 A very good evening everyone, welcome to the Hindi news analysis brought to you by Shankar A.S. Academy. Here are the list of news articles chosen for discussion today and the video is timestamped for your convenience. Now let's start the discussion with past year preliminary questions that we have been discussing for quite some time by now. Our first question for today is about universal declaration of human rights. See the question asks which part of the Indian constitution reflects the principles and provisions of universal declaration of human rights of 1948. See some universal declarations and these some universal documents are very important for the exam point of view and this is one such question based on that. See UDHR was proclaimed by United Nations General Assembly in 1948. As you can see it was around the same time when our constitution was being drafted right. So the declaration for the first time sets out the fundamental human rights that is to be universally protected. It promises economic rights, social rights, political rights and all such rights to everyone and if you see rights are not country specifics and the rights have a universal character transcending the political boundaries right. So if you put it in a nutshell UDHR is a document that acts like a global roadmap for freedom and equality by protecting the rights of every individual everywhere right. So it outlines about 30 rights and freedoms that belong to all of us and that nobody can take away from us and note that India is a signatory to United Nations declaration on human rights so it is binding upon India. So further the rights under it continue to form the basis of international human rights law and it has inspired many documents across the world and one such document is our constitution and because when the declaration was adopted in 1948 it was the same time when our constitution was also being drafted like we saw before. So UDHR has a profound impact on the constitution and if we compare the UDHR in Indian constitution and can be found that the two are very very similar. Let's say some interesting examples here to understand it better. So the first example let's take article 19 and article 20 of UDHR. So these articles provide that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the right to freedom of peacefully assembled and association and interestingly we also know that article 19 of our constitution deals with protection of certain rights regarding freedom of speech. So this is the similarity and similarly it is declared that in the preamble of the constitution to secure to all citizens liberty of thought and expression. Through this the preamble also has a similarity to the UDHR and let's take this next example. Article 18 of UDHR provides that everyone has the right to freedom of thought, consigns and religion. We know that our fundamental rights under article 25 to 28 also contains the same set of freedoms and another example article 22 to 28 of UDHR provides for economic and social rights and the same are provided under DPSP of the Indian constitution. So we can say that the DPSP is also inspired from UDHR and another thing that you have to remember is part 4A of the Indian constitution is also in consonance with UDHR that is the fundamental duties enshrined in the constitution are in consonance with article 29 clause 1 of UDHR. So article 29 clause 1 says what? It says that everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. Now a similar provision has been mandated under our fundamental duties that list 10 duties which the society expects the citizen to do. So from the above discussion it is clear that the principles of UDHR are reflected in preamble fundamental rights DPSP fundamental duties under our constitution. So from the discussion that we just had we can say the correct option is option D. Now look at this question. This question is based on four events from medieval history. So let us discuss it one by one. The first option talks about Pratiharas. See Gurjara Pratiharas is often simply called as Pratiharas and it was an imperial Indian dynasty that ruled much of North India from 6th to 11th century CE. So that is a long period and the rulers were praised by many historians as they faced and defeated many attacks from the west especially from the Arabs and all. And note that it was the last great empire in North India before the Muslim conquest and one of the most powerful rulers was King Boja I and he ruled during the 9th century and his kingdom was very extensive and it is said to have extended from Tharai in Himalaya to Budhakhand and Kausambi and it extended to the frontier of Pala kingdom in the east and Saurashtra in the west and a large portion of Rajasthan was also under his control. So because of all this extension and everything his achievements are spoken about and highlighted in the history so you probably should know this and the next statement is about Pala Dynacity. See Pala dynasty was founded in eastern India in 8th century by Gopala. The Pallas continue to rule over the current day Bihar in Bengal for nearly four centuries with a with a small break in between and the son and the grandson of Gopala namely the Dharmapala and Devapala greatly extended the power and prestige of the Pala Dynacity. See another notable achievement of the Pala Dynacity is the Nalanda University and Vikram Shila University that was found by Dharmapala belonging to this Dynacity itself. And next is Pallavaya Dynacity. Pallavas were one of the ancient South Indian Dynasties that were active in the Andhra region from the 2nd century CE itself and later they moved south to settle in Tamil Nadu and the kingdom was spread from the region around the capital Kanchipuram which is in the Kaveri Delta that is in the present day Tamil Nadu and one