 Good evening aspirants welcome to the hindi news analysis by shankar eyes academy for the date 27th of july 2021 the list of news articles chosen for today's discussion is given here along with the page numbers of these news articles in different editions of hindi newspaper so let us start our analysis from this news article which talks about wildfires see the news is that many countries in the southern europe are battling wildfires so in today's discussion let us first understand what are these wildfires how they are caused or what causes them and then we will see about the news the syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference see the wildfires are nothing but the forest fires it is just another name for it and these wildfires or forest fires are defined as the uncontrolled fire which occurs in fields grass or bushes as well as in the forest itself so we can say that forest fires are the uncontrolled fires which happen in the wild land but note that particularly when the fire happens over grass or grassland it is specifically known as grass fires and when it happens over the bushes it is known as bush fires now these bush fires and the grass fires are actually common throughout australia and that is why we often hear about forest fires in australia now among these grass fires bush fires and forest fires the grass fires are the fast moving one here you can see how fast it is and you should know that there are certain basic factors which determine whether a forest fire will occur or not and these basic factors include the presence of fuel oxygen and an ignition source and these three are the components of fire triangle as well see fire triangle means only when these three factors are present a fire can happen so that means if we remove any one of these components then the fire will go off for example if you remove the fuel then the fire will go off or if you remove the oxygen then also fire will go off so for fire triangle fuel oxygen and ignition source is important and additionally the fire intensity and speed at which the forest fire spreads also depends on certain factors these factors include ambient temperature fuel load fuel moisture wind speed slope angle relative humidity etc so let us now understand how these factors individually contribute to a forest fire see here the fuel load mentioned here describes the amount of fallen bark amount of leaf litter and small branches these all keep accumulating in the forest landscape in addition to this we also have trees which have natural oil present for example if you take the eucalyptus tree it has natural oil in it so this promotes combustion of fuel then comes the fuel moisture it is also important because dry fuel will burn quickly but a damp or wet fuel may not burn at all and as a consequence of this the time since the rainfall and the amount of rain received is an important consideration while assessing the forest fire danger apart from this drought factor or moisture deficit are also used as an indicator of extreme forest fire weather conditions in other words when there is drought or when there is deficit of moisture they assume that extreme forest fires may happen then another factor is the wind the wind acts to drive a fire by blowing the flames into fresh fuel this brings the fuel to ignition point and it provides a continuous supply of oxygen to the fuel wind also promotes the rapid spread of fire by spotting see here spotting refers to the ignition of new fires by burning embers that are thrown high into the air by wind and these spotting can occur up to 30 kilometers downwind from the fire front now next comes the role of ambient temperature see the higher the temperature the more likely it is that a fire will start or a fire will continue to burn this is because the fuel which we saw is closer to its ignition point at higher temperatures in other words the fuel is preheated due to the high temperature and we know that the preheated fuel loads burn faster now the next factor is relative humidity see dry air promotes a greater intensity fire than moist air dry air means there is low humidity and plants become more flammable at a low humidity because they release their moisture more easily the next important factor is the ignition source and the forest fires can originate from both human activity and also natural causes here by ignition source we mean how it originated so under the natural cause the lightning is the predominant one and these lightning could be a result of thunderstorms but there is a major problem with the combination of thunderstorms and forest fires because they form a vicious circle so what happens is these forest fires themselves can also drive thunderstorms so it increases the risk of lightning strikes and more fires so when there is thunderstorm we have lightning it leads to fire which leads to forest fire then this forest fire in turn again causes thunderstorms to understand this we need to understand the role of pyro cumulonimbus clouds here the term pyro denotes fire as you can see in this image this is how a pyro cumulonimbus cloud forms they are caused by the heat of the fire which forces the smoke and hot air above that fire to raise to a point where that smoke and hot air cools and it condenses into water droplets and these eventually form large clouds so in this representation you can see first smoke plume rises then the plume cools and then the cloud forms then it develops into a thunderstorm and that thunderstorm brings rain along with lightning so the places where there is rain there will not be forest fire but when where there is lightning along with rain or when there is only lightning then it leads