 A very good evening aspirants. We are happy to share that the second test batch of pre-storming 2021 program of Shankara IS Academy has started from 11 December 2020 that is from yesterday. Pre-storming 2021 program is the problem test series conducted by Shankara IS Academy for the upcoming UPSI preliminary examination 2021. Our pre-storming program is India's first full-fledged artificial intelligence supported preliminary test series and the admissions for the same is going on now. All the required details regarding the admission process and about the pre-storming 2021 program is provided in the link that is given in the description of the video and also in the comment section. With this, let us move on to the Hindi news analysis for the date 12 December 2020. These are the list of news articles shown by today's analysis. It has been provided along with the page numbers of different editions of Hindi newspaper. Let's start our discussion with this first article. This discussion is based on this editorial article which talks about the victory of Nicolas Medura in the recent Venezuelan legislative elections and the country is experiencing political crisis for a long time. So, in this context, we will see in brief about Venezuela, its demographic and political aspects along with certain important points from the editorial. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. First, let us know about Venezuela. It is located in the North and South America. It borders the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean. Its capital is Caracas. Its physical terrain consists of the Andes Mountains and the Maracaibo Lowlands in Northwest. And in the South-East, there are Illinois or the Central Plains and the Guiana Highlands. And this country lies in the major sea and air routes that links the North American and South America. Apart from this, Venezuela has some of the most unique geology in the world. For example, it has the Tepuis which are the massive tabletop mountains on the western Guiana Highlands. These Tepuis are isolated, so they support unique endemic plant and animal species. And these Tepuis have perpendicular cliff sites and this causes some of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world in the Tepuis. And this includes the Angel Falls also. And additionally know that the country has natural resources of petroleum, natural gas, iron ore, hydropower, diamonds, gold, bauxite and other minerals. But Venezuela is highly dependent on oil revenues. Oil revenues account for almost all export earnings and nearly half of the government's revenue. But due to market uncertainty and poor cash flow, investments in the petroleum sector have slowed down and this resulted in the decline in oil production in the country. And this further led to fall in oil prices and these fall in oil prices have aggravated Venezuela's economic crisis. Now what about Venezuela's political system? It is a federal presidential republic where the president is both the chief of the state and also the head of the government. Venezuela had many constructions in the past but the present one was adopted in the year 1999. And here we have given you the elections and the political structure of Venezuelan government for your reference. Now let us come to the editorial article. Now this article mainly talks about the recent legislative election and the democratic crisis that is happening at Venezuela. Venezuela has for long been involved in crisis as we saw in the beginning. It was suffering from American sanctions and there was economic crisis which led to fuel shortages, food and medicine shortages also and all these issues triggered protests and it also forced at least 4.5 million people to flee the country. Now these crises have been there in the country for a long time but at present Venezuela goes through a political chaos because of two men who claim to be the rightful leader or the legitimate leader of the country. One of them is Juan Guaido and who is the speaker of the National Assembly of Venezuela. The other one is Nicolas Maduro. He took over as president after the death of the former president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez in 2013. After that Nicolas Maduro has consolidated an authoritarian grip over the country. Now the issue is that in 2018 presidential elections happened because after the death of Hugo Chavez Maduro took over as president immediately but the presidential elections happened in 2018 only and in that Mr. Maduro won the election but his 2018 re-election victory was widely disputed. There were allegations of fraud that suggested he might not actually have the popular support to act as president. Many even said that the elections were rigged and Maduro's claim was illegitimate. Now in the scenario the assembly speaker Juan Guaido declared himself as the interim president of the country. Now here one point to be noted is that Guaido got international support. He was quickly recognized as the legitimate leader by USA and even by Venezuela's neighbors such as Brazil and Colombia and also by many other Latin American countries. On a whole more than 50 countries supported him internationally but Maduro refused to step down even though Guaido had support from the international community. Now this added political instability to the already economically unstable country of Venezuela. So Maduro chose to begin his second term in January 2019 so many Venezuelans and members of international community branded his term as illegitimate. Now here note that Guaido bases his claim to Venezuela's interim presidency based on his leadership of the national assembly and this national assembly is considered to be the last democratically elected institution in the Venezuelan country and he also took the decision of being interim president because the supreme court of Venezuela appointed a new election commission for this election. So many claimed the appointment of this new election commission as illegal so the opposition party rejected the reelection results. Thus here the fact is that Guaido had the international support on his side but all other major institutions including the judiciary and the military in the Venezuelan