The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 17 July 2023

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis for UPSC

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 15 July 2023

• About National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA):
• It is a statutory body under the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoEFCC).
• It was established in 2006 under Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972.
• Objectives:
• Providing statutory authority to Project Tiger so that compliance of its directives become legal.
• Fostering accountability of Center-State in management of Tiger Reserves by providing a basis for MoU with States within the federal structure.
• Providing for an oversight by Parliament.
• Addressing livelihood interests of local people in areas surrounding Tiger Reserves.

 The Hindu Editorial Today

• NTCA Members:
• Minister in charge of MoEFCC (as Chairperson),
• Minister of State in MoEFCC (as Vice-Chairperson),
• three members of Parliament, the Secretary (MoEFCC), and other members.
• One more male cheetah died at Kuno National Park (KNP) in Madhya Pradesh on Friday – the second one this week – taking the total number of feline fatalities this year to eight.
• “Both Tejas and Suraj have similar nature of injuries.
• South African cheetah expert Adrian Tordiffe, who was involved in the translocation of the cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa, told The Indian Express, “I saw the video of the cheetah that died and it dawned on me that this may be the result of an infection at the neck. If there is constant rainfall then the skin under the collar becomes infected due to constant moistness.
• This results in a systematic infection brought on by flies and maggots, eventually causing death.”

• Gibbons, the smallest and fastest of all apes, live in tropical and subtropical forests in the southeastern part of Asia.
• The hoolock gibbon, unique to India’s Northeast, is one of 20 species of gibbons on Earth.
• The estimated population of hoolock gibbons is 12,000.
• Unfortunately, the current conservation status of gibbon species is alarming – all 20 species are at a high risk of extinction. Since 1900, gibbon distribution and populations have declined dramatically, with only small populations in tropical rainforests,”
• The hoolock gibbon faces threat primarily from the felling of trees for infrastructure projects.

• In the name of strengthening Indian business as part of promoting the national interest, a very few business groups are being actively favoured by the state.
• It results in profit inflation or profiteering, through the manipulation of costs and prices. In the process it fosters extreme asset and income inequality.

• Democracies have battled hard to force governments to maintain some distance from private capital in general and big business in particular. Those efforts have been partially successful in specific historical contexts, leading among other things to strong action against monopoly and trustification.

• The devastating floods across North India have renewed attention on the dynamic between climate change, urbanisation and the infrastructural lacunae that bedevil India’s large cities.
• States must coordinate to evolve a joint strategy to combat floods

• The number of electric vehicles in India has surged from just 2,400 a decade ago to over 27.4 lakh as of July 2023. However, given the concurrent rise in the number of non-electric vehicles, the overall share of electric vehicles has still not crossed the 1% mark.
• Assam ranked first with a share of 2.2% electric vehicles, followed by Tripura (about 2%). Delhi, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Goa had a share of over 1%. Among the major States, Himachal Pradesh had the lowest share with 0.11%, followed by Punjab (0.26%), Andhra Pradesh (0.40%), West Bengal (0.44%), and Madhya Pradesh (0.47%).

• The Union government is not in favour of declaring lightning a natural disaster as deaths caused by it can be prevented by making people aware of safety steps, a senior government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says.
• India is among only five countries in the world that has an early warning system for lightning — the forecast is available from five days to up to three hours.
• The States such as Bihar and West Bengal have been demanding that lightning deaths be covered as a natural disaster. Once this is notified, the victims will be entitled to compensation from the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF). The Centre makes 75% of the contribution to the SDRF.
• Cyclone, drought, earthquake, fire, flood, tsunami, hailstorm, landslip, avalanche, cloudburst, pest attack, frost and cold wave are now considered disasters under the SDRF.
• National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data show that 2,880 people died in lightning strikes in 2021.
• The deaths made up 40% of all accidental deaths caused by “forces of nature”.
• While 2,862 people died in 2020, the number stood at 2,876 in 2019. There has been an increase in proportion of such deaths compared with the total accident deaths caused by events related to nature.
• For instance, in 2003, deaths from lightning made up just 0.2% of the total deaths caused by “forces of nature”.
• A presentation made by the Director-General, India Meteorological Department (IMD) at the National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction Conference (NPDRR) in March said the frequency of lightning was the highest in northeastern States and in West Bengal, Sikkim, Jharkhand, Odisha and Bihar, but the number of deaths is higher in the central Indian States of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Odisha.

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