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Religious leaders across different faiths have joined hands to oppose the plea for recognition of same-sex marriages in the Supreme Court.
Some have filed an application in the Supreme Court opposing petitions in favour of same-sex marriages, while others have written to the President seeking her intervention.
The Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, the Communion of Churches, and the Akal Takht, along with representatives of the Ajmer dargah and Jain gurus, have raised concerns about a legal sanction for same-sex marriages, claiming that it is against the natural family order apart from being in contravention of their differing scriptures.
Several leaders reiterated the sentiment that marriage is an institution for procreation, not recreation. The RSS also opposes same-sex marriage, though it has accepted same-sex relationships, holding a position in line with the Centre.
The Supreme Court Bench has said that the hearing of the case will be livestreamed from April 18 in public interest.
Taking the lead is the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, which filed an application in the top court. “The concept of marriage between two opposite sexes is like the basic feature of marriage itself which leads to the creation of a bundle of rights (maintenance, inheritance, guardianship, custody).
By these petitions, the petitioners are seeking to dilute the concept of marriage by introducing a free-floating system through the concept of same-sex marriage,” the application read.
In a media statement, the Jamaat-e-Islami’s vice-president Salim Engineer referred to a marriage between a man and a woman as “the correct form” of marriage.
States
In a first, Eravikulam National Park gets a fernarium (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The Eravikulam National Park (ENP) in Kerala, the natural habitat of the Nilgiri tahr in Munnar, has a new attraction — a fernarium set up inside the park. According to officials, this is the first time such a fern collection is being set up in the hill station.
Job J. Neriamparampil, Assistant Wildlife Warden, ENP, said that 52 varieties of ferns had already been planted in the new fernarium.
As per data, ENP has 104 varieties of ferns. We have planned to increase the number of ferns inside the park to 104 soon. The fern park has been set up near the orchidarium and will be opened to the public on April 20.
The ENP is one of the rich biodiversity areas, and the new initiatives aim to provide visitors with awareness of the park’s biodiversity.
Jomy Augustine, botanist, said that ferns were the ecological indicator of healthy forests. “The climatic condition inside the ENP is more suitable for growing ferns.
“Ferns are part of the Epiphytic family. They grow naturally in a soilless condition. The plants obtain water and nutrients through leaching from trees. A large number of ferns are on the trees inside the park. Meanwhile, after the calving season of the Nilgiri tahrs, the ENP opened for the public.
Mr. Neriamparmpil said that a selfie point was among the new facilities established for tourists. “Three buggy cars have been arranged for the visitors to explore the park, and two more will be purchased soon. The park had 1,607 and 1,684 tourists on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
According to officials, a survey of new births in the ENP will be held on April 20. The last annual census recorded 785 tahrs, while 125 new calves were sighted. It is expected that the number of calves will increase from 125 to 150 after the census.
Editorial
India needs a national programme on autism (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
One of the most frequent questions I faced at academic conferences as soon as people realised that I was an Indian researcher working on autism was this: ‘How many children in India have autism?’ At this point, India did not have any systematic estimates of autism prevalence.
My collaborators and I set out to answer this question, and found ourselves telephoning a number of government hospitals in India.
We were looking for available records of the children who came to them, and were eventually given a diagnosis of autism. In the absence of a central medical registry, this method seemed reasonable to estimate the prevalence of autism — and had been successfully used in some other countries.
Unfortunately, it did not work. None of the hospitals kept any records of how many children got a diagnosis of autism. It made us change our strategy from focusing on hospitals to schools.
Instead of relying on existing medical records from hospitals, we translated and validated widely used autism assessment tools — and used these to estimate the prevalence of autism in nearly 12,000 schoolchildren.
Interestingly, none of the children who met the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum in our study had a prior clinical diagnosis.
All of these children were in mainstream schools, and reported facing more challenges than their counterparts. There have been a few other prevalence estimates since our initial study, and a conservative estimate based on pooling the results from different studies suggests that well over one crore Indians are on the autism spectrum.
While biochemical pathways involved in core autism symptoms are unlikely to be different between cultures, there are notable cultural differences in who gets a clinical diagnosis of autism.
The majority of children with an autism spectrum diagnosis within the United States and the United Kingdom are likely to be verbal, with average or higher than average IQ, and attending mainstream schools. In contrast, a significant majority of children in India who get a clinical diagnosis of autism often also have intellectual disability, and limited verbal ability.
This difference is likely to be driven by a range of sociological factors, such as access to appropriate clinical expertise, the allowance of provisions for inclusion in mainstream schools, as well as availability of medical insurance coverage for autism interventions.
