Opinion Watch: Monkeypox scare; No time for sanction against India; Carbon spike in Ladakh
In ‘Editorial analysis’, The Raisina Hills critically reviews comments of India’s top five English newspapers – The Indian Express (IE), The Hindu (TH), The Times of India (ToI), The Pioneer (TP) and Deccan Herald (DH).
India reported its first case of monkeypox in Kerala where a person had come in contact with an infected person in the United Arab Emirates. Kerala also had reported the first Covid-19 case in 2020.
TH in its Edit has called for vigilance against the monkeypox, which is already spreading in several countries, while being a cause of concern for the world limping back to normalcy after battling the coronavirus for two and a half years.
TH has noted that the monkeypox virus which was first reported outside of Africa in the UK in May, 2022 has already spread to 63 countries. The daily noted that the first case was reported in Congo in 1970, and since then it had become endemic in 11 countries in Africa.
European countries are reporting a large number of cases, and TH noted that while the virus had been in circulation for five decades no serious attempt had been made to deal with it. This indeed is the major moral lapse of the advanced countries that problems of other continents aren’t concerns for them until they knock their doors.
The US President Joe Biden is fast seen responding to the changing world order following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The energy and food crises are two clear fallout of the war in Europe, and India has seemingly emerged as a country with hope for solutions to the twin challenge as seen in the outcomes of the Quad, G7 and I2U2 Summits.
In this backdrop, the development that the US House of Representatives has passed a legislative amendment that urges the Joe Biden administration to extend waiver from sanctions against the purchase of the S-400 missile defence system from Russia is a welcome development, which has been commented by IE.
The Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) authorizes the US administrations to impose sanctions against countries which buy weapons from Russia. The law has its origins in the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and Moscow’s interference in the American elections in 2016.
IE argues that the amendment moved by Ro Khanna is in sync with the tenor of the recent bilateral relations. The Biden administration now has twin challenges – facing up to the challenges of Russian and Chinese expansionism. That brings India in the picture for the US.
The daily noted that after the watershed 2008 year, India-US relations have been on an upward journey, with the cumulative defence contracts adding up to USD 20 billion.
But it shouldn’t be forgotten that the western countries, barring France, are quite reluctant in technology transfer in the defence productions unlike Russian, and that’s an area which requires attention of the Biden administration amid evolving global order situations.
TP has carried an interesting Edit, which should be a cause of concern, on the spike in the carbon emissions in the Ladakh regions and the consequent melting of the glaciers.
Quoting from ‘Environmental Science and Pollution Research’, which is based on satellite pictures of 77 glaciers in the Drass sector between 2000 and 2020, TP stated that glaciers in the lower, mid and the higher ranges have receded by 4.10, 3.23 and 1.46 percent respectively. There is a loss of about five square kms of the glaciers due to the increased carbon emissions, blamed on more number of vehicles in the region.
The daily rightly cautions that the Himalayan glaciers, which are the sources of waters for the Asian countries, are facing the brunt of the carbon emissions. The highest glacier in the Mount Everest is projected by the Nepalese researchers to go extinct by end of this century.
Ladakh is now a Union territory, and it’s attracting more investments as the political leadership pushes for development works. That may further add up to the challenge in the near future.
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