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A major earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, killing more than 2,600 people and flattening thousands of buildings as rescuers dug with bare hands for survivors.
Dozens of nations have pledged aid since the 7.8-magnitude quake, which hit as people were still sleeping and amid freezing weather that has hampered emergency efforts.
Multi-storey apartment buildings full of residents were among the 3,400 structures reduced to rubble in Turkey, while Syria announced dozens of collapses, as well as damage to archaeological sites in Aleppo.
The initial quake was followed by dozens of aftershocks.
States
Rajasthan’s ‘open prisons’ helping transform the lives of inmates (Page no. 3)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The open prison model adopted in Rajasthan, with convicts staying on community land without high walls or strict surveillance, has promoted a reformative form of punishment and succeeded in transforming the lives of inmates. Once a pioneering idea, Rajasthan has now proved its success with 40 such open camps.
Prisoners who have served one-third of their sentences are eligible to shift to the open jails, according to the Rajasthan Prisoners’ Open Air Camp Rules of 1972.
Inmates of Central and district jails with a track record of good conduct are regularly identified to make the move to the open prisons, where they are allowed to live with family members and earn their livelihoods.
The trust-based concept, introduced in the State in the 1950s, has succeeded by facilitating the integration of prisoners into society by ensuring their stay in a functional social environment.
Three judges of the Supreme Court visited an open prison in Sanganer, near Jaipur, last week and observed the atmosphere in which the inmates enjoy the freedom of living with their immediate family members.
Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Aniruddha Bose and Sripathi Ravindra Bhat interacted with the inmates and laid emphasis on the reformative potential of such open prisons.
While Justice Kaul suggested the creation of similar open camps across the country with improved amenities and funding, Justice Bhat observed that the focus was on the individual rather than on the crime.
Prison Aid and Action Research (PAAR) founder SmitaChakraburtty said the model had stood the test of time, as there were no reports of prisoners trying to escape or committing the same offence again.
As minimum security facilities, open prisons require 92.4% less staff compared to closed jails and the cost incurred per prisoner per month is only ₹500, she said.
Editorial
The freedom of speech and an ‘adolescent India’ (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Constitution)
We hold adults to different standards of behaviour than we do for children. But what about adolescents? We are disappointed when they are unable to behave with maturity but are often not surprised by their lack of it.
Maturity, in a human, is the duty to conduct oneself in accordance with social norms, under varying circumstances, irrespective of how the individual feels.
In the context of a nation, Tocqueville defines the maturity of a nation as the capacity of the people of that nation to act responsibly in the face of social flux.
The rapid growth in national power, along with the unbridled freedom of economic power, has given Indians something that our predecessors never had.
The freedom of speech is one of the most cherished freedoms. The Constitution of India, too, declares that Indians possess this freedom, but makes it subject to the interest of public order, or the sovereignty and integrity of India.
We believe that the framers of the Constitution accepted this watering down of this fundamental freedom, simply because the notion of unfettered freedom of speech was foreign to us.
The concept of freedom of speech is a western notion. While some form of freedom may have existed in ancient Greece, the real freedom of speech, as we understand it today, was propounded by Voltaire and Rousseau.
There is nothing in our soil that suggests that this freedom took root here. B.R. Ambedkar, in his Writings and Speeches, notes this in relation to ancient India:
As to freedom of speech it exists. But it exists only for those who are in favour of the social order. The freedom is not the freedom of liberalism which was expressed by Voltaire when he said ‘I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it.
Jammu, village defence and governance (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
The rise in terror-related strikes in the relatively peaceful Jammu division, especially in the border districts of Rajouri and Poonch, needs a closer look.
In spite of militancy-related indices not being a cause for alarm, any complacency on the part of the state could be disastrous in the mid and long terms.
The dynamics of militancy in these regions are different from those prevalent in Kashmir due to the demographic profile of an almost equal proportion of Hindus and Muslims.
The agency of the local population in a conflict zone cannot be overlooked. Conflict resolution in such regions is a function of utilising the potential of people by facilitating their participation in decision making and execution vis-à-vis issues concerning them.
There have been several terror-related incidents in the region of Jammu division over the last year with the gravest of them so far having been committed in Dangri village in Rajouri district at the beginning of the year.
In January, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, there were infiltration attempts, recoveries of war-like stores, explosions followed by gunshots at the house of a local MLA, a neutralisation of hideouts, and the nabbing of suspects in Rajouri and Poonch.
Since Dangri happened, the demand for a revival of the erstwhile Village Defence Committees (VDC) has emerged from different quarters.
The government had issued instructions to operationalise VDC (rechristened as Village Defence Guards, or VDG) in August 2022. As in the policy, the VDGs were to instil a sense of self protection, with the district’s superintendent of police mandated to exercise command and control.
