 a very good evening aspirants welcome to the hindu newspaper analysis brought to you by shankara a s academy today's date is 31st of august 2023 displayed here or the list of news articles that we are going to discuss today now before getting into the news article discussion i have two important announcement to make the first one is regarding the most awaited pre-storming prelims 2024 test series the orientation for the test series will be starting on 11th september 2023 and the first test will be on 18th september 2023 the fee structure is displayed here you can go through it the second announcement is regarding all india open mock test for mains 2023 the test will be starting on 1st september 2023 for further details you can check the link in the description please don't miss the chance use it wisely to boost your answers in the mains 2023 so with this announcement let us move on to the news article discussion take a look at this news article from chennai page yesterday the state minister for municipal administration inaugurated a pilot project on the reuse of wastewater with nature-based solution to improve groundwater recharge this pilot project has been inaugurated at the little flower convent school in chennai the project is part of the efforts of city of thousand tanks so in this news article discussion we shall understand about city of thousand tanks and specifications of the new pilot project launched in the flower convent school see city of thousand tanks is a plan that was developed by a consortium of various organizations led by netherland-based oos architectures and urbanist the aim of the plan is to demonstrate a model that can make chennai water secure by identifying the interrelationships between the underlying causes of floods water scarcity and pollution in chennai currently city of thousand tanks intends to develop a water balance model across the city by collecting rainwater treating wastewater and runoff pollution with decentralized nature-based solutions and recharging them to the underground aquifier this will prevent climate change induced droughts by increasing groundwater resource and prevent saline intrusion from sea level rise simultaneously it will mitigate risks associated with high frequency floods as well as sea wage pollution see the current urban demand is thousand 580 million liters per day mld so the project intends to fix supply side issues by creating water retention and supply capacities of 200 to 250 mld in first two phases one such initiative is what we saw in today's news article the project in the school used advanced wastewater treatment techniques and constructed wetlands especially an artificial wetland with canal plants to treat gray water apart from this harvesting rainwater anaerobic and aerobic treatment methods are also used to treat 27 000 liters of sewage generated daily the treated wastewater would be released into an aquifier through infiltration gardens see this program is an initiative of henry owink the special envoy for international water affairs of the kingdom of the netherlands the team has also collaborated with other organizations in chennai as well for example cat earth dressed will monitor the impact on biodiversity in the garden and check the quality of treated wastewater city of thousand tanks have also planned to scale up the initiative to other parts of chennai the program besides reducing burden on urban sewage infrastructure and flooding it would also help urban cooling due to increase in population and the depletion of water table chennai will run out of water in the next decade that is why this initiative has been launched remember kenna lily has huge potential to remove carbon nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater and the subtropical conditions this recycling technology of wastewater using nature-based solution is known as phytoread technology or in other words phytoread technology is a self-sustainable technology for wastewater treatment that works on the principle of natural wetland hope you learned something new in today's news article discussion so these learned points now let us move on to the next news article discussion take a look at this news article it talks about the reason coop that is happening in an african country called gabon after the coop attempt there is uncertainty about who is in charge of gabon the coop leaders have announced that they have installed a new interim leader this is the cracks of the news article given here in this context let us discuss about the coop happening in gabon in problems point of view first let us see some of the basic information about gabon look at this map gabon lies on west coast of africa and the equated forces through it it is bordered by equatorial gunia on the northwest cameron to the north the republic of the congo on the south and the gulf of gunia to the west the gunon was previously a french colony and even today it has stronger economic ties with france gabon is rich in oil resources and oil is the main source of country's revenue even though it has plenty of natural resources one third of its population live in poverty due to exploitation by european powers so with this basic understanding now let us discuss about the coop that is happening in gabon see recently the president of gabon ali bongo was deposed by the country's military his family has ruled gabon for 56 years and there is public resentment for their rule there is also public discontent over broader issues like poverty inflation influence of france in country's economic policies and etc president bongo has been removed from his office by military leaders in the recent coop as a result the rebel leaders have received the support of common people but france and other western nations have condemned to the coop interesting thing to note here is that this is the eighth coop in former french colonies in africa in the past three years few days earlier we have discussed a coop happened in niger which is a west african country before that political instability happened in mali gunia senegal and etc so we can see that there is an increasing trend