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Newspaper Analysis and Summary – 9th January 2015 NATIONAL NRIs can energise India, Modi tells Pravasi meet- The Hindu The phase when Indians travelled abroad in search of opportunity is over and now India beckons its overseas citizens as a land of opportunity, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said here on Thursday in his inaugural address at the ongoing Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.

―Our forefathers went to far off lands in search of opportunity. They endured long journeys and carved a niche for themselves wherever they went. There was also a phase where educated Indians and professionals went abroad for more exposure or better prospects. Perhaps that phase was necessary. But today opportunities await you on Indian soil. Time has changed rapidly and the world is looking at India with hope. An Indian in any corner of the world has become a symbol of strength. The world is ready to embrace us and we must be ready for the world,‖ Mr. Modi said.

Reminding the diaspora that he had delivered on his promises made to them before coming to power, he said the government worked to merge Person of Indian Origin (PIO) and Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) schemes, making way for a one-time visa. Overseas Indians would also be exempt from weekly police reporting. Mr. Modi said these measures were not merely a matter of ease of administration, but of self-respect as well.

―There is a certain strength in meeting our people. That itself can be a source of energy.

Newspapers in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo– The Hindu Newspapers on Thursday expressed outrage at the attack on the Paris satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo with at least one republishing a controversial cartoon from the magazine in solidarity.

Thursday‘s print edition of the Washington Post republished the controversial spoofing of the Prophet that prompted the 2011 firebombing of the offices of Charlie Hebdo .

Some European papers are also considering coordinated publication of the cartoons. In the small world of political satire, many cartoonists knew the journalists at the French weekly magazine who were among the 12 killed by suspected Islamists on Wednesday.

They expressed their anguish and deep anger at the killings in the way they know best.

One of the pictures that quickly went viral on the Internet was by Dutch artist Ruben L. Oppenheimer, showing a plane flying into two pencils standing erect, reminiscent of the Twin Towers in New York.

Another cartoon, by Australia‘s David Pope, showed a picture of a gunman with a smoking rifle standing over a body, bearing the caption ―He drew first.‖

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Must counter terror with cooperation: French envoy – The Hindu France will share information with India on the terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, as it is important to counter terrorism with cooperation, says France‘s Ambassador to India Francois Richier. ―We have already shared information on this attack, although our security agencies are still trying to track the perpetrators. We will definitely share the methods the terrorists used and the way the attack was carried out, with Indian authorities because all this information is useful for our allies around the world.‖ Mr. Richier told The Hindu .

He said the French government had been tracking the Charlie Hebdo attackers for some time, and believed they were part of a ―radical group,‖ but not members of Islamic State (IS).

However, he said the ―sizeable numbers‖ of French and European nationals going to fight in the IS was a ―growing concern,‖ and might have proven as an ―inspiration‖ for the attack.

Last week, the European Union‘s counterterrorism chief had said an estimated 3,000 Europeans were now fighting in the IS, and a video released by the terror group targeting France specifically had raised concerns.

Sources told The Hindu that Indian and French security officials had discussed sharing lists of those suspected to have joined the IS, although the numbers in India were estimated to be much fewer, nearly 15.

Asked if incidents reported in Paris, Lyon and other towns of attacks on mosques caused worries of a backlash, Mr. Richier said, ―It is not established yet that these incidents are related to the terrorist attack. I hope they aren‘t.‖ However, he said it would be unfortunate if they were, adding, ―We have to punish the perpetrators but we shall not act like these terrorists did in harming innocent people.‖

The French embassy in Delhi received condolence messages from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Pranab Mukherjee and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. ―Like the rest of the world, we are shocked,‖ External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said.

Ambassador Richier met diplomats, French nationals and others who came to the embassy for a moment of silence timed with a similar observance in other capitals around the world, and at a special service in Paris at 1030 GMT. ―This could have happened anywhere, in India, in Europe, in the U.S., so it is clearly a message of solidarity, to cooperate together against terrorism,‖ he said.

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India, South Africa discuss UNSC reforms- The Hindu Engaging in diplomacy on the sidelines of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) event here, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had substantive meetings with Donald Ramotar, President of Guyana; Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, South Africa; and Showkutally Soodhun, Vice Prime Minister Mauritius.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is set to visit South Africa in the first quarter of this year to pursue opportunities for economic ties particularly in infrastructure and mining.

India and South Africa on Thursday discussed the need for UN Security Council reforms especially when 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the international body, Syed Akbaruddin, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs told a press conference here.

In his discussion with Mr. Ramotar, Mr. Modi assured a line of credit worth $ 60 million to Guyana for two road and ocean ferry projects in the Caribbean country. The Centre also decided to include Guyana in the list of countries whose citizens will get a visa-on-arrival facility. The facility of Electronic Travel Authorization (e-Visa) has also been introduced to save time.

A deeper engagement with Mauritius is also on the cards with the country inviting Mr. Modi to pay a visit on March 12.

