 a very good evening viewers and aspirants welcome to the indian news analysis brought to you by shankarai's academy for the date 29th of november 2021 these are the articles that have been taken for discussion today and followed by the article discussion we have a practice question discussion also so without wasting much time let us move on to the first news article analysis so we are going to start our news analysis with this editorial article discussion this editorial article is about the important pledges or the important events that took place in 26 conference of parties to the UNFCCC convention that is the COP26 as you remember COP26 was held at Glasgow earlier this month and in this editorial author has particularly focused on global methane pledge pledge related to the deforestation and also commitments related to green energy so today let us understand these and we'll also see India's commitments regarding these and issues of India with these pledges and commitments the syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference so let us start our discussion with the global methane pledge see this pledge is an agreement to reduce global methane emissions now one of the central aims of this agreement is to cut down methane emissions by up to 30 percentage from 2020 level and this has to be cut down by the year 2030 as per the pledge and more than 100 countries have signed this global methane pledge but India is not one among them India has actually abstained from signing this pledge now why India abstained from it the major reason for this is India is the third largest emitter of methane see this methane emission in India is mainly due to the huge size of our rural economy and our largest cattle population so India doesn't want to commit to this methane pledge without knowing whether it is a feasible one now the next pledge is related to deforestation it is the Glasgow declaration on forest and land use see this declaration was initiated by united kingdom to halt deforestation and land degradation by the year 2030 and this declaration has been signed by more than 105 countries but India did not sign this declaration also India did not sign this declaration even when India is among the 10 most forest rich countries in the world so why India did not sign this declaration see according to sources there were disagreements with respect to the wordings in the declaration it is said that the declaration had mentioned about trade so it suggested that meeting the obligations under the pledge could also mean restrictions in international trade and India was against this idea of trade being interlinked with climate change and forest issues in the agreement why because trade falls under the ambit of world trade organization to which India is a member so saying that trade should not be related to climate change and forest issues India didn't sign this declaration on forest and land use so overall India did not sign the methane pledge and India did not sign the declaration on deforestation now the next pledge which we are going to discuss is related to green energy so what is this green energy it is also known as green power or clean energy this green energy is a subset of renewable energy it represents those renewable energy resources and technologies that provide the highest environmental benefit so it includes electricity produced from solar wind geothermal biogas etc and if you remember India has agreed to a commitment regarding this green energy we know that India made five important climate promises in co p26 under the tag of panchamrith and two of those commitments could be related to this green energy these commitments were to reach India's non-fossil energy capacity to 500 gigawatts by the 2030 and the next one is the meeting 50 percentage of India's energy requirements from renewable energy by the year 2030 so this is not the first time India has been promoting green energy and committing to it because even though India has not yet significantly transitioned towards renewable energy we have been promoting green energy to reduce carbon emission and one of the classic example for such promotion is the launching of international solar alliance by India along with France but according to the author of this editorial when it comes to transitioning towards green energy India has to face three major struggles so let us see what are these struggles or challenges the first major challenge is India's huge population so it is not really easy for India to depend almost entirely on green energy for satisfying the consumption needs of world's second largest population base because when we take countries like Iceland and Norway they have a small population and they also have adequate resources so they have the privilege to totally depend on green energy like hydroelectricity but this is not the case with India because we have a huge population base and our renewable energy sources are not enough to meet our needs so this is the main challenge now the second challenge is sustaining green energy the problem is that we should first have enough available renewable energy options to choose which is a challenge for India why because if you take the examples of countries that have similar populations like India for example if you take China or USA we can see that they have been relying majorly on nuclear power to cut down their carbon emissions and this was possible for these countries because they have nuclear suppliers group status that is they are member of nuclear suppliers group but India doesn't have the option of using nuclear power to the extent of how it is being used by China and USA because India is not a member of this nuclear suppliers group here we should not forget that India is the only country to receive a waiver from nuclear suppliers group because India demonstrated itself as a credential and responsible nuclear power state so in the year 2008 India was allowed access to civilian nuclear technology and fuel from other countries so this enabled India to buy power plants from the global market but still there are many other types of technologies which India is denied because it is outside this nuclear suppliers group so there is a lack of adequate option for India regarding this nuclear power which is a struggle for us and this is the reason why in the COP26 also India was pushing for NSG status see once we get this NSG status then we'll have a legal foundation for our nuclear regime and it will also provide greater confidence to the countries for investing billions of dollars in the nuclear power projects in India but unless we have this NSG status scaling up our nuclear power production is a difficult task for India and that is why sustaining green energy in our country is a challenge now apart from this the Indian renewable energy industry is also facing an immense financial challenge especially in this pandemic India