country remained loyal to Mr. Maduro only. So now all the major wings of the government were under the control of Maduro except for the national assembly which was under the control of Guaido and the national assembly's term is to expire in January 5th of 2021. So for that polls have to be conducted and it is claimed that to win this election Maduro had all the illegitimate actions such as Venezuela's main opposition party leaders were removed and in their place Maduro's own representatives were appointed and even Mr. Juan Guaido was barred from access to television and radio broadcasts and many opposition leaders were banned from standing for the election and several were even arrested or were sent into exile because of this even united nations accused Venezuela of grave violations of economic social civil political and cultural rights. So for this national assembly election Maduro ignored the concerns of the international community and continued with the election which happened last week. So because of this the opposition parties decided to boycott the election and they even organized their own referendum against that national assembly election and this referendum is to happen today but since the elections to the new national assembly already happened the results also came and in that the Nicolas Maduro and his allies have secured victory obviously but since the opposition parties are going for a referendum today it is expected that the results of the recent elections in Venezuela is unlikely to resolve the political crisis in the country. These are some of the information that you should know with respect to Venezuela and its political crisis. Now let's move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this news article which mentions that not all Indian droughts are caused by El Nino. Now to understand what this news article mentions let us see about El Nino and the possible causes of droughts in non El Nino years and also about the important points from this article. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. We first know that a study about causative factors of drought in India was conducted by the researchers at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Now the findings of their study suggest that simply saying El Nino is the reason for all droughts in India could be incorrect. This is because their study states that droughts have occurred in Indian summer monsoon season also in the non El Nino years and out of these nearly 6 out of 10 droughts in non El Nino years in the past century may have been driven by the atmospheric disturbances that happened from the North Atlantic region. So not every drought is caused by El Nino event according to this study. So what do we mean by El Nino event? In an El Nino event the sea surface temperature in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean becomes substantially higher than normal. In other words a warm ocean current temporarily replaces the cold Peruvian current. This warm current starts flowing during Christmas therefore this event was given the name of baby Christ and El Nino is a Spanish word meaning the child and it refers to baby Christ according to NCRT. Now this oceanic event is associated with changes in pressure pattern in the southern oceans. Now the change in the pressure pattern is called as Southern Oscillation and this El Nino and associated Southern Oscillation is shortly called as Enzo. Now because of the changes in the pressure pattern and the atmospheric air circulation several regions experience swings in their normal rainfall pattern. Now some regions receive lesser or no rainfall and some regions receive extreme rainfall but both these swings in normal rainfall pattern have extreme consequences such as droughts and floods. Now you know that whenever it is El Nino it affects the Indian summer monsoon in June to September period. This is because El Nino is associated with weakening of trade winds which drive the Indian summer monsoon winds that is abnormally warm equatorial Pacific waters pull the moisture laden clouds away from the Indian subcontinent. Now in that sense El Nino is associated with increased propensity of drought like conditions in India. Now this El Nino is called as warm phase of Enzo. Now there is also a cold phase of Enzo this is called as La Nina. Now in this La Nina event the sea surface temperature in the central tropical Pacific Ocean and the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean become lower than normal. So whenever it is La Nina India experiences more rainfall and as a result of it there are also floods in some places. Now let us see how scientists differentiate the pattern of droughts that is observed in El Nino years and in non-El Nino years. Now the droughts that happen during the El Nino year follow a standard pattern. See during an El Nino year the rainfall deficit starts around mid-June. Now the deficit scenario progressively worsens that is the rainfall further decreases. Now by mid-August the deficit spreads to many places over the country and there is no going back from the drought in this season that is after this drought there won't be usual monsoon rainfall. Now the scenario only progressively worsens since mid-June but however if you observe the droughts in non-El Nino years the pattern is different from El Nino year and surprisingly the droughts during the non-El Nino years also seem to follow a common pattern among themselves and in this case first there was moderate drop or slump in rainfall in the month of June. Now after this slump the rainfall does not progressively worsen as observed during the El Nino year. Instead there is recovery of monsoon rainfall during the rainiest period of the summer monsoon that is from mid-July to mid-August the rainfall amount increases but however after this recovery around third week in August there is sudden steep decline in rainfall and this results into drought or drought like conditions during the non-El Nino year. So this is how scientists differentiate the pattern of droughts observed in a non-El Nino year and in a El Nino year. Next let us conclude this discussion after seeing some of the findings of the reported study by the