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Here are the topics covered for 03 January 2024:
GS-2: BRICS Expansion , Free Movement Regime
GS-3: Understanding Hate Groups Online, Hit and Run Law
Facts For Prelims: EX Desert Cyclone , KH-22 Missiles
BRICS Expansion
Context
- BRICS a group comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa has decided to include new members i.e., Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Significance of Expansion
- This will challenge the Western-led order and increase multipolarity.
- It will increase South-South cooperation among the developing countries.
- It will make the collective voice for the restructuring of global institutions.
- The inclusion of oil-producing countries will increase oil production.
Issues Among BRICS
- Difference in opinion, India sees BRICS as non-western whereas China sees BRICS as anti-western.
- Economic disruptions due to various economic and political sanctions.
- Overlap with groups like India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA).
Free Movement Regime
Context
- The Union Government has announced the scrapping of the Free Movement Regime along the Myanmar border. It also added that the people living in border areas will soon require visas.
About the Free Movement Regime
- The Free Movement Regime (FMR) allows hill tribes, regardless of their citizenship in India or Myanmar, to travel within a 16 km radius on either side of the Indo-Myanmar Border (IMB).
- To cross the border, individuals must present a one-year valid border pass issued by the competent authority, enabling them to stay up to two weeks per visit.
- Introduced in 2018 under the Central government\’s Act East policy, the FMR fosters cultural assimilation among trans-border villages through activities such as weddings, shared festivals, and cross-border trade.
- It reflects the strong physical, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and fraternal connections among the trans-border villagers.
Indo_Myanmar Border
- The Indo-Myanmar Border (IMB) spans 1,643 km across the states of Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh, extending from the tripoint with China in the north to the tripoint with Bangladesh in the south.
- The Assam Rifles is responsible for safeguarding the IMB.
Understanding Hate Groups Online
Context
- Scholars from Washington University have recently discovered that methodologically, physics addresses the phenomenon of collective behavior, such as online hate, by constructing mathematical models that capture average behaviors.
Shock Waves and Online Hate
- Online hate communities, referred to as \”antiX\” communities opposing a particular concept, stand out due to their rapid growth, often fueled by the influx of numerous individuals or groups in a process termed \”fusion.\”
- This is in contrast to \”fission,\” where moderators shut down communities violating platform guidelines.
- Scholars have explored the formation and persistence of these online antiX communities, despite efforts by platform moderators to curb them—a phenomenon akin to \”online turbulence,\” characterized by chaotic changes analogous to fluid movement in physics.
- By examining established online hate community networks, the scholars have also addressed the \”innuendo problem,\” a challenge that complicates the tracking and censorship of online hate speech for social media platforms.
- The innuendo problem arises from the limited understanding of sarcasm.
- Scholars have highlighted that the ‘clever hate speech’ is not explicit but delivered as an innuendo thus making it difficult for algorithms to identify such content and leading to ineffective content moderation.
- Such problems can be circumvented by tracking repeat offenders and their networks.
Proposed Steps as Way Ahead
- The researchers have outlined three main steps for their future work.
- Firstly, they aim to expand their dataset of online hate communities, focusing on gaming channels due to the increasing controversy surrounding violent games and behavior.
- Secondly, they plan to test their model in various scenarios where online hate communities emerge, persist, or vanish. In their paper, they examined the model with domestic anti-US communities and foreign anti-US communities.
- Lastly, the team intends to enhance their model to encompass different forms of hate, considering that various types of hate coexist on online platforms, such as race and gender, and their intensities or prevalence are subject to change. The team aims to upgrade the model to adapt to these fluctuations.
Hit and Run Law
Context
- Following a nationwide strike by transporters in protest of the proposed Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which includes increased penalties for hit-and-run cases, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) organized a meeting with the All India Motor Transport Congress.
Why Strike by Transporters?
- Transporters have called for a nationwide strike to protest Section 106 of the BNS.
- The section proposed a maximum punishment of ten years in rash and negligent driving cases.
- The government clarified that the news laws still need to be implemented.
- Transporters have called off the strike, however, transport bodies would continue with the strike and termed it as “kaala kanoon”.
Road Accidents in India
- In the calendar year 2022, states and Union Territories reported a total of 4,61,312 road accidents in India, resulting in 1,68,491 fatalities and injuries to 4,43,366 individuals.
- This reflects an 11.9% increase in accidents, 9.4% in fatalities, and 15.3% in injuries compared to the previous year.
- The report, titled \’Road accidents in India — 2022,\’ highlights that \’Hit from Back\’ was the leading cause of accident-related deaths, accounting for 19.5%, followed by \’Hit and Run\’ and \’Head on Collision\’ at 18.1% and 15.7%, respectively.
Facts For Prelims
EX Desert Cyclone
- The UAE Land Forces contingent, consisting of 45 personnel, has arrived in India to take part in the inaugural edition of the India-UAE Joint Military Exercise known as \’DESERT CYCLONE.\’
- The exercise is scheduled to take place in Mahajan, Rajasthan, spanning from January 2nd to January 15th, 2024.
- The primary objective of the DESERT CYCLONE joint military exercise is to enhance coordination and interoperability between the Indian Army contingent, primarily represented by a battalion from the Mechanised Infantry Regiment, and the UAE Land Forces contingent, which comprises 45 personnel from the Zayed First Brigade.
KH-22 Missiles
- The Kh-22 \”Storm\” missile, originating from the Soviet Union and initially developed by MKB Raduga, is a notable long-range anti-ship missile designed specifically to target aircraft carriers and carrier battle groups.
- An updated version, the Kh-32, was introduced in 2016, incorporating improved propulsion and targeting systems for enhanced performance.