Mr. Modi took a tour of ‗Dandi Kutir‘ – a conical three-storey museum dedicated to Gandhiji – constructed in Gandhinagar. Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel said it was the biggest exhibition in Asia.

Coins, stamps released At the occasion, two stamps of Rs. 25 and Rs. 5 and two coins of Rs. 100 and Rs. 10 denominations were released in the memory of Gandhiji.

This years PBD will honour 16 NRIs with ‗Samman Awards‘. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who is among those awarded this year, will not attending the awards function on Friday.

―The award will be given to him in absentia,‖ Mr. Akbaruddin said.

Women’s safety, Bhopal gas tragedy to figure in Litfest-The Hindu Continuing the ongoing debate on women safety, a session titled ‗A Revolution is Brewing‘ will be organised at the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival beginning here on January 21. With Sangeeta Bandopadhyay, C. Mrunalini, Sukrita Paul Kumar and Malashri Lal as participants, the session will take centre stage at the festival.

And, to mark three decades of the Bhopal gas tragedy, there will be a session by Javier Moro, Salil Tripathi and John Elliott on the ‗Toxic Legacy.‘

As the popular theme of ‗Crime and Punishment‘ last year, visitors can look forward to various sessions on the theme ‗The Seven Deadly Sins‘ this year. Hanif Kureishi, Deepti Kapoor, Sarah Waters and Nicholson Baker will be seen in conversation with Parul Sehgal at a session titled ‗Basic Instinct.‘

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CURRENT AFFAIRS Visitors can look forward to sessions such as ‗Selfie: The Art of Memoir‘ with Elizabeth Gilbert, and ‗The Conflict of Dharma in the Mahabharata‘ with Amish Tripathi and Bibek Debroy.

Changing cinema Cinematic immortality and the changing face of Indian cinema will be in the spotlight this year. While Naseeruddin Shah will discuss his autobiography, And Then One Day , with acclaimed actor and playwright Girish Karnad, yesteryear Bollywood beauty Waheeda Rehman will be seen in conversation with her biographer and film historian Nasreen Muni Kabir, and writer and mythologist Arshia Sattar. Along with discussion on Rehman‘s landmark films and roles, the veteran actor will also share her views on the changing face of Indian cinema.

The biggest blockbuster this season will be the coming together of Nobel laureate Sir V.S. Naipaul and celebrated American travel writer Paul Theroux. While the former will participate in a session titled, ‗The Writer and The World‘ with Farrukh Dhondy, the latter will be addressing a session on A House for Mr. Biswas alongside Hanif Kureishi and Amit Chaudhuri. Paul Theroux will also talk about crossing genres in his solo session, ‗My Other Life: A Novelist‘s Affair with Non Fiction.‘

Staying true to its commitment of being a grand platform for poetry lovers, the festival will open with a keynote address by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Vijay Seshadri, eminent Hindi poet and Jnanpith awardee Kedarnath Singh and iconic poet, anthologist and translator Arvind Krishna Mehrotra.

Black holes inching towards ‘merger’- The Hindu In a galaxy far, far away, a pair of supermassive black holes appear to be spiralling together towards a cosmic collision of unimaginable scale, astronomers said on Wednesday.

―The final act of this mating dance, perhaps a mere 1 million years from now, could release as much energy as 100 million of the violent supernova explosions in which stars end their lives, and wreck the galaxy it is in,‖ said S. George Djorgovski, of the California Institute of Technology.

―Most of that energy would go into gravitational waves, the violent ripples of space-time that are predicted but not yet directly detected by Einsteins theory of general relativity,‖ Mr. Djorgovski said. ―And there could be electromagnetic fireworks as well.‖

―According to the theory,‖ he explained in an e-mail, ―the interactions of the black holes would drive nearby stars away, like shingles in a tornado.‖

―However,‖ he added, ―I think that the nature is never so neat.‖

Mr. Djorgovski, one of the authors of a paper published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, will discuss the research at a meeting in Seattle. The lead author is Matthew Graham, a computational scientist at Caltech‘s Center for Data-Driven Discovery.

The merging black holes manifested as a regular flicker in a quasar a mass of light and energy in a remote galaxy known as PG 1302-102. The most logical explanation, Mr.

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CURRENT AFFAIRS Graham and his colleagues wrote, is a pair of black holes circling each other less than a light-year apart.

―This is the most convincing evidence for a tight pair of black holes with a separation smaller than the solar system,‖ said Avi Loeb, a cosmologist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who was not involved in the work, noting that other less- convincing systems have been suspected.

He cautioned, moreover, that ―the evidence is not yet airtight; the apparent variation in the quasar light could be a statistical effect from not checking it frequently enough.‖

If it holds up under scrutiny, the system could be a bonanza for the young field of gravitational wave astronomy. It would also provide a preview of what will happen in our own Milky Way galaxy in a few billion years when it collides with the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy, sending the black holes at the hearts of both galaxies into an intimate (pre-arranged) companionship, as Mr. Loeb put it in an e-mail.