scientists of Indian Institute of Science. Now one of the findings is that nearly half of the droughts that occurred during the Indian summer monsoon season in the past century may have been driven by atmospheric disturbances from the North Atlantic region. It is said that 10 out of 23 droughts that India faced in the past century have occurred during the years when El Nino was absent that is in the non-El Nino years and these non-El Nino year droughts were linked to an atmospheric disturbance in the mid-latitudes region over the North Atlantic Ocean and this atmospheric disturbance creates a pattern of atmospheric currents which swoop in over the Indian subcontinent and it derails the summer monsoon and this causes droughts in India. Here the researchers studied why does the break occur this late in August that is around the third week of August. The researchers noticed an unusual atmospheric disturbance in the mid-latitudes. Now this disturbance emerged from the interactions of winds in the upper atmosphere with a deep cyclonic circulation that is above the abnormally cold North Atlantic water and this results in a wave of currents called as Rosby wave. Now this wave has curved down from the North Atlantic and it was squeezed in by the Tibetan Plateau. Now these waves of air currents hit the Indian subcontinent around mid-August. Now this surpasses the monsoon rainfall and it also derails or diverts the Indian monsoon that was trying to recover from the June slump. Now though the Rosby wave's usual course is to go from west to east the inward curving was peculiar thing that the researchers have noticed during the non-elnino years. See here just understand that Rosby waves are mid-latitudes, westerly winds which move in large wavy or meandering patterns. They are also known as planetary waves and they are called Rosby waves because they are named after Carl Rosby who discovered these waves in 1930s. Now Rosby waves help to transfer the heat from the tropics towards the poles and it transfer the cold air toward the tropics to return to the atmosphere to balance. Now here note that within the Rosby waves strong ribbon of winds form called as jet streams. As you know jet streams are strong narrow currents of wind which is thousands of kilometers in length and hundreds of kilometers wide and two to four kilometers deep. These streams are found in altitudes of about six to twelve kilometers or six to fifteen kilometers above the earth. And coming back to our discussion the findings of the study underline the importance of the considering influences on the Indian monsoon from outside the tropics. So the study implies that equal focus or enough focus should be given to the mid-altitude influences for better handling the enhanced predictability of summer monsoon variability in our country. So these are some of the information that you should know with respect to the study and elnino. Now let's move on to the next discussion. This discussion is based on this lead editorial article which is with reference to parliamentary scrutiny of legislative work. The article is authored by a former secretary general of Lok Sabha in the backdrop of recent democratic action that is the protest by the farmers in connection with the three new form laws passed by the parliament. As we know the request of farmers is to repeal the three form laws. So in this context we will discuss the relevant aspects in this analysis. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. See as you know the demand for the repeal of the laws that were recently passed by the parliament essentially points to a serious lapse in the management of the legislative work in parliament. This is because usually important bills and bills that have serious ramifications are referred for the examination of concerned departmentally related standing committees in the parliament. But it is found that the three formulas are protested against since they were not examined by the departmentally related standing committee on agriculture that is the DRSC on agriculture. Here the assumption is that if the farm bills had been examined by the standing committee then there would not have been an agitation today from the side of farmers. This is because once a bill is forwarded for examination by the presiding officer of the house then the committees invite various stakeholders to place their views before them and then only after elaborate consultation with the relevant stakeholders the committees will formulate their views and recommendations and it is found that in all the circumstances the bills which come back after the scrutiny by the committees will be in much better shape in terms of their content. So that means the departmentally related standing committees and its functions are very important. See this concept of DRSCs was deeply discussed during the 1980s and early 1990s and finally the system of having such DRSCs was inaugurated on 31st March 1993 and this happened during the tenure of 10th Lok Sabha. Now the rule books of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were modified to give effect to the DRSCs. Even the then vice president remarked that the main purpose of these committees is to ensure the accountability of the government to the parliament through more detailed consideration of measures in these committees. That means the committees are there to provide more meaningful parliamentary support and here the intention is not to weaken or criticize the administration. Based on this the speaker of the 10th Lok Sabha also remarked that with these committees having come into existence it would be possible for the members of the parliament to participate in greater details in the functioning of the parliamentary system. So these were the views of the vice president and the speaker of 10th Lok Sabha when the DRSCs were inaugurated. Now here you should note that a minister shall not be nominated as a member of the committee and if a member is nominated initially to the committee and later if she is appointed as a minister then such a member shall cease to be a member of the committee from the date of appointment as a minister. This is to give effect to the fact that a minister shall not