to forest fire so you can understand how this pyro cumulonimbus can cause erratic more intense and dangerous forest fire behavior because it can itself create lightning strikes causing new fires it was created by an existing fire but in turn it also creates lightning which creates new fires as you can see in this image so natural source is one of the ignition points now another ignition point we saw was the human activity or the anthropogenic reasons see here anthropogenic reasons includes the negligent use of fire in agriculture then railroad sparks cold killing in forest then power lines also cause anthropogenic reasons etc so these may happen accidentally also now you may have a question how agriculture is leading to forest fires so you should remember that in some type of cultivation farmers carry out agricultural burning to remove unwanted biomass and sometimes even for vegetation management for the use of forestry or for pasture purposes they do agricultural learning for example we all know about the slash and burn agriculture that is the jume cultivation so here fire is used to burn the unwanted biomass but this fire if not carried out in a controlled environment it spreads more and it leads to forest fires now here agricultural burning is mainly done because it is cheap and efficient too and that is why this is also one of the major reasons why forest fires occur around the world but if you take the european countries according to research studies the forest fires in these countries are categorized as unknown toss class by that they say they do not know what caused the fire and this is due to the fact that there is difficulty determining the ignition point but even then certain studies suggest that as per the available statistics majority of fires are human induced in europe it is to the extent that the Mediterranean region alone accounts for the larger proportion of human caused fires in the world it is said that around 95 percentage of human caused fires happen in the Mediterranean region now in addition to all these factors and reasons we also have another causative factor which is the wild land urban interface and in Europe also this wild land urban interface or ensure wui is one of the main contributions to forest fire risk because they have extensive wui see this term wui describes urban settlements that are encroaching into or which are bordering the forested areas in Europe especially in the southern countries an accelerated growth of wui occurred mainly in the last three decades and this happened as a result of significant social and economic changes now this wui is an issue pertaining to forest fires because it led to the depopulation of traditional villages in mountain areas now this ultimately contributed to fire management problems see when the traditional village depopulates that is when people leave the traditional villages then the firewood collection in the forest lands around these villages decrease sharply which means that the fuel which should be used at home by the forest dwellers is now piling up in the forest itself and adding up to the fuel load so when even one small place catches fire this fuel load helps it to build into a larger one then apart from this the wui is also an issue because in Europe many olive groves vineyards and orchids etc they used to serve as a buffer zone between the wildlands and the settlements in the past but these were abandoned or poorly maintained due to the wui that is wildland urban interface so ultimately the abandoned plots were overtaken by natural vegetation and these changes increased the potential for fast moving fires to reach the homes therefore they started endangering people and properties so the buffer zone here was either abandoned or poorly maintained so because of this the people and their properties they can easily come in contact with the forest fires so wui is one of the reasons and next comes the important reason of all which is the climate change it is aggravating all of the other factors which we just saw especially in Europe climate change has increased forest fire risk but how see increase in global temperature leads to frequent severe droughts and heat waves and these heat waves often form an association with drought only and they in turn lead to wildfires so what happens here is that in these cases the prevailing dry conditions set the stage for the heat because the land is already dried out because of drought and the vegetation is wilted and all the heat from the sun goes into rising the temperatures which ultimately lead to catching of fires but if you take on the other hand in a normal condition we have the process of evaporative cooling which mitigates the risk of catching fire it is because in evaporative cooling the surface water or the wetness acts as an evaporative cooler even when the forest land catches fire so climate change is an important reason for the forest fires and according to the available data during the first half of 2019 itself severe droughts and heat waves affected the western Mediterranean region of Europe and this prolonged the fire season in Europe and the same is happening now also according to today's news the forests in the southern countries of Europe such as France, Italy, Spain, Croatia etc these countries forests are engulfed in fire if you see in this representation it is provided by the european forest fire information system these orange dots represent the active fires in the last seven days and the red ones shows the active fires in the last one day and this next representation shows the already burnt areas so you can see what is the scenario going on now in the southern Europe so the need