27 Oct 2022: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

B. GS 2 Related

Nothing here for today!!!

E. Editorials

Category: SOCIAL JUSTICE

1. Improving access to entertainment content

Syllabus: Vulnerable Sections – Disabled

Mains: Policies and interventions to make India inclusive and participative for the differently-abled.

Context: Designing entertainment content with the needs of the disabled in mind.

Introduction:

• Inaccessible physical environments, lack of mobility and transportation, unavailability of assistive devices and technologies, and inaccessible websites and services hinder equal participation of persons with disabilities (divyangjan) in mainstream socio-economic and cultural activities. 
• As per the Census 2011, there are 2.68 crore persons with disabilities in India. 
• The Accessible India Campaign was launched in 2015 to make a barrier-free and conducive environment and accessible ecosystems to help persons with disabilities by providing equality of opportunity and an enabling environment.
• The Accessible India Campaign (AIC) promotes accessibility in websites, public documents, media content on TV and training of sign language interpreters. 
  • The key objectives are also to develop accessible websites, upload accessible public documents and sign-language interpretation of public television news and entertainment programmes.

Tools to make entertainment disabled-friendly:

• Two important tools that help make entertainment content disabled-friendly are audio description and subtitling. 
• Audio description (AD) (also referred to as “description” or “video description”) is defined as “the verbal depiction of key visual elements in media and live productions.” 
  • AD is meant to provide information on visual content that is considered essential to the comprehension of the program. 
  • In these cases, not providing AD would inhibit blind and visually impaired individuals from gaining a complete understanding of the given program.
• Subtitling is the process of translating spoken dialogue into written text on the screen for the benefit of those who cannot hear. 
  • It is a type of audiovisual translation, with its own set of rules and guidelines.

Government Policies: 

• Without being able to access the facilities and services found in the communities, persons with disabilities will never be fully included. 
• The Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act provides guidance to remedy this issue.
  • Section 29(h) of the Act requires the appropriate government to take measures to ensure that “persons with hearing impairment can have access to television programmes with sign language interpretation or sub-titles.” 
  • Further, Section 42(ii) requires the appropriate government to take measures to ensure that “persons with disabilities have access to electronic media by providing audio description, sign language interpretation and close captioning.”
• In October 2019, the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B Ministry) issued a letter to the Central Board for Film Certification (CBFC) requesting the Board to motivate and persuade its associated members to make audio description part of the production and distribution of a film. 
• The Union government under AIC has several objectives to enhance the proportion of accessible and usable public documents and websites that meet internationally recognized accessibility standards.
  • Conducting accessibility audits of 50% of all government (both Central and State Governments) websites and converting them into fully accessible websites.
  • Ensure that at least 50% of all public documents issued by the Central Government and the State Governments meet accessibility standards.
  • Enhance the pool of sign language interpreters.
  • Enhance the proportion of daily captioning and sign-language interpretation of public television news programmes.
  • Develop and adopt national standards on captioning and sign-language interpretation in consultation with national media authorities.

Steps towards inclusivity:

• ‘Saksham’, a non-governmental organisation for visually impaired persons has pioneered audio descriptions for films in India. It has developed an app called XL Cinema which syncs audio-described tracks with movies. 
  • On buying an audio ticket for a movie that has been audio described, a user can hear the audio description of the movie in a theatre at the same time when the movie is being showcased. 
• More than 1250 Sign Language Interpreters have been trained by the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre through long-term, short-term and professional courses.
• Sugamya Bharat App, a crowdsourcing mobile application was launched on 2nd March 2021.
  • The App has been developed by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.
  • It is a means for sensitising and enhancing accessibility in the 3 pillars of the Accessible India Campaign i.e. built environment, transportation sector and ICT ecosystem in India.

Way Forward: 

• Many movie producers believe that there is a poor demand for audio descriptions in India. Until a critical mass of users puts pressure on platforms to provide audio description and subtitling, this issue will get pushed down the priority list of the powers that be. 
• Amidst all the responsibilities that film studios have to discharge during a movie release, accessibility for the disabled takes a back seat. 
  • Studios must realise that making disabled-friendly content is the right thing to do — morally, legally and commercially. 
• Production houses often lack the know-how, human resources or adequate lead time to make new content disabled-friendly. 
  • User organisations must undertake targeted interventions to sensitise filmmakers and engage in capacity-building initiatives. 
• Civil society groups must draw on the court system to translate written legal guarantees into improved real-world outcomes. 
• Citizens with disabilities must demand accountability from the government, filmmakers, streaming platforms and others in the entertainment ecosystem through the judicial process. 
• Awareness generation and sensitization are key to bringing transformational change in society regarding accessibility.

Nut Graf: Access to information creates opportunities for everyone in society. In India, the potential of the various tools to make entertainment content disabled-friendly has largely remained untapped. For a truly inclusive society, the entertainment industry should also strive to make its content and distribution of content more disabled-friendly and accessible.

Category: WORLD HISTORY

1. Colonialism and its discontents today

Syllabus: Colonisation and Decolonisation

Mains: Decolonisation of Education in India

Context: Comments made on “ foreign attacks” and “colonialism” recently by Indian External Affairs Minister Mr. S. Jaishankar in his address to the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly has reignited the debate on the decolonisation process.

