📰 UN to vote on draft nullifying Jerusalem move
Resolution calls for any such decision to be declared void and is likely to be backed by most members
•The UN Security Council is considering a draft resolution affirming that any change to the status of Jerusalem has no legal effect and must be reversed, in response to the U.S. decision to recognise the city as Israel’s capital.
•Egypt circulated the draft text on Saturday, and diplomats said the council could vote on the proposed measure as early as on Monday.
•Breaking with the international consensus, U.S. President Donald Trump this month announced that he would recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv, sparking protests and strong condemnation.
•The draft resolution stresses that Jerusalem is an issue “to be resolved through negotiations” and expresses “deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem”, without specifically mentioning Mr. Trump’s move.
‘No legal effect’
•“Any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded,” it said.
•Diplomats said they expected the United States to use its veto power to block the measure while most, if not all, of the 14 other council members were expected to back the draft resolution.
•Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon “strongly condemned” the draft, dismissing it as an attempt by the Palestinians “to reinvent history”.
•The draft resolution calls on all countries to refrain from opening embassies in Jerusalem, reflecting concerns that other governments could follow the U.S. lead.
•It demands that all member-states not recognise any actions that are contrary to UN resolutions on the status of the city.
•Several UN resolutions call on Israel to withdraw from territory seized during the 1967 war.
•The Palestinians had sought a toughly-worded draft resolution that would have directly called on the U.S. administration to scrap its decision.
•But some US allies on the council such as Britain, France, Egypt, Japan and Ukraine were reluctant to be too hard-hitting and insisted that the proposed measure should reaffirm the position enshrined in current resolutions, diplomats said.
•Backed by Muslim countries, the Palestinians are expected to turn to the UN General Assembly to adopt a resolution rejecting the US decision, if, as expected, the measure is vetoed by the United States at the council.
📰 High road to democratic stability
With civic watch-dogging, Nepal, with its new Constitution, can turn history on its head
•Nepal has been in distress for two decades, since the start of the Maoist war in early 1996, through royal autocracy, palace massacre, earthquake, foreign interference and communal polarisation. Finally, in a second try, the new Constitution was promulgated by the Constituent Assembly in September 2015. The last roadblock to its implementation was overcome with a series of local, provincial and national elections over the summer-winter of 2017.
•The parliamentary elections of November 26-December 7 ended the 70-year tradition of the Nepali Congress (NC) setting the political agenda in power or in dissidence. The Left alliance of the mainstream Communist Party of Nepal(Unified Marxist-Leninist), or UML, and the Maoists have made a clean sweep to be able to form governments at the Centre and all but one of the seven brand new provinces. (The elected MP vote count for the five ‘national parties’ came to 80-UML, 36-Maoist, 23-NC, 11-Rashtriya Janata Party and 10-Federal Socialist Forum.)
Constitutional confidence
•While this weakening of opposition is cause for concern, Nepal finally seems set for a stable government with longevity beyond a year. To begin with, Nepal’s adherence to republicanism, federalism and its own brand of secularism are now set in stone, while earlier there was the fear of backsliding. The placement of elected representatives in three tiers from local, provincial to national — including in the restive Tarai plains — means there is now buy-in for the Constitution from all political stakeholders.
•New Delhi’s overt show of displeasure regarding the constitutional promulgation too has been overcome through sheer national public will. The citizenry feels empowered for having participated in each key episode of the last decade, including the People’s Movement of 2006, blocking attempts at communal arson, and overcoming the five-month blockade of 2015-16.
•The new Constitution marks an innovation in the South Asian landscape, with devolution of fiscal, legislative, executive and other powers not to two but three tier ‘sarkars’.
•Besides the national Parliament, the Constitution has empowered representative government in the seven provinces, 17 cities, 276 towns and 460 village municipalities. Emerging from a history of Kathmandu-centrism and two decades without elected local government, today an entire superstructure of representation is in place. Says the constitutionalist Nilamber Acharya: “A system of democratic filtering is in place, and there is excitement among the people to experiment with this new system.”
