 Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankar Iyer's Academy for the date 12th of July 2019. Displayed are the list of news articles taken up for today's discussion from four different editions. Let us now start our discussion. First, let us see an editorial which is about the recent debate on electoral reforms that was held in the Rajya Shabab. Know that the author of this editorial, Mr. S. Y. Khureshi is a former chief election commissioner. During the general elections in the months of April and May this year, we had seen many editorials that were written by this author regarding the election-related issues in India. Today, the author has appreciated the need for electoral reforms that was debated by the members of parliament, especially in the Rajya Shabab from the opposition parties during a short duration discussion which was held on 3rd of July. The syllabus for this editorial is displayed here. Let us now see the editorial. Now this debate was initiated in Rajya Shabab by the MP from Trinamul Congress Party of West Bengal and it was backed by almost 14 opposition parties. The author of this editorial has appreciated the fact that political parties who are divided by different ideologies are debating on how to make elections a free, fair and a more representative one. The author tells that the member of parliament from Trinamul Congress Party had touched on six major themes during his debate in the Rajya Shabab. First is the appointment system for chief election commissioner and other election commissioners. Next theme is on money power and the next theme is on electronic voting machines in short EVMs. Then the next theme was on the idea of simultaneous elections. Then the debate was also on the role of social media. Here the member of parliament as mentioned social media as cheat India platforms and finally the debate was on the use of government data and surrogate advertisements to target certain sections of voters. Here know that surrogate advertising means an indirect form of advertising like bragging or the government is praising itself in the advertisements. This generally happens before the elections if you see the government is nothing but the ruling political party. So the government advertisements give a chance to the ruling political party to advertise its achievements during its rule. So this is called as surrogate advertisements. Now let us see the first four themes one by one which were put forward by the TMC member of parliament. Now the first theme was on the issue of appointments of election commissioners including the chief election commissioner. Now as per article 324 of Indian constitution the president appoints chief election commissioner and other election commissioners. Basically if the president is appointing it is as per the recommendations that are made by the prime minister and his council of ministers. So we can say that there is a role of executive in appointing the chief election commissioner. So there are three forms of government we know one is the executive the other is judiciary and the third one is the legislature. Here the role of executive is overpowering or dominating in appointing the chief election commissioner. So we can see that there is a clear influence of the executive in the appointment matters of chief election commissioner and also the other commissioners. Also know that as per the chief election commissioner and other election commissioners conditions of service act 1991 the tenure of the chief election commissioner and other election commissioners is fixed at 6 years or up to the age of 65 years whichever is earlier. And the chief election commissioner or the other election commissioners are expected to be party neutral because first and the foremost requirement is to be politically neutral that is they should not be aligned with any political parties during any of the election process. So the Tsunamul Congress Member of Parliament has debated on this issue. During the debate the Member of Parliament has also quoted Dr. Bir Ambedkar statement which was made by him at the constituent assembly. Now the Member of Parliament's views of having a politically neutral chief election commissioner and other election commissioners was also supported by other political parties in the parliament debate. All the opposition parties have demanded a collegium system of appointment that is to discuss and appoint the chief election commissioner and other election commissioners instead of the executive taking one sided decisions in its favor. The second theme was on the influence of money power in the elections. Now many opposition parties have given their suggestions during this debate. Let us see some important ones which has been mentioned by the author in this editorial. Now you can use them in any of your main answers concerning money power in elections. One of the Member of Parliament from the Congress party has debated about electoral bonds. He has told that this concept of electoral bond itself an absurd one. Instead he has proposed state funding that is the government should authorize to fund the political parties based on two things either by setting up a national electoral fund or based on the number of votes that are obtained by the respective political party. This Member of Parliament has also proposed crowdfunding in the form of small donations. Here the term crowdfunding means raising money from a large number of people by getting small amounts of money from each and every one so that a decent amount