 Very good evening aspirants. We have a small announcement for you today. We are happy to inform you that the third test batch of the pre-storming 2021 program of Shankara AS Academy has started from yesterday and the admission for the same is currently underway. The pre-storming of Shankara AS Academy is the prelims test series for the upcoming UPSC preliminary examination 2021. Our pre-storming program is India's first full-fledged artificial intelligence supported preliminary test series. All the required details regarding this is provided in the link in the description of this video and also in the comment section. With this information, let's move on to the Hindu news analysis for the date 9th January 2021. The list of news articles chosen for today's analysis along with its page numbers from different editions of Hindu newspaper is given here for your reference. Let us start the discussion with this first news article. Our first discussion is based on this news article which talks about a video that displays a group of youth who were indulging in killing of a Gangetic Dolphin in Uttar Pradesh. Gangetic Dolphin assumes importance in Indian scenario. So, let us see about it today. First, know its full name. It is known as the Gangetic River Dolphin. It was officially discovered in the year 1801. This species is spotted in the river systems of Nepal, India and Bangladesh, such as the Ganges Brahmaputra Meghna River System and Kornafuli Sangu River System. However, at present, this species is said to be extinct from a major part of its early distribution ranges. In India, its distribution range covers seven states namely Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. One of its special characteristics is that this Gangetic River Dolphin or the Ganges River Dolphin can only live in fresh water and they are generally blind. Now, since they are blind, they catch their prey in a unique manner by emitting an ultrasonic sound which reaches the prey. After this, the dolphin registers this image in its mind and subsequently it catches hold of its prey. Now, these Gangetic Dolphins are important since it is among the four obligate fresh water dolphins found in the world and they are a reliable indicator of the health of the entire river ecosystem. But as we saw, it is in the verge of extinction. So, what are the threats to this species? The first threat is that the habitat of the Ganges River Dolphin is within one of the most densely populated areas of the world and in these areas, both the dolphin and the people favor those areas where the fishes are plenty and the water current is slow. So, this led to fewer fish for people and more dolphins are dying as a result of accidentally being caught in the fishing nets. That is, they are caught as by-catch, due to which they are wounded and they die as a result. Apart from this, Ganges River Dolphins are also hunted for meat and oil for medicinal reasons and their oil is also used to attract catfish in net fisheries. Then pollution is also a serious threat to this species including the industrial, agricultural and human pollution. The high level of pollution has got the potential to kill the prey species and dolphins and completely destroy their habitat. See, these dolphins are top predators. So, the high level of toxic chemicals in their preys enters in their bodies also which affects their health. Next threat is that its population is divided into sub-populations. This is due to the construction of more than 50 dams and other irrigation related projects in its habitats. So, these dolphins are divided into isolated groups. This makes them susceptible to inbreeding and they are more vulnerable to other threats as they cannot move to new areas. This also leads to less food because dams disturb the migration, breeding cycles and habitat of fish and other prey of dolphins. Apart from these, they also face threats like direct killing which was reported in today's news. So, they are subjected to many threats. Thus, various steps are being taken nationally and internationally to regulate the developmental activities and to increase the population of Ganges River Dolphin. Internationally, if you see, it has been listed as endangered in the ISN Red List. It is also listed under the Appendix I of Sites and they are also listed in Appendix I and II of CMS that is the Convention of Migratory Species. And if we discuss on the national front, it is to be noted that in the year 2009, the Ganges River Dolphins were declared as the national aquatic animal of India by the Government of India. Additionally, they are also protected under Schedule I of Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. So, they have been accorded the highest degree of protection against hunting. Now, to ensure its conservation, wildlife sanctuaries that cover important dolphin habitats have been created in the country under the provisions of Wildlife Protection Act to conserve their habitats. And these sanctuaries include the National Chumble Sanctuary, Sarnath Turtle Sanctuary, Vikram Shila Ganges Dolphin Sanctuary. Apart from this, Ganges River Dolphin is also one of the 16 species that are identified for taking up recovery program of critically endangered species under the centrally sponsored scheme of integrated development of wildlife habitat. Then they protect these species and its habitats. The conservation action plan for the Ganges Dolphin of 2010-20 has been formulated. And we also have a special project named after this, which is the Project Dolphin. This project involves conservation of dolphins and the aquatic habitat