of the hour is proper mitigation measures and fire control mechanisms so this makes us to remember how much it is important to control climate change because they also lead to forest fires so the conclusion is that forest fires are an example of how important it is to control climate change so in this discussion we saw mainly about wildfires or forest fires and the factors that contribute to forest fires this topic is important from the mains perspective because nowadays we are often seeing many news related to forest fires Australia USA especially the california region and now europe all are experiencing forest fires so it is important to know the contributing factors or the causative factors so some other day we'll discuss about the indian scenario also it will give you a wholesome picture now let us move to the next discussion our next discussion is going to be based on this editorial article so we know that the minister of external affairs previously invited public opinion on the draft immigration bill of 2021 and even on 20th july analysis we saw some of the important provisions of this bill and in today's editorial the author has critically analyzed this bill so today let us see some of the other important aspects of the bill along with the criticisms of the author the syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference see first of all remember that this draft bill is proposed to replace the immigration act of 1983 and this act provides the regulatory framework for immigration of indian workers for contractual overseas employment and it mainly seeks to safeguard their interests and ensure their welfare now this 1983 act outlines the obligations for agents to conduct due diligence of prospective employers it also asks them to set up a cap on the service fees etc then it also establishes a government review of the worker travel and employment documents and this is done through immigration clearances to 18 countries and remember that this is mainly available for the west asian countries and the southeast asian countries but this new bill is different in many aspects mainly it aims to create two authorities first one is the bureau of immigration policy and planning second one is the bureau of immigration administration now this bureau of immigration policy in planning it would formulate effective policies through periodic assessment and it would undertake consultation with relevant stakeholders but the role of bureau of immigration administration is to implement the provisions of the act along with that it has to ensure the welfare and protection of the immigrants also apart from this the bill also provides for help desks and welfare committees and it also requires the manpower agencies to conduct pre-departial briefings for the migrants so overall the bill aims to increase the accountability of brokers and other intermediaries who are involved in the hiring of labourers so keeping these facts in mind let us see what the author has to say according to the author the bill was long overdue because Indian immigrants were working under exploitative conditions for many years see here the exploitation is severe you would have seen these in movies and you would have read in the newspapers like they charge high recruitment charges then they even deceive the workers and sometimes they even retain the passports of the workers and most of the time the wages are either underpaid or sometimes even not even paid to the workers then they are provided with the poor living conditions they are discriminated so like this many exploitative practices are carried out against the immigrant workers so keeping all this in mind only author has highlighted few drawbacks in the bill which aims to mitigate these exploitative conditions see firstly author criticizes the purpose of this bill so according to the bill the purpose is to consolidate and amend the law relating to immigration of citizens of India so author feels that this lacks a human rights framework to secure the rights of migrants and their families it is because other countries are moving the right directions by including this human rights framework for example if you take the Philippines and its immigrant law it explicitly recognizes the contribution of Filipino workers and it also tries to ensure the dignity and fundamental human rights and freedoms of the Filipino citizens so it takes care of both of them the workers and also their citizens but this aspect does not exist in the proposed bill now the second criticism is regarding the service fees see we just saw that the bill permits manpower agencies to charge workers service fees and it allows agents even to set their own service fee limits author is critical of this point because it is against the international labour organizations convention the convention which author is talking about is the convention number 181 which is regarding private employment agencies convention as per this convention the employers have to bear recruitment payments and not the workers and here the recruitment payments includes the cost of the visas of the workers their air travel medical exams and even the service charges to the recruiters but this feature of this convention is ignored in the bill so author feels that if these provisions are included then the problem of Indian workers who are paying exorbitant charges for their jobs would come to an end because as of now Indians are paying high service charges or service fees for example in Saudi Arabia they are paying around 1500 dollars on an average as their recruitment charges and in Qatar they are paying around thousand one fifty dollars on an average see even though a part of