‘No mechanism to protect Yamuna’- The Hindu A report filed by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in the Supreme Court on Thursday shows that a total pollution load of over 300 tonnes flow into river Yamuna every day from 22 drains connecting it in Delhi and its neighbouring regions.

There has been no mechanism to protect the river, a water source for the teeming National Capital, from the untreated sewage being dumped into it through drains, which were actually built to carry storm water, the report said.

―The total pollution load discharged through 22 drains in river Yamuna and its canals observed during the 12 rounds of monitoring from November 2013 to October 2014 varied between 145 to 317 tons a day,‖ it said.

Analysis of the drains from neighbouring Ghaziabad joining in Delhi shows that the nature of pollution in the drains is mainly bio-degradable waste.

― Although the drains are meant to carry storm water and tail end discharge as a part of river basin system, in present circumstances the drains are being used to carry treated and untreated sewage and industrial effluents apart from storm water,‖ CPCB said.

The Board informed that it has set up Real Time Water Quality monitoring stations at Wazirabad water intake point and another at Okhla. These stations provide real time water quality observations in respect of 10 parameters, namely pH, conductivity, temperature, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, etc.

The Supreme Court had suo motu taken up the issue of the pollution of the river following newspaper reports. It had in 2012 sought an explanation from the Centre, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana governments on the Yamuna continuing to be highly polluted despite a spending of around Rs. 4,400 crore over the last 18 years on cleaning the river.

―All the agencies have spent crores of rupees. What is the purpose? What work has been done ultimately?‖ Despite the existence of as many as 18 sewage plants to treat effluents,

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CURRENT AFFAIRS the treated water had ―a high rate of pollution,‖ the then Bench led by Justice (now retired) Swatanter Kumar had observed.

The court had asked the CPCB to submit a report explaining whether the treatment plants were working and how untreated waste could be stopped from being drained into the Yamuna.

EDITORIALS Philosophical investigations- The Hindu In the weeks just before and after the new year, when the overall atmosphere of the capital was vitiated on account of the government‘s attempts to override Christmas as a Christian observance and an official holiday, replacing it with a so-called ―Good Governance Day‖ and the birth anniversaries of Madan Mohan Malaviya, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, brief visits by two eminent philosophers provided some relief. The visitors were the Bengali philosopher, Arindam Chakrabarti, who teaches at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, and the Iranian philosopher, Ramin Jahanbegloo, who teaches at York University in Canada. Both lectured at public fora, met with students and scholars, and brought to the denizens of beleaguered Delhi a much-needed reminder of the importance of philosophy as the core of humanistic intellectual inquiry and democratic dissent.

Doubt, choice and freedom Professor Chakrabarti delivered the first of the newly-instituted Daya Krishna Lectures in Philosophy, speaking about reality, freedom and knowledge on three separate occasions. Professor Jahanbegloo held a reading and discussion around his recently-published memoir, Time Will Say Nothing: A Philosopher Survives an Iranian Prison (University of Regina Press, 2014). Although the two men are very different from one another in their personal and intellectual trajectories, they are almost exact contemporaries. Both impressed audiences with their passion for philosophical thinking, their broad comparative knowledge of philosophical systems, eastern and western, their moving eloquence and their pedagogical energy. The start of a new year under a new right-wing regime, one that continually poses challenges to liberal thought, rational debate and free expression, felt a lot less depressing thanks to the old and new ideas, deep erudition and bold questions that both Chakrabarti and Jahanbegloo brought to the table.

Although he has lived overseas now for a long time, Chakrabarti is a familiar figure to anyone interested in philosophy in contemporary India. Equally adept in navya nyaya , Kashmiri Saivism and analytic philosophy, educated in Calcutta and in Oxford, a student as much of Bimal Krishna Matilal as Peter Strawson, fluent in Bangla, Sanskrit and Continental philosophical idioms, argumentative styles and textual traditions, Chakrabarti has been an unforgettable teacher and an engaging speaker throughout his career from the late 1980s.

His Daya Krishna lectures in Delhi on December 24, 26 and 27, 2014, that ranged widely over many subjects, are impossible to summarise descriptively. But what struck me as most significant, particularly given the current political climate in India, was his second lecture, which was about doubt, indecision, choice and freedom.

We are given to thinking that concepts like choice and freedom characterise modern and capitalist societies, and come to us in India thanks to our encounter with the West. But

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CURRENT AFFAIRS through incisive readings of the Bhagavad Gita , sections of the Mahabharata , the writings of Mahatma Gandhi and of his grandson, the recently deceased philosopher Ramchandra Gandhi (who was personally very close to both Daya Krishna and Arindam Chakrabarti himself), together with the Buddhist philosophers Na¯ga¯rjuna, Dign¯aga and Dharmaki¯rti, Chakrabarti explored the pathways through which the understanding of freedom in Indian philosophical systems was closely tied to issues of the stability or instability, persistence or impermanence of the self; the necessity of making ethical choices in the face of doubt, indecision, hesitation and ambiguity; and random strokes of both ―moral luck‖ as well as ―epistemic luck‖ with which some individuals may be blessed and others, not so much.

