KHALISTAN MOVEMENT

1. Context 

2. Key points

• He is the assistant of Amritpal Singh named Lovepreet Singh "Toofan", was released from Amritsar Central Jail after a court in Ajnala issued orders to discharge him based on an application by the police.
• Amritpal Singh, 29 is a follower of the Slani Sikh militant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and is often dubbed "Bhindranwale 2.0" in Punjab.
• He returned from Dubai last year to take the reins of the "Waris Punjab De" organisation following the death of its founder, actor-activist Deep Sidhu.

3. Khalistan movement

• The Khalistan movement is a fight for a separate, sovereign Sikh state in present-day Punjab (both India and Pakistan).
• Over the years, it has survived in various forms, in various places and amongst different populations.
• The movement was crushed in India following Operation Blue star (1984) and Operation Black Thunder (1986 and 1988), but it continues to evoke sympathy and support among sections of the Sikh population, especially in the Sikh diaspora in countries such as Canada, the UK and Australia.

4. Reasons for the origin of the movement

• The origins of the movement have been traced back to India's independence and subsequent Partition along religious lines.

• Lahore, the capital of Maharaja Ranjit Singh's great Sikh Empire, went to Pakistan as did holy Sikh sites including Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism.
• While most Sikhs found themselves in India, they were a small minority in the country, making up around 2 per cent of the population.
• The political struggle for greater autonomy began around the time of Independence, with the Punjabi Suba Movement for the creation of a Punjabi-speaking state.
• The States Reorganisation Commission, in its 1955 report rejected this demand, but in 1966 after years of protest, the state of Punjab was reorganised to reflect the Punjabi Suba demand.
• The erstwhile Punjab state was trifurcated into the Hindi-speaking, Hindu-majority states of Himachal Pradesh and Haryana and the Punjabi-speaking, Sikh-majority Punjab.

5. The Anandpur Sahib Resolution

• The Punjabi Suba Movement had galvanised the Akali Dal which became a major force in the new Sikh-majority Punjab and gave Congress hard fights in the Legislative Assembly elections of 1967 and 1969.
• But in 1972, in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's resounding victory in the 1971 Lok Sabha elections, the Akali Dal's performance in the state was underwhelming.
• The party met at the sacred town of Anandpur Sahib the birthplace of the Khalsa, in 1973 and released a list of demands that would guide the political path of the Akali Dal.
• Among other things, the Anandpur Sahib Resolution demanded autonomy for the state of Punjab, identified regions that would be part of a separate state and sought the right to frame its internal constitution.
• The Akali Dal was trying to cash in on the growing demand for an autonomous state which had emerged alongside the Punjabi Suba movement and had gone global by 1971 when an advertisement appeared in the New York Times proclaiming the birth of Khalistan.
• While the Akalis themselves repeatedly made it clear that they were not demanding secession from India, for the Indian state, the Anandpur Sahib Resolution was of grave concern.

6. Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

• Many in Punjab sought to go beyond just a demand for greater autonomy.
• One such man was Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a charismatic preacher who soon positioned himself as "the authentic voice of the Sikhs, in contrast to the Akali Dal's lukewarm, vacillating leadership".
• Some accounts claim that Bhindranwale was propped up by Sanjay Gandhi, Indira's son, to stand against the Akalis for Congress's political benefit.
• However, by the 1980s the appeal of Bhindranwale had grown so much that he started to become a problem for the government.
• He found a captive audience in the state's youth, especially those in the lower rungs of the social ladder and massed a massive following. He and his followers were also getting increasingly violent.
• In the summer of 1982, Bhindranwale, with support from the Akali Dal's leadership, launched a civil disobedience movement called Dharam Yudh Morcha.
• He took up residence inside the Golden Temple, directing demonstrations and clashes with the Police.
• The Movement was geared towards the demands first articulated in the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, especially the socio-economic demands, which addressed concerns of the state's rural Sikh population.
• However, amidst growing religious polarisation, sectarian violence and Bhindranwale's harsh rhetoric against Hindus, Indira Gandhi's government declared the movement tantamount to secession.