VDCs have played a crucial role in containing militancy in the Jammu division, after being set up in the mid-1990s. Pockets with a VDC presence were those in remote areas; their difficult terrain and a meagre presence of security forces made chances of successful operations remote.
VDCs were trained to hold the front against militants till the arrival of security forces, thus proving to be force multipliers.However, in several cases, the VDCs have proved to be counterproductive, with instances of cadres abusing their authority and even facing allegations of human rights violations.
Text & context
Voice deepfakes: how they are generated, used, misused and differentiated (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
On January 29, several users of the social media platform 4chan, used “speech synthesis” and “voice cloning” service provider, ElevenLabs, to make voice deepfakes of celebrities like Emma Watson, Joe Rogan, and Ben Shapiro.
These deepfake audios made racist, abusive, and violent comments. Making deepfake voices to impersonate others without their consent is a serious concern that could have devastating consequences.
In response to such use of their software, ElevenLabs tweeted saying, “While we see our tech being overwhelmingly applied to positive use, we also see an increasing number of voice cloning misuse cases.”
A voice deepfake is one that closely mimics a real person’s voice. The voice can accurately replicate tonality, accents, cadence, and other unique characteristics of the target person.
People use AI and robust computing power to generate such voice clones or synthetic voices. Sometimes it can take weeks to produce such voices, according to Speechify, a text-to-speech conversion app.
To create deepfakes one needs high-end computers with powerful graphics cards, leveraging cloud computing power. Powerful computing hardware can accelerate the process of rendering, which can take hours, days, and even weeks, depending on the process.
Besides specialised tools and software, generating deepfakes need training data to be fed to AI models. This data are often original recordings of the target person’s voice. AI can use this data to render an authentic-sounding voice, which can then be used to say anything.
Attackers are using such technology to defraud users, steal their identity, and to engage in various other illegal activities like phone scams and posting fake videos on social media platforms.
According to one of Speechify’s blog posts, back in 2020, a manager from a bank in the UAE, received a phone call from someone he believed was a company director.
The manager recognised the voice and authorised a transfer of $35 million. The manager had no idea that the company director’s voice was cloned.
News
India, Canada FMs discuss Indo-Pacific cooperation, and trade (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Indo-Pacific cooperation and trade were at the top of the agenda as Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly met External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar for the India-Canada Strategic Dialogue in Delhi.
The visit is seen as an attempt by both sides to put bilateral ties back on track, after several turbulent years, and focused primarily on Canada’s newly released Indo-Pacific strategy that calls India an important partner.
Significantly, the MEA press release made no mention of recent tensions over vandalism by suspected pro-Khalistani groups in Canada.
“India welcomed the announcement of Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, given the shared vision of a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific,” the MEA said in a statement after the meeting, adding that they discussed developments in India’s neighbourhood, Ukraine and cooperation in the United Nations.
The Canadian strategy document released contains sharp words on China’s “coercive” challenge to the international rules-based order and on human rights, and in contrast says India and Canada have a “shared tradition of democracy and pluralism, a common commitment to a rules-based international system and multilateralism, mutual interest in expanding our commercial relationship and extensive and growing people-to-people connections”.
India’s growing energy demand offers investment opportunities: PM (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
India’s energy demand has significantly increased and in the coming years, it will reach 11% of the global demand as against 5% currently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said while inaugurating the India Energy Week (IEW), 2023.
Demand for energy in the country has grown significantly. This offers opportunities for energy companies to invest in and collaborate with energy firms in the country.
The energy sector played a major role in deciding the future of the world in the 21st century and India was one of the strongest voices today in developing new resources of energy and in the energy transition, the Prime Minister said.
Also, the country has a chunky class of aspirational population and energy would play an important role in fulfilling the aspirations of these people; in fact, energy demand would be highest globally in India in coming years, Mr. Modi added, quoting the International Energy Agency.
He said the government, under the National Green Hydrogen Mission, had set aside ₹1 lakh crore for green hydrogen. The country was taking the lead in the green hydrogen space, and would replace grey hydrogen (created from natural gas, or methane, using steam methane reformation but without capturing the greenhouse gases made in the process), to increase its share to 25% in the next five years.
Addressing a large audience of energy experts and captains of global energy companies, Mr. Modi said global and domestic investors should increase their presence in fossil fuel exploration in the country. Some 10 lakh square kilometres of ‘no-go zones’ were freed for energy exploration, he added.
Domestic exploration of fuels and an increase in production of such fuels was one of the focus areas for the energy sector in the country.
Based on investor sentiment, we have reduced no-go areas in the country by 10 lakh square km to facilitate exploration in inaccessible areas of the country.
Speaking at the opening session of the event, Hardeep Singh Puri, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas and Housing and Urban Affairs, said the country’s energy landscape had undergone significant shifts in recent years.
To accommodate these changes, the government is prepared to play a catalyst in accelerating adoption of low-carbon options, including biofuels, electric vehicles, and green hydrogen.