On Indic antiquity At a time when we are continually subjected to unsubstantiated claims about how our ancestors made scientific discoveries and technological advances thousands of years before any other culture, it seems much more valuable to learn about the principal problems that thinkers in our part of the world were actually reflecting upon with great intensity, intelligence and sophistication in Indic antiquity. Self and Other, doubt and decision, action and inaction, birth and death, war and peace, bondage and freedom — these were matters of philosophical scrutiny over millennia, spread out over multiple schools of thought, and locked in long-running debates within, between and across traditions.

Figures like the historical Buddha, the epic heroes Rama, Yudhisthira and Arjuna, characters from the Upanishads like Nachiketa and Satyakama, the enigmatic divinity Krishna, and so many others from our ancient literature illustrate vividly for us both the moral significance and the narrative power of fundamental questions like Who am I? What should I do? What is the right way? and ultimately, Does it matter? Whether or not they flew airplanes and practised plastic surgery, the best minds in India took the big puzzles of metaphysics, ontology, aesthetics and epistemology very seriously indeed.

Imprisonment and freedom Chakrabarti brought to life a world of thought humming with creativity for centuries, to which we are each day losing access, thanks to our misguided and meaningless obsession with whether or not India was modern before modernity, and whether it was superior or inferior relative to other civilisations. If only we learned how to read and appreciate what is in our texts, instead of pointlessly probing them for what they never contained, and insisting, falsely, that they anticipated the theories and inventions of every other people on the planet. Chakrabarti suggested, intriguingly, that imagination ( kalpana ) too, ought to be taken seriously as a touchstone of valid knowledge, pramana , because many times the access to truth is first made through imaginative leaps and only later substantiated using other, harder, epistemological criteria. Some things can be imagined even if they are not known. From what I could discern, the warrant for such an argument too lies embedded within the voluminous folds of Indian philosophy.

Ramin Jahanbegloo‘s personal history highlights a different sense of the word ―freedom‖. Born in Tehran in 1956, educated in Paris where he lived for over two decades, bilingual in Farsi and French, widely travelled, a self-confessed Gandhian and Indophile, the philosopher found himself arrested and thrown into his native country‘s notorious high security Evin Prison from April to August 2006. He was accused of conspiring to destabilise the Islamic Republic and fomenting a ―velvet revolution‖ against the Iranian

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CURRENT AFFAIRS authorities with the help of western powers like France and America, following Eastern European models. This liberal humanist has spent time with figures like Isaiah Berlin, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Václav Havel, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, but also has an interest in teaching the West about Iran‘s complicated history, politics and religious traditions, both Islamic as well as non-Islamic.

Jahanbegloo‘s new book, Time Will Say Nothing (a title based on a line from a poem by W.H. Auden), takes his 125 days of imprisonment as an occasion to reflect on his life as an itinerant philosopher, a cosmopolitan intellectual, a son and lover, a family man, a political activist and a moral human being suddenly thrown into a confrontation not just with tyranny in the abstract, but with terrifying silence, physical violence, and the very real prospect of torture and death in solitary confinement. He follows Jorge Luis Borges in thinking of every experience that befalls him as a ―resource‖, even the terrible days and nights in his prison cell, where he is allowed to read little else besides the Koran, Hegel, Gandhi and Nehru, and has to confine his writing to aphorisms scribbled on biscuit wrappers and bits of newspaper.

Eventually after repetitive and degrading blindfolded interrogations, as well as untold hardships to his young wife, elderly mother and newborn daughter, he realises that it would be better to concoct an admission to crimes against the state that he never committed, and buy his release by trading in the very fictions that had secured his imprisonment in the first place. He knows about other political prisoners in Iran and in totalitarian states like the former Soviet Union; he has read Franz Kafka, written about Hannah Arendt, and visited Auschwitz. Through a convoluted and sometimes guilt-racked inner journey, he decides that preserving his bodily health, retaining his full mental powers, keeping his faith in human goodness, and holding on to life itself, through the sheer determination to survive, are all essential for him to fight his way back to freedom.

After an elaborate but false ―confession‖, it may appear as if the jailed philosopher was freed on the basis of lies, but he is convinced that what actually got him out was his steadfast dedication to the truth — and with it, his commitment to hope, to humanity and to non-violence. Since emerging from the darkness of prison and years of post-traumatic depression, Jahanbegloo writes and speaks with courageous bluntness. He is understandably critical of his native Iran, of which he says that the idea of a ―religious democracy‖ is a contradiction in terms — a regime can either be religious, or democratic, but not both. After he got out of prison, he was exiled indefinitely to Canada, where he has lived since 2007, with temporary research and teaching positions at various universities. But he is equally critical of Canadian political correctness, advanced capitalist consumer culture, conformism, conservatism, and the dilution of freedom through the erasure of differences and the homogenisation of identities.

