GS Analyst
Daily Current Affairs

North Korea has recently passed a law enshrining the right to ‘automatically’ use preemptive nuclear strikes to protect itself.

About the new law:

• This new law makes the country’s nuclear status ‘irreversible’ and bars any talks of denuclearisation.
• The utmost significance of legislating nuclear weapons policy is to draw an irretrievable line so that there can be no bargaining over our nuclear weapons.
• North Korea’s new law is important because, very simply, it authorises preemptive nuclear strikes.
• That means this law could be implemented if Pyongyang thinks there is an impending nuclear attack or if Pyongyang believes that its state’s existence faced threats or the command organisation of its nuclear forces were threatened.
• Under the provisions of this new law, “all decisive powers” over nuclear weapons, but in case that command-and-control system was to be threatened, then nuclear weapons may be launched “automatically”.
• The law also bans the sharing of nuclear arms or technology with other countries, and is aimed at reducing the danger of a nuclear war by preventing miscalculations among nuclear weapons states and misuse of nuclear weapons.

The annual celebration of Hindi Diwas commemorates September 14, 1949, the day when the Constituent Assembly of India took the decision to make Hindi the official language of the Union government.

• The Constituent Assembly of India adopted Hindi written in Devnagari Script along with English as the official language of the country on September 14, 1949, under Article 343(1).
  • Initially, English was granted the official language status for only 15 years since the adoption of the constitution. During these 15 years, Hindi’s reach was to be promoted for official purposes as well as in the education sector so that English would fade out, giving ground to Hindi.
• Imposition of Hindi was contested in many non-Hindi states, especially in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
  • Violent protests broke out in southern India leading the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, to introduce the ‘Official Languages Act’ in 1963, which assured the continuation of English along with Hindi as the official language of the Union of India.
• Anti-Hindi protests of 1965 marked an important turn in India’s official language policy.
  • The ‘Official Languages Act’ was amended in 1967 guaranteeing the "virtual indefinite policy of bilingualism" for all official purposes of the Union.
• Given the linguistic diversity of India, there is no national language as all the states are free to decide their own official languages.

Constitutional Provisions

• Article 343(1)states that the Official Language of the Union government shall be Hindi in Devanagari script.
• Article 351gives power to the Union Government to issue a directive for the development of the Hindi language.
• The Hindi language is one of the 22 languages of the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India.

About Hindi Diwas

• Hindi Language, written in the Devanagari script, was adopted as one of the official languages of India on this day in 1949.
• The day is also called as Hindi Day.
• It is observed across India to honour and promote the Hindi language among people, with special emphasis on children.

About Hindi Language

• Hindi is written in Devanagari script for the unversed.
• It comprises of a large number of dialects.
• Hindi Language stands at fourth place worldwide after English, Spanish and Mandarin.

NITI Aayog to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Shoonya, India’s zero pollution e-mobility campaign.

Shoonya Campaign:

• The Shoonya campaign aims to improve air quality in India by accelerating the deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) for ride hailing and deliveries.
• The Shoonya campaign brings together consumers and industry, to reduce emissions from the commercial passenger and urban freight sector by promoting EV adoption.
• The campaign is administered by NITI Aayog and RMI in partnership with leading industry players.
• The goal of the campaign is to raise awareness about EVs among consumers and recognise industry efforts through an integrated combination of corporate branding, impact assessment and consumer awareness.
  
  

The Shoonya campaign has three major components:

1. Corporate Branding Programme

• The corporate branding programme recognises efforts made by industry partners to promote vehicle electrification.
• Under this programme, rides and deliveries carried out in EVs are branded with the Shoonya logo.
• The EVs used for deliveries and ride-hailing carry a Shoonya sticker and drivers wear a Shoonya badge.

2. Consumer Awareness Drive

• A public-facing awareness drive is designed to highlight the health and environmental benefits of EV adoption.
• The campaign seeks to build awareness and demand for zero-pollution rides and deliveries among consumers, solidifying Shoonya as a slogan across every household in India.
</u
3. Resource Toolkit
• The resource toolkit provides EV users with online tools to assess the costs and impact of electric vehicle adoption.
• These toolkits include
  • an impact tracking dashboard that shares the progress and impact of the campaign to date
  • a calculator that shows a cost and emissions comparison between EVs and their petrol, diesel, and CNG counterparts
  • a list of financing resources and policy incentives to support EV procurement. 