of its notable king was Mahendra Varman 1 who ruled from 590 to 630 CE so that is the 6th century. So under him the Pallavas became a major political power and he was also celebrated as a king with many accomplishments as well and he is known for his literary works temple building activities and next let's see about the Chola Dynacity the Chola Empire of the south emerged in the middle of the 9th century AD and it covered a large part of Indian Peninsula as well as parts of Sri Lanka and Maldives island and one of the important early Chola kings was Parantaka 1 who ruled from 907 AD to 955 AD. So based on all these information let's consider the order so the second statement should come first so which is around the 6th century and the fourth statement next which is around 8th century and the rest of the other two are in the 9th century which we may not be able to narrow down so the order should start with 204 and only option C has this option and so we are going with option C as the correct answer. See this is an easy question that is based on factual knowledge of the student first one needs to know what is part 4 of the constitution to answer this question we know part 4 of the Indian constitution deals with directive principles of state policy and the articles involved are from article 36 to article 51 and our question is largely based on article 37 of DPSP here is the snippet from article 37 of our constitution so now we know that they're not judicially enforceable in any court so statement 2 is right and so we eliminate option A and C now we are left only with option C and D so as we see article 37 of Indian constitution also states that it shall be the duty of the state to apply this principle in making laws as they are fundamental in the governance of the country so statement 3 is correct so by elimination the answer we narrow down is this option D so as you can infer the general understanding of DPSP itself shall help you score this question now look at this next question this is a politic question based on the parliament chapter of this subject and you can answer this largely based on factual knowledge itself with very little analysis being involved right say the constitution under article 85 1 West's power on the president to summon each house of the parliament at such time and place as he thinks fit hence we can say the statement 1 is correct this leads us to eliminate option B and D because they do not contain statement 1 so now we are left only with options A and C so now everything boils down to the validity of statement 3 and if you look at the article 85 it merely says that the parliament shall meet at least twice in a year and it does not specify the number of days so in taking that view we come to the conclusion that statement 3 is right so the correct answer for this question will be option C which is 1 and 3 only so with those questions we have come to the end of the discussion on the past year preliminary questions let's move on to the discussion on the newspaper analysis for today let's take up this news article for discussion this article is about cyclone takte which is expected to hit the Karnataka and Kerala coasts by Sunday and know that the name takte has been given by Myanmar and we've discussed elaborately about the naming of cyclones in our 24th November 2020 analysis I recommend you to go through the PDF of that for better understanding today let us discuss about the formation of cyclone its structure severity grading etc see cyclone is a very important topic in geography realm so pay attention see a cyclonic storm is an intense vortex or a whirl in the atmosphere with very strong winds circulating around it in anticlockwise direction in the northern hemisphere and in clockwise direction in the southern hemisphere we know the difference is because of the Coriolis force right and the tropical cyclones are also referred to as hurricanes over Atlantic ocean typhoons over pacific ocean willy wells over australian sea and simply as cyclones over north indian ocean this difference in the nomenclature is something that you will have to remember so cyclones are an intense low pressure areas from the center of which pressure increases outwards the amount of pressure drop in the center and the rate at which it increases outwards gives the intensity of the cyclones and the strength to the winds so let's also see the structure see structure of a cyclone has a full grown cyclone is a violent whirl in the atmosphere with 150 to 1000 kilometer diameter and 10 to 15 kilometer height gale winds of about 150 to 250 kilometer per hour or more spiral around the center of the low pressure system with 30 to 100 pascals below normal sea level pressure and in a fully developed cyclonic storm there are four major components of horizontal structure that is the eye which is in the center wall or the cloud region rain spiral bands and outer storm area so have a look at this figure to understand the four areas the eye forms at the center of the storm inside a central dense overcast region see the eye has a diameter for about 10 to 50 kilometers which is generally cloud free and is surrounded by thick walls of clouds around it not over it but around it okay and the eye is surrounded by a 10 to 15 kilometer thick wall of convective clouds where the maximum winds occur and this is the most dangerous part of the cyclonic storm that is the walls of the eye and the height of the wall can go up to 10 to 15 kilometer upwards and beyond the eye walls region the major convective clouds in a cyclonic storm is responsible for heavy rains and have a partially spirally banded structure these spiral bands are sometimes hundreds of kilometers long and a few kilometers wide also and let's come to the outer storm area this outer storm area is the region beyond 