these charges are legitimate the amount which we saw is highly excessive of the real cost of recruitment and that is why it becomes exploitative so if the employee takes care of this particular amount then it would help the worker because the worker will be freed from taking high interest loans the worker need not be indicted to anyone and even they will be free from the debt bondage that is the forced labor you would have heard that because of these service charges many are kept under bondage for forced labor so these issues could be taken care of if the employer is made accountable for this amount then the next issue noted by the author is regarding the imposing of fines on emigrants see the bill proposes to impose fines up to 50 000 rupees on emigrants if they violate the provisions of this bill this would criminalize migration through unregistered brokers but here the issue is that if the bill penalizes emigrants who are unaware of the law or who are fooled by the recruiters then it goes against the purpose of protecting the migrants and their families because we saw that this is the main aim of the immigrant law in our country additionally such kind of penal provisions would discourage migrants who are in trouble because they will be afraid to file complaints fearing that they could be fined or they could even fear that their passports will be revoked by the government so it will not create a positive reporting behavior in the immigrant so that is why this provision need to be re-looked and last but not the least like any other law in our country this bill also does not focus on the women migrants because if normally a male worker undergoes exploitation such as non-payment of wages discrimination retention of passports then as a woman the migrants will have another extra problem which is the abuse and this abuse could be sexual abuse or physical abuse so author urges that the bill should also include a strong provision to ensure the safety of women migrants so these are some of the contentious provisions in the draft immigration bill of 2021 let us hope that the public opinions received by the government included remedies to these problems and those will be incorporated by the government in the final bill that will be submitted in the parliament so as an aspirant whenever a bill comes to public opinion take a look at it you analyze it you can read newspaper articles that will say what is the positive and negative in the bill then you can write your own comments of how you feel that certain provisions should be included or certain provisions should be excluded from the bill it will improve your knowledge about the understanding of legislative process in our country and you'll also feel proud that you are playing a part in the framing of a legislation so that is all about the draft immigration bill now let us move on to the next discussion our next discussion is going to be based on these two articles one is the editorial and this news article they talk about the ecology of Himachal Pradesh you would remember that recently nine tourists tragically lost their lives in the landslide that happened in Kinnur district of Himachal Pradesh so this incident has again put the fragility of ecology of Himalayan states in the spotlight and these articles discuss the cause for such tragic incidents let us see about it the syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here so recently we heard that Himachal Pradesh received extraordinarily heavy rains and this unprecedented rainfall has made the hill slopes of Himachal Pradesh unstable it has also caused floods in many areas like in Dharamshala see these unstable hill slopes are a huge problem because of the destabilized terrain of Himachal Pradesh and due to this heavy boulders keep rolling down on the hill slopes these huge boulders easily crush the people and the infrastructure in their path while rolling down the slope and they have caused huge loss of life and destruction so many tourists and local residents have become victims to this issue we all know that Himachal Pradesh is a famous tourist spot it is famed for its scenic vistas and welcoming summer climate so many lacks of people visit Himachal every year and this is a great cause of worry because states like Himachal Pradesh are entering a phase of irreversible decline because of the losses to their ecology this loss of ecology will frequent such landslides in the upcoming years so now this raises a question why is Himachal losing its pristine ecology say our government is building many big hydroelectric projects in Himachal we are building these big hydroelectric projects to increase our production of clean energy now the green power generated from these hydroelectric projects can substitute fossil fuels so because of these hydroelectric projects the state of Himachal is undergoing large-scale construction activity and these construction activities as usual have destroyed huge areas of forests and that is why the ecology of the state is altered and because of these alterations Himachal is now vulnerable to the effects of extreme events such as cloudbursts flash floods landslides and earthquakes if you remember during our last discussion on 24th July we saw about landslides and we saw that the roots of the trees arrest the landslides so since the ecology is destructed the region is now more prone to landslides see here we should remember that our government is also carrying out a forestation programs to compensate for the loss of forest due to these projects this is called as compensatory of forestation but this of compensatory of forestation is not yielding a desired result on the contrary it is causing a