through use of modern technology, especially in enumeration and anti-poaching activities. This project engages the fishermen and other river-dependent population or ocean-dependent population in conservation measures. And it also strives to improve the livelihood of local communities. Now, since the Ganges River Dolphin is a national heritage of our country, many measures are being taken by the government for its conservation. So, these are some of the points that you should know with respect to Ganges River Dolphin. Now, let's move on to the next discussion. This discussion is based on this news article, which mentions that the Tata Consultancy Services Limited, that is, TCS has reported rise in its profits. It has reported that in its third quarter, there is a consolidated net profit rise of 7.2% from previous year. And the company has said that this increase was backed by broad-based growth across segments, especially in the cloud-based services. So, the new IT cloud-based services have fueled the growth of the company. And we also often hear cloud services in news. So, in the technological perspective, it is important to know about cloud services. In this context, let's have a brief discussion on cloud services and other cloud-related technologies today. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. First, you have to understand the term cloud services. It refers to a wide range of services that are delivered on demand to companies and customers over the internet. That is the cloud. See, when we say cloud in IT, it means a networked computing facility that provides remote data storage and processing services via the internet. Now, these services are designed to provide easy, affordable access to applications and resources without the need for internal infrastructure or hardware. Actually, from checking email to collaborating on documents, we use cloud services throughout the workday without being aware of it. For example, now we are watching a video on YouTube. Now, though we have uploaded the video, the video is not hosted by us, which means the video location or the drive where the video is actually is not even known to us. This is because the video has been uploaded to YouTube platform and it is YouTube which saves the video in its drive and it makes it available to the users like you. So, YouTube can be called as a cloud service here. Now, these cloud services facilitate the flow of user data from front-end clients, such as users, mobiles, tablets, etc., through the internet to the provider systems and also the other way back. Here note that users can access cloud services with just a computer, operating system, and internet connectivity. Now, to understand this, let us take another example, Google Photos. Now, these Google Photos are stored in Google's servers which are somewhere in a foreign country, but we are accessing it with just a computer that has an operating system and has internet connectivity. Now, these cloud services are fully managed by cloud computing vendors and service providers like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc. And these services are made available to customers from the provider's servers. So, there is no need for a company to host the applications on its own, on the on-premises servers. In simple words, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services. And it includes servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence. And these are delivered over the internet, that is the cloud, to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. Now, when we say economies of scale, it means a proportionate saving in the cost that is gained by an increased level of production, which means we typically pay only for cloud services which we use. This helps to lower our operating costs, it helps us to run our infrastructure more efficiently, and scale our businesses according to our change in needs. For example, you are watching the daily news analysis of Shankara Ace Academy. Now, all the work files which we do daily, including to create this daily news analysis video, these are stored in Google Drive, instead of storing them in our own computers. So, this is how they reduce the operating costs and infrastructure, and helps us to use the infrastructure more efficiently. So, on a whole, what are its benefits? First benefit is the cost. As we just saw, cloud computing eliminates the capital expense of buying hardware and software and setting up and running on-site data centers. The next benefit is the speed. See, most cloud computing services are provided as self-service or on-demand. So, even vast amounts of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes. That is, with just few mouse clicks, the cloud computing services can be used. So, this gives the businesses a lot of flexibility and it takes the pressure of the capacity planning of the companies. Now, the next benefit is the global scale. That is the ability to scale elastically. In cloud language, this means delivering the right amount of IT resources at the right time when it is needed, and from the right geographical location. Now, next benefit is that it enables high productivity. As we saw, on-site data centers require a lot of racking and stacking, such as it requires hard-vesit or software patching and other time-consuming IT management chores. But the cloud computing removes the need for all these tasks. So, the IT teams can spend their time on achieving more important business goals. So, this improves their productivity. Now, next benefit is the performance. The biggest cloud computing services run