 Good evening aspirants, welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankara IS Academy for the date 3rd of April 2022. These are the list of articles we will be discussing today. Now let us take up the first article. Look at this article here. It is about the presence of kangaroo in Baikunthpur forest division in West Bengal. Can you believe it? No, right. Like us, the forest officials also did not believe first. Because these animals, that is the kangaroos, they are not native to Asia. But they found three kangaroos in the narrow forested patches, bordering Darjeeling in Jalpaiguri district of the state. The carcass of another kangaroo was found in the nearby area, taking the number of these Australian marsupials that are recorded in North Bengal to 4. Now, what is this term marsupials? See, mammals can be generally classified into three broad groups. They are egg-laying monoterms, marsupials and placentals. A marsupial is a mammal that raises its newborn offspring inside an external pouch at the front or underside of their bodies. In contrast, a placental is a mammal in which the complete embryo development happens inside the mother. In mammals, while inside the mother, the embryo is nourished by an organ called a placenta. So, both marsupial and placental mammal groups give birth to live young ones. Placental mammals account for the majority of modern mammal species that are alive today. Most marsupials can be found in Australia and South America, although the fossil record shows that they were once more widespread. See, mammals and marsupials belong to the same phylum. Both mammals and marsupials are warm-blooded. Here warm-blooded means the blood temperature of both mammals and marsupials does not change if the temperature of the surroundings change. That is, their blood temperature is independent of the surrounding temperature. Furthermore, mammals and marsupials are chordates, meaning they all have backbones, unlike most of our politicians. In addition, they have body hairs and fur. Moreover, both are air-breathing animals that give birth to young ones instead of laying eggs. Only monoterms lay eggs, which we discussed earlier. The most common example of monoterm is platypus. Now, coming back, mammals and marsupial females produce milk for the nourishment of their young ones. The distinctive character of marsupial is that they give birth to an undeveloped young one. Here note that, while all marsupials give birth to undeveloped young ones, only some marsupials have poach. Marsupials like wombat, kangaroo have poach, while short-tailed opossum, which is also a marsupial, does not have poach. So, note that. Now, coming back to the article. The forest officials have rescued animals that were being smuggled through the corridor that starts from the northeast of India to north Bengal. The rescued kangaroos had been handed over to the Bengal safari zoo in Siliguri. And this is the crux of the article given here. In this context, let us learn about kangaroos and their habitat and their conservation status also. Kangaroos are large famous marsupials native to Australia. Kangaroos are large marsupial, which means they have a poach to carry their young located in the lower abdomen. The kangaroo's poach is technically called a marsupium and it performs a number of functions. The female kangaroo's breast, which she uses to nurse her young, are inside her poach. The poach also functions similar to an incubator to allow a joey. Joey is a baby kangaroo to fully develop. Lastly, poach has a safety function in that it helps to protect the female's young from predators. Kangaroos are usually between 3 to 7 feet in height. They can weigh up to approximately 200 pounds. Other physical characteristics of kangaroos are their relatively small heads with their large and round ears. Due to their hopping ability, they can leap over long distances. Some males can leap to almost 30 feet in one leap. Now that we have a basic understanding about the physical characteristics of a kangaroo, let us move on to see about the habitat. Kangaroos live in Australia, Tasmania and surrounding islands in a variety of habitats such as forest, woodlands, plains and savannas. The musky rat kangaroo likes to nestle down in little nests on the floor of the rainforest in northeastern Queensland. On the other hand, grey kangaroos like the forests of Australia and Tasmania. The antelopean kangaroo can be found in the monsoonal, equiliptus woodlands of extreme northern Australia. The tree kangaroos live in the upper branches of trees in the rainforests of Queensland as well as the island of New Guinea. Now let us get to the important part, which is the conservation status for kangaroos. See, according to IUCN's red list of threatened species, 16 species of tree kangaroos and rat kangaroos are listed as either near threatened, threatened, vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. The desert rat kangaroo and nular barred dwarf betong are considered extinct. Now coming to the conservation status for kangaroos in India. In India, there is no provision for protection of kangaroos in Wildlife Protection Act 1972. Why? Think about it and post your answers in the comment section. Now that's all regarding this discussion. Before concluding the discussion, let us do a quick recap. In this discussion, we support what is a marsupial, basic characteristics and the difference between mammals and marsupials. Then we saw about kangaroos, its habitat and its conservation status. With this, let us conclude this discussion and take up the next news article. Look at this FAQ article. This FAQ article talks about India's deal with Russia for fuel and defense. The article also discusses about the issues The issue is the swift sanctions imposed on Russia. These sanctions on Russia might become an issue for India because the supplies of fuel or any material traded may be stopped. See, India has started buying Russian oil. In the last few days, India has bought about 3 to 4 days of our total needs worth of Russian oil. This is despite the fact that the United States has warned about the consequences of trading with Russia. See, in addition to this, India and Russia still have several new defense deals in addition to the oil deals. See, some of the recent defense deals in the pipeline includes 12 Su-30 MKI aircraft and 21 MiG-24 fighter jets for the