lot of problems and this has been outlined by a recent study titled mitigation or myth this study has noted that both the hydropower projects and the compensatory of forestation these both are altering the land use and also they are negatively impacting the forest ecosystem in the state the study tried to understand the impacts of hydropower development and compensator of forestation on forest ecosystems in the high Himalayas and the study was undertaken by environmentalists Manshi Asher and Prakash Vandari remember these names you can quote them in your essay answer writing and remember these environmentalists are associated with the Himadra Environment Research and Action Collective now according to the study carried out by them construction activities for hydropower projects have impacted the existing land use of the Himalayas they have also disturbed forest biodiversity and they have fragmented the forest landscapes so if this is devastating the landscapes in on one hand the compensatory of forestation is giving other problems such as the plantations under the compensatory of forestation suffer from low presence of surviving saplings it is said that only up to 10 percentage of the saplings actually survive and when they survive they suffer from inter species conflict because already the region would have some native species and now they are introducing new species and among those new species also there will be competition to survive so this is leading to the growth of invasive species and also it is leading to the destruction of native species and they also infringe on the local land usage apart from all these the ecology is also damaged by the wildfires and landslides so we can see that both hydropower projects and compensatory of forestation are causing huge damages to the ecology of Himalayas if the government continues on the same path we will face many more catastrophic weather events in the region and they can cause further damages to not only property but also to life hence the need of the hour is a change in our approach towards handling the ecology and to minimize the damages in the future that is all about Himachal Pradesh now let us move on to the next discussion moving on to the next discussion based on this news article it talks about fast tag so first let us understand about fast tag then we will see about the news the fast tag is used for making toll payments and it is used for making these payments directly from the customer's linked prepaid account or savings or current account and it uses a radio frequency identification technology passive tag in short RFID passive tag see it is said as passive tag because fast tags work with no internal power source rather they are powered by the electromagnetic energy transmitted from an RFID reader but if you take an active RFID system the RFID tag works with an internal power source so this is the difference between an active and a passive tag and this fast tag is a passive RFID tag now this fast tag is affixed on the windscreen of the vehicle so it enables the customer to drive through toll plazas and they need not stop for any toll payments it is because the toll fare is directly deducted from the linked account of the customer and therefore fast tag also enables making toll payments directly while the vehicle is in motion another important feature of this fast tag is that it is vehicle specific and not customer specific which means that once it is fixed to a vehicle it cannot be transferred to another vehicle so where can we get this fast tag it can be purchased from any of the natural electronic toll collection member banks in short any TC member banks see this any TC is developed by the National Payments Corporation of India it is a program launched to ease out the traffic woes and to create an efficient and interoperable system on a national scale by covering all the toll plazas so this any TC is an interoperable system so your point to be noted is that if a fast tag is linked to the prepared account then it needs to be recharged or topped up as per the usage of the customer this is like how we recharge our phone numbers when we have a prepaid SIM card so that means if we have adequate balance in the fast tag then it is fine but if adequate balance is not maintained by the customer then the fast tag gets blacklisted at the toll plaza and such a scenario if the customer travels through a toll plaza without recharging then she won't be able to avail the any TC services and the customer would be required to pay the toll fare through cash now here the remedy is offered through the mobile application of fast tag it is called as my fast tag this offers a remedy because it has the feature which enables the users or the customers to check the balance status by simply entering the vehicle number so it makes it easy for the customers to know whenever the balance in their accounts is less so overall the benefits of this fast tag is that it enables cashless payment then we can save fuel and time because the customers do not have to stop at the toll plaza and then it also reduces the congestion at the toll plazas another important benefit is the interoperability which is supported by the NETC ecosystem because it supports multiple issuers and multiple acquirers that is the tag is issued by any member bank is accepted at all toll plaza under the NETC program so from February 2021 government has declared all lanes of fee plazas on the national highways as fast tag lane of the fee plaza and the news is that because of this development the overall fast tag penetration has reached approximately 96 percentage which means that around 96 percentage of the toll users or