is struggling with resource constraints but despite these challenges India is making efforts to promote its green energy in order to abide by its COP21 climate commitments for example India has already taken initiatives like recently government has planned to make hydrogen fuel as a better substitute of fossil fuels on a wider basis then India is also attempting to promote renewable energy like solar powered energy production by reducing tariffs but we should remember that it is not easy for India to meet the climate goals with our 1.3 billion population while we are combating the coronavirus pandemic also it is not financially sustainable for us so based on these challenges author has given one of the major suggestions that has also been put forward by other climate experts the suggestion is the need for an effective climate finance so this climate finance is important at a time when the world is increasing its commitments to cut greenhouse gases this was even stressed by prime minister during his speech at Glasgow so as part of it he asked the countries to increase the climate finance from its current 100 billion US dollars limit to about 1 trillion US dollars and if this is done then the developing countries like India will be able to achieve the targets that have been agreed to in the COP26 and according to the experts this could be the only sustainable way forward in the longer run so with these points we have come to the end of this discussion in this discussion we understood about the global methane pledge we saw about the pledge related to deforestation and finally we saw about the commitments agreed by India regarding green energy and the challenges that India faces while transitioning towards green energy now let us move on to the next discussion so our second discussion is going to be based on this news article it talks about an issue that is ongoing between the leading payment networks that is between rupee visa and mastercard so first let us understand about these three payment networks we'll see what they are and what is the difference between them and then finally we'll see the issue that is going on between them so we all use debit cards or credit cards for transactions and if you had noticed these debit cards or credit cards they have a logo at their bottom right as you can see in this representation they have the logo of rupee mastercard or visa so this helps to differentiate between these cards so what are these visa mastercard or rupee first if we see about visa and mastercard see they are payment gateway they support the payment facility to almost all the major banks from around the world actually there is no major difference between the visa and the mastercard because they both have similar functioning and they also work as an ATM card but note that both of these are not involved in extending credit or they do not issue cards but rather these mastercard and visa are the companies or the financial corporations that process the transactions made by the credit and debit cards so they process the transactions so now what about rupee see rupee is India's first payment network system and it can be used anywhere in India it facilitates electronic payment at all Indian banks and financial institutions and this rupee was mainly created to fulfill the vision of RBI to have a domestic open and multilateral system of payments and here you should remember that rupee is a product of npci that is national payments corporation of India because it is the umbrella organization that deals with retail payments in our country so now what is the difference between this rupee and the visa and mastercard see the major difference is that visa and mastercard are leading and dominating payment networks worldwide so their services are recognized and accepted in over 200 countries but on the other hand if we take rupee we saw that it is India's first payment network system which can be used anywhere in India so it is a domestic financial service that means it is accepted only in India so this limits the usage of rupee but this particular feature is advantageous for rupee because since it operates domestically it has the fastest processing speed as compared to other international services so due to this reason rupee has less processing fee or the processing cost and therefore the transactions made through rupee is cheaper compared to the mastercard and visa so now what is the actual issue between rupee and visa see it is said that in a meeting that happened between visa and the US trade representative which happened in august this year this visa company complained about rupee it complained that our Indian prime minister is making formal and informal promotion of rupee and it complained that our prime minister is using nationalism to promote this local network so this is affecting the business of visa in India so therefore visa doesn't have a level playing field in India and not only visa even mastercard has raised similar concerns privately with the USTR why they have raised concerns with the USTR because both visa and mastercard are US companies now both visa and mastercard are worried about promotion of rupee because they counted India as a key growth market so at this juncture a separate promotion of rupee is posing a challenge to both these companies in a fast growing payments market so is their allegation true we can say yes to some extent their allegations true see according to the available data rupee accounted for 63 percentage of India's 952 million debit and credit cards this was the scenario as of november 2020 so that means the remaining percentage is shared between all other companies so because of this these companies are concerned that their business is getting affected in India because of the informal and formal promotion of rupee so this is the issue that is mentioned in the news article so from this discussion you have to understand what is rupee what is mastercard and visa and what is the difference between these three and finally why we are suddenly discussing about these three payment systems so with this now let us move on to the third discussion our next discussion is going to be based on this news article it talks about rifts in opposition so today we are not going to see about the party politics but we are going to cover the role of opposition and its significance in a democracy so first of all let us see the criteria to be termed as opposition in a legislature see there may be several parties in opposition but the opposition actually means the second main party it has leaders with in-office experience and these leaders are ready when the time arises to form an alternative government for your knowledge you should note that in the current regime the Indian national congress is the principal opposition party and the central pillar of opposition and we also have a leader of opposition in the house this leader