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Govt. & politics
In the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Election Commission (EC) is set to replace the printed circuit board (PCB) of 2.2 lakh Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines as a part of routine maintenance, according to top EC officials.
The EC had on January 27, 2022 written to all chief electoral officers of states and Union Territories, apart from Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Daman and Diu and Lakshadweep, saying that “all M3-VVPATs” of the series numbers mentioned “are required to be shifted to the manufacturers” Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) Bengaluru and Panchkula and Electronics Corporation of India (ECIL) in Hyderabad.
As per the letter, a total of 3,43,741 VVPATs were to be shifted to the manufacturers for various tasks of rectification from February to August 2022.
While some VVPATs from 33 states and UTs were listed for rectification, about 74% of the VVPATs needing repairs were from seven states and UTs — West Bengal (76,151), Uttar Pradesh (60,726), Tamil Nadu (39,139), Madhya Pradesh (28,886), Assam (22,436), Haryana (13,807) and Jammu and Kashmir (13,580).
Express network
Healers and Travellers, Karnataka tribe awaits the rescue of some members from Sudan as conflict drags on (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 1, Society)
In the midst of her conversation, Shivakanya, 23, stops to take a call from her sister Kushi. The call, punctuated by anguished wails, is all the way from the African nation of Sudan, where Khushi and her husband Bharat are stuck in the midst of fierce fighting between rival military groups.
Things are getting very bad there (in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan). They have run out of food and water and just want to come home. Khushi has been crying, saying she doesn’t know if she will survive.
She said there are shootings and bombings going on right next to the building they are in. The homeowner has already left the place fearing for his life,” says Shivakanya, sitting on the threshold of her house in the tribal hamlet of Pakshirajapura, about 50 km from Mysuru.
Newlyweds Khushi and Bharat are among 30 people from Karnataka’s Hakki Pikki tribe who have been trapped in Sudan since last week. On April 18, former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar got into a heated exchange on Twitter when the senior Congress leader alleged that the government had not intervened to rescue the stranded Hakki Pikki tribals in Sudan. In response, Jaishankar accused the Karnataka leader of politicising the issue.
A few houses from Shivakanya’s, Kranthi, 23, too has been living the same nightmare. “Seven of my family members — my husband, mother, three brothers and two sisters-in-law — are stuck in Khartoum.
When we spoke the last time, they said they did not have enough food or water. They said the bombing has not stopped,” cries Kranthi, who has been taking care of her brothers’ children in India since they left for Sudan a year ago.
The Hakki Pikki (‘Hakki’ in Kannada translates as ‘bird’ and ‘Pikki’ as ‘catchers’) are a nomadic tribe of traditional bird catchers and hunters.
According to the 2011 Census, there are 11,892 Hakki Pikki people in Karnataka. Members of the tribe are mostly concentrated in Davangere, Mysuru, Kolar, Hassan and Shivmogga districts.
They also live in parts of capital Bengaluru, where they reside in slums and unauthorised colonies. Members of the tribe speak Vaghri (an unclassified tribal Indo-Aryan language of south India), Kannada and Hindi.
New space policy sets out the roles of private and government entities (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Space)
Three years after opening up the space sector to private entities, the Union government Thursday released the Indian Space Policy document that sets out and formalises the roles of private and government entities in the sector — including envisaging the Indian Space Research Organisation as a body that moves beyond manufacturing into research and development.
The release of the document came after the cabinet on April 6 approved the Indian Space Policy 2023. The policy aims to not only create space-based resources and services, but also promote research and development along with education in the space sector.
Private companies, referred to as non-governmental entities in the policy, will be allowed to undertake end-to-end space activity — launching and operating satellites, developing rockets, creating ground stations, building spaceports and mobile launch platforms, and providing services like communication, remote sensing and navigation, nationally and internationally.
Private entities have also been encouraged to develop space situational awareness capabilities — a mechanism to track objects in space and avoid collision of satellites and space stations with each other or space debris.
The policy also says that private players can engage in “commercial recovery” of asteroids or space resources. The companies will be entitled to “possess, own, transport, use, and sell” such resources in accordance with law.
Editorial page
Steel frame to Bhavna vriksh (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Civil Service Day, observed on April 21 every year, is a celebration of the idea of a national civil service. “Bapu inaugurated new service recruits’ school at Delhi,” observed Maniben Patel, in her diary.
He added a credo for civil servants: “We have a right to expect the best out of every civil servant in India, in whatever position of responsibility he may be.
It is not for you to approach your task purely from a mercenary angle or entirely from self-interest, however, enlightened it may be. Your foremost consideration should be how best to contribute to the well-being of India as a whole.”
It is, therefore, a travesty to attribute to Sardar Patel, the phrase “steel frame” with its negative connotation of a rigid, restrictive, and rule-bound colonial bureaucracy.
The “steel frame”, a description of the Imperial Civil Service (ICS) by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George in a Commons debate in 1921, came to define both the popular culture and self-imagination of the Civil Service.
Hence, the lamentations of the early governments on their inability to craft a civil service rooted in the national ethos were distracted as they were by the turbulent Partition times. It remained an unfinished job.