be nominated as a member of the committee. Now these committees are permanent committees that are reconstituted every year. In other words a member of a committee shall hold office for a term not exceeding one year. Now the system of DRSCs that was set up in the year 1993 it was restructured in July 2004. It is because after watching the effectiveness and working of DRSCs parliament wanted to increase the number of DRSCs. So it was increased from 17 to 24 DRSCs. Now the functions of these committees are given here for your reference and as you can see here one of its main functions is to examine the bills pertaining to the related ministries or department and that is referred to the committee by the chairman or the speaker that is the presiding officer. So in this context only author observed that in the recent years only few bills are referred to the examination of the DRSCs and not referring such important bills to the scrutiny of the committees is called as serious laps in the management of legislative work by the author and this is also the reason why recent laws were intensely opposed by various sections of the population after being passed by the parliament. In this regard it is also found that the ministers of the central government are generally reluctant to send their bills to the committees for scrutiny. They often reportedly request the presiding officers not to refer their bills to the committees and to some extent there is criticism that the presiding officers they themselves are not exercising their independent judgment to decide for detailed examination of a bill by the DRSCs because we just now saw that a bill is examined only if it is referred to the committees by the chairman or the speaker. So if the chairman or the speaker is not exercising their independent judgment in this regard and they also do not want the bill to be examined by the DRSCs then also the bills are not sent to the committees. At this juncture author talks about how such committees and their examination of bills were inherently part of the parliamentary working. Here author connects to the British parliament and India's colonial history. The British parliament has been doing detailed scrutiny of legislative bills through committees since 16th century and even in India the committee system can be traced back to the arrival of Montague Chamsford reforms. At that period of time the standing orders of the central legislative assembly provided for three committees. One is committee on petitions relating to bills then select committees on amendments of standing orders and thirdly the select committee on bills. Here author states that even the colonial assembly recognized the need and usefulness of parliamentary scrutiny of bills that were brought to the house by the government. However we should note one thing here that is unlike the committees of the independent India the committees of the then central legislative assembly were not free from governmental control and interference. So as a conclusion author calls the presiding officers that is the chairman of the Rajasabha and the speaker of the Lok Sabha to act neutral and to exercise independent judgment and also to refer important bills to the DRSCs. Now since the content of the bill that is presented after the examination of the committees are much better in content and shape there is lesser chance for opposition from the citizens and the concerned groups and that is why author has given this suggestion. So these are some of the information that you should know with respect to this news article where we saw about the current management of legislative work through DRSCs in the parliament. Now let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this news article which deals with India's achievement in its nationally determined commitments under the Paris Agreement. The news article also talks about the International Climate Ambition Summit that is being hosted jointly by the United Nations UK and France in partnership with Chile and Italy and this summit is to mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement. So in this context let us see in brief about the Paris Agreement. This agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 parties in December 2015 and it came into force in November 2016. It is a landmark agreement in the multilateral climate change process because for the first time a binding agreement brings all nations into common cause to undertake efforts to combat the climate change and to adapt to its effects. Now under this agreement the goal is to limit global warming below 2 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial levels and also further to attempt to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. It also provides a financial, technical and capacity building framework to support those countries who need it. Now the climate action carried out by the member countries under this agreement will work on the basis of a five-year cycle and currently it has got 188 member parties. All of them are expected to undertake ambitious efforts to support the agreements goals and to communicate their related intentions every five years in the form of nationally determined contributions that is NDCs. So based on this India also submitted its NDC and it consists of three major voluntary contributions or commitments from the side of India. They are first improving the emissions intensity of its GTP by 33 to 35 percentage by the year 2030 compared to the 2005 levels that is bringing 33 to 35 percentage reduction in emissions that are associated with each unit of economic output. Now here it is to be noted that according to the news article India has so far achieved 21 percentage out of the proposed 33 to 35 percentage. Now the second commitment is to increase the share of non-fossil fuel based electricity to 40 percentage by the year 2030. Now in this India has achieved about 37.9 personally so far according to the announcement made by the Union Environment Minister and now the third commitment is to enhance India's forest cover. Now under this commitment India has increased its forest cover or tree cover of almost 15,000 square kilometer in the last six years. Now other