Indian Air Force. Now, what will Russia do to handle the troubles caused by these sanctions? For this, we need to know about what is swift and how it works. So today, let us see in detail about all the above mentioned questions. Then, we will see the impacts of swift sanctions on Russia and finally, we will see some alternatives available for Russia to tackle the troubles caused by the swift sanctions or the dollar route. Okay? First, the syllabus regarding this discussion is highlighted here. You can go through it. Now, let us start the discussion. First of all, what is swift? See, the Swift system stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. See, Swift is a cooperative company under Belgian law and it is owned and controlled by its shareholders that is financial institutions. Okay? It is a secure platform for financial institutions to exchange information about global monetary transactions such as money transfers. While, Swift does not actually move money, it operates as a middleman. The purpose is to verify information of transaction by providing secure financial messaging service. So basically, Swift is a financial messaging service. The primary focus here is to ensure that Swift has effective control and processes in terms of security and resilience. This is to avoid posing a risk to financial stability and to the soundness of financial infrastructures. Okay? Here, the service is provided to more than 11,000 banks in over 200 countries. Swift is based in Belgium. It is overseen by the central banks from 11 industrial countries. Just look at this image to know what are all the 11 countries. Okay? Now, what does Swift sanction mean? See, now the United States and the European Union are cutting off a number of Russian banks from the main international payment gateway which is the Swift. This is known as Swift sanctions. Now, what does the move aim to achieve? See, excluding Russian banks from the Swift platform is expected to hit the country's economy hard. Also, it will make the country, that is Russia, rely on telephone or fax machine to make payments. This is because cutting off a country's from Swift in the financial world is equivalent to restricting internet access of a nation. Okay? The decision to paralyze the assets of Russia's central bank is mainly to stop Kremlin from using its varchest. Here, what does varchest mean? Varchest means the forex reserves that Russia has been building. Look at this graph here. President Vladimir Putin has been preparing for a standoff with the West. President Putin has built up his country's forex reserves to the tune of over $640 billion to insulate the Russian economy. What happens when war breaks? When war finally takes place, the countries will stop trading with the country at war. To act as a buffer in case of such an event, Russia has been building up its forex reserves. This is evident from this graph. But to use the forex reserve, Russia must rely on the Swift system. The United States, the European Union and their global partners announced the plan to ban some Russian banks from Swift network after the 24th February Russian invasion of Ukraine. This ban will make it difficult for Russia to effectively use its forex reserves. See, the ban from Swift will make it difficult for Russia to pay its outstanding debt. Once Russia fails to pay its outstanding debt, Rubel will further lose its value. So, the Swift ban is nothing but the Western countries weaponizing an international payment system to give a crippling blow to the Russian economy. So, these are some of the impacts of the Swift sanctions on Russia. Now, let us see what are all the alternatives preferred by Russia to these Swift sanctions. See, as we saw, Swift is nothing but a secure messaging service to ensure international financial transaction. But Swift is dominated by Western democracies. So, this is why the United States is using Swift ban to counter Russia. There are alternatives to Swift also. One such is the system for transfer of financial messages that is SPFS. SPFS is developed by the Russian Central Bank. The downside of SPFS is that it has very little international presence. Currently, international services are limited to countries such as Armenia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. So, in theory, Russia can use SPFS to circumvent the Swift ban. So, this is how this will work. Say, for example, India is importing oil from Russia. Currently, India cannot pay Russia via Swift transactions. Then, what will India do here is, India will send money to Turkey using the Swift system. Turkey will then transfer the money to Russia through the SPFS system. Although this method is little costly and time consuming, in theory, Russia can use this as an alternative to overcome the Swift ban. This is the first alternative available for Russia. Now, let us look at the second alternative. The alternative available for Russia here is the Rubel route. See, US dollar is a hard currency and almost all global transactions are made in dollars. So, through the Swift system and the dollar route, the United States has a global monopoly. To counter this, Russia can shift to the Rubel route. Here, for example, if India is buying oil from Russia, India can pay for the oil by depositing the equivalent amount in rupees in a Russian bank. This will then be converted into Rubel at a fixed exchange rate. Likewise, when Russia is importing Indian wheat, Russia will deposit an equivalent amount in Rubel in an Indian bank. This will later be converted into rupee. Like this, the dollar route can be circumvented and be replaced by a rupee-rubel route. But this also has a limitation. This will only work when both the countries have negligible trade deficit. In case of Russia and India, there is a huge trade deficit in favor of Russia. That is, Russia is exporting more to India than India is exporting to Russia. So, this will only be a temporary solution. It can't go on for a long time. See, these are the two alternatives that are available for Russia. So, that's all regarding this news article discussion. Before concluding, let us do a quick recap. See, in this discussion, we saw what is Swift and how it works. Then we saw the impacts of Swift sanctions on Russia. And finally, we saw some alternatives that are available to Russia to tackle the trouble caused by Swift sanctions or the dollar route. With this, let us conclude this discussion and take up the next news article. Look at this news article. The article states that there is a disruption in wheat supplies across the globe because of the Russian-Ukrain War. So, the author of this article suggests that India can use this opportunity to fill the void created by the war. This is because India is the second largest producer of wheat in the world, but exports only two percentage of what it produces. In this context, we will discuss about the important points mentioned in the article. Then we will revise about some of the basic facts about the wheat crop. See, Russia and Ukraine account for about 25% of the world's wheat exports. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent Western sanctions against Russia have curtailed the wheat supplies drastically. As a result, many countries which were sourcing wheat mainly from these two countries are now in an urgent need for an alternative. See, between 2017 and 2021, Russia exported 183 million tons of wheat and Ukraine exported 91 million tons of wheat. But India exported just 12.6 million tons in the same period, that is between 2017 to 2021. Note that India is the second largest wheat producer in the world. Here, wheat supply includes production, existing stocks and imports. India's wheat supply stood at 613 million tons. And 80% of this is used for domestic consumption alone. India exported only 2%. The remaining 18% are stored in FCA Goodones, that is, Food Corporation of India Goodones. In contrast, take the other leading exporters. For instance, the United States. The United States exported 31% of its 404 million metric tons of supply in 2017 to 2021 period. Canada exported 60.5% of its 186 million metric tons, while Australia exported 57% of its supplies of 1.46 million metric tons. So, we can understand from this data that India exports very minimum quantity of wheat when compared to the rest of the world. See, many countries in Africa, West Asia and South Asia rely heavily on Russian and Ukrainian wheat. Now, the supply is disrupted because of the war. So, APEDA, that is Agricultural and Processed Food Products Exports Development Authority Chairman, said that India is now focusing on exporting wheat to these nations. See, India's wheat harvesting season that is from March to May coincide with the wheat supply crunch. That is, between March to May, in the global wheat market, there is a slump in wheat supply. Know that a bumper harvest of wheat is expected this year also. So, India currently is well poised to step in and fill the void created by the Russia-Ukraine War. However, food security campaigners want that India should not lose focus on domestic needs while exporting surplus wheat. So, ensuring the stability of prices in India and availability of grain for internal consumption should be of the top priority of the Indian government. See, these are some of the points mentioned in the article. Having seen about the article, now we will revise about the basic facts about the wheat crop. See, wheat requires moderate temperature and rainfall during growing season and bright sunshine at the time of harvest. The wheat crop thrives best in the well-drained loamy soil. Wheat is grown exclusively in the United States of America, Canada, Argentina, Russia, Ukraine, Australia and India. Wheat is the second most important cereal crop in India after rice. India produces about 12.8% of the total wheat production in the world. It is primarily a crop of temperate zone. Hence, wheat cultivation in India is done during winter, that is the raw by season. About 85% of the total area under wheat crop is concentrated in the northern central region of our country, that is mainly in the Indo-Gangetic plain, Malwa Plateau and in some places of Himalayas up to 2700 meter altitude. Being a rabbi crop, it is mostly grown under irrigated condition. But it is a rain-fed crop in Himalayan highlands and parts of the Malwa Plateau in Madhya Pradesh. About 14% of the total crop area in our country is under wheat cultivation. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan are the leading wheat-producing states. The yield level of wheat is very high, that is above 4000 kg per hectare in Punjab and Haryana, whereas Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar has very moderate yields. States like Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Jammun Kashmir are growing wheat under rain-fed conditions and they naturally have very low yield. So these are all some of the points regarding this news article and some points about the wheat crop. Now with this, let us conclude this discussion and move on to the next news article. Look at these two news articles. These articles state that India and Australia signed an economic cooperation and trade agreement yesterday. The agreement was signed in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The agreement has the aim of doubling bilateral trade to $50 billion in five years. One of the main features is easing movement of people, goods and services across borders. The agreement will also facilitate zero-duty access to over 96% of Indian exports. India in turn will offer preferential access to Australia on over 70% of its tariff lines on goods imports. Know that this is the first deal which includes a compulsory review mechanism after 15 years. This is the essence of these news articles. In this context, let us discuss about India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement and its significance. Before getting into the discussion, I have highlighted here the syllabus regarding this discussion. You can go through it. Now let us start our discussion. See, India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement is the first trade agreement of India with a developed country after over a decade. The agreement encompasses cooperation across the entire spectrum of bilateral economic and commercial relations between the two friendly countries. The agreement covers areas like trade in goods, rules of origin, trade in services, technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, dispute settlement, movement of natural persons, telecom, custom procedures and pharmacutical products. See, this economic cooperation and trade agreement provides for an institutional mechanism to encourage and improve trade between the two countries. The