250 kilometer from the center where the wind is cyclonic but the wind speed decreases slowly outward and the weather condition in the outer storm area are better with scattered cumulus growth interspersed with spiral bands here is where the climate is actually pleasant okay now finally have a look at the table to understand the classification of cyclonic disturbances over the northern Indian ocean so this table is just for your reference so in this discussion we saw about the cyclones their structure and their spread and their severity is also mentioned from which you can expect some preliminary exam questions now look at this news article it reports the views of world trade organizations present director general on the waiver of covid-19 vaccines so in this regard let us see some important facts about wto which is important from the exam point of view see the wto the world trade organization is an international organization that deals with the rules of trade between the nations and its headquartered in janeva switzerland the wto came into being in 1995 and it is the successor of general agreement on trade and tariff and the general agreement of trade and tariff was established in the wake of the second world war let us have a quick look into the four story the gatt the general agreement on trade and tariff tases his origin in the 1944 breton woods conference and this breton woods conference laid the foundation for the post world war two financial institutions which are the international monetary fund and the world bank the conference delegate also recommended the establishment of a complementary institution which is to be known as the international trade organization and in havana in 1948 the youth conference on trade and employment concluded a draft shatter for the itvo and this is famously called as the havana shatter but this never came into existence but meanwhile an agreement as the gatt was signed by 23 countries in janeva in 1947 and came into force on jan first 1948 with the purpose that is to face out the use of import quotas and to reduce tariffs on merchandise trade the gatt became the only multilateral instrument governing the international trade from 1948 until 1995 when the wto was established note that gatt was not institution it was merely an instrument that governed the multilateral trade for so many years and wto's main function was to ensure the trade flows as smoothly and predictably and as freely as possible so right now wto has 164 members accounting for almost 95 percentage of the world trade and around 25 others are still negotiating membership and india has been a wto member since its inception that is first of january 1995 and india was a member of gatt also since 8 of july 1948 and also know that to join the wto a government has to bring its economic and trade policies in line with the wto rules and negotiates its terms of entry with the wto membership and another notable feature is that the decisions in wto are made by the entire membership that is complete consensus and this is the reason why the final outcome on the intellectual property waivers for covid-19 vaccine has also not yet been achieved because as you know some countries are yet to agree on it right so even though a majority vote is possible but it has never been used in the world trade organization and it was also extremely rare under wto's predecessor which is gatt so most of the decision or all the decisions in wto are taken by consensus and most of the decisions in gatt were taken by consensus and wto derives most of the income from its annual budget contributions by its members only and these contributions are based on a formula that takes into account each member's share of the international trade and see that the highest institutional decision-making body of wto is the ministerial conference and this ministerial conference meets roughly every two years and this is an important fact that you have to remember and this is attended by the trade ministers and other senior officials from the organization's 164 member countries and know that the 12th or the upcoming ministerial conference is expected to take place in 2021 this the end of this year in janeva switzerland and it will be chaired by kazakhstan so this brings us to the end of discussion on wto basically we have focused on the organizational structure and the decision making pattern of the wto and also the evolution of wto see other details of the wto are also very important which we will be discussing in the other subsequent discussions look at this article this opi talks about the need for a regulatory authority to ensure data protection of students using ed tech apps in india in this context let us first discuss about the status of ed tech companies in india and then the points given by the author here is the syllabus for your reference students first let us understand what is this ed tech ed tech or educational technology refers to the software designed to enhance teacher-led learning in classrooms and improve students education outcomes see ed tech shows promise as a method of customizing a curriculum for a student's ability level by introducing and reinforcing new content at a pace the student can handle now coming to india as online learning continues to gain prominence especially in the pandemic situation and all india's ed tech sector is projected to become a 30 billion industry in the next 10 years on the backing of growing demand and strengthening business models in fact india has emerged to be among the top three countries in the world after us in china to get venture capital funding in this particular sector and the global ed tech started the last decade with 500 million dollars as a venture capital now it has reached 16.1 billion in 2020 which is a 32 times leap right and india's