk of pushing millions into hunger and undermining global climate goals.
As the clock ticks, the question remains: will the world rise to meet the moment?

Indians need the right to disconnect

death of an EY employee in September, allegedly due to work pressure,
MP Shashi said that “inhumanity at the workplace must be legislated out of existence.”
A recent report by The Hindu reveals that Indian women in professional jobs, such as auditing, Information Technology, and media, work more than 55 hours a week.
The working hours vary for those who belong to the marginalised sections of society and work in the unorganised sector.
According to a study by ADP Research Institute, 49% of Indian workers said workplace stress negatively impacts their mental health.
As French politician Benoit Hamon said, “Employees physically leave the once, but they do not leave their work. They remain attached by a kind of electronic leash like a dog. The text, the messages, the emails colonise the life of the individual to the point where he or she eventually breaks down”.
Right to disconnect laws Such tragic incidents, research, and statements highlight how the right to disconnect is an important right.
It allows employees to disconnect from their employer outside of working hours.
The Labour Chamber of the French Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that an employee is under no obligation to work from home or take home files and working tools.
This decision was subsequently confirmed by the Cour de Cassation (the highest court in the French judiciary), which said, “The fact that [the employee] was not reachable on his cell phone outside working hours cannot be considered as a misconduct”.
Portugal has a Right to Disconnect law, which makes it illegal for employers to contact employees outside working hours, except in emergencies.
Similarly, according to Article 88 of the Organic Law 3/2018 on the Protection of Personal Data and Guarantee of- must recognise that the right to disconnect will increase productivity and ensure the overall growth and well-being of employees and employers
Digital Rights in Spain, “Public workers and employees shall have the right to switch off devices in order to guarantee that, outside of legal or conventionally established working hours, their time off, leave and holidays are respected, in addition to their personal and family privacy, with the aim of promoting a good work-life balance”.
This year, the Australian Parliament passed the Fair Work Legislation Amendment, which gave employees the right to disconnect from work outside of working hours.
Ireland has also recognised the right to disconnect for employees.

Where does India stand?

India does not have specific laws recognising the right to disconnect from work.
However, the Constitution, the Directive Principles of State Policy, and
various judicial pronouncements have spoken of the right to work in a conducive and healthy environment.
Article 38 of the Constitution mandates that “the State shall strive to promote the welfare of the people”.
Article 39(e) of the Directive Principles of State Policy directs the state to direct its policy towards securing the strength and health of its workers.
The Supreme Court, in Vishakha v State of Rajasthan (1997), ruled that sexual harassment at the workplace violates fundamental rights, recognised the right to dignity at the workplace, and issued guidelines to ensure that there is a safe working environment for women and gender equality.
In Ravindra Kumar Dhariwal and Ors v. Union of India (2021), the Court read Article 14 to include ideas of inclusive equality to reasonably accommodate persons with disabilities.
Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said that an employer must consider an employee’s individual differences and capabilities.
In Praveen Pradhan v. State of Uttaranchal (2012), the High Court of Uttarakhand held that “under the pretext of administrative control and discipline, a superior officer cannot be left to enjoy extreme liberty to make the intense humiliation and scolding inhumanly in front of all the subordinate staff members for a little lapse.”
Despite the clear recognition of the right to dignity at the workplace and
a direction for employers to be sensitive towards mental health concerns, and also laws that fix accountability in the case of breaching working hours, violating dignity is unfortunately common in Indian workplaces.
Prolonged working hours In 2018, MP Supriya Sule introduced a Private Member Bill in the Lok Sabha, which delineated the right to disconnect from work after working hours.
The bill included the provision of a penalty of 1% of the total renumeration of all employees to be paid by companies for noncompliance with its provisions.
However, in recent years, there has been no significant legislative effort to recognise employees’ right to disconnect from work outside working hours or to impose a duty on employers to be mindful of employee well-being and avoid overworking them.
Research by Harvard Business Review shows that working prolonged hours causes stress, coronary heart diseases, and impacts overall health.
Contrary to the widespread belief that overworked human beings bring in productivity, research by the University of Oxford in collaboration with British multinational telecoms firm BT found a conclusive link between happiness and productivity.