If there is one place in which Jahanbegloo sees the possibility of reconciling enormous cultural diversity with genuine secular coexistence, it is India. How many lifetimes, he writes plaintively, before I am reborn as an Indian! It is ironic and alarming that Jahanbegloo‘s Tagorean ―heaven of freedom‖ — the very India that taught him about ahimsa and in which he sees the greatest promise of true democratic transformation — is all too eager to give up its hard-won liberty and its fiercely resilient plurality for a narrow- minded and mean-spirited sectarianism. We seem hell-bent on denying the voice that is great within us from our earliest history down to our precarious present.

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Not anti-Islam, but anti-religion– The Hindu The French satirical publication, Charlie Hebdo , is an equal opportunity offender. In keeping with France‘s secular intellectual tradition, no particular individual, ideology or religion was safe from being lampooned by Charlie Hebdo . In 2006, ‗Jesus on the cross‘ was on the cover shouting, ―I‘m a celebrity, get me out of here,‖ referencing the popular British TV show of the same name. In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI was on the cover holding a condom. In 2011, Prophet Mohammad was on the cover saying, ―100 lashes for not laughing.‖

The importance of Charlie Hebdo lies in what the publication represents — an aversion to giving in to illogical extremism of any kind and holding the right to offend people on sensitive matters like religion. The underpinning logic assumes that interrogation of self- sanctified institutions like religion needs to be done through the systematic practice of irreverence. The idea was to make humorous and irreverent attacks so frequent that a discussion on an institution like religion would be like a discussion on a popular movie, or sliced bread or some such thing— effectively defanging the institution and its hold on people. If you can laugh at it, you can question it.

Brave editorial course This was a brave editorial course for Charlie Hebdo . In essence, the publication asserted the right to equally offend anyone and everyone as a part of the practice of French secularism. Over and above this, by doing so the French publication also presented itself in the vanguard of secularism, not concerning itself with short-term appeasement politics.

After all, the reasoning went, how much damage can pen and ink and some funny sketches do? However, for its editorial stances, in November 2011, following the publication of the cover bearing the Prophet, the offices of the publication were firebombed. Four years later on January 7, 2015, four gunmen stormed into Charlie Hebdo‘s office in Paris and killed 10 people, two police officers and injured 11 people. Amongst those killed was the editor-in- chief of the magazine, Stephane Charbonnier, who had been on an al-Qaeda watch list since 2013.

What Charbonnier‘s editorial line represented can be considered a strong desire to avoid self-censorship. When the special issue of Charlie Hebdo , which was ―guest edited by the Prophet Mohammad,‖ hit the stands in 2011, the controversy it raised was overwhelming. Politicians and clerics in France alike, and even representatives of the U.S. government, cautioned the publication. Clerics found the issue offensive. Politicians said that the decision to publish such material was not a particularly clever one, even though they agreed that Charlie Hebdo had a right to publish such material.

For Charbonnier, a committed left-wing intellectual, self-censoring to avoid offending one or two particular groups was not an option. He believed that secularism contained the right to offend. Charlie Hebdo ‘s manner of channelling offence was to turn it into humour. They believed that the only way to deal with religious extremism was to laugh at the extremists and depict them as being illogical. This the publication found to be less violent than the standard political response of sending out soldiers after extremists.

Some of the cartoons published can also be seen as deeply sensitive to the current politics of Islam. In fact, in some of the ‗provocative‘ cartoons, the Prophet is shown to be at his

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CURRENT AFFAIRS wits‘ end as he surveys his present day followers saying ―it is difficult to be loved by idiots.‖ In another cartoon, the Islamic State is beheading the Prophet — Charlie Hebdo may have been trying to rescue Islam from the extremists. Perhaps this is precisely why extremist fury surrounded the publication.

Stress on secular culture However, its satire was itself a fulmination of identity politics in France. The French public sphere has sworn by secularism, only very recently being challenged by the rise of the French right wing. With immigration increasing over the last decade, and people of colour from former French colonies moving in as citizens of France, there has been considerable strain on French identity. You see, it is an identity which can only be expressed as a non- ethnic, non-religious one. However, the reality is that now in France there are people who exhibit not one French identity, but at least two or three competing ones. Not only has this fed into the rise of the right wing led by Le Pen, but it has placed stress on secular culture. The French government banned headscarves in public schools in 2004, and in 2014 it became mandatory to reveal one‘s face at a place of work.