ed tech sector has attracted private equity investments of about four billion dollars in the last five years alone and the market has also witnessed the consolidation of the sector with aggressive mergers and acquisition activities leading to market leaders like byju's an academy up grad vedantu among others and as we know the formal education in india includes the primary and secondary school education graduation post graduation diploma courses and so india's education system is multifold and one of the largest in the world and there are more than 271 million students enrolled in more than 1.5 million schools and around 37.2 million undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in over 39 thousand colleges across the country and this indicates that the ed tech companies in india are poised to grow further with a huge potential in our nation with this let us discuss the oped since the onset of pandemic the online education has gained traction and to ensure minimal academic disruption schools and colleges have shifted their strategy of education delivery and this had many impacts and the first and foremost is that teachers became facilitators in learning rather than being content providers second this trend has nurtured several ed tech apps in india right these are the two major changes that we can see and as we know ed tech apps customize learning to every students in the system so what is this for learning customization the apps collect large quantities of data from the learners through the gadgets that the students use see the latest electronic gadgets have a range of sensors like GPS gyroscope accelerometer magnetometer and biometric sensors and without knowledge we just give access to all these sensors and that is how these apps end up gaining so much data into our personal space and intimate data like emotions and attitudes experienced all these are also being collected by these apps thus the ed tech apps have access to private spaces of the learner increasing the privacy concerns right so data is always associated with privacy concerns and the authors suggest that india shall have a regulatory framework along the lines of the gdpr in europe general data protection regulation which is in place for data related activities in europe this shall ensure prior informed consent in handling data to ensure the privacy of students using these apps further such companies working with children shall have to convince school teachers parents and school management about their work type of data to be collected method of storage the potential harmful effects of such data etc and there shall also be parent or adult supervision of these apps to ensure zero intrusion of a child's privacy finally the government shall formulate an ethics policy for these companies through the active participation of all these stakeholders like educators researchers parents learners and also industry experts right so consent and privacy are a very important verticals of data collection and this needs to be regulated in the new digital world and the article has thrown light on this aspect in the growing ed tech sector of india so this brings us to the end of this discussion our next news discussion is going to be based on this editorial article it reports on the recent supreme court's order relating to the decongestion of prisons so in this light let us see about the guidelines mentioned in the order and also important points from the article so here is the syllabus for your reference relevant to this editorial so first let's know what is the supreme court order as we all know overcrowding of prisons is a perennial problem in our country and since it is a matter concerning the health and right of life to of the prisoners and the police personnel involved the supreme court on saturday moved to decongest prison by passing directions on how this decongestion has to be taken forward now let us look about it see the guidelines prescribed for a selected class of prisoners to be released on parole or an interim bail for such periods as may be thought appropriate if you remember last year also the court took such a measure quite early even around the lockdown times so as a move to decongest prisons the court in its order back then itself had directed all states and union territories to constitute a high-powered committee to consider for the release of the prisoners who are those class of prisoners who can be released those on parole or interim bail are the prisoners and under trials who are charged with offenses entailing up to seven years jail term and note that the high-powered committee consisted of the chairman of the state legal services committee and apart from that it had the principal secretary of home or prison by whatever designation it is known and apart from that it also had the director general of prisons so it is in these people who will determine the class of prisoners to be released on parole or an interim bail for such periods as may be thought appropriate and coming to the present order in addition to the release of the freshly identified prisoners those inmates who were allowed to go out on bail in march last year by the decision of the high-powered committee will also be granted the same relief without any reconsideration all right and the court also ordered for the decision of the high-powered committees to be published on the respective state legal services authority websites in order to enable effective dissemination of information all right so this is a move to enhance the transparency in the judicial process and apart from that the court has also emphasized on the need to adhere to the norms laid down in the arneesh kumar versus state of behar 2014 judgment see what is this judgment see it is a landmark judgment which imposed further checks and