of opposition she is the leader of the largest opposition party and this largest opposition party has not less than one-tenth of seats of total strength of the house so now what is the purpose of existence of opposition opposition has an important role in a democracy we should note that the task of the leader of opposition is not as difficult as that of a leader of the house but the task of leader of opposition has some considerable importance because opposition is an essential part of democratic government and in more mature democracies this opposition is well recognized and the leader of the largest party is often given access to sensitive informations now this is done on the basis that she or he is the prime minister in waiting so sure he has to be ready to perform the role of running the country at comparatively short notice and that is why they are given access to sensitive information so mainly what is expected from an opposition is effective criticism and constructive criticism we say that government governs and opposition criticizes therefore attacks upon the government and attacks upon the administration by individual ministers are the main functions of the opposition now along with this they also have many duties like they have to check upon corruption and effective administration and then they have to watch for encroachments on the rights of minorities they have to demand debates when the government is trying to slide away without parliamentary criticism and the opposition also exercises the oversight of implementation of the law from an angle of performance and accountability that is they see how a law is performing and whether the authority under it is accountable or not and it also mainly monitors the use of finances granted to the executive for their work for example if you take the public accounts committee we know that it has the function of examining the annual audit reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India and these audit reports are laid before the parliament by the president now the CAG that is the Comptroller and Auditor General of India submits three audit reports to the president and these are the audit report on appropriation accounts then audit report on finance accounts and then audit report on public undertakings now the point we noted is that the committee which examines these audit reports is the public accounts committee and this committee is headed by the leader of opposition so in this manner they monitor the finances granted to the executive then apart from all these functions and duties opposition parties also have certain functions outside the legislature such as they attract the attention of the press and they report their criticism of the government policy to the media and because of all these important duties and functions in our country the leaders of opposition both in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha they have been accorded the statutory recognition so what we have to remember is that opposition is important in a democracy they ensure that the government is accountable and they also ensure that no arbitrary decision is taken by the government so these are some of the points that you need to keep in mind when we talk about opposition and leader of opposition so with this now let us move on to the next discussion this discussion is based on this opiate article which talks about radicalization in keshmir so in this discussion we'll understand what is radicalization first then we'll see the growth of radicalization in kashmiri youth and then we'll also see about the measures taken by the government as part of the radicalization measures the syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference see first of all let us understand the plain meaning of radicalization so first what is radical view it denotes the intent to transform or replace the fundamental principles of a society or the fundamental principles of a political system and this is normally done through social change structural change revolution or even through radical reforms so the process of adopting such radical views is termed as radicalization but now in our context radicalization refers to a phased and complex process in which an individual or a group embraces a radical ideology or belief no such ideology or belief it accepts it uses or it even condones violence and such violence also includes the acts of terrorism and these are done to reach a specific political purpose or ideological purpose so we can simply say that radicalization is the process by which an individual or group adopts extreme political social or religious views and we should also note that sometimes people self-radicalize so they self-radicalize by reading or listening to extremist literature or speakers but most commonly what happens is there may be an individual or group which actively seeks to persuade others to adopt their extremist views and that is why this process of persuasion or cohesion is also known as radicalization and we can often witness and hear news about the radicalization by ISIS so now what is the result of such radicalization here what happens is innocent people especially youth they are brainwashed by terrorist and extremist organization to join their organization and support them so that means these extremist or terrorist organizations recruit impressionable or easily influenced individuals through radicalization and ultimately people believe their ideology and participate in terrorist groups and they become terrorists militants or extremists so we can understand that why radicalization is a problem mainly because at the individual level the radicalization process often involves embracing a terrorist belief system which identifies others as enemies and it justifies engaging in violence against them and when the individuals who have relationship with others those who support terrorism that is those who support terrorism become stronger they may begin to separate themselves from those who do not share those beliefs that is they get away from the mainstream society and they become increasingly isolated and in this manner only the radicalization of keshmiri youth is a problem so now let us understand what led to the situation in keshmir see the starting point of the radicalization of youth in keshmir can be pointed out to the accession of the princely state of javan keshmir to india we know that this accession took place in terms of the india independence act and this act provided the rulers of princely states to take the final decision of whether they wished to join india or to join pakistan but we should note that in this act there was no provision for any recourse for ascertaining the wishes of the people so with respect to keshmir what was the wish of the people it is said that the issue revolved around the keshmiri identity known as keshmiri et and people were aspiring for a