of money is collected at the end and with this money as one form of source the election expenses can be managed. Also the Member of Parliament has told that the current expenditure cap on candidates is unrealistic. If you see the election commission has put expenditure limit on candidates it is around 50 to 70 lakh for each candidate who is contesting in Lok Sabha elections and rupees 20 to 28 lakh for a candidate who is contesting in state assembly elections. According to this a Member of Parliament from the Congress party such small amounts would lead to illegal spending in elections. Hence the expenditure limits should either be raised or the expenditure limit should be removed completely in order to encourage transparency in this election process. Then if you see the Communist party has supported the idea of banning corporate donations for the elections. The third theme which was discussed in the debate was on the electronic voting machines. Many opposition parties have suggested that the old system of using ballot papers in the elections should be reintroduced but a few of the opposition parties have shown their support to these electronic voting machines during the debate. Especially if you see the ruling party from the state of Odisha the Biju Janathadal party has told that the electronic voting machines have reduced election related violence especially in the states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. So they are supporting electronic voting machines. Now this party has also commented that in order to gain public faith in this voter verified paper audit trials at least five VVPAT machines should be countered right in the beginning of the counting process instead of using it as a verifying tool. Next the Bahujan Samaj party has added that the postal ballot should be scanned before counting in order to increase the transparency. So these are some of the debates that happened on this topic. Now the next theme was on the simultaneous elections. We know that the prime minister has pushed for simultaneous elections soon after he was elected for the second term. The ruling party has told in Rajya Sabha that prime minister's request should be understood as a call for minimum cycle of elections rather than thinking about one nation one election because very recently we are seeing in news this term one nation one election. The ruling party has said that just see it as a call for minimum cycle of elections. So when there is a minimum cycle of elections they have put forward some positive points like there will be some lesser expenditures made towards the election process. Also the governance would be increased then there will not be any electoral fatigue that is the electors will not get tired of voting in elections in short intervals. To this stand by the ruling party or the comments that have been made by the ruling party various points were raised by the opposition parties. So you can use them in your main sense is for the negative side of having simultaneous elections in India. The Chernobyl congress party has said that constitutional experts should be consulted regarding having simultaneous elections in India and next the government must publish a white paper for more discussion on this matter of simultaneous elections. Now know that white paper means a government report which gives information or proposals on a particular issue. So here the issue is simultaneous elections. So the Chernobyl congress parties requesting the government to issue a white paper on simultaneous elections. Next if you see the communist party of India said that simultaneous elections are unconstitutional and unrealistic. One of the parties member of parliament has said that the accountability should hold precedence over stability. It just means that accountability is first then a particular process can be stabilized. So preference to accountability because conducting elections is not like handling a business the entire machinery is accountable to people to conduct free, fair and representative elections. So the accountability should hold precedence over stability. So now we have seen the four major themes that were put forward by this Chernobyl congress member of parliament. Apart from these four major themes some other issues related to these electoral reforms were also debated in Rajya Sabha. First one is regarding the internal democracy within political parties. Here the internal democracy is nothing but democracy within a political party. You can tell it like the levels and methods of including party members in the decision making process within a political party. So the Biju Janadadal party from Odisha suggested that an independent regulator should be set up to supervise and ensure inner party democracy of all the political parties in India. Then reforms regarding the representation in the elections were also discussed. Right now we have the first pasty post system. In this system all the electors cast their votes to only one candidate of their choice and the candidate who secures the largest number of votes or the most number of votes wins that particular election. Now a few opposition parties have debated that this type of system is not representational. If you see the Dravidha Munnetra Karagam party from the state of Tamil Nadu as a given the example of Bahujan Samaj party's performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Because in that particular 2014 Lok Sabha elections BSP or the Bahujan Samaj party got a vote share of nearly 20% in Uttar Pradesh