on a worldwide network of secure data centers, which are regularly upgraded to the latest generation of fast and efficient computing hardware. This offers several benefits over a single corporate data center, such as it reduces network latency for applications and it provides greater economies of scale, as we saw already. See here, latency is the delay before the transfer of data begins after an instruction is given for its transfer. So, cloud services reduces this network latency. Then, the next benefit is its reliability. This cloud computing makes data backup, disaster recovery and business continuity easier and less expensive, because data can be mirrored at multiple redundant sites on the cloud provider's network. Now, from the above discussion, you would have understood that the cloud services offer many services, including storage of our data. So, here comes the question of security. But in the current world, many cloud providers offer a broad set of policies, technologies, and controls that strengthen our security posture overall. So, this helps to protect our data, apps, and infrastructure from potential threats. But the security aspect is still evolving, we can say. It is not foolproof. So, this is what technically you need to know about cloud services. Now, let us understand this on a whole, using one example. As we said before, our work files are stored in Google Drive, and the news analysis video, Shankar I.S. Academy, will be shared on YouTube channel. But instead of this, if you plan to host video on our own platform and share the work files in our own hard disks, then for that firstly, we have to set up many hard disks to store the daily data. And then second, there will be a problem of collaborative working because during the lockdowns, we continued the news analysis videos. This happened even though our workforce, that is the Hindi News Analysis team, was staying in different states. It was possible for us to upload the videos because of the cloud sharing of files. Now, this would not have been possible if we did not use the cloud services. And then finally, to host the video on our own website, we also need online data storage tools and a website that will always uptime potential, that is, which will be in operation. So this all needs lots of resources and it reduces the work efficiency. But by just using the cloud services, we have reduced the upfront capital cost and also the operational expenses. So suddenly, if you want to increase our cloud storage, we just upgrade our Google Drive plan to higher storage. So instead of setting up new computers and new storages, etc., we can just do this and reduce the operational costs. Now, before ending this discussion, you need to know the types of cloud services. There are three basic types of cloud services. The first one is software as a service, in short SAS, AAS. This is the most widely recognized type of cloud service. It is a broad category that encompasses a variety of services such as file storage and backup, web-based email and project management tools. And the examples for this software as a service could be G Suite and Microsoft Office 365. Now, in each of these applications, users can access, share, store, and secure information in the cloud. Now, the next type is the infrastructure as a service or, in short, IAAS. Now, this provides the infrastructure that many cloud service providers need to manage the SAS tools. That is the SAS tools because the cloud service providers don't want to maintain these infrastructure themselves. So these IAAS serves as the complete data center framework which eliminates the need for resource-intensive on-site installations. Now, examples for this includes the Amazon Web Services, then Microsoft Azure. These providers maintain all-story servers and networking hardware, and they may also offer load-balancing application firewalls and more. These are technical terms. Just know that they offer these services. So, you just understand that many well-known SAS providers run on IAAS platforms. Now, the next type of cloud service is the platform as a service. In short, P-A-A-S. It serves as a web-based environment where developers can build cloud apps. So, the PAS or P-A-A-S provides a database operating system and programming language that organizations can use to develop cloud-based software. And they can do this without having to maintain the underlying elements. An example for this is Microsoft Azure. So, these are some of the points that you should know with respect to cloud services or cloud-based services and its types and benefits. Now, let's move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this news article which talks about an application of cloud services which we discussed in the last discussion. As we said, during lockdown, the cloud services helped us in continuing our work, even from our homes. Like that, an organic farmer, Mr. Manivasan, has used cloud services to demonstrate the agri-related farm techniques through virtual meets. He is an advisor on organic agriculture to a dozen of farmer-producer organizations. So, he has been hosting virtual farm meets through cloud-based video communication app almost every day to teach about organic farming. So, what is this organic farming? It is a system which is not new to India. It is being followed from ancient times. It is a method of farming system which primarily aims at cultivating the land and raising crops in such a way so as to keep the soil alive and in good health by use of organic waste and other biological materials along with beneficial microbes. These help in