7. Operation Blue Star

• By 1984, the situation in Punjab had become increasingly untenable for the government.
• Bhindranwale had given a call to arms and instances of violence against Hindus, as well as government officers, had become common.
• In 1983, a senior police officer was shot dead after praying at the Golden Temple and his body was left to decay in the sun, while the local police station did nothing perhaps both out of fear and sympathy for Bhindranwale's cause.
• Indira Gandhi took the fateful decision to order the Indian Army to flush out militants from the Golden Temple and neutralise Bhindranwale.
• Operation Blue Star began on June 1, 1984, but due to fierce resistance from Bhindranwale and his heavily armed supporters, the Army's operation became larger and more violent than had been originally intended, with the use of tanks and air support.
• The image of Indian Army tanks shelling the holiest shrine of Sikhism was traumatic and the very large number of civilian casualties that occurred during the operation added to the trauma.
• According to the government, 83 Indian Army soldiers were killed and 249 were injured in the operation.  A total of 493 militants and civilians were killed in the operation.
• Other estimates peg the number of casualties much higher as much as 3, 000.
• The operation coincided with the martyrdom day of Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth Guru of the Sikhs; hence the number of pilgrims in the Golden Temple was higher than usual.

8. The aftermath of Operation Blue Star

• While the operation was ostensibly successful in its aims Bhindranwale was killed and the Golden Temple was freed of militants it gravely wounded the Sikh community around the world. It also galvanised the demand for Khalistan.
• On October 31, 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards.
• This triggered the worst communal violence since Partition even according to conservative estimates, over 8, 000 Sikha were massacred in massive anti-Sikh street violence.
• A year later, Sikh nationalists based in Canada blew up an Air India flight killing 329 people.
• They claimed that the attack was to "avenge Bhindranwale's killing".
• Punjab saw the worst violence, becoming the hub of a long-drawn-out insurgency that lasted till 1995.
• While the movement was allegedly supported by Pakistan to cause internal unrest in its neighbouring country, it would slowly peter out by the 1990s as the violence took its toll, the bulk of the population turned against the militants and India headed towards economic liberalisation

9. The status of the Khalistan movement today

• Punjab has long been peaceful, but the movement lives among some Sikh communities overseas.
• The deep-rooted anger over Operation Blue Star and the desecration of the Golden Temple continues to resonate with some of the newer generations of Sikhs.
• However, even though Bhindranwale is viewed as a martyr by many and the 1980s are remembered as dark times, this has not manifested into tangible political support for the Khalistna cause.

For Prelims & Mains

GENOME INDIA PROJECT

1. Context 

The Department of Biotechnology recently said that the exercise to sequence 10, 000 Indian human genomes and create a database under the Centrebacked Genome India Project is about two-thirds complete.

About 7, 000 Indian genomes have already been sequenced of which 3, 000 are available for public access to researchers.

2. About Genome Sequencing

• The human genome is the entire set of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) residing in the nucleus of every cell of the human body.
• It carries the complete genetic information responsible for the development and functioning of an organism.
• The DNA consists of a double-stranded molecule built up by four bases.
• While the sequence of base pairs is identical in all humans, there are differences in the genome of every human being that make them unique.
• The process of deciphering the order of base pairs, to decode the genetic fingerprint of a human is called genome sequencing.
• In 1990, a group of scientists began to work on determining the whole sequence of the human genome under the Human Genome Project.
• The Project released its latest version of the complete human genome in 2023, with a 0.3 per cent error margin.
• This shows that genomic sequencing has now evolved to a stage where large sequencers can process thousands of samples simultaneously.
• There are several approaches to genome sequencing, including whole genome sequencing.
• The process of whole genome sequencing, made possible by the Human Genome Project, now facilitates the reading of a person's genome to identify differences from the average human genome.

3. Applications of sequencing

• Genome sequencing has been used to evaluate rare disorders, preconditions for disorders and even cancer from the viewpoint of genetics, rather than as diseases of certain organs.
• Nearly 10, 000 diseases including cystic fibrosis and thalassemia are known to be the result of a single gene malfunctioning.
• In public health, however, sequencing has been used to read the codes of viruses.
• One of its first practical usages was in 2014 when a group of scientists from M.I.T and Harvard sequenced samples of Ebola from infected African patients to show how genomic data of viruses could reveal hidden pathways of transmission.

4. Effective response against COVID-19

• In January 2020, at the start of the pandemic, Chinese scientist YongZhen Zhang sequenced the genome of a novel pathogen causing infections in the city of Wuhan.
• Mr Zhang then shared it with his virologist friend Edward Holmes in Australia, who published the genomic code online.
• It was after this that virologists began evaluating the sequence to try and understand how to combat the virus, track the mutating variants and their intensity and spread and come up with a vaccine.
• To enable an effective response against COVID-19, researchers kept track of emerging variants, conducting further studies about their transmissibility, immune escape and potential to cause severe disease.
• Genomic sequencing became one of the first steps in this important process.
• Here, the purpose of genome sequencing was to understand the role of certain mutations in increasing the virus's infectivity.
• India also put in place a sequencing framework the Indian SARSCOV2 Genomics Consortia (INSACOG).
• This consortium of labs across the country was tasked with scanning coronavirus samples from patents and flagging the presence of variants known to have spiked transmission internationally.
• As of early December 2021, INSACOG had sequenced about 1, 00, 000 samples.