Deuba’s debacle
•While the caretaker Prime Minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, deserves all credit for guiding society through the maze of elections, he did run a lacklustre campaign and will not be thanked for the debilitation of the country’s premier democratic party. While NC voters remained loyal, the Maoist swing vote and the romantic call of ‘Left unity’ made all the difference.
•During the Dashain holidays, the UML sprang a surprise, enticing Maoist Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal (‘Prachanda’) away from the Congress with the promise of 60-40% share of seats in the provincial/national elections of November-December. This was a godsend for the Maoist party in decline. Mr. Deuba’s poor oratory could not stand against the UML’s firebrand Khadga Prasad Oli, who rode the nationalist plank against the vivid backdrop of the blockade. Mr. Deuba’s dire warnings that the communists as threats to democracy lacked credibility because of his own earlier embrace of Mr. Dahal.
Oli’s moment
•All eyes are now on Mr. Oli, having emerged as paramount leader with both electoral and populist power. Under the new rules, a no-confidence motion against a new government cannot be brought for two years, and it is likely that he will get to complete a full five-year term. This situation has been unavailable to any of his predecessors in the entire modern era.
•The new Prime Minister’s biggest success will be to ‘neutralise’ the Maoist party — through power-sharing or unification — and Mr. Dahal may be agreeable as his main worry of late has been to keep the cadre placated. In his previous stint as Prime Minister, Mr. Oli had almost brought the transitional justice process to a successful closure, including accountability for conflict-era excesses. The peace process will not be complete till this is done, and Mr. Oli’s staying the course will ensure long-term peace and represent a victory for liberal democracy.
•Beyond the Maoists, Mr. Oli will have to build a working relationship not only with the NC but also the plains-based parties with whom he has been combative. Democratic stability would, ipso facto, release long-pending economic energy for which the new Prime Minister will have to fight rather than join the crony capitalists who have entrapped the political economy during the decade of “political transition”.
•The economy has to start galloping, creating jobs for the young workforce, including the millions in West Asia, Malaysia and India likely to return due to pushes and pulls beyond Nepal’s control. This requires movement on infrastructure projects, agro-forestry, tourism, service industries and irrigated agriculture in the Tarai plains.
•The new Prime Minister will need to mend fences with New Delhi, energised by the strength of his electoral mandate. Based on the set of agreements signed in Beijing during his earlier stint at Singha Durbar, Mr. Oli is expected to accelerate connectivity to the north, utilising the Chinese railway network that has arrived on the Tibetan plateau.
•Kathmandu does not yet fully understand Beijing’s super-charged geopolitical agenda, but a confident Mr. Oli can be expected to seek a respectful rather than obsequious relationship. As the commentator Jainendra Jeevan wrote last week, “We don’t want another ‘India’ across the northern border.”
•Nepal having become a feeble international player due to autocracy, conflict and transition, Mr. Oli has an opportunity to bring international respectability back to a level not seen since the time of B.P. Koirala in the 1950s. Insecurities having been dealt with, the confidence of the new republic will also be seen in shifting the office and residence of the President of Nepal from Shital Niwas to the former Narayanhiti Royal Palace.
•The ride to democratic stability is bound to be bumpy, not least because the Constitution — written by politicians rather than jurists and constitutionalists — is so ‘magnanimous’ that it will be a challenge to implement. Hundreds of laws need drafting, the grey areas in the inter-relationships between the three levels of government have to be clarified.
•The concurrent list detailing the rights and responsibilities of not two but three tiers makes Nepal’s experiment unique. Already, one can sense reluctance among the topmost leadership and bureaucracy to devolve power to local government as mandated by the Constitution. The newborn Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court will need to gear up to tackle the deluge.