releasing nutrients to crops for increased sustainable production in an eco-friendly, pollution-free environment. Thus, organic farming can be defined as a system which avoids or largely excludes the use of synthetic inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, hormones, feed additives, etc. And it is a system which relies upon crop rotations, crop residues, animal menus, and biological system of nutrient mobilization and plant protection to the maximum extent feasible. So, what is the need of organic farming when we have successful methods like green revolution? See, with the increase in population, our compulsion would be not only to stabilize agricultural production but also to increase it further in a sustainable manner. In this regard, scientists have realized that the green revolution with high input use has reached a level and now it is sustained with diminishing return or falling dividends. Thus, a natural balance needs to be maintained at all costs for the existence of life and property. So, there was a need for an obvious choice that would be more relevant in the present era because the agrochemicals that are used in green revolution, these are produced from fossil fuels and they are not renewable and they are also diminishing in availability. It is also expected to cost heavily on our foreign exchange in the future and thus an alternative choice was needed which is the organic farming. Let us see some of the key characteristics of organic farming. It enables protecting the long-term fertility of soils by maintaining the organic matter levels and by encouraging soil biological activity and by careful mechanical intervention. It also provides crop nutrients indirectly using relatively insoluble nutrient sources which are made available to the plants by the action of soil microorganisms. It also enables nitrogen self-sufficiency using legumes and biological nitrogen fixation and this also includes effective recycling of organic materials such as crop residues and livestock manures. It also pays careful attention to the impact of the farming system on the wider environment and it also focuses on the conservation of wildlife and natural habitats. So, like this, these are the key characteristics and benefits of organic farming. With this, let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this news article which talks about the decision of Supreme Court to examine a petition which has raised the question of forced confessions or mandatory confessions in the Kerala-based Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and the alleged abuse of such confessions. So, in this context, let us have an understanding of this issue. We will also see some other similar religious issues where the court had intervened previously. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. First, let us see the current issue with respect to forced confession. Before that, what is confession? See, confession is a concept used in Judeo-Christian tradition. It is the acknowledgement of sinfulness in public or private and it is regarded as necessary to obtain divine forgiveness. Now, the need for confession is frequently stressed in the holy book of Christians that is Bible. It is told that confessing once since is one of the sacraments that is the ritual of the church. But can a believer in the religion or a believer in this tradition or the one who follows it be compelled to do it? This is where the current issue lies. Now, the plea which has been filed in the Supreme Court is regarding the compulsion to do confessions. Now, this plea referred to the 1934 Constitution of Malankara Church of Kerala. As per this, a person in order to remain a member of the church is mandatory required to make a confession once a year. And the names of those who do the confessions are recorded in a confession register and the maintenance of this register is mandatory. So, in this regard, it is also to be remembered that in 2017, Supreme Court gave a verdict which upheld this 1934 Constitution of Malankara Church and it gave Orthodox group the control over some thousand parishes and churches in Kerala. Now, the petitioners in their plea claimed that such confessions by women are subsequently used to sexually exploit them. Why? Because in confessions, the believer will tell all their so-called sins and they will admit their mistakes. So, it seems that those are used against them to sexually exploit them. So, the petitioners opined that the mandatory requirement to confess along with the mandatory requirement to keep a confession register has turned into a tool for exploiting men and women churchgoers by the priests of their respective church. And this compulsion imposed on the devotees of the churchgoers is seriously interfering with the guarantees provided to every citizen under Articles 21 and 25 of the Constitution of India. This is what has been argued by the petitioners. As you know, Article 25 of Indian Constitution guarantees freedom of consigns and free profession, practice and propagation of religion. However, this freedom is subject to public order, health and morality. Now, the petitioners argue that they are not allowed to freely practice their religion because they are forced to do to the confessions. Additionally, the petitioners also added that this compulsion to confess is a serious intrusion into the privacy of a person. So, in this regard, we should remember that Supreme Court in its unanimous judgment, in Justice's case, Putta Swami versus Union of India ruled that the right to privacy is a fundamental right under the Constitution. Supreme