of military coop in west africa and this latest coop in gabon is seen as the part of this trend as upsi has tendency of asking questions about conflict regions around the world we can expect questions based on these recent coops in west african region that is why we have chosen this news article so these learned points now let us move on to the next news article discussion now take a look at this science page article this article speaks about managing nuclear waste now suddenly this topic is in news because of japan japan has started releasing treated radioactive water from the fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean i hope you all remember that in 2011 japan was hit by a massive earthquake during this earthquake the fukushima nuclear power plant was flooded with seawater and it was heavily damaged the flood water had mixed up with the water that was used to cool nuclear fuel rods so all the contaminated water have been collected and stored in tanks this is because there was a chance that the water would contain harmful radiations now after several years the wastewater was highly filtered to reduce radioactivity and it was released into the ocean this has raised some concern among the people about the disposal or management of spent nuclear fuel so because of this only the topic regarding managing nuclear waste appeared in the news today there are some temporary traditional methods followed to manage nuclear waste let us understand them in this news article discussion now to have a better understanding we have to first know about nuclear energy and the functioning of nuclear reactors see nuclear energy is a green energy it is one of the alternatives to fossil fuel or carbon based energy currently 10 percentage of the world's electricity comes from nuclear energy as we all know many countries like the u-verse china and india have set a target to achieve net zero emissions so they are focusing on obtaining a higher share of energy from nuclear power plants but the problem here is that there is no clear cut common global policy to deal with nuclear waste that is obtained from nuclear power plants now coming to the functioning of nuclear reactors see nuclear reactors are the heart of a nuclear power plant the nuclear reactor contains nuclear fuel rods which comprises of numerous pellets of feasible uranium fuel the nuclear fuel rod acts as a fuel to run the reactors the nuclear reactors carry out controlled nuclear chain reactions with the help of uranium filled fuel rods during operation the reactors produce extreme heat through a process of nuclear efficient reaction the heat obtained through the nuclear reaction is supplied to one adjacent chamber filled with water due to extreme heat the water starts boiling and it produces steam the obtained steam spins a turbine and it creates electricity with the help of a generator this is how nuclear reactors function here the nuclear fuel rods that are used to run the reactor are constantly cooled with the help of water if it is not cooled it will melt down the reactor and the radiation will get released into the environment this in turn affects the living organisms surrounding the power plant so the fuel rods should be kept cool to avoid any disaster see when the nuclear fuel rods are exhausted of fuel it is unloaded and replaced by the new fuel rods now the spent nuclear rods are not safer to dispose of in the environment so they are unloaded and kept into a water-filled pool immediately it allows the rods to decrease its heat and radiation levels note that the rods are held in the water pools for periods ranging from a few years to decades so now what happens after the cooling of spent fuel see after cooling the spent fuel rods are transferred to massive air-cooled dry casks for storage here the spent fuel is stored safely in a centralized facility for the rest of the lifetime most of the countries follow this disposal process but in a few countries the fuel is spent to a reprocessing plant in the reprocessing plant the spent fuel is dissolved and some of the elements like the plutonium and uranium are recovered in some cases the recovered elements are recycled to use again in nuclear reactor also in some countries the cooled spent fuel rods are buried in near-surface disposal facilities at ground level or below these facilities are protected with a cover of at least a few meters thick apart from this the nuclear waste is also placed in walls which are filled with soil and clay then the vault is covered with an impermeable material and buried under the ground see these are some of the options followed to dispose of low-level and intermediate level waste that is to dispose of the waste with low level of radioactivity that typically comes from a nuclear power plant however coming to the disposal of high-level waste see disposing high-level waste that is the waste with high level of radioactivity has few options the most visible option is deep geological disposal currently this process is followed by Finland the deep geological disposal process involves three layers of protection firstly the nuclear waste is placed in copper canisters secondly the copper canisters were wrapped in bentonite clay and finally they are buried more than 400 meters below ancient pit rock see the deep geological disposal process will help to keep the waste isolated from surroundings apart from this this disposal process will also be able to withstand disasters like earthquakes or tsunamis so these are all some of the methods followed to manage or dispose of nuclear waste so these learned points now let us move on to the next news article discussion take a look at this news article this article discusses a recent report called state of food security and nutrition in the world in short called as SOFI 2023 the report is published by the food and agriculture organization FAO and other united nations agencies the report focuses on the affordability of a healthy diet in India and compares it with other countries so in our discussion we shall see the important findings of the report as mentioned in the news article before