It raises the question of why one chooses to get an autism diagnosis in the first place. If a clinical diagnosis is unlikely to open doors to appropriate services and support provisions, and is instead going to add to societal stigma, then rolling out a nationwide screening and diagnostic programme for autism across all schools is not likely to be useful. Even if it were theoretically possible to do so, how we assess autism presents its own set of challenges.
No ‘sayonara’ for Japan in Indo-Pacific geopolitics (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The visit by the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, to India, in March 2023, during which he engaged with his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, on global and bilateral issues, focused on cooperation between the G-7 and the G-20 (Japan and India hold their presidencies, respectively).
Besides this, Mr. Kishida also unveiled “Japan’s New Plan for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP) and exchanged views about deepening the “Japan-India Special Strategic and Global Partnership.
Japan’s FOIP clearly shows that Japan wants to reinforce the idea that it has been the main champion of the FOIP concept, and Mr. Kishida’s speech underlined that given the current geopolitical landscape with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, East China Sea, the Indian Line of Actual Control and the Taiwan Straits, there is a need to give a fresh push and momentum to this concept.
The New Plan for the FOIP lays stress on the need to uphold the rules-based order and respect each other’s territorial sovereignty, with Mr. Kishida warning that “at a time when the international community is at a historical turning point, I would like to clarify the concept of FOIP once again to propose a guiding perspective to be shared by the international community which, if left unchecked, could drift towards division and confrontation”.
Japan’s new policy focuses on the numerous challenges facing the Indo-Pacific such as the Ukraine war, food security, and cyber space in addition to issues such as ensuring the freedom of the seas, and connectivity among others.
Another challenge which has been highlighted is the lack of a united stand on “what the international order should be” — the differing position of countries on the Russia-Ukraine war has brought this issue to the fore.
But there is a firm belief that the FOIP will be able to work with and embrace diverse voices and create an atmosphere of cooperation and collaboration rather than division and confrontation. For attaining this atmosphere of cooperation, ‘rule-making through dialogue’ should be encouraged.
The fact that Japan under the FOIP should work alongside other like-minded countries in the region has been mentioned, with India being billed as an ‘indispensable’ partner.
Long on intent (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
India’s long-delayed, refreshed Foreign Trade Policy has finally been unveiled. The new policy, announced on Friday by the Union Minister for Commerce, Industry and Textiles Piyush Goyal, has made bold to set an ambitious target of reaching $2 trillion in total exports (goods and services combined) by 2030.
With the government currently estimating exports to have crossed $760 billion in the fiscal year just ended on March 31, the policy projects a near tripling in outbound shipments of goods and services over the course of seven years.
And when one compares this growth goal with the 75% expansion achieved over the last seven years since 2016, the magnitude of the aspiration suggests vaulting ambition.
To be sure, the last three years have been unprecedented, with first the COVID-19 pandemic and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupting global trade momentum.
Still, the last three years, when India put its trade policy reset on hold, also provided policymakers a unique opportunity to take a fresh approach to delineating the contours of its trade policy goals.
The end result is long on statements of intent. The National Trade Facilitation Action Plan, for instance, lists aims to achieve that are essential and laudable but in no way novel: an improvement in the ease of doing business through reduction in transaction cost and time, a reduction in cargo release time, and a paperless regulatory environment.
In a nod to India’s WTO obligations, the shift from incentives to an enabling regime of duty remission and exemption schemes to facilitate duty-free imports of inputs required for boosting exports has been near complete.
Most of these schemes including the RoDTEP (Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products), RoSCTL (Rebate on State and Central Taxes and Levies), AA (Advance Authorisation) and EPCG (Export Promotion Capital Goods) have been around for a while and the policy has just tweaked some of the terms of implementation to improve adoption.
In the key sector of apparel and clothing, for instance, the facility of self-declaration has now been offered across the board to all exporters. A one-time amnesty has also been offered, giving exporters more time to avail of both the AA and EPCG schemes.
And acknowledging the substantial surge in online trade, the policy devotes a whole chapter to ‘Promoting Cross Border Trade in Digital Economy’ including moves to facilitate the establishment of dedicated e-commerce export hubs.
Still, with global trade largely becalmed and the services sector facing headwinds of uncertainty in the key western markets, the FTP falls short in offering more substantive and sectorally targeted measures as well as a well-defined road map to meet the 2030 export target.
Explainer
The indictment against Donald Trump (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
A New York grand jury has indicted former U.S. President Donald Trump on charges relating to the case of hush-money paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016, prior to Mr. Trump entering the Oval Office.
The formal indictment is still under seal, creating ambiguity around the specific charges and the extent of evidence against Mr. Trump.
However, media reports and comments by Mr. Trump’s attorney suggest that he will be in the dock for passing off the $1,30,000 payment to Ms. Daniels as a business expense, potentially in violation of campaign finance laws.
In 2006, Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is said to have had a consensual sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, who was married to his wife Melania at the time.