the national highway users now use fast tags so these are some of the points that you need to know about fast tag it is important from the prelims perspective so we'll discuss this prelims question at the last session now let us move to the next discussion now this discussion is based on this news article which reports a study and the study has stated that air samples collected from Chennai has the presence of heavy metals such as nickel manganese and silica and the amount of these metals were beyond the annual average level of exposure so let us first understand about heavy metals in brief and we'll also see their health implications see the heavy metals we are talking about here are the toxic metals and these toxic metals are the individual metals and metal compounds that negatively affect people's health so note that toxic metals also includes heavy metals but that does not mean that all the heavy metals are toxic metals now these heavy metals are a group of metals and metalloids and they have relatively high density and they are almost toxic and these metals are released into the environment by both natural and anthropogenic sources such as they are released by industrial discharge automobile exhaust and even through mining now if you consider the mentally periodic table it organizes chemical elements according to their atomic number electron configuration and valence numbers so you can see here these blue ones are the heavy metals and the main heavy metals as you can see are the beryllium aluminium chromium manganese iron nickel copper lead and tin etc and often we hear the term heavy metal poisoning it refers to the scenario of an excessive exposure to heavy metal affects the normal functioning of the body so heavy metal poisoning includes the excessive amounts of iron manganese aluminium mercury etc but here should note that heavy metals are not dangerous per se some heavy metals even have essential roles for human health while some are carcinogenic or toxic as we saw in the beginning carcinogenic means they can cause cancers for example if you take copper it is an integral part of the numerous enzymes in our body including the ferro oxidase cytochrome c oxidase and others it plays a role in the iron metabolism melanin synthesis and in the central nervous system functioning and if you take selenium it is a component of enzyme glutathione ferroxidase and this protects the protein cell membranes lipids and nucleic acids from the oxidant molecules and if you take chromium it potentiates that is it increases the power of insulin in the patients who have impaired glucose tolerance so remember we have both useful as well as toxic heavy metals so what are the sources so before that you should understand that unlike organic pollutants heavy metals are non-biodegradable and they have the tendency to accumulate in living beings and in fact most of them are known to be potential carcinogens as you already saw so various adverse health hazards are known to be caused due to long-term and continuous exposure to heavy metals that is the toxic ones so if you mainly take the sources heavy metal pollution can arise from many sources but most commonly it arises from the purification of metals for example it occurs during this melting of copper and the preparation of nuclear fuels and also if you take electroplating it is the primary source of chromium and cadmium mainly these heavy metals access pollutants because they can localize and they can lay dormant for some time see through precipitation of their compounds these heavy metals exchange into soils and muds and they cause the heavy metal pollution and as we already saw they do not decay therefore they pose a different kind of challenge with respect to remediation so these are some of the points that you need to know about heavy metals notice more to the next discussion our next discussion is with reference to this news article it mentions about the recent clashes between the state police forces of Assam and Mizoram here the people are not fighting but the police forces are fighting and these clashes are because of the border disputes between the two states so in today's analysis let us briefly see what is the issue and the origin of this issue in the coming days we will see in detail about each of these aspects today let us just start with a brief introduction of the dispute see if you take Assam you first understand that it shares border with the seven Indian states and it shares international boundary with two neighboring countries these are Bhutan and Bangladesh and among the seven Indian states which it shares border with Assam has boundary disputes with Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram now if you take Nagaland two commissions were earlier constituted by the central government to settle the border disputes between Assam and Nagaland these commissions are the Sundaram commission of 1971 and the Sastry commission of 1985 but these commissions failed to resolve the matter because the states did not accept the recommendations of these commissions but however still the negotiations are going on between the two states let's come to the Meghalaya issue see Meghalaya and Assam were found to be reluctant to hold talks because they also have border disputes especially they were fighting on the lumpy village issue see this village is at the Assam-Meghalaya border and has been a bone of contention between the states for a long time but however recently both these states had a dialogue to resolve this issue and related issues and this has showed a change in Assam's attitude now next comes the turn of Mizoram see in case of Mizoram both the states are turning