•There are enough triggers out there for social discontent to erupt. The profligacy of the last decade of “consensus governance” has emptied the national coffers even as expenditure is set to rise to meet the needs of local and provincial administration. The post-earthquake reconstruction of households, infrastructure and heritage structures has yet to gather steam.
•There is a sharp difference in the economic status of the seven federal units, with Province No. 1 (in the East) and No. 3 (including Kathmandu Valley) the best placed in the GDP and human development indices. An equalisation protocol is the need of the hour.
•The power devolved to provincial and local government is liable to expose the population to mistreatment, from economic crimes to human rights abuse. Civil liberty forums must rise to the occasion in all seven provinces, to watchdog all tiers. A society heading out into uncharted waters amid economic, political and geopolitical challenges is asked to implement the democratic, inclusive and social justice-oriented ideals that are to be found in the Constitution of Nepal (2015).
📰 U.S. has failed to walk the talk on Pakistan: Hamid Karzai
Ex-Afghan President wants India to question Trump policy
•India should rethink its support to U.S. President Donald Trump’s Afghanistan policy, said former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, during a visit to Delhi to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
•“India has the right to ask the U.S. questions on [continuing support to Pakistan], and it must think and rethink its policy in view of changes and developments in Afghanistan,” Mr. Karzai told The Hindu in an exclusive interview during the visit.
Role for India
•Calling the U.S. and Pakistan “bedfellows,” Mr. Karzai said Mr. Trump, who announced his new Afghan policy for South Asia in August this year, had failed to back his tough words on Pakistan with action. The policy, which entailed a larger role in development work for India as well as more pressure on Pakistan to act against terrorist safe havens within its borders, was welcomed by New Delhi at the time.
•“We have heard these words over the past 16 years, repeatedly from U.S. on terror sanctuaries within Pakistan. But we also see the U.S. talking of Pakistan as an ally, and being protective of Pakistan…,” Mr. Karzai said.
•“Now too, they pointed fingers at Pakistan and then within months they gave them another 700 million dollars in appreciation of their fight against terrorism,” Mr. Karzai said.
•He was referring to the Defense authorisation bill that Mr. Trump signed into law on Thursday, which provides for up to $700 million to be transferred to Pakistan for coalition support.
•While the U.S. still has to certify Pakistan is acting against the Haqqani network, the U.S. Congress also dropped a plan to add the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, that target India, to the list of groups Pakistan must be certified on for action taken.
•Mr. Karzai, who has often criticised Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani’s government for concessions to the United States, also called for a Loya Jirga [meeting of tribal elders] to decide the future course of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, where it still maintains about 10,000 troops. “They (U.S.) must negotiate a new compact and terms of engagement for their presence in Afghanistan now. This is why I have been calling for the Loya Jirga to be convened, to re-legitimise the U.S. presence. The more the U.S. opposes this Jirga, the more Afghans will turn away from them,” he added.
•Mr. Karzai said he had discussed developments in the region including “the war against terrorism and extremism” with Prime Minister Modi, who hosted an official dinner in his honour at Hyderabad House. The dinner was attended by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Foreign Secretary Dr. S. Jaishankar. “Delighted to meet my friend [Hamid Karzai] in New Delhi,” tweeted Prime Minister Modi, after the talks on Saturday evening.
•However Mr. Karzai dismissed speculation that his visit and the ‘red carpet’ treatment he received entailed any special message or a change in Indian policy. “I go around the world and meet with leaders: I was with President Rouhani in Tehran and was received by President Putin in Russia, and by the Chinese leadership. India is of course more hospitable given my old connection here,” he said.