state but it did not even win even a single seat. So the 20% of the votes which were cast by the voters went meaningless and the party was not able to represent the people in the parliament to whom they voted. So to improve the representativeness of elections parties like DMK the communist party have put forward the demand of having proportional representation system in the elections. Now in this system seats are allocated to the political parties based on the share of the votes it receives during the elections. So this method is somewhat representational. Then some other member of parliament also argued for a mixed system where there is a provision for both these first pass the post election system and then the proportional representation system. Next the YSR Congress party from the state of Andhra Pradesh has raised the issue of fidelity of electoral rules that is the precision or the accuracy of the electoral rules. Few parties like Bahujan Samaj party and Samaj Vadi party have raised the idea of having a common electoral role for all the three tiers of democracy that is for the Lok Sabha elections at the central level, state assembly elections at the state level and also at the local body elections at the local level. Then one of the member of parliament from the Samaj Vadi party has spoken about the impact of ruling party advantage in elections. So now we will see about this ruling party advantage. He has proposed that all member of parliaments and member of legislative assemblies should resign six months before the elections and a national government should be formed at the central level and for the state level states should be ruled by the governor and the governor would have to follow the binding advice of a three-member high court advisory board. So this is just a suggestion given by this MP. So try to have an idea of what the member of parliaments are telling so that you can use the more relevant points in your main answers on electoral reforms. Apart from all the themes debated by the member of parliaments of both the ruling and the opposition parties, the author of this editorial has also given some suggestions for electoral reforms because we saw that he was the ex-chief election commissioner of India. He has told that he has been advocating or in support of these reforms since a very long time. Some of the reforms which he has told in this editorial are overlapping with what we saw now. So just let us focus only the reforms that have not been discussed till now. First the author has mentioned about reducing the number of faces in elections. Now this can be made possible by raising more security forces. Also the election expenditures would be decreased that is the spending for elections would be decreased considerably if the elections are carried out in less faces or even in a single face. Next the author has mentioned about giving powers to the election commission of India to deregister the political parties. The author finally ends this editorial by telling that whichever government is in power they have to carry out electoral reforms but they should have long-term national interests in mind instead of thinking about immediate electoral gains. The author hopes that the parliament will act on electoral reforms so that India which is the world's largest democracy becomes the world's greatest democracy. With this we come to the end of the analysis of this editorial. Have a look at the practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This news article is about the largest recorded manhurs in the state of Kerala. Now the syllabus for this news article is displayed here. Team of historians have identified new manhurs on Potomala Hills on Kerala-Tamarnadu border. The exact place is in Udumanchola, Taluk in Iduki district of Kerala. It has been said that the newly sighted manhurs are the largest ever recorded manhurs in the state of Kerala. When we say manhurs we refer to single long stones which are placed upright in an upright position. In other words an upright long monumental stone like as we can see in this image. The recent identification of these manhurs inferred that there could have been a major prehistoric necropolis in the places where these manhurs were found. When we say prehistoric it refers to the time before written records were found. For India it is almost before some 2500 BC because the old NCRT textbook on ancient India says that the ancient Indians knew writing as early as 2500 BC. Coming to the term necropolis in this the word necros in Greek means dead body and polis means city. In our context necropolis means a large symmetry of an ancient city. To be clear they are expecting that there could be an existence of a structured graveyard of a prehistoric civilization. This is because the manhurs were planted in a specific geometrical pattern on a cluster of hills and most of these structures were oriented in the east-west direction. The news article states that the site is an yet to be explored megalithic site. Now what is this megalithic site mean? Mega means large, lithic means stone. Therefore by megalithic site in this context it means a prehistoric site where there are large stone structures. So this could throw some light into the building activities of the past and also the way of life that was there in the past. See if archaeological survey of India takes effort to excavate this site it may find several implements and material remains that were used in the prehistoric times. Thus we can understand the way of life of the