14 June 2023: Indian Express

Indian Express

14-June-2023

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1. WHY THE US WALKED OUT OF UNESCO, AND WHY IT NOW WANTS TO REJOIN

Syllabus – GSII

Recent Context – US Plans to Rejoin UNESCO

UNESCO

1. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN), promotes world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences, and culture.

2. It was founded in 1945 as the successor to the League of Nations International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.

3. It has 193 member states and 11 associate members and partners in the non-governmental, intergovernmental, and private sectors.

4. Headquarter – Paris

5. UNESCO’s founding mission is to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights by facilitating collaboration among nations.

Why did the US leave?

1. In 2011, UNESCO inducted Palestine as a member state. This led to the US halting the agency’s funding.

2. The country’s historical ties with Israel prohibit funding to any UN agency that implies recognition of the Palestinians’ demands for their own state.

Why is it rejoining?

1. UNESCO has worked to address US concerns.

2. US absence from UNESCO had strengthened China.

3. The United States previously pulled out of UNESCO under the Ronald Reagan administration in 1984 because it viewed the agency as corrupt that used to advance Soviet interests. It rejoined in 2003.

2. El Nino and the Monsoon

Syllabus – GSI

Recent Context – India’s monsoon progressing under El Nino

El Nino and La Nina

1. El Nino refers to an abnormal warming of surface waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. It is known to suppress monsoon rainfall. The opposite phase, La Nina, the abnormal cooling of sea surface waters in the same region, is known to aid rainfall over India.

ENSO

1. ENSO is an interaction of ocean and atmospheric conditions. In fact, the ‘southern oscillation’ part in the term ENSO refers to a specific atmospheric condition that measures the difference in sea-level air pressure over the western and eastern sides of the Pacific Ocean.

ENSO Neutral Condition

1. The tropical region, immediately above and below the equator, is home to a permanent wind system called trade winds that move from east to west at quite low altitudes.

2. Because of the exposure to sunlight, the sea surface in the Pacific Ocean is quite warm. When the trade winds move over the Pacific Ocean, they push these relatively warm waters, which also become lighter, in the westward direction. So, the surface water in the eastern Pacific Ocean near the South American coast gets pushed towards the west. The relatively cooler waters from below replace it.

3. The warmer surface waters continue to get pushed till they encounter a land mass at Philippines and Indonesia. They cannot be pushed any further. This process results in the accumulation of relatively warm waters near Indonesia, called the Western Pacific Warm Pool, and relatively cold waters near Ecuador and Peru.

4. This sweeping of surface waters and its accumulation also results in a relative rise in sea levels near Indonesia. The sea levels on the eastern coast of Indonesia are about half a metre higher than the western coast of Ecuador and Peru.

5. The warmer surface waters near Indonesia create a low-pressure area, causing the air to rise upwards. This also results in the formation of clouds and heavy rainfall.

6. The airflow helps build up the monsoon system, bringing rainfall over India.

7. At higher altitudes, this air starts to move towards the eastern Pacific Ocean, that is, in a direction opposite to the trade winds that flow at lower altitudes. This wind system, east to west near the surface and west to east at higher altitudes, creates a loop and reinforces the temperature gradient between the east and west Pacific Ocean.

3. We all need Darwin

Syllabus – GSIII

Recent Context – Removing the theory of evolution from school texts

Darwin’s theory of evolution

1. According to this theory, existing living forms share similarities, to varying degrees, among themselves and also with life forms that existed millions of years ago. Many such life forms do not exist any more. There had been extinctions of different life forms in the years gone by, just as new forms of life arose at different periods of the history of the earth. There has been a gradual evolution of life forms.

2. Those who are better fit in an environment leave more progeny than others. These, therefore, will survive more and are considered as selected by nature. He termed it as natural selection and implied it as a mechanism of evolution.

Why in News?

1. Deletions of the chapters on evolution and the chapter on the Periodic Table of Elements from the Class 9 and Class 10 science textbooks.

2. Chapters on evolution have, indeed, been retained in Class 11 and 12 science curricula.

Facts to know

1. Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria and Oman do not teach evolution in schools or universities. In Egypt and Tunisia, evolution is taught, but it is presented as an “unproven hypothesis”.

2. Some states in the United States had either banned the teaching of evolution or decided to teach it alongside “creationism”.

3. The 75th round of National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data also shows that 74 per cent of the population, 18 years and above, dropped out of school before reaching Class 12.

4. Holes in the digital net

Syllabus – GS III

Recent Context – Data breach of COWIN Portal

Three critical events – COWIN Data Breach (June 2023)

EPFO Data Breach (August 2022)

Ransomware attack on AIIMS (November 2022)

Critique of Government

1. CERT has often maintained silence and did not make its technical findings public.

2. Lack of National Cyber Security Strategy – a draft put to public consultation in December 2019 awaits finalization.

3. India has no data protection law requiring breach notifications to impacted users.

4. The proposed Draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022, being mooted by Meity, would, by notification, exempt government entities from compliance.

5. RailYatri Portal was reportedly breached in 2020, 2022and 2023.

What is Digital Public Infrastructure?

It refers to blocks or platforms such as digital identification, payment infrastructure and data exchange solutions that help countries deliver essential services to their people, empowering citizens and improving lives by enabling digital inclusion.

Global DPI Summit

1. The side event of third meeting of the G20 Digital Economy Working Group was successfully organized recently by MeitY.

2. India signed MoU with Armenia, Sierra Leone, Suriname and Antigua and Barbuda on sharing India Stack, i.e. successful digital solutions implemented at the population scale.

What is India Stack?

1. It is a set of APIs (Application programming interfaces) allowing governments, businesses, startups and developers to utilize a unique digital infrastructure to solve India’s complex problems towards presence less, paperless, and cashless service delivery.

2. This project was conceptualized and first implemented in India, where its rapid adoption by billions of individuals and businesses has helped promote financial and social inclusion and positioned the country for the Internet Age.

3. Pillars of India’s DPI – Aadhar, DigiLocker, Digi Yatra, UPI

Critical Issues in DPI and India Stacks

1. Lack of legal definition except for Aadhar.

2. Data guzzlers

3. The creation of regulatory and institutional frameworks is rejected to favour the mirage of innovation.

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