National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) chairperson Justice Arun Kumar Mishra (retd.) expressed concern over the dumping of e-waste in developing countries by developed countries.

• While addressing the annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Forum of national human rights institutions of countries in the region, he called for a stop to the practice in order "to universally ensure human rights for a healthy sustainable environment".
• A multi-pronged strategy was needed to combat climate change in a time-bound manner by all countries.

E-Waste:

• E-waste, or electronic waste, refers to all electronic equipment that’s been discarded by users with no intentions of reuse.
• This includes everything from smaller items like lamps and phones to larger appliances like televisions, refrigerators and washing machines.
  
  

The Union Cabinet under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the addition of four tribes to the list of Scheduled Tribes.

Newly added tribes:

• Himachal Pradesh: Hatti tribe 
• Tamil Nadu: Narikoravan and Kurivikkaran hill tribes 
• Chhattisgarh: Binjhia (They were listed as ST in Jharkhand and Odisha but not in Chhattisgarh)
• Karnataka: Kadu Kuruba community 

Process:

• The process to include tribes in the ST list begins with the recommendation from the respective State governments.
• The request is made to the Tribal Affairs Ministry, which reviews and sends them to the Registrar General of India for approval.
• This is followed by the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes’ approval before the list is sent to the Cabinet for a final decision.

Scheduled Tribes in India

• The term 'Scheduled Tribes' first appeared in the Constitution of India. Article 366 (25) defined scheduled tribes as "such tribes or tribal communities or parts of or groups within such tribes or tribal communities as are deemed under Article 342 to be Scheduled Tribes for the purposes of this constitution".
• Article 342, which is reproduced below, prescribes procedure to be followed in the matter of specification of scheduled tribes.
• The tribal population of the country, as per 2011 census, is 10.43 crore, constituting 8.6% of the total population.
  • 89.97% of them live in rural areas and 10.03% in urban areas.
  • The decadal population growth of the tribal’s from Census 2001 to 2011 has been 23.66% against the 17.69% of the entire population.
  • The sex ratio for the overall population is 940 females per 1000 males and that of Scheduled Tribes 990 females per thousand males.
• Broadly the STs inhabit two distinct geographical area – the Central India and the North- Eastern Area.
  • More than half of the Scheduled Tribe population is concentrated in Central India, i.e., Madhya Pradesh (14.69%), Chhattisgarh (7.5%), Jharkhand (8.29%), Andhra Pradesh (5.7%), Maharashtra (10.08%), Orissa (9.2%), Gujarat (8.55%) and Rajasthan (8.86%).
  • The other distinct area is the North East (Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh).
• More than two-third of the ST population is concentrated only in the seven States of the country, viz. Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.
• There is no ST population in 3 States (Delhi NCR, Punjab and Haryana) and 2 UTs (Puducherry and Chandigarh), as no Scheduled Tribe is notified.

US officials have announced recently to list the tricoloured bat as endangered.

• A fungal disease that attacks while bats are hibernating has brought the tricolored bat to the brink of extinction.
• Tricolored bats live in 39 states east of the Rocky Mountains, as well as parts of Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and Nicaragua.
• But white-nose syndrome— caused by a fungus that develops on cave-dwelling bats during hibernation — is decimating the bat's population in North America at unprecedented rates.
• White-nose syndrome has killed off millions of bats across the continent, wiping out 90% to 100% of colonies in some sites.

About the species:

• The tricolored bat, formerly known as the eastern pipistrelle, is one of the smallest bats in North America.
• Tricolored bats are a hibernating species and have the longest hibernation period of any bat species in their range.
• When not hunkering down for the winter, they may be found in a wide variety of habitats to roost and forage.  
• When feeding, these bats can catch insects in the air as often as every 2 seconds and increase their body mass by 25 percent in only half an hour.