Court held that the right to privacy is protected as an intrinsic part of right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 and also protected as a part of freedoms that is guaranteed by Part 3 of the Constitution. So, now, the petitioners argue that their fundamental right is being violated. But even though such a petition was filed, it is up to the Court to accept the petition and to inquire about it. So, in this current issue, the Court asked the senior advocate who was appearing for the petitioners that why the Court should intervene in a purely religious issue like this. And for replying this question, the advocate reminded the Court about the Court's previous interventions in questions that concern personal laws and customs of communities like Bora Muslims and Parsis. So, this is where you need to know that where the Court had already intervened in some of the religious issues, one of such intervention happened in 2015 when a writ petition was filed in Supreme Court that called for the ban over the practice of female genital mutilation. This is also known as Khatna or female circumcision or Khaft. This was performed by the Dawudi Bora community in India. And this practice is generally performed when a girl is 7 years old. It involves the total removal or partial removal of the clitoral hood of the girl child. Now, this Dawudi Bora community believes that male and female circumcision is required as acts of religious purity. But this was challenged in the Supreme Court. But however, Supreme Court directed the matter to a larger constitutional bench which is yet to hear the matter. And again, in 2017, Supreme Court in its verdict allowed two Parsis sisters to participate in the last rites of their father though they had married two non-Parsis. See, in the Zoroastrians or the Parsis, there is a religious custom in India of not allowing the women to enter the fire temple and the tower of silence if they marry a non-Zoroastrian person. In this tower of silence, the Parsis lay out the corpses because in their tradition they do not bury or cremate the dead. So if a Zoroastrian woman marries a non-Zoroastrian person, then she was not allowed to enter the fire temple and the tower of silence. And this custom was challenged before the Supreme Court for which the Supreme Court gave its verdict in 2017 and it ruled in favor of allowing the entry to the two Parsis sisters to participate in the last rites of their father. And very recently we have the Sabrimala verdict which came in September 2018. He the court delivered its verdict regarding the Sabrimala temple entry. Supreme Court held that the temple's practice of excluding women of certain age from entry into the temple is unconstitutional. It also held that the practice violated the fundamental right to freedom of religion of female worshippers under article 25 class 1 of Indian constitution. In this regard, it also struck down rule 3B of Kerala Hindu places of public worship act as unconstitutional because this rule allowed for Hindu denominations to exclude women from public places of worship if the exclusion was based on custom. So in this manner, Supreme Court has intervened in many instances. So now let us wait and watch whether Supreme Court declares that mandatory confession is violation of right to privacy, liberty and dignity of the church goers or not. So these are some of the information that you should know with respect to this news article. Now let's move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this news article which states that the Kerala state government has planned to develop a flood forecasting and early warning system which will be integrated with real-time reservoir operations for the Periyar basin. The Kerala state government has also planned to come up with a real-time decision support system for flood and drought management in Bharatapura basin this year. And these initiatives are part of the government's plan to develop a full-fledged inflow forecasting and flood early warning systems for all river basins in the state under the National Hydrology Project. So what is this National Hydrology Project? This project was started in the year 2016 as a central sector scheme that is a 100% grant was given to the implementing agencies. Now this project aims to improve the reliability and accuracy of hydrology and groundwater data throughout India and it aims to improve the access to this information. The program also aims for water management through scientific data collection through dissemination of information on water availability in all blocks of the country and also by establishing a National Water Information Center. Additionally, the project aims to establish an effective and sound hydrological database and hydrological information system. So this project is intended for setting up of a system for timely and reliable water resources data acquisition, data storage, collation and management. Thus it will help in gathering the hydro-metrological data which will be stored and analyzed on a real-time basis and it can be seamlessly accessed by any user at the state level, district level or village level and this project aims to cover the entire country. It will also provide tools or systems for the informed decision making through the decision support systems. Now this decision support system is for water resource assessment, flood management, reservoir operations, drought management, etc. Thus, NHP also seeks to build the capacity of the state and central sector organizations in water resources management through the use of information systems and through