than these three there are also other commitments which include enhancing forest carbon sink adaptation component mobilizing finance technology development and transfer sustainable lifestyle and cleaner economic development and according to this news article in the summit some of the world's top 10 emitters are expected to be present and these top 10 emitters include China USA European Union India Japan Canada etc and as you can see in this representation energy consumption is by far the biggest source of human cost greenhouse gas emissions and the energy sector includes transportation electricity and heat buildings manufacturing and construction fugitive emissions and other fuel combustion. Now within the energy sector the generation of heat and electricity is responsible for most emissions and it is followed by transportation and manufacturing and construction. Now the other top sectors that produce emissions are agriculture such as livestock and crop cultivation then comes the land use land use change in forestry such as deforestation and then comes the industrial processes of chemicals cement and more and then also comes the waste including the landfills and wastewater. Now among this the sectors from India which contribute to greenhouse gas emissions include heat and electricity agriculture industrial processes of chemicals and then wastes. So these are some of the information that we should know with respect to this news article. Now let's move on to the next discussion. Well let us take this news article which talks about the index of industrial production. The news article mentions that India's industrial output grew at a faster pace in the last eight months in October 2020 and this is as per the quick estimates released by the National Statistical Office according to this industrial output grew at 3.6 percentage in October. So for a second month in a row the industrial output recorded positive growth since the pandemic and according to the economists this could be due to the festive demands. So in this regard you need to know about the IEP that is index of industrial production and also about the index of core industries. We have discussed these two on our 12th September 2020 in the news analysis. I request the viewers to view that analysis and then attend this question. This question is based on indices of eight core industries. The question asks in India in the overall index of industrial production the index of eight core industries have a combined weight of 40.27 percentage which of the following are not among those eight core industries. Cement industry, sugar industry, automobile industry, refinery products industry, food processing industry. Now the eight core industries consists of these eight industries coal, natural gas, crude oil, refinery products, fertilizer, steel, cement, electricity and as you can see here only cement industry and refinery products are part of the eight core industries. The other three sugar, automobile and food processing industries are not part of the index of eight core industries. So based on this also you can arrive at the correct answer which is option B 2 3 and 5 or otherwise if you surely know that cement industry is a part of the eight core industries then also you can arrive at the correct answer because all the other options have one in the options. So the correct answer is option B 2 3 and 5 only. Now we have come to the last session the practice questions discussion session. This first question is based on LNO first statement is the summer monsoon in India is affected only by LNO phenomenon. This statement is incorrect because the summer monsoon in India is also affected by the unusual atmospheric disturbance in the mid latitudes above the abnormally cold north Atlantic ocean. This was what found by the study which we discussed during the news article analysis. Now the second statement is LNO is the cold phase of Enzo. Now the statement is also incorrect because La Nina is the cold phase of Enzo LNO is the warm phase. Now here the question asks for the correct statements since both the statements are incorrect the correct answer to this question is option D neither one nor two. Now this next question is based on INDC the question asks which of the following is or are true about intended nationally determined contribution of India. First statement reducing emission intensity by 33 to 35 percentage. This is correct. This is one of the INDCs of India. Second statement is complete elimination of ozone depleting substances by 2030. Now this option 2 is not relevant since this particular aspect is not separately proposed under this INDC. The third one is increasing the forest cover. This is also one of the INDCs of India. So the correct answer to this question is option A one and three only. Now this question is a map based question. The question asks what is the correct sequence of occurrence of the following countries in South America as one proceeds from west to east. The countries given are Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, Colombia. Now as you can see in this map we have to move from west to east. So the first country among these four that comes first is Colombia. So four should be first in the given order. So A or B should be the answer. We can eliminate option C and D and the last one is Suriname. So two should be in the last. Or simply if you know that Venezuela borders Colombia then also you can easily arrive at the correct answer because in only one order one comes after four. So the correct answer is option B four one three two that is Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname. Now let us take one main question based on GS paper two. Discuss the role of departmentally related standing committees in establishing accountability of the government to the parliament. You have to write the answer in 150 words. You can post the answer in the comments section. We will review it within a reasonable time frame. With this we have come to the end of today's Cindy News Analysis. If you like the video don't forget to like comment and share and do subscribe to Shankar IS Academy YouTube channel for more updates related to civil service examination preparation.