balances on the powers of the police before an arrest is done under section 498 a or crpc 498 a deals with the dowry cases right so in this background the apex court ordered all the state governments to instruct the police officers not to automatically arrest when a case under section 498 a of IPC is registered but rather to assist the necessity for arrests under the parameters lay down above flowing from section 41 of crpc and it is also specified that this direction prohibiting automatic arrest is not only restricted to dowry and harassment cases but also to those cases where the offense is punishable with imprisonment for a term up to seven years or lesser better with or without fine and it has also given other guidelines the court has also provided guidelines for those imprisoned already in this judgment in this order and it includes proper medical facilities like regular testing immediate treatment to ensure the level of daily hygiene and sanitation and along with it suitable precautions to prevent the transmission of deadly virus among the inmates because it also concerns the right to life of prisoners see the editorial puts forward certain concerns related to the present day imprisonment system and practice which needs to be addressed say for instance we are witnessing reports of prisoners testing positive and getting hospitalized by the extent to which these regular testings in medical treatments are effective remains unclear to the general public and similarly the political prisoners or the person imprisoned for their political beliefs or actions are being repeatedly denied bail due to the stringent laws that were invoked likewise some political activists who were alleged to be involved in riots are jailed under anti-terrorism law and they are alleged to be involved note that see such practices highlights the need for the court to acknowledge such persons and take into consideration their vulnerability to infection and to consider bail because many of them are aged people also and with this information let's move on to the next segment now look at this news article this news article deals with the covid-19 vaccination policy and the prevailing health conditions in India and tries to reflect the reality of the pandemic in India and it will be also an refreshing reminder of India's covid vaccination policy so let's get into the discussion see this is the syllabus that is to be covered see vaccination for covid-19 in India is voluntary right but however it is advisable to receive the complete schedule of covid-19 vaccine for protecting oneself against the disease and note that India's national covid-19 vaccine strategy is based on scientific and epidemiological evidence and it is tries to focus on systematic end-to-end planning and the union government is in close collaboration with state governments and union territory administrations and it has been walking over a period of time to ensure that the maximum number of Indians are able to get the vaccine in the shortest possible time and for that the vaccine strategy has been rolled out in phases let's see the phases one by one see the first phase the national covid-19 vaccine strategy was launched on 16th of january 2021 and note that it focused on protecting the healthcare workers and frontline workers later phase two was launched and it focused on protecting the most vulnerable that is population aged 45 years and above and at that time when the policy was launched about 80 percentage of covid mortality was centered on these age group okay that was the rationale behind this note that in phase three the national vaccine strategy aimed at a liberalized vaccine pricing and scaling up of vaccine coverage why because it was trying to encompass a huge population that is all the adults that is all of them who are aged above 18 were tried to be covered this policy on one hand incentivizes the vaccine manufacturers to rapidly scale up their production and on the other hand it also attracts new vaccine manufacturers and that is the rationale hence it makes pricing procurement administration of vaccine more flexible right so now let us understand the liberalized pricing and accelerated national covid-19 vaccine strategy this strategy came into effect from first of May 2021 and as per this strategy the vaccine manufacturers would supply about 50 percentage of their monthly central drug laboratory released doses to government of India whereas the remaining 50 percentage doses are supplied to the state governments and in the other than government of India channel so adding to it the manufacturers declare the price of 50 percentage of supply that would be available to the state government and in the other than government of India channel that is other than central government channel which primarily is the private hospital network right and note that this invited criticism from various sections also based on this price states private hospitals industrial establishments through their hospitals may procure vaccine doses from the manufacturers and make it clear that the central government state government in the private hospitals are those involved in the vaccination drive okay and as per this strategy government of India vaccination centers engaged with eligible population who are healthcare workers frontline workers and population above 45 years of age and for other than government of India channel the eligibility would be all adult citizens of the country that is everyone above the age of 18 now let's get back to the article so as per the article India's national positivity rate or the proportion of the tested cases returning positive is around 21 percent see that is a huge percentage right pandemic or epidemic is considered to be under control only if the positivity rate is below 5 percentage but here we