the adoption of state-of-the-art technologies like remote sensing. So these are the components of NHP which includes in situ hydro-met monitoring system and hydro-met data acquisition system, then setting up of NWIC, then water resources operation and management system and then water resources institutions and capacity building. Now these components will help the policy makers to have data beforehand it will also help flood forecasting in advance and with the help of the information provided by this NHP flood prone areas can be mapped well in advance. So these are some of the information that is shown with respect to National Hydrology Project. Now let's move on to the next discussion. Now this next news article mentions that a former DGP of Maharashtra has been appointed as the new chief of Central Industrial Security Force that is CISF. We don't often get chance to discuss about the security forces. So today let us take this opportunity to know some facts about CISF. First know that it is an armed force of the union that is established under an act of parliament which is the Central Industrial Security Force Act of 1968. And if you see in the year 1969 the strength of the force established with the help of merely 3000 personnel and now it has increased to more than 1,40,000 personnel. Now in its present form it was established in 1983 and know that it is a Central Armed Police Force in India. It is governed by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs and it is headquartered at New Delhi and the CISF is headed by an Indian Police Service Officer with the rank of Director General and it has 12 reserve battalions and according to its mandate CISF provides security to the premises staff along with the security of property and also establishments. Thus CISF is providing security to the strategic establishments which includes the Department of Space the Department of Atomic Energy airports the Delhi Metro then the ports and the historical monuments and the basic areas of Indian economy such as petroleum and natural gas electricity, coal, steel and mining. In all these places CISF provides security not only to the staff but also to the property and its establishments. Apart from this CISF is also providing protection to some private sector units and important government buildings in Delhi and presently know that CISF is also providing security to the protected persons who are classified as Z plus Z, X and Y. As you know government provides different levels of security under different categories which ranges from Z plus to X that is Z plus Z, Y plus Y and X. And depending on the level of threat the security is provided in these categories and the threat assessment is done by the Central Security Agency. So the persons who are classified as Z plus Z, X and Y they are also protected by CISF personal. And also know that CISF is the only force with a customized and dedicated fire wing and the recruitment to CISF is done by UPSC. So these are some of the important facts that you should know with respect to the Central Industrial Security Force. Now let's move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this news article which talks about the two new wildlife sanctuaries which will soon come into being in Kerala as part of government's efforts to expand its network of protected areas. The first such wildlife sanctuary is the Kallar Sanctuary. It is situated on the way to Punmudi from Tiruvannandu Pram city. It is located near the borders of Kerala and Tamil Nadu and on the north of Kallar is the Shendurni Wildlife Sanctuary and the Avastiamala Biosphere Reserve is located in the northeast and to its east is the Kalakkad Modandurai Tiger reserve and to its south is the Pappara Wildlife Sanctuary. Now the second new wildlife sanctuary that is to be declared is the forest areas that surround the Silent Valley National Park. Now this area connects the Mukurti National Park in Tamil Nadu on the north of the site. It also connects the Karimpura Wildlife Sanctuary which is situated on the northwest to this area and obviously the Silent Valley National Park in its southern part. Now since this forest area is a connecting point it is to be declared as a wildlife sanctuary so this initiative will provide connectivity between the existing protected areas and it will also mitigate the human-animal conflict. In this context you should know about some important protected areas mentioned in this news article. Let us first see about the Shendurni Wildlife Sanctuary it is situated in the Kolam District of Kerala and it is part of Agastiyamala Biosphere Reserve. Now the Shendurni River flows through this sanctuary its forest type includes tropical evergreen forest, tropical semi-evergreen, moist mixed deciduous forest and it also has grasslands. It has around 34 species of mammals 245 species of birds many species of reptiles and amphibians and the common mammals which are found here are elephant, gore, sambar deer, wild bear, malabar giant squirrel, nilgiri langur, then lion-tailed macaque etc etc. Now the next wildlife sanctuary is the Pepara Wildlife Sanctuary it is located in the Tiruvannalpuram District of Kerala. The major rivers that flows through this wildlife sanctuary are the Karamana River and its tributaries and it also consists of wide range of forest such as west coast tropical evergreen forest then southern hilltop tropical evergreen forest sub-mountain hill valleys form forest etc. It also has very diversity of fauna and flora and the common mammals which are found in the sanctuary are the tiger, leopards, sloth, bear, elephant, sambar