In 2011, when Mr. Trump was said to be considering the idea of running for president, Ms. Daniels apparently tried to go public with the story of Mr. Trump’s extramarital affair with her.
However, that story got suppressed after Mr. Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, threatened to sue. When he actually ran for office in 2016, Ms. Daniels again attempted to approach the media with her story.
This time Mr. Cohen reportedly worked out a deal, whereby he paid Ms. Daniels $1,30,000 for her silence and was subsequently reimbursed $4,20,000 in what was written into the books as “legal expenses”.
Later, in his congressional testimony, Mr. Cohen, who admitted a guilty plea in August 2018 for violating federal campaign finance laws said, “Mr. Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a home equity line of credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign. I did that.”
Also involved in reimbursing funds to Mr. Cohen from the Trump Organization was its Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who is presently in prison for tax fraud. In this backdrop, the hush-money case would essentially seek to directly link Mr. Trump with the false bookkeeping entries, and then charge him with falsification of records.
However, under New York state law this would only be a misdemeanour, not a felony, which implies a far lighter sentence for the accused if convicted.
Text & Context
The Bharat 6G vision document: how India plans to lead telecommunication tech (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
On March 22, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the Bharat 6G Vision Document, a starting point for policymakers and the industry to gear up for the next generation of telecommunication. This is happening even as over 45,000 villages lack 4G connectivity, and 5G networks are still being built out.
The government has indicated that it wants to accelerate India’s wireless data consumption and assume leadership in setting the standards for 6G in the coming years.
This may involve everything from encouraging local manufacturing of telecom gear to supporting Indian companies and engineers in international discussions around standardisation. Influence in the latter is key, as telecommunications standards are usually adopted globally.
Another key motivation is the delay in previous generations of telecommunication technology rolling out in India — 5G started rolling out in India years after countries like South Korea and the U.S. had already blanketed their major urban areas with high-speed wireless connectivity.
India does not want a repeat of that; the government even says in the 6G vision document that it wants to make sure it grabs 6G “from the oven”.
Yet another reason is pure physics: frequencies generally increase in newer generations of networks, but the lower the frequency, the longer a cell signal can travel.
With increasing data usage, lower frequencies in 4G networks may not physically be able to keep up with the demand for traffic.
The government says so in plain terms: “Right now, the spectrum is congested, particularly in the low and mid-bands where the propagation characteristics are favourable,” the vision document says.
More data can travel in higher frequencies, which is the basis for 5G architectures where base stations with low coverage took the place of a single larger cell tower.
Beyond encouraging greater participation in standardisation discussions, the vision document says the government will financially support “research pathways” where breakthroughs are most likely to advance connectivity goals, leveraging talent in academia and companies. The government said an “apex body” will be set up to shepherd these groups through roadblocks.
Some indicative goals are to guarantee every citizen a minimum bandwidth of 100Mbps; ensure every gram panchayat has half a terabit per second of connectivity; and blanket the country with over 50 million internet hotspots, with thirteen per square kilometre.
News
ISRO’s Reusable Launch Vehicle landing test successful (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Space)
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Sunday successfully carried out the landing experiment of the Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstration (RLV-TD) programme at the Aeronautical Test Range in Challakere, Chitradurga.
An Indian Air Force (IAF) Chinook helicopter was used to drop the RLV-TD from an altitude of 4.5 km and the ISRO executed the landing experiment of the RLV-TD as planned.
The RLV took off at 7.10 a.m. by a Chinook helicopter of the IAF as an underslung load and flew at a height of 4.5 km. Once the predetermined pillbox parameters were attained, based on the RLV’s Mission Management and Computer command, the RLV was released mid-air, at a down range of 4.6 km,” the ISRO said. Release conditions included 10 parameters covering “position, velocity, altitude and body rates.
It added that the release of the RLV was autonomous as it performed approach and landing manoeuvres using Integrated Navigation, Guidance and Control System and completed the landing on the airstrip at 7.40 a.m.
The ISRO also said that for the first time in the world, a winged body has been carried to an altitude of 4.5 km by an helicopter and released for carrying out autonomous landing on a runway.
The Indian Air Force said that its trial team, which participated in the mission, was headed by a woman officer from the Bengaluru-based Aircraft Systems and Testing Establishment.
According to ISRO, the configuration of RLV-TD is similar to that of an aircraft and combines the complexity of both launch vehicles and aircraft.
The experiment is successful and it meets almost all the objectives of the landing experiment that we had defined long back. We will have a few more landing experiments with different conditions to prove the ruggedness of the algorithm and the hardware that we have put in. These are steps which takes us closer to having India’s own reusable launch vehicles.
He added that the ideation of this project started almost 20 years ago and that it has taken many years to grow from the initial stage to this.