people of the past. Therefore the news article tells that these megalithic stone structures which were found at Potamalla Hills will help us find an unexplored facet of a civilization which was present in these areas before 3000 years. The historians have requested the archaeological survey of India and the archaeology department to conduct a full-scale excavation and detailed study of this megalithic site without delay. The article also says that megalithic sites were already identified in different parts of Iduki district and also in the Udumman Chola Thaluk where they have now found out the largest manners of the state which is around 20 feet tall and 6 feet wide with a thickness of around 5 feet. We already saw that this Udumman Chola Thaluk is located in the Iduki district of Kerala. Now have a look at the practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. Now this news article is regarding Hayabusa 2 spacecraft. The syllabus is mentioned here for your reference. Now this Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has been launched by Japan. The news is that Hayabusa 2 probe made a perfect touchdown on a distant asteroid yesterday. Then it collected samples from beneath the surface of the asteroid barret lander. By analyzing the samples the scientists will be able to know the history of the solar system that we are living in. The news article tells that worldwide no country has ever collected a sample of subsurface material apart from the moon. Here subsurface means below the surface. So Japan has created history now by becoming the first nation to collect a subsurface material from a celestial body apart from the moon. If you see this mission is to explore an asteroid called Ryugu. So let us see this Hayabusa 2 mission now. Hayabusa 2 is mission of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in short it is called as JAXA similar to NASA of USA. It has been launched from the earth on December of 2014 basically to survey the near earth asteroid Ryugu and collect a surface sample from this asteroid. We saw that this Ryugu is a near earth asteroid which is located some 300 million kilometers away from earth. Now this Hayabusa 2 spacecraft which was launched in the year 2014 arrived this asteroid by June 2018. So it has almost taken some three and a half years for the spacecraft to reach this asteroid. The Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has four deployable surface landers which means the instruments that will land on the surface of the asteroid. Also the spacecraft contains some explosive devices basically to create a crater on the asteroid. Crater is nothing but a small depression. So by creating this crater the spacecraft will be able to collect the subsurface samples. After creating the crater the rover will touch down that is land on the crater and then collect the samples. If you see already Hayabusa 2 has successfully completed its first touchdown that is landing and sample collection on 22nd February 2019. Again on 5th of April 2019 the spacecraft used explosives to create an artificial crater and now again the rover has touched down and collected the second sample. So this happened yesterday. This is the news which we are seeing now. This Hayabusa 2 spacecraft is expected to return to earth by the year 2021. Then this Hayabusa 2 is the successor to JAXA's first asteroid explorer Hayabusa. So Hayabusa in Japanese means falcon. So falcon is basically a bird. This Hayabusa mission returned with dust samples from a smaller potato shaped asteroid in the year 2010. It was launched in the year 2003. It came back in the year 2010. Now when you are studying about Hayabusa 2 also try to know about some other significant asteroid missions by different space agencies of the world. The first significant asteroid mission is the near Shoemaker asteroid mission. It was launched by NASA of United States in the year 1996. So this spacecraft carried out the first long-term study of an asteroid at close quarters. It explored the mass, structure, geology, composition and gravity of the nearby asteroid named as Eros. Next is the Hayabusa mission which we have already seen. It was launched in the year 2003 and it returned earth in the year 2010 and it was launched by Japanese Space Exploration Agency JAXA. Next we have the Dawn mission. This Dawn mission was launched in the year 2007 and it aimed to explore two rocky bodies which were Vesta and Ceres. So from 2011 to 2012 Dawn was an orbit around the Vesta rocky body. Then its second target was Ceres and in the year 2018 this Dawn spacecraft was retired in this Ceres rocky formation. And finally we have the O-Series REX mission. This was launched by NASA in the year 2016 and it is expected to study the orbital characteristics and surface features of the asteroid named Bennu. So this is a mission of NASA by the United States. So these are some of the significant asteroid missions apart from Hayabusa 2 which have been carried out by different space agencies across the world. Now have a look at the practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This news article is about the Commonwealth Nations and the request of India to re-admit Maldives as a member country in Commonwealth Nations. The syllabus is displayed here for your reference. Between 9th and 11th July of 2019 the 19th Commonwealth Foreign Affairs Ministers meeting took place in London United Kingdom. During this meeting our Indian External Affairs Minister has asked the Commonwealth to fast track the process of