away from the negotiations there are violent clashes at the disputed locations in Mizoram Assam border see totally both the states share around 164.6 kilometers length of border and the news article reports that six Assam police personnel were killed in an exchange of fire between the two state police forces and both are alleging each other saying that the other one started the fight or the firing but why is this boundary dispute happening it is because of the history of Assam and the present neighboring northeastern states see there are two colonial documents that are at the heart of this ongoing boundary conflict one is the 1875 notification and the other one is the 1933 notification here you should first note that during the colonial era Mizoram was known as Lusai Hills now in the 1875 notification the Kachar Hills and the Lusai Hills have been differentiated but in the 1933 notification the Lusai Hills and Manipur have been demarcated the north Kachar Hills is in the state of Assam now regarding these notification Mizoram states that the boundary should be demarcated on the basis of 1875 notification only and this notification was derived from the Bengal Eastern Fair Regulation Act of 1873 therefore Mizoram rejects the 1933 notification stating that Mizor society was not consulted before framing of this notification but on the other hand Assam government follows the 1933 notification and this is the main reason for the trouble but however there are other reasons also such as need for resources then demands of ethnic groups on both sides etc so all of this complicates the ongoing insurgency situation in the northeastern states now on a whole if you ask why Nagaland Mizoram Megalaya are having conflict with Assam it is because all these three states were carved out of Assam and they do not have a proper boundary demarcation and that is why often there is boundary dispute between these states and Assam so this is the brief about Assam and its border disputes with other states now let us move on to the next discussion our next discussion is based on this news article it mentions that the 87th Jayanthi celebration of Jayendra Saraswati Shankaracharya was conducted at Kanjipuram see note that Kanjipuram is a district in Tamil Nadu and it is the spiritual capital of the state and it is also home to certain majestic temples and it is also the seat of Jagadguru Adi Shankaracharya you should note that here the Jayanthi Saraswati Shankaracharya was the 69th Shankaracharya or Sri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham this Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham was established by Sri Adi Shankaracharya and that is why today we are going to know about Adi Shankaracharya from cultural history perspective the Adi Shankaracharya is one of the most influential philosophers of India he was born in Kerala in the eighth century some sources say he died early at the age of 32 in Uttarakhand but there is no proper evidence to prove this claim now Adi Shankaracharya is remembered for establishing the Advaita Vedanta he did this at a time when the Hindu culture was on the decline see Advaita means dualism and Advaita means non-dualism we will see what this means later here first know that Adi Shankaracharya along with Madhava and Ramanuja they all played an important role in the revival of Hinduism and they are considered as the most powerful figures in the recent history of Hindu philosophy mainly because their doctrines are still followed by their respective sex even till date so now let us see some of Shankaracharya's main philosophical thoughts see as we saw he was the exponent of Advaita Vedanta school of philosophy and based on this only the doctrines of the current modern Indian thoughts are said to be derived see this Advaita or the non-dualism means the doctrine of the oneness of the individual soul and the supreme god here the supreme god is the ultimate reality and as per this doctrine the individual soul and the supreme god both are one but in the concept of Dwaita or dualism both of them are treated separate and at the heart of this philosophy lies the tattvamasi tattvamasi is translated to thou art that see this is a famous phrase from the Chandogya Upanishad it perceives that the self or the atman as the absolute reality here you can note that the self and the atman that is the supreme god is treated as one and this absolute reality is said to be associated with Brahman see as per the Upanishads the supreme existence or the absolute reality is the Brahman and Brahman is said as the sole cause creator and consumer of the universe see as per this Advaita Vedanta this notion of Brahman or absolute reality states that there exists just one infinite existence and this one infinite existence is the one which reveals itself in multitude of forms which is nothing but Brahman is the only reality and Brahman has been appearing in the different forms of existence and they say that Brahman is beyond distinctions qualities descriptions or definitions now apart from this Advaita Vedanta school of philosophy Shankaracharya is also famous for his theory of Maya see according to him the charismatic power that creates the world is Maya and this power is inseparable from Ramma and according to Shankaracharya change is an illusion in the sense that nothing that did not exist earlier will come into existence it means that if something did not exist earlier it will not exist now also but even then sometimes the change of outer form is visible to the eyes of some and this happens due to the operation of Maya that is the change which we see is the operation of Maya and that is why Shankaracharya claims that the