that the syllabus relevant to the news article is highlighted here you can go through it firstly let us start with basic information mentioned in the report see the SOFI report talks about two important dimensions regarding food security in India one is cost of healthy diet and another one is affordability of healthy diet first let us see what does the report says about cost of healthy diet see to determine the cost of a healthy diet the report takes the cheapest local food item that meet dietary guidelines then they compare the cost of these food items with average income of the country if the cost of the diet is more than 52 percentage of the average income then it is considered as expensive the key findings of the report indicate that the cost of a healthy diet in India has increased in recent years but it still reminds lower compared to bricks nation and India's neighbors now let us see about the affordability of healthy diet see even though the food prices are lower in India 74 percentage of the population cannot afford a healthy diet this is because of the low income of the population so the share of people who can afford a healthy diet in India is low compared to other countries the report mentions that India rank at the bottom of this list this is because income levels in India is stagnant or declining the report also highlights a specific case study from Mumbai it says that the cost of meals increased by 65 percentage over five years in Mumbai but at the same time the wages increased by only 28 to 37 percentage it means the food prices increased much higher than the wages now we shall understand the findings of the report with the help of four charts as mentioned in the news article now look at this first chart this chart compares the cost of a healthy diet for one person per day in 2021 this cost is measured in PPP dollars which stands for purchasing power parity dollars see here one PPP dollar in the united states is equivalent to one PPP dollar in India or Brazil even though the actual currency value might be different so according to this concept one PPP dollar has the same value in different countries for example in India the cost of a healthy diet is 3.066 PPP dollars per person per day this is actually lowest among the countries studied you can see that in the chart given here now look at this chart two this chart tells us how many people in each country couldn't buy a healthy diet in 2021 according to the chart 74 percentage of people in India could not afford a healthy diet this is the fourth highest share among the countries studied by the report many people in India still cannot afford a healthy diet despite low cost of diet this is due to lower income levels among the population now the third chart explains that the cost of a healthy diet in Asia increased by almost 9 percentage between 2019 and 2021 this was due to a number of factors like COVID-19 pandemic which disrupted supply chains and increased food prices additionally the economics low down in Asia has led to low incomes for many people making it more difficult for them to afford healthy food now look at this fourth chart the number of people who could not afford a healthy diet increased in Asia and Africa between 2019 and 2021 Asia accounted for 72 percentage of the worldwide increase followed by Africa which accounted for 20 percentage increase in people who could not afford the healthy diet in Asia South Asia region is most affected and in the African continent eastern and western part are most affected so these are also some of the important findings of the report given in the article overall the article highlights the lack of access to healthy diet in India and other regions of the world due to low income levels so these learnt points now let us move on to the next news article discussion take a look at this news article according to the article yesterday the Irola tribal people deciding in the Palsune village of Krishnagiri district in Tamil Nadu didn't allow a dead body of a village person to enter into their village it is said that the person died of cardiac complications at Jipmar in Puducherry last Tuesday so his body was brought by ambulance to the village but the ambulance was stopped at the entrance of the village itself this is because according to the Irolas the body of the deceased cannot be brought to the Irola settlement they consider that bringing the dead from a hospital for burial in the Irola village is ominous here ominous means that something unpleasant is likely to happen the Irolas believe that bringing the dead body from outside to the Irola village will cause unpleasant things to their community so they didn't allow the dead body of a person from outside into their village here even though the Irolas of Palsune village didn't allow the body into their village they themselves took the dead body to the common graveyard on the outskirts of Krishnagiri town after that they contacted the revenue officials to help them in cremating the body the officials arrived and they held talks with the Irola people to allow the body into their village but they denied the request and finally the body was cremated that is the body was burnt into ashes here one thing have to notice the practice of cremation itself is alien to Irolas see mostly the tribals around the world don't cremate their dead body this is because they live in hills and forest so burning the dead will sometimes end up in forest fires therefore they bury the dead instead of cremation the Irola tribes also have a belief that burying the dead will give birth to the new as like solving the seeds so this is the background of the news article given here based on this news article let us also revise some of the points about Irolas in Prillam's perspective see Irolas are one of India's oldest intergenius tribal communities they reside in northern district of Tamil Nadu and in some parts of Kerala and Karnataka they speak Irola language which is closely related to Dravidian languages of Kannada and Tamil the traditional dance of Irolas is Irola dance the Irolas are classified as particularly vulnerable