Charlie Hebdo ‘s work falls within this context of stresses on national identity and secular culture. Of course, it targeted one religion, Islam, more than others in recent years. However, we need to understand Charlie Hebdo not as an anti-Islamic publication, but as an anti-religion, anti-institutional, anti-extremist publication.

Charlie Hebdo is a brave magazine that took on one of the most powerful organised institutions of all time — religion. Over many years, the publication interrogated the political, personal and ritual logic of religion and the micro foundations of religion‘s relationship to individuals and the state. And it did so in one comic panel or less. Through these panels, which were simultaneously provocative, thoughtful, funny, obscene and anti- institutional (almost anarchist, as one commentator described), Charlie Hebdo saw to it that the church and state stayed apart in France, as best they could, using the only weapons they had: pen, ink and Photoshop.

Carnivores in the neighbourhood – The Hindu The tigress strode boldly across open farmlands, and crossed railway tracks and highways at night. She avoided venturing close to villages in her hunt for wild pigs. During the day, she hunkered down in forest patches, reed beds, or plantations, out of sight of people.

A few villagers walked within 100 metres of her hideout, but she didn‘t move. In an area where the average human density is 200 per square kilometre, no one knew of her existence except a few researchers and forest officials. She wore a GPS collar that transmitted the coordinates of her location by text message several times a day for four months.

Contrary to popular belief that tigers need to live in vast forests, this tigress was 45 kilometres away from the nearest one, Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve. The collar stopped functioning after four months, but a camera trap took her photograph in the same area a year later. She wasn‘t a lone tiger struggling to survive in a less than ideal habitat; two other tigers lived nearby. Despite living so close to humans, she posed no threat to them.

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CURRENT AFFAIRS Impediment to survival When wild carnivores are found far outside forests, managers and conservationists often grasp for excuses. Wild animals prefer wild habitats, we are told. If they are found anywhere else, there must be something wrong. Lack of habitat, disturbance within forests, and lack of prey are oft-cited reasons. After visiting the farmlands of Akole, Maharashtra, where leopards live among people without causing alarm, one forester exclaimed to the biologist studying them, ―These leopards are not normal.‖

Animals disregard not only our boundaries but also our assumptions. They go where there is prey, whether domestic, feral or wild, and they live in what little cover is available. The only possible impediment to their survival in landscapes where humans live is the level of tolerance of people. Our religious and cultural traditions are empathetic of almost all animals including venomous snakes.

Regional folk deities like Waghoba in western India and Dakshin Ray in Bengal or a pan- Indian goddess such as Durga bestow sanctity on large wild cats. Even in an extreme situation like in the Sunderbans, where more people are killed by tigers than anywhere else, no one demands that all tigers be killed. It‘s because of this tolerance that India still has the largest population of wild tigers in the world despite our high human population.

In comparison, European folk tales traditionally demonise predators, and fear of them runs deep. Even though human densities are relatively low, Europeans almost eradicated their carnivores. Brown bears used to be found throughout Europe except in Iceland and the Mediterranean Islands. By the mid-20th century, they were holding out in the east, north, and west of Europe.

Similarly, much of the continent was wiped clean of its wolves after the Second World War, but they managed to survive in the three Mediterranean peninsulas, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans. The number of Eurasian lynx also diminished, and they survived only along the margins of international borders. This dismal situation has changed.

A new assessment, ‗Recovery of large carnivores in Europe‘s modern human-dominated landscapes,‘ by 76 authors from 26 countries, was published in S cience in December 2014. It shows that like the tigress outside Tadoba, carnivores are recolonising Europe, ranging far outside protected forests and staking territories among human-owned farms and plantations.

From the margins of Europe, wolves have recolonised more than 15 per cent of the land. They‘ve returned to countries from where they had been declared extinct such as Norway, Poland, Latvia, Germany, and Bulgaria. Even though brown bears are huge, weighing an average 200 kilogrammes, they are now the continent‘s most abundant carnivore. About 17,000 bears roam over 4,85,400 sq.km., about 10 per cent of Europe.

This turnaround was achieved after decades of coordinated legislation, good law enforcement, and public support for conservation. Instead of antagonising local people by outlawing their hunting traditions, management plans incorporated such practices and promoted recovery of animal populations. And therein lies a lesson for India.

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CURRENT AFFAIRS The separation model India‘s primary conservation model, borrowed from the U.S., is to create exclusive zones, separating people from predators. Carnivores need plenty of space, and American parks, free of settlements, are large enough to accommodate them. They remove any predators found outside designated wildlife areas that take livestock.

Few parks in India are devoid of settlements and not many are large enough to maintain good breeding populations. We apply the separation model as it suits us. People living in forests have to relocate to make space for predators. But if the state removes carnivores living outside forests, there won‘t be many of them left. Our laws and policies guide management of animals inside forests, but there‘s no state policy to deal with predators living amongst people.