Ideas page
Mega Science and Mega Dreams (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
A fortnight ago, the Union Cabinet approved the full budget for the LIGO-India mega-science project, which includes the construction, commissioning and joint scientific operation of a state-of-the-art, advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in India in collaboration with the NSF-funded LIGO Laboratory, USA, operated by Caltech and MIT.
The approval emphatically reiterates the Indian government’s commitment to meet the rising aspirations of Indian science to make a far-reaching impact in the global arena.
As noted in the “in-principle” approval granted by the Union Cabinet in February 2016, LIGO-India will provide a very broad spectrum of opportunities to Indian youth to pursue research careers in cutting-edge areas of science and technology.
The LIGO-India Observatory will enable dramatically enhanced global capability in the emergent field of gravitational-wave astronomy and astrophysics (A&A).
This enabling of an entirely new window to our universe parallels in significance — of its potential contribution — to the growth of modern astronomy after Galileo pointed his first telescope to the skies 400 years ago.
The global science community is unanimous that the key to gravitational-wave observations blooming into an essential, valuable element of multi-messenger A&A lies with LIGO-India.
Express network
First-ever waterbody census, Bengal tops list of States with most ponds and reservoirs (Page no. 19)
(GS Paper 1, Resources)
India has 24.24 lakh waterbodies like ponds, tanks and lakes, with West Bengal accounting for the most (7.47 lakh) and Sikkim the least (134), according to the report of the first census of waterbodies released by the Ministry of Jal Shakti recently.
The report states, “24,24,540 waterbodies have been enumerated in the country, out of which 97.1% (23,55,055) are in rural areas and only 2.9% (69,485) in urban areas.”
The census defines a waterbody as “all natural or man-made units bounded on all sides with some or no masonry work used for storing water for irrigation or other purposes (example industrial, pisciculture, domestic/drinking, recreation, religious, ground water recharge etc)”
Waterbodies are usually of various types known by different names like tank, reservoirs, ponds and bundhies etc. A structure where water from ice-melt, streams, springs, rain or drainage of water from residential or other areas is accumulated or water is stored by diversion from a stream, nala or river will also be treated as waterbody,” state the report.
The waterbodies census was conducted along with the 6th Minor Irrigation Census for 2017-18. The results of the census have been released recently.
Explained
Caught in Sudan conflict: Why Karnataka Hakki Pikkis go to Africa from Karnataka (Page no. 24)
(GS Paper 1, Society)
More than 181 members of the Hakki Pikki tribal community from Karnataka are stuck in violence-hit Sudan, even as the government is making efforts to bring them back.
The Hakki Pikki is a tribe that lives in several states in west and south India, especially near forest areas. Hakki Pikkis (Hakki in Kannada means ‘bird’ and Pikki means ‘catchers’) are a semi-nomadic tribe, traditionally of bird catchers and hunters.
According to the 2011 census, the Hakki Pikki population in Karnataka is 11,892, and they live majorly in Davangere, Mysuru, Kolar, Hassan and Shivmogga districts.
In different regions, they are known by different names, such as Mel-Shikari in northern Karnataka and Maharashtra.
MR Gangadhar, Vice Chancellor of Chamarajanagar University and an anthropologist who has conducted a study on the tribe, said, “The Hakki Pikki move in groups from place to place in search of livelihood.
They are divided into four clans, called Gujaratia, Panwar, Kaliwala and Mewaras. These clans can be equated with castes in the traditional Hindu society.
In the olden days, there was a hierarchy among the clans, with the Gujaratia at the top and the Mewaras at the bottom. The forest is the main natural resource of the Hakki Pikki.”
Hakki Pikki people are believed to hail originally from the bordering districts of Gujarat and Rajasthan. According to Gangadhar, they came to the south in search of game.
To Karnataka, they seem to have arrived via Andhra Pradesh, as they still remember a place called Jalapally near Hyderabad as their ancestral home, where their forefathers lived for a considerable period. They are now spread across south India.
Till a few years ago, women used to wear the ghagra (skirt) common in Rajasthan, although now they wear saris and other garments.
China and Central Asia (Page no. 24)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Earlier this week, China convened an online meeting of trade ministers of the grouping known as C+C5 — China and the five Central Asian republics, namely Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
It was the latest in a series of diplomatic engagements by Beijing with the region since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Last month, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan received Nowroz messages from President Xi Jinping, who also invited them to the meeting on April 18.
An in-person C+C 5 summit is on the cards — perhaps in Xi’an next month — along with China’s flagship Belt and Road Forum, which has a substantial Central Asian component.
Foreign Minister Qin Gang has announced that his ministry is working “to ensure the success of [the] two major diplomatic events…to show the distinctive character of China’s diplomacy”.
The first C+C5 summit was held in virtual format on January 25 last year, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations.
Two days later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted a virtual summit of the C5 — India’s first engagement with the Central Asian nations collectively at the highest level.
China shares a long history of trade, cultural, and people-to-people links with the Central Asian region, which lies on the ancient Silk Route.
Modern China’s involvement with the region began with the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, when it moved deftly to formalise its boundaries with Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan, as well as Russia.