re-admission of Maldives into this Commonwealth Nations. If you see the Maldives withdrew from the Commonwealth during the tenure of its President Abdullah Yameen in the year 2016. Maldives withdrew from the forum after Commonwealth expressed serious concerns about the declining human rights situation in the country. Maldives at that time was criticized by the Commonwealth because of various factors. If you see the then government in Maldives brought a law restricting the freedom of speech and expression where many opposition political leaders were arrested. Even one of the former presidents was arrested. Then Maldives introduced death penalty, reintroduced death penalty after an unofficial moratorium for over 60 years and it took many such measures. So all these were seen as anti-democratic measures and the Commonwealth warned Maldives that it may suspend the membership of Maldives from the Commonwealth Nations. While withdrawing the membership from the Commonwealth the Maldives accused the Commonwealth of interfering into the internal affairs of the country. At present if you see there are 53 countries in this association so they are 53 member countries. The last country to join the Commonwealth was Rwanda in the year 2009. The association by the name The Commonwealth came into being in the year 1949. Earlier it was called as a British Commonwealth of Nations. Now British Commonwealth of Nations had the countries that are directly or indirectly ruled by Britain as its members. Some of the countries became self-governing while retaining Britain's monarch as head of the state. But in the year 1949 the Commonwealth came into being. Since then the independent countries from five regions that is from Africa, from the Caribbean in the Americas, then from Asia, Europe and then from the Pacific have joined the Commonwealth. Though majority of the members of Commonwealth are the former colonies of Britain the membership today is based on free and equal voluntary cooperation. If you see the last two countries that have joined the Commonwealth that is Rwanda and Mozambique they have no historical ties to the British Empire but they joined the Commonwealth. Mozambique joined in the year 1995 and we have seen already that Rwanda has joined in the year 2009. Then apart from this Zimbabwe, Vidru is membership from the Commonwealth in the year 2003. Then Gambia which is a country in the western part of African continent has left the Commonwealth in the year 2013. However it again joined which means it rejoined in the year 2018. Now India and other countries are expecting a similar rejoining of Maldives also in the Commonwealth. Now this association consists of both advanced economies and the developing countries. Majority of the members in the association are small states including many island nations and if you see the year 2019 is the 70th anniversary of this association of Commonwealth countries. In India we have the headquarters of Commonwealth Human Rights initiative in New Delhi. It is the premier body that promotes human rights in member countries of the Commonwealth. Now know that Maldives was the first choice for the foreign visit for a re-elected prime minister. After the swearing in ceremony our Indian prime minister visited Maldives in the month of June 2019 that is the previous month. We have analyzed those news articles as a part of our India's neighborhood first policy at that time so just have a look at it. Now have a look at the practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. Next let us see an editorial which is about the present unemployment scenario of India and also regarding the jobless growth. Now the syllabus for this editorial is displayed here. Let us see the editorial now. The authors have analyzed the findings of the periodic labour force survey 2017-18 which was released recently. This editorial has a lot of statistics if you see with which the authors have tried to substantiate the facts. They have told that the two biggest issues which they see on analyzing this particular survey is that the share of the labour forces shrinking and the unemployment levels are rising. First the authors have compared the labour force participation rate of the present survey nothing but the periodic labour force survey of 2017-18 with the national sample survey 68th round which was released in the year 2012. Here know that labour force participation rate means percentage of those persons who are above 15 years of age who are either working or who are seeking work. Now the formula for calculating this labour force participation rate is the number of employed persons plus number of unemployed persons divided by the total population into 100 so it is expressed in percentage. In the year 2012 that particular survey the labour force participation rate was 55.5 percentage but this has reduced to 49.7 percentage in this 2017-18 survey. Also if you seen terms of absolute number of workers the number of workers recorded in the 2012 survey was 467.7 million which is roughly around 46.8 crores but it has reduced to 461.5 million which is 46.2 crores in 2017-18 survey. So we can see that in this six years time frame the labour force participation or the employment levels have only decreased. Next the authors tell that recent attempts were made by some people to create an impression that self employment has not been captured under this national sample survey. The authors tell that it is absolutely false since the definition of employment includes both self employment as