conclusion:-

Therefore, employers need to take into account psychological factors while dealing with employees. In its march towards becoming the third largest economy by 2030, India must recognise that the right to disconnect will increase productivity and ensure the growth and well-being of both

Frigate INS Tushilcommissioned into Indian Navy in KaliningraD

INS Tushil is designed for blue water operations across the spectrum of naval warfare in all four dimensions air, surface, underwater and electromagnetic.

It is armed with a range of advanced weapons,
INS Tushilis an upgraded Krivak III class frigate of Project 1135.6 of which, six are already in service —
three Talwar class ships, built at Baltiysky shipyard, St. Petersburg, and
three follow-on Teg class ships, built at Yantar shipyard, Kaliningrad.

collaboration developments

In October 2016, India and Russia signed a deal for four stealth frigates, two to be built in Russia and two to be constructed at Goa Shipyard Ltd. under technology transfer.
The second frigate Tamal is expected to be delivered to the Indian Navy in Russia in the first quarter of next year.
The construction saw repeated delays initially due to COVID-19 and then the war in Ukraine.
new era of cooperation by taking advantage of each other’s expertise in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, space exploration and counter-terrorism.
commissioning of the stealth guided missile frigate INS Tushil at Kaliningrad, Russia.
“Made in India content is continuously increasing in many ships including INS Tushil.
The ship is a big proof of the collaborative prowess of Russian and Indian industries.
It exemplifies India’s journey to wards technological excellence through jointmanship,
All Krivak frigates are powered by engines from Zorya Nash proekt of Ukraine.
INS Tushil, the seventh in the series, is the first of the two additional follow on ships under construction in Russia.
In October 2016, India and Russia signed a deal for four stealth frigates, two to be built in Russia and two to be constructed at Goa Shipyard Ltd. under technology transfer.
The second frigate Tamal is expected to be delivered to the Indian Navy in Russia in the first quarter of next year.
The construction saw repeated delays initially due to COVID-19 and then the war in Ukraine.

India's role in security in IOR

“Our Navy has foiled the designs of piracy, arms and drug smugglers and non state actors in various hot spots.
From the Gulf of Oman to the Gulf of Aden, from Suez to Malacca & from Australia to Madagascar, the Indian Navy is playing the essential role of a net security provider in IOR.
India, along with its friendly countries, believes in ensuring that maritime trade in the region remains safe and secure, thereby promoting unhindered trade across the sea.”
As a first responder, the Indian Navy is always pre pared to provide quick and timely humanitarian assistance and disaster relief to its friends in the region.

National Food Security Act still driven by FIgures from 2011 Census, lawyer tells SC

updated issues:-

Mr. Bhushan argued that the calculation of food grains distributed to States by the Centre under the NFSA banked on a census carried out over 13 years ago.
National Food Security Act still driven by figures from 2011 Census -Census had not been held in 2021.
It was discriminatory to provide 81 crore people subsidy while two or three more crore people under the same category are excluded. They have not done the Census since 2011... Had they done it, at least 10 crore more would have been found eligible,
Meanwhile, the pandemic had happened.
The court was hearing a suo motucase on food security, especially for migrant workers.
The case was originally based on petitions filed by activists Anjali Bharadwaj, Harsh Mander and Jagdeep Chhokar, represented by Mr. Bhushan, seeking directions to the Centre and States to ensure food security, cash transfers, and other welfare measures for distressed migrant workers during the second wave of the pandemic.
“In the last five years, since COVID, the situation of the poor in the country has worsened,” the senior lawyer submitted. Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, for the Centre, strongly objected to Mr. Bhushan’s contentions, maintaining that the NFSA had 81.35 crore eligible beneficiaries.