📰 Divorce as crime: on instant triple talaq
Making triple talaq a criminal offence is unnecessary and possibly counter-productive
•The Centre’s proposal to make instant triple talaq an offence punishable with three-year imprisonment and a fine is an unnecessary attempt to convert a civil wrong into a criminal act. By a three-two majority, the Supreme Court has already declared, and correctly, that the practice of talaq-e-biddat, or instant divorce of a Muslim woman by uttering the word ‘talaq’ thrice, is illegal and unenforceable. While two judges in the majority said the practice was arbitrary and, therefore, unconstitutional, the third judge ruled that it was illegal because it was contrary to Islamic tenets. Its consequence is that the husband’s marital obligations remain, regardless of his intention in pronouncing it. When Parliament enacts a law to give effect to the judicial invalidation of talaq-e-biddat, it must primarily ensure protection to Muslim women against its use. Although the details are not yet available, the proposed Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017, appears to have provisions for maintenance or subsistence allowance to the wife and children in the event of triple talaq being pronounced. It seeks to preserve the woman’s entitlement to custody of her children. While these are welcome and necessary features of a law aimed to protect the rights of Muslim women against arbitrary divorce, it hardly requires iteration that the civil character of these aspects of marital law must be preserved.
•Instant triple talaq is viewed as sinful and improper by a large section of the community itself. Therefore, there can be no dispute about the need to protect Muslim women against the practice. But it is also well established that criminalising something does not have any deterrent effect on its practice. That there have been 66 cases of its use after the Supreme Court verdict only underscores the need for protecting women against desertion and abandonment, but is it justified to send someone to jail? Also, the fine amount under consideration could as well be awarded as maintenance or subsistence allowance. The All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Muslimeen president, Asaduddin Owaisi, has argued in a letter to the Union Law Minister that there is no need for a fresh criminal provision when existing laws, under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code or provisions of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, already allow the prosecution of a husband for inflicting physical or mental cruelty, emotional and economic abuse, and for deprivation of financial resources. Regardless of whether instant talaq would fall under any of these forms of cruelty or domestic violence, criminalising it risks defeating the objective of preserving the husband’s legal obligations, and the payment of maintenance. The Centre would do well to reconsider its draft and limit its scope to providing relief to women, instead of creating a new offence out of a civil matter.
📰 The crisis of globalisation
Even as leaders tap into discontent, there won’t be any promised return to the past
•Today’s so-called crisis of globalisation is nothing more than a new variable of the old battle between protectionism and free trade. On the one hand it is the tribalists while on the other it is the globalists. On one side there are the anti-Amazon, pro-retailers, losers of a global challenge, while on the other, there are the pro-Amazon, e-commerce winners.
•Nothing more, really. The opening of trade walls has accelerated industrial evolution in such a way that workers have had to learn to adapt to almost every generation. The difference, today, is that the evolution didn’t happen within a lifetime, but a few times within that lifetime. This is why the Indian farmer, who initially moved to the city to work in a call centre, had to reinvent himself as an Uber driver and is now worried about driverless cars — all within one lifetime.
Cause of discontent
•Technological innovations are what accelerate the rhythm of change. The medium is the message all over again. It is the transformation of technology that affects society, not whatever that technology delivers (news, electricity, TV series). And this is why in the United States and the United Kingdom and in some parts of Europe, so many 50-somethings, unemployed, disgruntled voters who found it hard to reinvent themselves ended up voting for someone who promised to bring back an impossible past — a greater America, a more British Britain, whatever that may mean.
•Up until 20 to 30 years ago, you could reach your pension age before a new radical evolution in the job market, which created its winners and losers. Today, the challenge is that evolutionary shifts happen not just once before reaching pensionable age, but often.
•This is what causes globalisation’s discontent. Blue collar workers from the mid-West cannot move to Silicon Valley; it’s a totally different skill set, and only few can manage it.
A sort of revenge
•U.S. President Donald Trump’s and Brexit’s victories can be seen as a sort of “revenge of the losers”. The victims of the system described above decided to vote for someone who promised to protect them. Ludicrous. And, in fact, little has been done by Mr. Trump or British Prime Minister Theresa May to help those workers. And little is being done. Their standards of living have not improved. Or have certainly not returned to previous levels. Nor is there any policy in motion indicating that the previous levels will return.