well as wage employment. Self employment can be businesses or working in homes whereas wage employment is you are working in some company and you get some wages for the work that you have done. And if you see within this category of self employment the survey also counts those who are engaged in unpaid family labour. Now these unpaid family labour means they are not compensated for the work that they do within the family or in the home. Next the authors have compared the overall unemployment rate of 2017-18 periodic labour force survey with this 2012 national sample survey 68th around. The formula for calculating unemployment rate is the number of unemployed persons divided by the number of employed plus unemployed persons into 100. So this is also expressed in percentage. The overall unemployment rate as per this 2017-18 periodic labour force survey was 6.1 percentage. Now the authors tell that this value is 2.77 times more than that of the 2012 survey results. Next the authors tell that there are two different dimensions that needs to be seen with the rise in the overall unemployment levels. The first dimension is the locational dimension. The second dimension is the gender dimension. Here location means the place where the people reside. We can generally categorize into urban and rural areas and gender wise dimension means it is just men and women. When we include both the dimensions that is the location and the gender we have four classifications 2 into 2, 4. First one is the urban women. Next is the urban men. Then rural men and then rural women. The highest unemployment rate was seen among the urban women which was at 10.8 percentage. Then the next highest was seen among the urban men which was at 7.1 percentage. Then it was followed by rural men where the unemployment rate was 5.8 percentage and finally the rural women whose unemployment rate was 3.8 percentage. When this location factor is excluded that is when the urban and the rural areas are excluded we have only the gender dimension which is nothing but male and female. The authors tell that the unemployment rates were higher in men at 6.2 percentage and women had unemployment rates of 5.7 percentage. Next the authors have discussed some aspects of unemployment rates that are present in the women population. So the focus is now on women. They tell that women face double whammy. Here whammy means two problems that are of serious nature which are affecting them. So whammy just refers to problems. First is the exclusion of women population from the labour force which means the men are preferred more than women for most of the jobs. Next women are not able to access employment that is to get jobs even when they are included in the labour force which means once they become eligible to work. They tell that women's labour force participation has decreased from 31 percentage to 24 percentage in the present survey. This means that India is among the countries with the lowest participation of women in the labour force. Next the authors have linked the education aspect with unemployment. They call this as an issue of educated unemployment. So they tell that the unemployment levels keep increasing as the education level also keep increasing. So higher the education, higher is the chance of unemployment. The authors have given some reasons why the educated persons are mostly unemployed. It's because they specialize in a particular subject area as they move on to higher education. So they keep waiting for that specialized or specific jobs related to the education that they have been qualified in. Hence the author tells that they keep waiting for jobs till they get the perfect job. They also tell that this section of population are also not likely to be poor that is economically deprived. So this is just an suggestion which is given by these authors or what they think it is not a fact. The authors tell that India's inability to provide jobs for this section of population is an economic loss to the government and for those unemployed persons it is a demoralizing experience because they keep waiting and waiting for the jobs but they have completed their education even then they keep waiting for the jobs. Next the authors have discussed the location and the gender dimension for the students who have completed their higher education. So we saw what is meant by location dimension and gender dimension. They tell that the unemployment rates are highest among urban women which is at 19.8 percentage followed by rural women with 17.3 percentage then rural men have an unemployment rate of 10.5 percentage and urban men have an unemployment rate of 9.2 percentage. So we can see that even among the educated population women face a more unfavorable situation than men. Next the authors have discussed the unemployment rates among the youth. Education is a different aspect. Youth is a different aspect. When you speak about youth it means the age group. Here the age group that has been considered for the survey is 15 to 29 years. The unemployment rate for overall youth is 17.8 percentage then they have compared gender wise unemployment in the urban areas only. In this editorial they have just mentioned the gender wise unemployment for urban areas. The unemployment rate for urban women if you see was 27.2 percentage whereas for urban men it was 18.7 percentage. So we can see that women are more disadvantaged than men here as well. Now you can use all these statistics which show that women are more disadvantaged in any of your main answers