5. About Genome India Project

• India's 1.3 billion strong population consists of over 4, 600 population groups, many of which are endogamous.
• Thus, the Indian population harbours distinct variations, with disease-causing mutations often amplified within some of these groups.
• But despite being a large population with diverse ethnic groups, India lacks a comprehensive catalogue of genetic variations.
• Creating a database of Indian genomes allows researchers to learn about genetic variants unique to India's population groups and use that to customise drugs.
• About 20 institutions across India are involved in the Project.

For Prelims: Genome India Project, Covid-19, DNA,  For Mains:  1. What is the significance of genome sequencing? Discuss the reasons for the importance of the Genome India Project. (250 Words)

 

Previous Year Questions   1. With reference to agriculture in India, how can the technique of 'genome sequencing', often seen in the news, be used in the immediate future? (UPSC 2017)  1. Genome sequencing can be used to identify genetic markers for disease resistance and drought tolerance in various crop plants. 2. This technique helps in reducing the time required to develop new varieties of crop plants. 3. It can be used to decipher the host-pathogen relationships in crops. Select the correct answer using the code given below: A. 1 only      B. 2 and 3 only      C. 1 and 3 only     D.  1, 2 and 3   Answer: D   2. Consider the following statements: (UPSC 2020)  1. Genetic changes can be introduced in the cells that produce eggs or sperms of a prospective parent. 2. A person’s genome can be edited before birth at the early embryonic stage. 3. Human-induced pluripotent stem cells can be injected into the embryo of a pig. Which of the statements given above is/are correct? A. 1 only      B. 2 and 3 only    C. 2 only     D. 1, 2 and 3   Answer: D

 

Source: The Hindu

TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES

 

1. Context

There was news recently that March 2023 was the second warmest March on record. The monthly report and the subsequent end­of­the­year annual summary by the U.S. National Oceanic and atmospheric administration (NOAA) serve as an excellent resource to contextualize the individual month’s ranking by temperature anomalies.

2. Temperature anomaly

Under normal circumstances, the temperature decreases from the equator towards the poles and each latitude has its own temperature. But other factors such as altitude, distribution of land and water, prevailing winds, ocean currents, etc. also affect the temperature of a place. As a result, there is a difference between the mean temperature of any place and the mean temperature of its parallel which is known as temperature anomaly or thermal anomaly.

3. Anomalies VS Temperature

• In climate change studies, temperature anomalies are more important than absolute temperature. A temperature anomaly is a difference from an average, or baseline, temperature.
• The baseline temperature is typically computed by averaging 30 or more years of temperature data.
• A positive anomaly indicates the observed temperature was warmer than the baseline, while a negative anomaly indicates the observed temperature was cooler than the baseline.
• When calculating an average of absolute temperatures, things like station location or elevation will have an effect on the data (ex. higher elevations tend to be cooler than lower elevations and urban areas tend to be warmer than rural areas).
• However, when looking at anomalies, those factors are less critical. For example, a summer month over an area may be cooler than average, both at a mountain top and in a nearby valley, but the absolute temperatures will be quite different at the two locations.
• Using anomalies also helps minimize problems when stations are added, removed, or missing from the monitoring network.

4. Why was March 2023 the second warmest? 

• March 2023 was indeed the second warmest in the instrumental record. The warmest March occurred just a few years ago in 2016 when the biggest El Niño of the 21st century triggered a ‘mini’ global warming.
• But the January­to­March average temperature anomaly ranks 2023 as the fourth warmest such period on record. This raises some obvious questions.

Image Source: The Hindu

5. Why was March 2023 the second warmest and not the warmest?

• As seen, each year’s March can be warmer or cooler than the March of the year before.
• Natural climate variability, including events like El Niño, can temporarily spike temperatures.
• The old adage (often mistakenly attributed to Mark Twain) says that climate is what we expect and the weather is what we get.
• In India, we expect March to be the beginning of the scorching summer season. But a particular year’s March may be cooler due to some other climate factors, such as a La Niña, and especially when averaged over a region as large as India or even an Indian State.
• A year is an ‘El Niño year’ if warmer water spreads in a band from west to east over the equatorial Pacific Ocean.
• In a ‘La Niña year’, cooler water spreads east to west in the same region. Both phenomena have distinct and significant effects on the global climate. (Global mean temperatures themselves represent the increasing amount of additional energy we are trapping in the earth system and preventing its escape to space by, among other things, increasing the atmospheric concentration of heat­trapping greenhouse gases.)