Antimatter idea offers scientists clue to cracking cosmic mystery

an antiparticle is a ‘partner’ of a particle type that has the same mass but opposite charge.
For example, the antielectron is the antiparticle of the electron; it has the same mass and is positively charged.
Antiparticles are an inevitable consequence of describing the world in terms of quantum mechanics and special relativity.
An antiparticle is a particle travelling backward in time.
One of the most astonishing facts about the natural world is the existence of antiparticles.
Theorised by the English physicist Paul A.M. Dirac in 1928 and
observed in cosmic rays by American physicist Carl Anderson in 1932,
antimatter.
But where is all the antimatter made of antiparticles? It is certainly scarce, or we would have discovered it a long time ago.
antiparticles are detectably numerous.
Our own bodies make one antielectron every 20 seconds from the decay of potassium-40.
Cosmic rays raining down on us supply antiprotons, antielectrons, and even antinuclei. Every proton and neutron — constituents of the nuclei that make up all the matter we can touch — is teeming with antiquarks.
But it is when we look out at the universe as a whole that antimatter’s scarcity becomes clear. All galaxies are made of matter, not antimatter.
Even in the infant universe, there had to have been a small dissimilarity between the populations of protons and antiprotons for our predictions about the outcomes of the synthesis of nuclei in the early universe and the features of the cosmic microwave background (radiation leftover from the Big Bang) to hold.
That is, for every 1.7 billion proton-antiproton pairs, there should have been an extra unpaired proton.
Presumably the universe started out with equal amounts of matter and antimatter before something happened to distort this symmetry. That’s a good thing: otherwise matter and antimatter would have mutually annihilated to •ll the universe with nothing but a fog of radiation — no raw material to make stars, planets or us.
But what spoiled the symmetry? Put differently, why is there something around us rather than nothing (but that fog)? Nobody knows for certain.
What we do know is that any theory attempting to explain it must satisfy three conditions, called the Sakharov conditions. The best current theory to explain the world, the Standard Model of particle physics, falls woefully short of meeting all of them.
At least this was the lore until the authors of an August 2024 preprint paper pointed out an interesting caveat.
They showed that one of the conditions can be satisfied by the Standard Model alone, provided some new particle species helps with the process of making matter.
An unsettling discovery Look at the world in a mirror. Does it look the same? Apples would still fall and moons would circle planets because gravity would be unchanged.
Protons and neutrons would cling to form nuclei because the strong nuclear force would be preserved.
atomic nuclei won’t undergo radioactive fission because that happens via the weak force.
And the weak force, like a vampire, vanishes in the mirror-world.
The discovery of this fact in 1957 was profoundly unsettling because it struck at cherished notions of symmetry in nature.
Aparity transformation (denoted P) — the act of swapping left and right — appeared to eliminate the weak force.
But soon physicists found that if they replaced a particle with its antiparticle in the mirror-world, the weak force reappeared. This action is called charge conjugation (C).
It seems the universe didn’t conserve P and C separately but did so when they happened together. This is called CP symmetry.
But in 1964, American physicists James Cronin and Val Fitch found that even CP symmetry is violated. And it wasn’t violated all the time — which made it more nagging.
They found that it was violated around once for every thousand times a process involving the weak force happened in nature.
Nine years later, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa in Japan found that if there were at least three variants of every quark species — with all properties the same except for the mass — CP symmetry violation is unavoidable.
And all fermion particles do come in three variants, a.k.a. generations. For instance, the up quark has two other variants: the charm and top quarks.
(Around the same time, physicists also found that the strong nuclear force — involved in fission and fusion — ought to violate CP symmetry strongly but doesn’t.
This is called the strong CP puzzle.) Now, as soon as CP symmetry violation was confirmed, the Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov realised it’s actually an essential condition to create a matter-antimatter asymmetry in the early universe.
Unfortunately, the amount of CP symmetry violation the Standard Model allowed for (the ~1 in 1,000 rate) proved insuffcient to explain the magnitude of the asymmetry.
This is where the authors of the August paper have pointed out a loophole.
We have known for some time that processes involving mesons — particles made of quark-antiquark pairs — violate CP symmetry, which is just how Cronin and Fitch made their discovery.
Now, if a meson could decay to particles not contained in the Standard Model, the matter-antimatter asymmetry could be controlled by the product of two quantities: the amount of standard CP violation and the fraction of decays into the non-standard particles.
This fraction can’t be too large: otherwise we would have detected the non-standard particles in particle colliders.
The study’s conceit, then, is to introduce a mechanism that ensured this fraction was large just in the early universe but evolved to a smaller number today.
This can be done if the masses of the new particles vary over time, which is possible to arrange in quantum field theory. Hard-won progress This mechanism has thus brought one of the three Sakharov conditions within the reach of the Standard Model five decades since these conditions came to light. T
he other two conditions are:
(i) A large violation in a type of charge carried by particles, called the baryon number. For example, protons and neutrons have a baryon number of 1 and their antiparticles carry a value of -1.
(ii) Interactions must occur out of thermal equilibrium, meaning that particle processes in the forward and backward directions do not occur at the same rate.
While the Standard Model does not meet these conditions adequately, the work discussed here serves as an important step towards understanding why matter overwhelmingly dominates over antimatter in our universe today.

