THE SABOTAGE OF DEMOCRACY

The people of Myanmar has been fortunate to experience freedom only for a brief period of 10 years.The sabotage of elected government of Myanmar by the military junta was being witnessed by the world nations with astonishment.

The elections for Myanmar were conducted amidst Covid-19 pandemic on November 8, 2020. The results showed landslide victory for National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi against Union Solidarity and Development (USDA) led by the military’s proxy, the main opposition party. Post elections USDP raised many allegations of electoral frauds against NLD and the ethnic parties too were unhappy with the NLD assuming powers.The refusal to accept the electoral outcome can be understood as the immediate cause of the breakdown of democracy Myanmar.

Days before the swearing in of elected representatives before the Parliament , on 31st January 2021, the State Counsellor of Myanmar , Aung San Suu Kyi and President U Win Myint were intimidated with a gun and arrested along with other elected representatives by the military coup launched by the Commander-in -Chief, Min Aung Hlaing. This is not the first time the military is usurping democratically elected government. In 1990 , when NLD came victorious in elections akin now , the army brutally dealt with the elected officials and imprisoned many of them accompanied by harassment and torture. This was the tool often used to disregard people’s mandate.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF MYANMAR AS A POLITICAL UNIT

The Anglo-Burmese wars between British empire and the Konbaug dynasty, fought during 1824-85 consolidated British rule over whole of Myanmar. Burma, as called by British rulers for Myanmar, was made a province of India in 1886 with Rangoon as its capital.The British rule economically drained the nation, but the oppressive rule was not unopposed.By twentieth century,many nationalist movements were started. After the world war II ,Burma was liberated with even more deepened ethnic divisions.The first independent Prime Minister was U Nu who was unable to deal with growing ethnic tensions, insurgency and corruption.To resolve the crisis, the military was by U Nu to form caretaker government from 1958 to 1960..In 1960,elections were conducted, which resulted in the formation of a civilian government under U Nu, but again the prevailing conflicts deteriorated and national integration unattainable.This led to a military coup on 2nd March 1962.From 1962 to 1974 ,Myanmar witnessed direct military rule and from 1974 to 1988, it was a phase of constitutional dictatorship. The second military coup was on 18th September, 1988 that brought back the direct military rule till 30th March,2011. In 2015 elections were conducted and NLD assumed office of power with Aung San Suu Kyi as the State Counsellor of Myanmar.

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS IN MYANMAR

Post military coup on 31st January 2021 ,hundreds of thousand pro-democratic demonstrators were on streets demanding restoration of democracy.But the response to these peaceful resistance movements were brutal suppression.

Since Feb 6,2021 civilians from every walks of life like students,bankers,lawyers etc were on streets to protest the unfortunate breakdown of democracy. The recent inhumane act of military to gun down its people on Armed Forces Day was pure infringement of right to peaceful protest and rule of law.Also official sources says that more than 100 protesters were killed. Many nations including India expressed their concerns.

Amidst the repressive and barbaric acts of the regime , the measures to curb Covid-19 has been derailed which poses a great threat to the health and life of people of Myanmar.If the relentless harm inflicted upon democracy is continued, the world nations might witness Rohingyan crisis like situation.

REPERCUSSIONS ON INDIA DUE TO THE UNFOLDING VIOLENCE IN MYANMAR

India shares border with Myanmar which makes India vulnerable to the spillover effect of the developments.The first and foremost is the influx of refugees who fear persecution in Myanmar.Indian states of Mizoram ,Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh shares its boundary with Myanmar and the refugee influx is largely to these states particularly to Mizoram from the Chin state of Myanmar with which Mizoram has deep ethnic ties.There is a 510 km porous border between Mizoram and the Chin state.

The Ministry of External Affairs strongly opposes the efforts of Mizoram government in providing asylum to refugees as India is not party to 1951 United Refugee Convention or its 1967 protocol. Devoid of national and international policies ,the recent influx of refugees will become the greatest diplomatic challenge for India as in the case of deportation efforts of Rohingyan refugees.

THE WAY AHEAD

The suppression of protests with an iron fist by the military regime is deplorable. Th U.S, U.K and European Union has imposed sanctions on military officials of Myanmar.

India being the largest democracy and the neighboring nation of Myanmar expressed its deep concerns on the massive bloodshed which occurred on Myanmar’s Armed Forces Day

The military regime seems to be unperturbed by the reactions from International community. Implementation of a peace plan expeditiously is an immediate requirement which can be attained only through diplomacy and dialogue process. The grave infringement of human rights even on children must be stopped. The world nations must join hands and should take efforts to restore democracy in Myanmar.India being the largest democracy and as a nation in South Asia can take up the role of mediator and initiate talks among the stakeholders.

• Developed by CSIR ( Council of Scientific and Industrial Research)

• Commercialised by Tata sons.
• Quicker than gold standard test because it does not require RT-PCR( reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction)
• Once the viral RNA is taken, it takes only 45 minutes to confirm presence of the virus.
• It uses CRISPR- Cas 9 method.
• FELUDA stands for FNCAS 9 EDITOR – LIMITED UNIFORM DETECTION ARRAY.
• CRISPR-9 uses more accurate technique.
• CRISPR – Cas 9 was initially used to treat sickle cell disease.

Awarded to three virus researchers.