6. Occurrence of Global distribution of temperature anomalies

• The global distribution of temperature anomalies is due to land­ ocean­ atmosphere processes that dynamically determine the weather and climate.
• Global warming does not mean each month or each year will be warmer than the previous month or the previous year.
• Instead, a better place to begin would be by averaging the weather over a decade. Decade­-to­decade warming clearly shows that humans are now ensuring each decade is warmer than the one before.
  
• As with the temperature, precipitation anomalies for March 2023 show the impact of a warm March over Eurasia in the form of below­normal precipitation.
  
• We know that reduced snowfall over the Eurasian landmass has historically tended to favor a stronger monsoon.
• As it happens, 2023 is expected to be an El Niño year, and El Niños tend to produce weaker monsoons. So this summer’s El Niño effect could be blunted by the lower snow cover over Eurasia.

7. Way forward

• In sum, climate scientists need to provide the proper context when they compare and rank individual months against each other.
• This will help the people at large better understand global warming as well as its cascading effects on the weather they experience every day.
  
• All global warming is local; nobody lives in the global mean temperature. And the better people understand the impact of global warming in their backyard, the likelier they can be engaged in climate action.

For Prelims: National Oceanic and atmospheric administration (NOAA), El Niño effect, La Nina Effect, Temperature anomaly, Positive anomaly, Negative Anomaly, and Global Warming.

Source: The Hindu

SOCIAL SECURITY FOR GIG WORKERS

1. Context 

Recently the Rajasthan government announced the Rajasthan Platform-based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Bill, 2023, which has stringent provisions against errant aggregators as well as various welfare policies.

2. Key Points

• The new Code on Social Security allows platform workers to be defined by their vulnerability not their labour, nor the vulnerabilities of platform work.
• Swiggy workers have been essential during the pandemic. Even so, they have faced a continuous dip in pay and no rewards for being essential workers.
• During the last six months, many platform workers have unionised under the All India Gig Workers Union and have protested day in and day out, deploring Swiggy for reducing their base pay from ₹ 35 to ₹10 per delivery order.
• It has been truly remarkable to see "food delivery" being developed through collective action, just as that of Uber and Ola taxi drivers has been taking shape for a few years now.
• Stable terms of earning have been a key demand of delivery persons and drivers through years of protests.

3. New labour codes 

• The three new labour codes passed by Parliament recently acknowledge platform and gig workers as new occupational categories in the making, in a bid to keep India's young workforce secure as it embraces "new kinds of work", like delivery, in the digital economy.
• The swiggy workers are not asking for the pay that was promised.
• The platform worker is allowed to claim rights, responsibilities and working conditions that can be legally upheld is the key question in these codes, such as for factory workers who have been an important industrial element in India and around the world.
• The specific issues of working in factories, the duration of time needed on a factory floor, and associated issues are recognised as the parameters for defining an ideal worker under most labour laws and this has not shifted much.

4. Definition of an employee

• The Code on Wages, 2019, tries to expand this idea by using wages as the primary definition of who an employee is.
• The wage relationship is important in the world of work, especially in the context of a large informal economy.
• Even so, the terms gig worker platform worker and gig economy appear elsewhere in the code on social security.
• Since the laws are prescriptive, what is written within them creates limits to what rights can be demanded and how these rights can be demanded.
• Hence, the categories and where they appear become key signs for understanding what kind of identity different workers can have under these new laws.
• Platform delivery people can claim benefits, but not labour rights. This distinction makes them beneficiaries of State programmes.
• This does not allow them to go to court to demand better and more stable pay or regulate the algorithms that assign the tasks.
• This also means that the government or courts cannot pull up platform companies for their choice of pay or how long they ask people to work.
• The main role of the laws for a platform worker is to make available benefits and safety nets from the government or platform companies.
• Even though platforms are part of the idea of how work will evolve in the future, the current laws do not see them as future industrial workers.