see that it is 21 percentage and moreover 533 of the 734 districts in India have reported positivity greater than 10 percentage and another fact that is deeply concerning is that on April 12th of this year India administered about 3.7 million doses of vaccine that was the peak and after April 26th this failed to administer over 3 million doses a day and this article also mentions that ever since the vaccine drive was expanded to all the adults over 18 on May 1st the maximum number of daily doses administered has been only 2.4 million and this is largely attributed to the scarcity and adding to it daily new cases added continue to be about 0.38 million and the deaths are close to 4000 days see all these grim facts point to the very large pool of infected and prone to infected population in India and as a measure to break the chain of infection and the mortality rate more than 18 states have imposed various grades of lockdowns and curfews and these included restrictions on religious gathering social functions and leisure visits to public entertainment spaces so it points to the fact that the economic situation in the country is already grim and one has to learn from the experience of sudden lockdown imposition that wrecked havoc on the migrant forces last year so a complete lockdown to the scale that was done last year is almost impossible and even if it is done it is only of a cosmetic value because already states have imposed a high degree of lockdown hence it mentions that a lesson has to be emerged from the pandemic in that states are best equipped to take care of themselves simply put the center should only do the facilitation work and the groundwork should be left to the states themselves and finally the article concludes by proposing that the center must focus on redistribution function that is distributing equitably across the states the vaccines the oxygen tankers the testing kits and other critical medical equipment while also accounting for a potential third wave and within the absence of good degree of vaccine coverage conventional means like masking up and social distancing are the mainstay of prevention so through this discussion we have gone through the national vaccine strategy that has been adopted for the pandemic and apart from that we have run through the glimpse of the pandemic situation in India and the vaccine coverage subsequently the major takeaway from this discussion would be for you to understand the reality of the pandemic and apart from that you can quote some facts take some facts from these and you can use it for your answers in your gs2 paper all right now with this information let's move on to the next section so here we are at the clarification section in yesterday's discussion we had discussed about Gandhi urban pact especially in reference to past year preliminary questions and one of the viewers had raised a clarification here especially regarding this pact see are those matters accepted once or just included so that's what the viewer had asked see a pact is made only after accepting the proposals made from the either of the side here in this case the proposal by Irwin and proposal by Gandhi and Congress have been accepted to arrive at the pact which is called as the Delhi pact or the Gandhi Irwin pact so the points mentioned here are those that are agreed upon by both the parties and subsequently we have also given the points rejected by the Irwin side they have two important points and we have given that or helping you to approach the question with the elimination technique so that's it for clarification from yesterday's discussion let's move on to the next area so here we are at the last segment of today's analysis practice question discussion let's test our knowledge that we gained through the discussion so to that effect we have two questions let's go over it one by one the first question is about world trade organization so we have three statements and the question asks us to identify the correct statement so the first statement general agreement on tariffs and trades is the organization that preceded WTO so this statement seems deceptively right but this statement is wrong because of the word organization see the general agreement and trade in tariffs although govern the trade for a very long period until 1995 it was merely an agreement between the countries okay it was never an organization it was WTO that was an organization so the first statement is wrong so we are eliminating option A and D from our answer now coming to the second statement its objective is to ensure smooth predictable and free flow of trade and from discussion we know this is right and coming to the third statement its decisions are based on on a consensus vote only see so far all the decisions in WTO has taken place through consensus only but the WTO in its instrument also has a provision for arriving in decisions through majority so this statement is wrong because of the word only in it so the answer is option C only only second statement is correct now the next question next question is about the tropical cyclones and the nomenclature we saw about this in discussion so it should be easy for you to identify the correct option tropical cyclones are also referred to as hurricanes in atlantic ocean and typhoons over pacific ocean willy-wiles over australian sea and simplest cyclones over indian ocean so as we saw given that is only three and four are correctly matched and pair one and two are incorrect so the correct option is option C and these are the practice main questions you can write the answers and pose them in the comment section for your review all right with that we are wrapping up our today's news analysis session if you like the video like share comment and subscribe to Shankara IS Academy stay home stay safe good day