javan keshmir with political autonomy eventually what happened the princely state of javan keshmir acceded to india but this did not happen in a normal situation because in october 1947 pakistan sent tribal infiltrators from its side to capture keshmir so to take counter insurgency measures the maharaja harising that was who was the king of javan keshmir at that time he asked for india to help and at that time india asked maharaja harising to accede to indian union and because of this only maharaja harising acceded to indian union along with this it was also agreed that once the situation normalized that is once the tribal infiltrators were taken care of then the views of the people of jammu and keshmir will also be ascertained without any delay so this is what happened when jammu and keshmir acceded to india so here we should understand that the signatory of the offer of accession of javan keshmir to india was the ruler of the state maharaja harising now along with him a prominent political leader sheikh abdulla he also acknowledged the political leader of the state and endorsed this decision of joining the indian union we know that sheikh abdulla was the leader of national conference and according to ncrt national conference was a secular organization and this national conference under the leadership of sheikh abdulla led a popular movement in keshmir so sheikh abdulla's support to maharaja harising was a notable point in this scenario and his rationale for endorsing this accession was that if they accede to india then there is no danger of revival of feudalism and autocracy in keshmir so here we should note that pakistan has always sought to use deniable violence to achieve its objective of capturing jaman keshmir from india like what it did in october 1947 and this violence by pakistan even continued in the following decades after partition and if you remember this led to the launch of operation jibraltar by pakistan in 1965 and this operation led to the 1965 indopakistan war now one of the reasons for pakistan using violence was its dictator president muhammad zia ulak he stressed religion should be a part of the state policy and for this purpose he increased the number of madharsas in their state that is in pakistan we know that madhasa refers to the education institution of islam and it is said that through these madharsas radicalization of pakistan youth happened and this later on even spilled over to keshmir and it was a part of the low intensity conflict operations of pakistan at that time see when we say low intensity conflict it refers to the armed conflict between regular armies or the regular law enforcement agencies with the non-regular armed militias such as terrorist groups guerrilla fighters gangs rioters etc so pakistan launched low intensity conflict operations in keshmir and through that they radicalized the keshmiri indian youths so this was one of the main reasons as to why radicalization grew in keshmiri and along with this going back on the promise made by the indian government was also a reason for many youth joining such radicalization programs see we initially saw that after the tribal invasion was normalized the views of the people will be taken into account and it will be taken into account through a plebiscite we know that plebiscite is the direct vote of all the members of an electorate on an important public question and here the important public question would be whether to remain a part of indian union or not but this promise was never fulfilled so this is also one of the reasons for the increased insurgency by the youths in keshmir see we saw that they demanded political autonomy of jammu and keshmiri but this dream was shattered so these are some of the problems that led to the radicalization of keshmiri youth now let us see how exactly it infiltrated among the youth see from 1989 the insurgents began to use violent means because their aim was secession from india so they used violence as a means to achieve their goal and in the recent years especially since 1990s the main theater of pakistan sponsored activity in india has been the erstwhile state of jammu and keshmiri we all know that and according to the indian government data this pakistan sponsored terrorist activity and insurgency has led to the loss of about 27 000 lives in jammu and keshmiri but even then in the 1990s the militancy increased and it peaked in jammu and keshmiri why because the keshmiri families were facing threats from the terrorist leaders so fearing the terrorist leaders the keshmiri families sent one of their sons to be trained in pakistan and then to be deployed in keshmiri as insurgents so this led to the home ground militancy in keshmiri so that means by then keshmiri had become a place having twin challenges for the armies and alarmed police forces and for the jammu and keshmiri police these twin challenges were that first the terrorists were the main challenge because their rules of engagement were different and second challenge was the keshmiri youth who formed the bulk of the protesters and they were turning into militants so because of this the government of india had to step in and had to take control of the situation in keshmiri so let us see what were the measures taken by the indian government see first of all india took counter insurgency operations and they said that this was the beginning of dividing line between the keshmiri's and the rest of india and these operations were undertaken by using two important acts these acts were the public safety act of 1978 and the armed forces special powers act of 1958 so we know that the public safety act was enacted in the interest of security of the state and public order and under this act the authorities have the power to detain persons as part of a preventive measure that is this act allowed for preventive detention now second act that is the afspa act as we know it allowed for arrest without warrant so using these two acts indian government undertook counter insurgency operations and according to the author using of these acts at that time was justified because at that time the militants were originally from pakistan who were being sent to keshmiri so there was no involvement of local youth in militancy but after that even the local youth were being radicalized and they were being involved in terrorist activities and in militancy so at this point of time government of india realized that this situation cannot be handled with vigilante approach because the keshmiri youth are indians and they are not terrorists they do not belong to any other country and this led to the conduct of deradicalization camps for the youth by indian government and this is where the steps taken by the indian government are important for us and under these steps the first important one is the operation sadhbhavana see here the term sadhbhavana means goodwill this operation was