People living around forests have a long history of living with predators. Generally, they tolerate some level of loss before complaining to the Forest Department. But these complaints may not always be straightforward. Often, people are at loggerheads with the forest department. They may express their unhappiness by asking the department to remove ―the government‘s animals‖ from their property. Wildlife symbolises the state and its callous policies.

After decades of treating their carnivores as vermin, many European countries worked hard to get them back. We haven‘t yet hit a low like Europe did, but we are headed that way if we don‘t turn the ship around. For instance, tigers, once found across the subcontinent, now range over a mere 2.5 per cent of our country. If the species has to regain at least some lost ground, we need to do more than focus on protected areas. Biologists advocate lifting our heads and looking at the landscape. This is also where numerous people live and they decide if they want to live with predators. Antagonising them isn‘t going to achieve conservation ends.

By following a coexistence model, the Europeans not only managed to bring back carnivores, they have proved it works. Europe now has twice as many wolves as the U.S., excluding Alaska. More than 12,000 wolves range across a continent that‘s half the size of the U.S. and has more than twice the density of people, 97 people per sq. km. compared to the U.S.‘s 40. While protected forests are great for conservation, they cannot be the only strategy. It‘s time India learned from the European experience.

ECONOMY SEBI proposes e-IPO norms– The Hindu To boost fund raising from markets, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, on Thursday, proposed e-IPO norms, where investors can bid for shares through Internet and eventually on mobiles, while already listed public sector undertakings (PSUs) will be provided a ‗fast-track‘ route for share sales to meet the disinvestment targets.

For already listed companies as well, the market regulator has proposed a fast-track route for raising of funds through FPOs (follow-on public offers) or rights offers (where funds can be raised from existing shareholders).

Under the new norms, SEBI has proposed to drastically cut the timeline for listing of shares within 2-3 days of the IPO, as against 12 days currently.

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CURRENT AFFAIRS The fast-track route of raising capital has been proposed for companies having public shareholding market valuation of as low as Rs.250 crore, as against Rs.3,000 crore at present. The public sector entities can tap the ‗fast-track‘ route even without complying to this minimum average market value limit, provided they meet other conditions, SEBI said. Under the ‗fast-track‘ route, a listed company would not be required to file any draft offer document for its FPO or rights issue and it can proceed with the fund-raising programme without necessarily getting ‗observations‘ from SEBI.

SEBI has invited public comments till January 30, after which it would put in place final norms for e-IPO as also for fast-track issuances.

Simplifying process The proposed moves are part of efforts to simplify the process of IPOs, lowering their costs and helping companies reach more retail investors in small towns.

Initially, investors would be able to place bids through Internet and by using broker terminals across the country, as against the current practice of filling long paper forms.

Mobile app for making bids A framework for use of mobile applications for making bids in public issues can also be put in place for implementation in future, SEBI said.

Investors would also get SMS/e-mail alert for allotment under the IPO, similar to alerts being sent to investors for secondary market transactions.

Further, on account of reduction in printing of application forms, the overall cost of public issues will also come down.

SEBI said that these proposals may be used for debt issues as well. However, to make this mechanism applicable, suitable amendments may be required under the SEBI (Issue and Listing of Debt Securities) Regulations, 2008.

Collapse of oil economies may affect India– The Hindu The continued slide in Brent crude prices augurs well for the Indian economy despite the temporary setback for stock markets and oil related stocks. However, analysts believe that the collapse of some oil economies could be a matter of concern for India.

―The fall in the stock markets was due to a combination of fall in crude oil prices below the $50-mark as well as the possibility of Greece being taken out of the eurozone. Falling crude oil prices is symptomatic not just of excess supply but also falling demand,‖ said Rajesh Mokashi, Deputy Managing Director, CARE Ratings.

The fall in crude oil price is good for all users, including major importers like India, as it lowers their trade deficit and hence strengthens their currencies. However, for the oil exporters, this is bad news as it lowers their export earnings, and given that most countries are dependent on oil exports, their growth would suffer.

―With low oil price, our production cost will go down, and we will be competitive internationally. With this, our exports will increase. Our imports will be down and this will

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CURRENT AFFAIRS improve our balance of payment situation. Overall it is good for our economy,‖ said Pramit Brahmabhatt, CEO, Veracity Group.

―The collapse of any economy will be a concern for India as it changes economic dynamics. Today the global economy is just about in a recovery mode and the collapse of any economy, be it Greece or any oil producing country would change the policy actions of central banks which will influence the flow of funds thus impacting our external balances. Hence while we may not be affected on the trade front, it will definitely impact our balance of payments,‖ Mr Mokashi added.

Now analysts are looking Brent at between $35 and $40 a barrel where the rate will equal the marginal cost of producing oil.