Introduction: 

• Praising the “determination, innovation and enterprise of millions of ordinary Indians”, Mr. Jaishankar asserted that “They are rejuvenating a society pillaged by centuries of foreign attacks and colonialism”. 
  • This formulation seemed like a distinction between “centuries of foreign attacks” and “colonialism”. 
• As an ideology, colonialism has an inbuilt device to deal with the reactive moods of the colonised according to economic and political seasons.

Colonisation and Education:

• Colonialism and education are closely interlinked. Historically, education systems were used and abused in efforts to control colonies. 
• Majoritarian nationalism picked up English as a de-colonisation plank. 
  • For example, Jyotirao Govindrao Phule supported English education believing in its potential to wipe out discrimination against the lower castes. 
• The knowledge of English has given Indians an edge in the global market. Though English continues to be a mark of privilege in some pockets of India, it has become a necessity and an important tool of communication.

Decolonisation of Education:

• Decolonization is the process of undoing colonisation practices. It involves reflecting on the structure of educational institutions, and their role within the larger society.
  • Within the educational context, this means confronting and challenging the colonising practices that have influenced education in the past, and which are still present today.
  • Calls for the decolonisation of the education system stem from lived experiences of inequalities that reflect historically uneven power relations and legacies of colonialism.
  • Hence, decolonising education demands recognising a historically specific set of colonial power relations, and how they continue to play out in structures, institutions, relations and processes today.
• The post-colonial science and science education is deeply mixed with colonial hangover and practices. Science should be made available locally. It will help its acceptance and understanding by the masses. It will enrich the scientific temper and the spirit of inquiry among the Indian masses.
  • Modern schools, colleges and universities should focus on Indianizing education instead of becoming part of western thoughts.
• The National Education Policy 2022  tends to replace rote learning, as was promoted by our colonial masters to produce ‘clerks’ and rather emphasise conceptual understanding of subjects and issues to hone the analytical skills that were emphasised in olden times. 
  • It is aimed at strengthening moral and basic education and offers us opportunities for equitable and qualitative development which is sensitive to particular cultural contexts.
  • The NEP might be able to raise a generation of Indian scientific thinkers. They would help us make sense of our ideas of scientific modernity rooted in Indian scientific thought.
  • The policy is in tune with the ideals of Swami Vivekananda who advocated education as a manifestation of perfection which is inherent in all human beings.

Nut Graf: Since independence, enormous changes have occurred in every social sphere which demonstrates the continued legacy of colonial history. No one-dimensional theory of colonialism and modernity can explain the changes that have occurred in different regions, especially in the education sector.

2. ISRO to boost NavIC, widen user base of location system

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is undertaking a series of efforts aimed at improving the NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation) which is India’s indigenous Regional Navigation Satellite System.
• Plans and efforts are underway to give NavIC a global reach and ensure that more people are motivated to install and use it.
• NavIC is a constellation of seven satellites and is similar to the Global Positioning System (GPS) of the U.S., Galileo of the European Union and GLONASS of Russia.
• NavIC is currently available for use in mainland India and within 1,500 km around it. However, the system is not used widely because mobile phones have not been made compatible with processing its signals. 
  • The government has urged the manufacturers to add compatibility and has set a deadline of January 2023.
• According to the chairman of ISRO, adding the L1 band into NavIC would be a major change as this bandwidth is part of the GPS and is the most used bandwidth for civilian navigational use. 
  • At present, the NavIC is only compatible with the L5 and S bands and only provides short code. 
  • Long Code becomes crucial for the use of the strategic sector as it prevents the signal from being breached.

3. Bats evicted from Manipur cave for tourism, says study

• A zoological study in Manipur revealed that a colony of bats was removed from a Manipur cave system with a Palaeolithic past to make it tourist-friendly.
• The Khangkhui (Khangkhui Mangsor) is a natural limestone cave located in Manipur’s Ukhrul district and the excavations by archaeologists have shown that the cave was home to Stone Age communities.
  • The cave was also used as a shelter by the local people during the Second World War after the Japanese forces advanced to Manipur and the adjoining Nagaland. 
• Further, the cave also housed a large roosting population of bats belonging to the Rhinolophidae and Hipposideridae families.
  • A study by researchers of the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) has now revealed that the bats were killed and evicted from the Khangkhui cave after 2016-17 to make it “more tourist-friendly”.
• The researchers from ZSI had earlier recorded Blyth’s horseshoe bat in the Khangkhui cave during two extensive field surveys in 2019 and 2021.
  • This bat was one of 12 new species added to Manipur’s mammalian fauna. The others included the ashy roundleaf bat, the intermediate horseshoe bat, the northern woolly horseshoe bat, the greater false vampire bat, the hairy-faced bat, Hodgson’s bat, Hutton’s tube-nosed bat and the round-eared tube-nosed bat.
• The latest study also makes a note of places in Manipur where bats are eaten for their medicinal properties or as a supplementary source of protein.
• Another serious threat to bats is the placing of illegal bird traps.