UN talks in Riyadh keep focus on land degradation

Much of the earth’s lands are drying out and damaging the ability of plant and animal life to survive, according to a United Nations report released Monday at talks where countries are working to address the problem.
The report was released at the UN summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on combating desertification — once-fertile lands turning into deserts because of hotter temperatures from human-caused climate change, lack of water and deforestation.
It found that more than three-quarters of the world’s land experienced drier conditions from 1970 to 2020 than the previous thirty-year period. “The drier climates now affecting vast lands across the globe will not return to how they were,” said, chief of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which is facilitating the Riyadh talks.
“This change is redefining life on earth.” At the talks, which started last week and are set to end on Friday, nations are discussing how better they can help the world deal with droughts — a more urgent lack of water over shorter periods — and the more permanent problem of degrading land. If global warming trends continue, nearly five billion people — including in most of Europe, parts of the western U.S., Brazil, eastern Asia and central Africa — will be affected by the drying by the end of the century, up from a quarter of the world’s population today, the report warned.
UNCCD’s chief scientist Barron Orr warned drier land could lead to “potentially catastrophic impacts affecting access to water that could push people and nature even closer to disastrous tipping points,” where humans are no longer able to reverse damaging effects of climate change.
Sergio Vicente-Serrano, one of the lead authors of the report, said that as the atmosphere heats up because the burning of coal, oil and gas spews planet-warming emissions, it leads to more evaporation on the ground.
That makes water less available for humans, plants and animals, making it harder to survive.
Farming is particularly at risk, with drier land being less productive and hurting both yields and the availability of food for livestock, the report said.
That can lead to food insecurity for communities worldwide.
Aridity also leads to more migration, because erratic rainfall, degrading land and frequent water shortages make it harder for regions or nations to develop economically.
It said the trend is especially noticeable in some of the world’s driest areas such as southern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa and southern Asia.
Negotiators in Riyadh are mainly discussing how best the world can respond to more frequent and damaging droughts.
Jes Weigelt, of European climate thinktank TMG, said it’s still a sticking point because countries can’t agree on whether rich nations should be forking out funds for drought responses around the world.
Any money pledged would go towards better forecasting and monitoring systems as well as creating reservoirs and other water-management structures.
UN talks in Riyadh keep focus on land degradation More than three-quarters of the world’s land experienced dried.

conditions from 1970 to 2020 than the previous thirty-year periodAFP Farming is particularly at risk, with drier land being less productive and hurting both yields and the availability of food for livestock,

ANSWER WRIITNG PRACTICES

HOMEWORK/FURTHR READINGS

WinUPSC

Search This Blog