The steep fall in crude prices is defacto fiscal stimulus for India as oil accounts for 37 per cent of its imports. Lower oil prices will cut inflation, and will bring down our current account deficit. It will boost our growth prospects and overall it is good for India. However, there should not be any geopolitical imbalances that could affect FDI or FII fund flow into India due to low crude prices. Default in loans given to Russia and to shale gas developers in the U.S. could affect the global banking industry which could cause imbalances,‖ said Ajit Ranade, Chief Economist, Aditya Birla Group.

SUPPLEMENT New antibiotics found from soil a breakthrough against drug resistance – Down To Earth Though still in its infancy, a discovery recently made in the domain of medicine, is being seen as a breakthrough for the medical fraternity.

Scientists have found new antibiotics that will be able to kill an array of germs that have become resistant to existing drugs. Not only this, the new method of growing bacteria has potential to yield more antibiotics in future. This was declared in a study that was published in journal Nature on Wednesday. Despite the world inching closer and closer to a post- antibiotic era, the last worthy discovery in the domain was made long back in 1987.

Titled, ‗A new antibiotic kills pathogen without detectable resistance‘ the study claims that experts believe it may prove to be a game changer. The much needed discovery, however, has not been tested on humans yet. But the method was found to be effective on mice.

A cure hidden in dirt The new class of antibiotic, uncovered by screening 10,000 bacterial strains from the soil, has been called teixobactin. The antibiotic will be investigated further in animals before being tested on humans. Kim Lewis, the lead author of the research and a professor at Northeastern University in Boston said, ―If all goes well, we will be in clinical trials two to three years from now to prove its efficacy.‖

The research has appeared when the whole world community is under-stress to deal with drug resistance because of widespread and increasingly indiscriminate use of existing antibiotics. Due to this unregulated use, bacteria in recent years have acquired mutations and new genes that render them more resistant to drugs.

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CURRENT AFFAIRS Promising ‘un-cultured’ bacteria The problem was getting compound because scientists were unable to find new antibiotics. One of the main barriers in the way of this innovation was inability to tap the vast storehouse of ―un-cultured‖ bacteria. The research paper says that approximately 99 per cent of all species in external environments do not grow under laboratory conditions means they are un-cultured, but they are quite promising source of new antibiotics.

These scientists developed several methods to grow ―un-cultured‖ organisms by cultivation in their natural environment and for this, they created a "subterranean hotel" for bacteria. One bacterium was placed in each "room" and the whole device was buried in soil. It allowed the unique chemistry of soil to permeate the room, but kept the bacteria in place for study.

It is known to all that innovation of antibiotics in the early 20th century had transformed medicine and also the public health.

Cabinet clears mineral Act; foreign companies can mine too - DownToEarth The BJP-led Central government has cleared an ordinance to facilitate the auction of minerals, including ores used to produce iron, manganese and aluminium. In a cabinet meeting on Monday, the government approved amendments to the 57-year old Mines and Mineral (Development and Regulation) Act. Among other changes, the amendments will allow multinational companies such as Rio Tinto and Vedanta to directly bid for mineral resources in India, which were earlier only allocated to companies by the government.

About 60,000 applications for mining leases of various minerals are pending with state governments across the country. To facilitate large-scale operations, the Union Ministry of Mines has proposed to expand the area for mineral leases from 10 sq kilometres to 100 sq kilometres. Further, the lease period has been extended to 50 years, after which the lease can be re-auctioned.

By expanding the lease area for mineral exploitation, areas that fall under the ecologically sensitive zones may come under threat. In Goa, for example, most of the iron ore leases are situated within 10 kilometres of wildlife sanctuaries, where the Supreme Court had banned mining for a year. The apex court-appointed M B Shah Commission had found that hundreds of these mining leases had encroached upon wildlife and national parks in Goa. The amendment will now see a ten-fold expansion of these leases.

The ordinance has approved clauses that distinguish between public and private sector mining companies and captive and non-captive mining firms. In case of existing mining leases, for example, the moratorium for transfer or sale of leases to other parties is 15 years for captive mining firms and 5 years for non-captive firms. Captive mining leases mostly consist of iron ore, bauxite and limestone which are mainly associated with steel, aluminium and cement production.

The ordinance has done away with reconnaissance permits issued to the government and private companies. Earlier, reconnaissance permits were issued to mining companies to estimate the total quantity of minerals that can be mined from an area. It was only after the companies were satisfied with the financial viability of mining a particular mineral that it

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CURRENT AFFAIRS would ask for a mining permit. But now, the government will directly issue a lease for notified minerals and a prospecting-cum-mining lease for non-notified minerals.

Mining ministry officials maintain that 85 per cent of mineral resources have been explored and notified. Private miners‘ associations, such as Federation of Indian Mineral Industries (FIMI), oppose the move, stating that investment decisions in a mining project are not taken on the basis of the estimates of minerals provided by the state, and hence, reconnaissance permits are crucial before mining there.

The Act also calls for the creation of District Mineral Fund (DMF), which will be used to sort rehabilitation issues. Mining companies and the government will contribute to the fund.

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