launched in 1998 it is a unique human initiative undertaken by the indian army in the erstwhile state of jamun kishmir it was launched to address the aspirations of people who were affected by terrorism that was being sponsored and abetted by pakistan the main focus of this operation sadhbhavana was to improve the overall core social indices of education woman and youth empowerment and healthcare among all so as part of this capacity building was also carried out through implementation of community development projects and infrastructure development projects in the region and if you remember as a part of this only recently in august 2021 the indian army announced that it would subsidize the undergraduate courses and school education to selected children and youth these selected children and youth belong to jamun kishmir and laddak and they were to be enrolled in residential schools and professional colleges functioning under the army welfare education society so this measure was taken by the indian army to bring back the youth to the mainstream society along with this we should also remember another measure that was taken by jamun kishmir police in august 2018 the jamun kishmir police organized a barat darshan tour this tour was to delhi and agra for the students so that they can have an opportunity to understand the history and development of other parts of our country and along with the jamun kishmir police even the border security force has been organizing such programs since 1999 2000 period and according to the union home ministry's data more than 1500 children from jamun kishmir region have participated in these bsf sponsored barat darshan tours along with this the indian army has also been assisting in the construction of schools medical aid veterinary care and has been assisting in disaster relief as well so it was involved in building infrastructure in the region these measures are important because here the indian government has the responsibility to show the kishmiri youth that they can provide a better life to the youth than what those terrorist and insurgent organizations can provide but even then irrespective of the measures taken by the indian government and the army these initiatives did not give the decide effect and the main problem for this was that the misconception and the preconceived thoughts about the kishmiri youth see we know that kishmiri youth are mistreated in other parts of our country especially if they are kishmiri muslim youth they are particularly harassed by other people so only when we can change this misconception we can de-radicalize the youths who are involved in insurgent activities and we can bring back them and integrate them to the society so in this manner the administration there is the indian administration and the administration of union territories of jamun kishmir and ladaq they have to provide protection to the kishmiri youth and the government of india should provide protection to them when they are studying elsewhere in india because rehabilitating them and integrating them to the society is a long-term effort which cannot be done in a single day so as a public we have to change our misconceptions and the indian government should also step in to take measures to change such misconceptions then only we can achieve the desired results so these are some of the points that you can take note from this in this discussion we saw what is radicalization and we saw what events led to the radicalization of youth in kishmir and finally we saw some of the measures taken by the indian government for de-radicalization of youth in kishmir so with this discussion we are moving to the next session which is the practice questions discussion let us take up this first question it is based on india's payment network system of rupee it is a three statement question first statement is it is a product of the national payments corporation of india this statement is correct we already saw this during discussion it is a product of npci so the second statement rupee cards are issued by the reserve bank of india now this statement is incorrect because presently rupee cards are issued by more than thousand hundred banks and these include the public sector banks private sector banks regional rural banks and cooperative banks so that means this statement is incorrect now the moment you know that this statement is incorrect you can eliminate options b and d let us see the third statement it has the fastest processing speed as compared to international services this statement is also correct we saw this during discussion we saw that the processing speed of rupees is fast as compared to mastercard and visa mainly because it operates domestically so statement 3 is correct so from the remaining options we are choosing the correct answer as option one in three only because the question asks for the correct statements let us take up this question it is based on the leader of opposition the question asks us to choose the correct statements let us see the first statement the leader of the largest opposition party having not less than one tenth seats of the total strength of the house is recognized as the leader of the opposition in that house this statement is correct we saw this during discussion now the second statement leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are not accorded statutory recognition this statement is incorrect because we saw that in india leaders of opposition in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha they have been accorded statutory recognition in the salary and the allowances of leaders of opposition in parliament act 1977 there is a definition for leader of opposition in relation to the either house of the parliament it defines the leader of opposition as member of the council of states or the house of the people who is for the time being the leader in that house of the party in opposition to the government having the greatest numerical strength and recognized as such by the chairman of the council of the states or the speaker of the house of the people that is they have to be recognized by the presiding officer of the house so based on this we can say that they have been accorded statutory recognition under salary and allowances of leaders of opposition in parliament act so statement 2 is incorrect so the correct answer is question is option a one only now let us take up these two main questions one question is based on the COP 26 and the other one is based on the radicalization among Kashmiri youth you can write answers to these questions in the comment section and whenever we get time we'll respond to your answers with this session we have come to the end of today's in the news analysis if you like this video don't forget to like comment and share and to subscribe to shankar eyes academy channel for more updates related to civil services preparation thank you