related to women and women development. So based on all the data that we saw the authors tell that there is a trend of jobless growth. They tell that till recently it was confined only within the organized sector but now it has spread to other sectors of the economy as well. So we can see a generalized pattern across India. The authors suggest that a thorough re-examination of the missing linkages between growth and employment is required. Now try to use the facts given in this editorial in your main answers related to unemployment issues also along with the issues related to women and women development. Then you can also present the gender and location dimensions in your main answer. With this we come to the end of the analysis of this editorial. Let us move on to the practice question discussion. The first question is which of the following best describes the term men here sometimes seen in the news and they have given four options. The first option is the meaning of the term necropolis. Necropolis means a large symmetry in an ancient city. The meaning of the term men here means long monumental stone of historic value. If you see the news related to men here has appeared in the front page today and we have discussed this during our analysis. So the correct answer is option B a long monumental stone of historic value. Moving on to the next question. The question is the Hayabusa II mission was launched by which among the following space agencies and they have given four options. Here the correct answer is option C JAXA which is the Japanese Space Exploration Agency. Option A is CNES which is the National Center for Space Studies. It is a French space agency and B we know which show is the Indian Space Agency Indian Space Research Organization and D ESA is European Space Agency. So the correct answer here is option C JAXA. Moving on to the next question. The question is considered the following statements and they have given two statements related to Commonwealth and they have asked you to choose the correct statements. Here we have seen during our analysis that though majority of the countries were former colonies of British Empire there are some members which have never had any historical ties with the British Empire. For example the member countries such as Mozambique and Rwanda did not have any historic ties with the British Empire. This is because at present the membership is based on free and equal voluntary association. So the first statement is incorrect here because the statement given here tells that all the member countries of the Commonwealth were countries which once had historic ties with the British Empire. Let us see the second statement now. Here the second statement is partly correct and partly incorrect that at the end which will make the entire statement a wrong statement. We know that India is a member of Commonwealth we saw during our discussion. We also saw that Maldives is not a member as of now but it might rejoin the Commonwealth. So this statement might become correct once it rejoins. Just know that Maldives left the Commonwealth in the year 2016. So as of now the statement is incorrect. So the question is asked for the correct statements. Here both the statements are not correct. So the correct answer is option D neither 1 nor 2. Moving on to the main question. The question is free fair and more representative elections is the need of the heart than simultaneous elections. Discuss. So here the question itself is a fact. They are telling that free fair and more representative elections is the need of the heart than the simultaneous elections. So try to bring out the positives of having free fair and more representative elections rather than having simultaneous elections. So you can also mention something about simultaneous elections. Just mention some of the positives of simultaneous election in just a word or two but bring out the negatives of simultaneous elections like today during our news analysis we saw that it is unconstitutional, unrealistic then constitutional experts need to be contacted in order to have an idea about simultaneous elections etc. But now focus more on free fair and more representative elections. So to answer this you can tell that the present scenario of conducting elections is not really free fair or more representative because we saw many issues during the election time regarding the conduct of elections. So you can mention all the reasons. Then there were some six themes which were discussed by the Rajesh Abba MP which we saw today in our editorial analysis like regarding the appointment system of chief election commissioner and election commissioners then issues on money power the role of money power in elections then regarding the issues of having electronic voting machines then also about the role of social media in the elections. Then again regarding the usage of government data and surrogate advertisements. So all these needs to be addressed to have a free fair and representative elections. So you just mentioned that there needs to be reform electoral reform which has to happen in India by telling all these points. And finally conclude the statement telling that free fair and representative elections is in need of Dihar rather than having simultaneous elections. With this we come to the end of today's session of the Hindu news analysis. Do like comment and share the video and do subscribe to Shankar IAS Academy YouTube channel for latest videos and updates. Stay focused and motivated friends. Thank you.