truth remains the same whereas the Maya makes it as something as a changed form here should note that Shankaracharya does not refute the dream itself but he only points at the Maya that creates the illusion of dream so in this discussion we saw about Adi Shankaracharya and two of his important philosophies one is the Advaita Vedanta and the Maya now let us move to the next discussion now we have come to the last session the practice questions discussion session let us start with this first question it is about fast tag the question asks which among the following is or are the features of fast tag first option it is RFID active tag this statement is incorrect because during discussion we clearly saw that it is a RFID passive tag and we also saw the reason behind it so this is incorrect so one should not be in the answer we can eliminate options A and B now from the remaining options you can easily say three and four are definitely correct now we have to only see whether two is correct or not now the second statement states it is customer specific no it is not we saw that fast tag is vehicle specific customers can use only one tag with one vehicle so once the tag is suffixed on the windshield of the vehicle it cannot be removed as it will get destroyed and it will not work at the toll blazers so it cannot be transferred to another vehicle so a customer may have three four vehicles and they need to have a separate tag for each vehicle so remember this fact it is important with respect to fast tag so two is incorrect and that is why the correct answer is option C three and four only three is it saves fuel yes and four is insufficient balance leads to blacklisting of tag see a blacklist of tag means vehicle is not allowed to pay through fast tag at the toll blazer and there are various reasons behind blacklisting of a tag such as the person is not having sufficient balance in her fast tag account so to avoid blacklisting customer should recharge their account or the tag after checking their balance often and sometimes fast tag can also be blacklisted by the law enforcement agencies due to any rule violation complaint registered against that particular vehicle so in such a case enforcement agencies request the issuer or the acquirer to add the tag id in the blacklist so this question we attempted using elimination technique in examination especially relating to current affairs elimination technique helps a lot now this next question is a map-based question it asks a sum shares border with which of the following states now this is not a question based on international city or a country but it is based on a state from our country itself the options given are Misoram Uttar Pradesh West Bengal Nagaland Tripura now one is present in all the options so obviously one is correct so if you know the map of India you can just assume where Assam is and where Uttar Pradesh is so even if you are confused with all the other options if you know that Uttar Pradesh does not share border with Assam which we should definitely know then we can eliminate options A and C now remaining are B and D now three is West Bengal and four is Nagaland and Nagaland definitely shares border with Assam because we saw that already border disputes are going on between both these states so that is why the correct answer is option D one three four and five only now this next question is based on Adi Shankaracharya topic first statement is Adi Shankaracharya wrote commentaries on the Upanishads Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita this statement is correct because he wrote the commentaries on these three and Shankaracharya's discourse or his philosophical views came to be known as Advaita Vedanta so this makes statement two as correct because it mentions that he is the proponent of Advaita Vedanta we just saw that his views came to be known as Advaita Vedanta so here the question asks for the correct statements option C both one and two notice next question states consider the following elements in the periodic table beryllium, aluminium, lithium, iron, potassium, cobalt which of the above are classified as heavy metals now this is a quite tricky question now immediately seeing that you will think four is a heavy metal definitely so based on that we can apply the elimination technique and we can arrive at the correct answer but if you see the options two and four are given in all the options that means aluminium and iron they are definitely heavy metals so we cannot apply the elimination technique here if you know the factual point you can arrive at the correct answer because here lithium is the lightest metal if you know this fact itself you can eliminate options A and B so from the given options you have 50-50 probability attempting this question correct so note that the correct answer is options C one two four and six only potassium is not a heavy metal because it is also a least dense metal and you can see where these metals are in the periodic table so with these problems questions discussion so so far we saw four problems question now let us take few mains questions and two are environment based questions so try to answer these questions and post your answer in the comment section for peer review the more you write answers the more you'll develop confidence and you'll have more words in the exam and in the exam you'll be able to form the words easily so develop the habit of writing mains answers so now we have come to the end of today's hindi news analysis if you like this video as always don't forget to like comment and share and do subscribe to shankar eyes academy youtube channel for more updates related to civil services preparation