Harvey J. Alter,Charles M.Rice of the U.S and Briton Michael Houghton of Britain won the prizes.

The award was for discovering and proving that a blood borne virus could cause Hepatitis C.

https://images.app.goo.gl/ZuBBvwoVt1L1pZGt6

Dr.Alter discovered that liver diseases could be spread by blood transfusions that weren’t caused by Hepatitis A or B. Later,a team led by Dr.Houghton created a clone of a new virus from fragments found from the blood of an infected chimpanzee.

This identification was pathbreaking as it could reduce the spread of the disease by conducting tests at blood bank supplies. Hepatitis C virus can cause cirrhosis and liver cancer.

Dr.Rice was able to use genetic engineering to generate a version of of the Hepatitis C virus .

This is the second Nobel prize for medicine for hepatitis virus.

Excerpts from The Hindu

Hepatitis C virus

1. RNA virus
2. Flaviviridae family
3. Causes liver cancer and lymphomas in humans.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/hepatitis-c : From here you can read about about how badly this virus can affect human lives.

Grabbed by three black hole researchers, namely;

1. Roger Penrose of Britain
2. Reinhard Genzel of Germany
3. Andrea Ghez of the U.S

The Nobel committee called the research “one of the most exotic phenomena in the Universe,the balck holes.”

Mr.Penrose’s research works on black holes proved its existence and it was based on mathematical modelling.It dated back to 1965 and asserted that the formation of black holes was a direct consequence of Einstein’s General theory of Relativity.

Ms. Ghez is the fourth woman to get Nobel prize for Physics since 1901 the first Nobel prizes were announced.

Mr.Genzel and Ms Ghez,with the help of world’s largest telescope discovered the presence of an extremely heavy, invisible object which was around 4 million times greater than the mass of the Sun. Since 1990s the astronomers led the research with area of focus Sagittarius A.(the object which pulled surrounding stars and gave the constellation a twisted pattern.)

Topics from prelims point of view

Black holes: It refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravitational field which even light cannot escape.(Excerpts from The Hindu)

EINSTEIN’S GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY

1. It is a theory of space and time.
2. We all know, gravitational force is an invisible force existing between two objects.
3. But General theory of Relativity, using a set of equations shows that a massive object can distort the space around it due to gravity and which in turn shows variation in time.

J Harsha the Director of Central Water Commission writes that the current weather forecasting technology of India is inadequate.

Most of the Indian states grapples with frequent floods such as Assam,Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

In all these situations the district administration, municipalities and disaster management authorities are the end users who had to act upon immediately after the alert is given by weather forecasting agency just before 24 hours. This could lead to mismanagement of evacuating people from flood prone areas and increase flood hazard.

This system adopted currently is called deterministic flood forecast.

The author stresses on the need to shift to Ensemble forecast that has been already adopted by the U.S ,the European Union and Japan.

Ensemble forecast provides a lead time of 7-10 days ahead with probabilities assigned to different scenarios of water levels and regions of inundation. Lead time is the length of time from issuance of the forecast and occurence of a flood event and it is crucial for risk based decision making and undertake cost effective rescue missions by end user agencies.

What can India do.

The IMD has begun testing and using ensemble models for weather forecast through its 6.8 peta flops supercomputers (Pratyush and Mihir) .

But the weather forecasting agency has to achieve technology parity with IMD. Modernising telemetry infrastructure and raising technology compatibility with river basin specific hydrological , hydrodynamic and inundation modelling is required.

For this the weather forecasting agency needs a technically capable workforce that is well versed with ensemble models and capable of coupling the same with flood forecast models.

Hence,the end users gets adequate time to decide,react, prepare and undertake risk based analysis and cost effective rescue missions.

This article finds place in the GS3 topics. Aspirants have to take special notice of this article as India has to face severe floods every year and we need to find solutions to reduce disaster risks. An effective weather forecasting is also necessary for the betterment of our farmers and thus strengthening food security of India.

Both the nations have finalised text of pact for artificial intelligence and 5G.

As per the statements of Ministry of External Affairs the agreement promotes cooperation in capacity building, research and development, security and resilience in the areas of Critical Information Infrastructure,5G, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence among others.

This announcement comes amidst the growing displeasure of actions of China in handling the pandemic by the world nations and also the persistent fear of India that the equipments sold by China (Huawei) having 5 G networks might hamper the cybersecurity of India by accessing the data by Chinese government.

This can also be perceived as a policy to isolate China by Indo Pacific nations.

This article finds importance in GS 2 ( International relations) and GS3 ( science and technology).So I hope aspirants can connect the dots and learn it accordingly.

• Emmanuelle Charpentier of France and Jennifer Doudna of the U.S won the prizes.

• The award for the duo was for the development of gene editing technique known as CRISPR-9 DNA snipping scissors.

• The application of this technology have tremendous impact on life sciences such as for contributing towards cancer therapies and in future this could pave the path for curing inherited diseases.

Using this tool researchers can change the DNA of animals,plants and microorganisms with great precision.

Also CRISPR-CAS 9 tool has already contributed to significant gains in crop resilience by altering their genetic code to better understand drought and pests.

• This is the first time Nobel science prize has gone to women only group.
• Therefore , it can be regarded as an added advantage in future while discussing about women in science and it can help empowering women in the field of Science and technology by recognising them.