barking deer, bonnet, macaque, nilgiri langur, nilgiri tar etc. Now the next important protected area is the Kalakard-Modendorek Tiger Reserve it is located in the Tiruvannalveli and Kanyakumari District of Tamil Nadu. It is one of the protected areas having diverse flora and fauna and the region has got vegetation types which gradually changes from dry thorn forest to dry deciduous forest then to moist deciduous and a patch of west coast wet evergreen forest on the high reaches of the reserve and this Kalakard-Modendorek Tiger Reserve was declared as the first tiger reserve of Tamil Nadu and it is the 17th tiger reserve of the country and this forest also have rich biodiversity and optimism. Now the next protected area is the Silent Valley National Park it falls within the revenue districts of Palakard and Malappuram district in Kerala it is the core of nilgiri biosphere reserve and the majority of flora of the valley are endemic to the western guards and the forest in this silent valley reserve forest can be classified into four types which is west coast tropical evergreen forest southern sub-tropical broadleaved hill forest southern montain vent temperate forest and grassland. Now the most famous resident of this silent valley national park is the lion-tailed macaque so remember this point it is important from problems perspective and like other protected areas which we just saw this national park also has wide diversity of fauna and flora now these are some of the points that you should take from the problems perspective regarding these protected areas now let's move on to the next discussion now we have come to the last session the practice questions discussion session this first question is a description based problems question this national park is located in the northwest corner of Tamil Nadu bordering Kerala in the western guards it was declared as a wildlife sanctuary and later a national park mainly for the protection of the endangered nilgiri tar in this regard the park was previously known as nilgiri tar national park it is perhaps the only area of the nilgiris that has not been badly affected by conversion to exotic monoculture plantations the above passage refers to which of the following national parks and the correct answer is option B Mukurti national park in the discussion we did not discuss Mukurti national park so you can take note of the points given in this question regarding Mukurti national park now this next question is a previous year question that was asked in 2014 and it is about the decline in the population of Ganges river dolphins the question is other than poaching what are the possible reasons for the decline in the population of Ganges river dolphins first is construction of dams and parishes on rivers this is correct second is increase in the population of crocodiles in the rivers this is incorrect because the crocodile population has nothing to do with the decline in population of dolphins it is the human activities that are mainly responsible for the decline of dolphin populations now the moment you know that too is incorrect you can easily evaluate the correct answer which is option C 1 3 and 4 only option 3 is getting trapped in fishing nets accidentally option 4 is using of synthetic fertilizers and other agricultural chemicals in crop fields in the vicinity of rivers now all these points we discussed during the discussion now this is a practice question on Ganges river dolphins first statement is they are spotted in Ganges Brahmaputra Meghna and Kornapuli Sangu river systems of Nepal India and Bangladesh this statement is correct second statement is they are blind and catch their prey using ultrasonic sound this statement is also correct third statement is they are a reliable indicator of the health of the entire river ecosystem this statement is also correct and here the question also asks for the correct statements the correct answer is option D 1 2 and 3 and we have discussed all these points during the discussion now this next question is based on national hydrology project first statement is it is centrally sponsored scheme with 50-50 sharing between the central government and the participating states this statement is incorrect because it is a central sector scheme not a centrally sponsored scheme now the second statement is it covers only 13 states on a pilot basis now this statement is also incorrect because it covers all the states and union territories in our country and here the question asks for the correct statements both the statements are incorrect so the correct answer is option D neither one nor two now this next question is based on central industrial security force first statement is it works under the administrative control of ministry of defense this statement is incorrect because it works under the ministry of home affairs now the second statement is it is the only force with a dedicated and customized firing now the statement is correct we discussed this during the discussion and here the question asks for the incorrect statements so be careful here statement one is the incorrect statement so the correct answer is option A one only now let us take two main questions one is based on gs paper 2 and the other is based on gs paper 3 you can answer these questions and post it in the comment section with this we come to the end of today's hindi news analysis and practice questions discussion session if you like the video don't forget to like comment and share and do subscribe to shankar eyes academy youtube channel for more updates related to civil service examination preparation