5. No guarantees

• In the Code on Social Security, 2020, platform workers are now eligible for benefits like maternity benefits, life and disability cover old age protection, provident fund, employment injury benefits and so on.
• However, eligibility does not mean that the benefits are guaranteed.
• None of these are secure benefits, which means that from time to time, the Central government can formulate welfare schemes that cover these aspects of personal and work security but they are not guaranteed.
• Actualising these benefits will depend on the political will at the Central and State government levels and how unions elicit political support.
• For some States like Karnataka, where a platform-focused social security scheme was in the making last year, this will possibly offer some financial assistance by the Centre. However, that is not assured.
• The language in the Code is open enough to imply that platform companies can be called upon to contribute either solely or with the government to some of these schemes.
• But it does not force the companies to contribute towards benefits or be responsible for workplace issues.
• The platform worker identity has the potential to grow in power and scope, but it will be mediated by politicians, election years, rates of underemployment and large investment-heavy technology companies that are notorious for not complying with local laws.
• But there are no guarantees for better and more stable days for platform workers, even though they are meant to be the future of work.

For Prelims: Gig workers, Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Bill, 2023, Labour codes For Mains:  1. What is the Gig economy? Discuss the advantage and challenges associated with this new trend. (250 Works)

Source: The Hindu

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

 

1. Context

On April 24, 1915, the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey) began rounding up Armenian political and cultural leaders in Constantinople, marking the beginning of what would come to be known as the Armenian genocide. 

2. What is Genocide?

• The word 'genocide' was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.
• As per the UN, Genocide is the intentional and systematic destruction of a particular ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.
• This destruction can occur through a variety of means, including mass killing, forced relocation, and the imposition of harsh living conditions that result in widespread death.
• UN says a crime of genocide includes two main elements namely Mental Element and Physical Element.
• Mental Element: The intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
• Physical Element: It includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively: Killing members of the group, Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life is calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
• Also, the members of the attacked group must have been attacked because they are members of the group, and not as individuals, for the crime to qualify as genocide.

3. What happened to Armenians?

• Armenians are an ancient people whose traditional homeland by the beginning of the 20^th century was divided between the Russian and the Ottoman empires.
• In the Ottoman Empire, dominated by Muslims, Armenians were a Christian, well-off minority.
• On account of their religion, they faced discrimination, which they had been protesting and demanding a greater say in the government. This led to resentment and attacks against the community.
• A revolution was brought in 1908 by a group called the Young Turks and paved the way for the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) to form the government which wanted the ‘Turkification’ of the empire and was hard on minorities.
• In August 1914, World War I broke out, and the Ottoman Empire joined forces with Germany and Austria-Hungary against Russia, Great Britain, and France.
• The war brought antipathy towards Armenians to a boil, especially as some Armenians were sympathetic to Russia and even willing to help it in the war. Soon, the Armenians as a whole were seen as a threat.
• The crackdown of April 14, 1915, on the community began in earnest with the arrest of prominent citizens in Constantinople, many of whom were executed. The government then ordered the forcible eviction of Armenians.
• In spring 1915 the Ottoman government began the deportation of the Armenian population from its northeastern border regions.

4. Genocide Convention

• The Genocide Convention, also known as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is an international treaty that was adopted by the UNGA on December 9, 1948.
• The purpose is to prevent and punish the crime of genocide and requires signatory nations to take action to prevent and punish genocide, including by enacting laws that criminalize the crime of genocide and by cooperating with other nations in the investigation and prosecution of individuals suspected of committing genocide.
• The Convention also establishes the International Court of Justice as the primary judicial body responsible for interpreting and enforcing the Convention.
• It was the first human rights treaty adopted by the General Assembly of the UN on 9 December 1948.

5. Recognition of the Armenian ‘genocide’

• As of today, 32 countries, including the US, France, and Germany, recognize the Armenian genocide.
• India does not, nor does the UK. The US joined this group only in 2021, under President Joe Biden, and support from other countries too was slow in coming.
• Turkey’s geopolitical importance has meant that not a lot of governments want to pick issues with it on the Armenian issue.
• Although most countries have condemned the tragedy, the use of ‘genocide’ has been avoided, as the term was coined only in 1944 and because Turkey has always claimed that there is no proof the deaths were planned and targeted. 
• The modern state of Armenia has in the past sought better ties with Turkey, although the two are now locked in a tussle over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, an Armenian-dominated part of Azerbaijan where Turkey supports Azerbaijan. 

6. About Armenia

 

• Armenia is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.
• Armenia is a part of the Caucasus region and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, the Lachin corridor (under a Russian peacekeeping force) and Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the south.
• Yerevan is the capital, largest city, and financial center. Armenia is a unitary, multi-party, democratic nation-state with an ancient cultural heritage. 

 

For Prelims: Armenia, Turkey, Genocide Convention,  Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, United Nations General Assembly, and Lachin corridor. For Mains: 1. What is the Armenian Genocide and discuss its repercussions. What are the international laws and regulations to stop genocide?(250 Words)

 

Source: The Indian Express