tribal group in short called as PVTG here PVTG refers to the marginalized section of the scheduled tribes in India these tribes are relatively isolated from other communities and they are both educationally and socioeconomically backward people now talking about their occupation see the main occupation of the Irola is snake and rat catching they also collect some of the wild resources like honey firewood and so on apart from this they also work as laborers in the agri fields during the sawing and harvesting season or in the rice mills the women in the Irola communities are very knowledgeable with regard to medicinal plant varieties they can treat some of the diseases with the help of medicinal plants this knowledge has been passed on from many generations talking about their food habits Irolas mostly consume millets this is because millet based food is very much ideal for their rigorous lifestyle apart from this they also consume the meat of chicken goat pig and fish not that Irolas don't consume beef now coming to their lifestyle see historically the Irolas live in the caves subsequently they began to live in huts made of bamboo but due to scarcity of bamboo they began to build huts with the help of soil and stones so as of now most of the Irolas are living in houses made up of stones and muds so these are also of the very important point that you have to remember about Irolas so with these learnt points let us move on to the next news article discussion take a look at this news article yesterday the Lok Sabha speaker revoked the suspension of congress leader Adhir Rajan Choudhury from the Lok Sabha this decision was taken after the recommendation of the privileges committee headed by BJP MP in the Lok Sabha the committee unanimously recommended the speaker to revoke the suspension so based on the committee's recommendation the speaker revoked the suspension of Mr Choudhury this is about the news article given here so in this news article discussion we shall understand about privileges committee of the parliament see basically member of parliament have some privileges while they speak or take part in the proceedings of the parliament these privileges can be classified into two broad categories like collective privileges and individual privileges now the main function of privileges committee is to examine the question whether these privileges offered to them or breached or not if any member of either house of the parliament found that there is a breach of privilege by a certain MP then they can move a privilege motion against such MP then if the speaker of either house finds that there is substantial breach of privilege they refer the question of breach to the privileges committee after receiving the request the committee decides on a breach of privilege based on the valid facts after due study the committee makes appropriate recommendation to the speaker through a detailed report based on the report the speaker would pass final order on the question of privileges in some cases the speaker also directs the committee to lay down the report on the table of the house this is how privileges committee actually functions talking about their composition in Lok Sabha privileges committee consists of 15 members and they are nominated by the speaker in Rajesh Sabha the privileges committee consists of 10 members and they are nominated by chairman of Rajesh Sabha note that the chairman of privileges committee of Lok Sabha is nominated by the speaker in case of Rajesh Sabha the privileges committee is headed by the deputy chairman of the Rajesh Sabha except the composition the functioning of privileges committee in both the Lok Sabha and Rajesh Sabha remains the same so that's all regarding this news article in this news article we saw about privileges committee how they function and their composition so these learned points now let us move on to the next part of the news article discussion which is the problem practice question discussion now take a look at this first question this question is about privileges committee of the parliament three statements are given you have to find how many statements given here or correct statement one the privileges committee of the Lok Sabha is headed by the opposition leader in the Lok Sabha this statement is actually incorrect the chairman to privileges committee of the Lok Sabha is nominated by the speaker now look at the second statement the recommendations of the privileges committee or binding on the parliament this statement is also incorrect the recommendations are not binding on the parliament now look at this third statement the members to the privileges committee are nominated by the prime minister this statement is also incorrect the members to the privileges committee or nominated by the speaker in case of Lok Sabha and chairman in case of Rajesh Sabha so the correct answer for the question is option d none none of the options are correct here now moving on here a description regarding a particular tribal group was given you have to find for which tribal group this description will be suitable four options are given option a toda option b kurumbas option c irulas and option d paliyans see here the correct answer for the question is option c irulas because from their community only recently two persons were conferred with batmashri for their expertise in snake catching okay so the correct answer is option c irulas moving on the term d geological disposal is associated with which of the following option a carbon sequestration option b disposal of spent nuclear fuel option c burial of deceased animals and option d disposal of burnt coal ashes see the correct answer for the question is option b disposal of spent nuclear fuel we saw that in the discussion right so the correct answer here is option b displayed here are the main practice questions for you today just go through the question try to answer it in the comment section with this we came to the end of the news article discussion if you like the video hit like do comment and don't forget to subscribe to Shankar IAS academy youtube channel now thank you for listening