economic cooperation and trade agreement between India and Australia covers almost all the tariff lines dealt in by India and Australia respectively. India will benefit from preferential market access provided by Australia on 100% of its tariff lines. This includes all the labour-intensive sectors of export interest to India such as gems and jewelry, textiles, leather, foodware, furniture, food and agricultural products, engineering products, medical devices and automobiles. On the other hand, India will be offering preferential access to Australia on over 70% of its tariff lines. This includes line of export interest to Australia which are primarily raw materials and intermediaries such as coal, mineral ores and wines. And with respect to trade in services, the agreement covers key areas of India's interest like information technology, information technology enabled services, business services, health, education and audiovisual. Some of the key offers from Australia in the services space include four key areas that is quota for chefs and yoga teachers, post-study work visa of 2 to 4 years for Indian students on reciprocal basis, mutual recognition of professional services and other licensed and regulated occupations and work and holiday visa arrangement for young professionals. On the other hand, India will offer market access to Australia in sectors such as business services, communication services, construction and related engineering services and so on. Both sides have also agreed to enable fast-track approval for patented generic and biosimilar medicines. See, growth of India-Australia economic and commercial relations will contribute to the stability and strength of a deepening bilateral relations between the two countries. We know that India and Australia have been each other's important trading partners. These excellent bilateral economic and commercial relations have continued to enhance and deepen work time. For instance, Australia is the 17th largest trading partner of India and India is Australia's ninth largest trading partner. India's bilateral trade for both merchandise and services is valued at $27.5 billion in 2021. India's merchandise exports to Australia grew by 135% between 2019 and 2021. India's exports consist primarily of finished goods. India's merchandise import from Australia mainly consists of raw materials, minerals and intermediate goods. Also, India and Australia are partners in the trilateral supply chain resilience initiative agreement along with Japan. Know that supply chain resilience initiative seeks to enhance the resilience of supply chains in the Indo-Pacific region. Further, India and Australia are also members of the recently formed Quad, which includes the United States and Japan to further enhance cooperation and develop partnership across several issues of common concerns. So, the India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement will further cement the already deep close and strategic relations between the two countries. It will enhance bilateral trade in goods and services, create new employment opportunities, raise living standards and improve the general awareness of the people of the two countries. That's all regarding these news articles. See, this is a very recent development. In the coming days, more editorial will be based on this development. We will wait for a few days and provide you with a complete analysis of the Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement. So, with this, let us conclude the news article discussion session and take up the practice prelims questions. We have three practice prelims questions today. Let us see them one by one. Let us take up the first question. See, this question is in reference to marsupials. Three statements are given. We have to find the incorrect statements. Let us take up the first statement. Marsupials are found only in Australia. See, this statement is incorrect because most extant marsupials are found in Australia and South America. Okay, so in South America also some marsupials are found. Let us take up the second statement. Kangaroos are large marsupials and are native to Australia. This statement is correct. We saw in our discussion itself that kangaroos are marsupials and they are native to Australia. Let us take up the third statement. IUCN status of gray kangaroos is vulnerable. See, this statement is incorrect because the IUCN status of gray kangaroos is least concerned. So, since in the question they have asked us to find the incorrect statement, the correct answer is option C 1 and 3 only. Now, let us take up the second question. Cross border interbag payment system or CAPS recently seen in news refers to. Four statements are given. We have to find the correct statement. The first statement is a settlement and payment clearing system for transaction to boost the international use of Chinese currency in trade settlements. The second statement is a cooperative company under Belgian law. The third statement is a regional development bank of united states. And the fourth statement is payment system used in India to make international transaction. See, of the four, the correct answer here is option A. CAPS is a settlement and payment clearing system for transaction to boost international use of Chinese currency in trade settlements. See, CAPS is nothing but another variant or another alternative to Swift system. So, it is a China based financial messaging service used to settle international transactions. So, the correct answer for second question is option A. Now, let us take up the third question. A description of a crop is given. We have to find which is the crop that is being described. Now, let me read out the question. This rabai crop requires moderate temperature and rainfall during growing season and bright sunshine at the time of harvest. It thrives best in well-drained loomy soil. Here, the crop prefers to. See, this is a pretty straightforward question. From our discussion, we know that the crop that is being described here is wheat. So, the correct answer is option B, wheat. The main question based on today's discussion is here. Write your answers and post it in the comment section. If you like today's discussion, like, comment and share it with your friends. For more updates regarding UPSC preparation, subscribe to Shankarayesh Academy YouTube channel. Thank you.