•There won’t be any promised return to the past. Which doesn’t mean the economy will not thrive. It just won’t bring back the same old jobs to the unskilled.
•For example, the latest U.S. tax reform promises to lower corporate taxes, rehashing the ancient myth job, the “trickle down” theory, will not impact the lower middle classes who voted for Mr. Trump. At the dangerous cost of increasing the deficit and widening the hole, Mr. Trump is lowering too high corporate taxes to bring them down to European levels.
•It would seem to make sense even though the impact on total taxation will be marginal. Lowering tax on capital may increase wages for those skilled workers whose productivity will be positively affected by increased demand for capital intensive work, but while engineers might see an increase in their wages, the unskilled won’t benefit directly from it.
•In other words, instead of fighting the ills of globalisation, Mr. Trump has found a way to economically hit the coastal electorate who mocked and railed against him — the Hillary Clinton voters. By lowering the maximal for family deductions and real estate taxes, he has hit those middle to upper middle classes in the east and west coasts who hate him. They are the ones who will not benefit from this reform. This is what he’ll obtain with this tax reform. Brilliant from his point of view because the reform dips into the pockets of people who never have and never will vote for him.
•How will this impact free trade globally? U.S. manufacturing is down to 11.7% of U.S. GDP (2016), while farming agriculture is only 1% (2015). America produces services such as Amazon, Google and Facebook; these are the richest corporations. Their expansion is thriving globally. And so is the expansion of other multinational corporations.
•Even though the discontent of globalisation is a leftover of the crisis of 2008, today we don’t see that it will really impact globalisation seriously. At least, so far, we don’t see the results of this desire to raise barriers. Globalisation is here to stay.
📰 Ministry may face fund crunch for UDAN
More routes add to pressure: official
•With more routes set to be operational under UDAN, the Civil Aviation ministry is likely to face paucity of funds in providing viability gap funding (VGF) to participating airlines, an official said.
•To connect unserved and under-served aerodromes as well as make flying more affordable, the Ministry unveiled Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik (UDAN) and 128 routes were awarded in the first round of bidding.
•A total of 141 initial proposals have been received from various players in the second round of bidding, the results of which are expected this month. As participating airlines are extended VGF, the Ministry feels that the amount that will be available towards it may not be sufficient once more players start operating UDAN flights.
📰 Pare stake in PSBs to 33%: CII to govt.
‘Dilution to complement the ₹2.11 lakh-crore recapitalisation plan for state-run banks’
•The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) urged the Centre to dilute its majority stake in public sector banks (PSBs), from the current threshold of 52% ownership to 33% over the next three years, to complement its ₹2.11 lakh-crore recapitalisation plan for these banks.
Stake in SBI
•The Centre could retain a larger share in the State Bank of India to meet priority sector needs and even maintain majority voting rights in other PSBs by diluting its stake through non-voting shares, the industry chamber recommended.
•The minimum government stake in PSBs had been relaxed to 52% from 58%, but the actual holdings in many of these banks is more than 80%. Just four banks have a government stake of 58% each as of March this year, the CII noted. “New accounting standards will also be applicable for banks from April 1, 2018.
•This is likely to increase provisioning requirements on bad loans by as much as 30%, further adding to these banks’ capital requirements,” the CII pointed out, suggesting the Centre could immediately initiate public issues to dilute its stake to 52% in the public sector banks.
Reviving bank growth
•The bank recapitalisation programme may revive bank credit growth over the next couple of years and lift the economy from the overhang of NPAs (non-performing assets), observed CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee, before suggesting some more steps to meet the capital requirements of public sector banks.
•CII had suggested the Centre set up a holding company for its banking stakes and distance itself from day-to-day management of the PSBs. The holding company could be empowered to raise resources and monitor banks’ performance, it said.
📰 What India’s student exodus means
Sprucing up our universities will bring in foreign learners and also help stem dollar outflows
•Indian consumers may be tightening their belts on many counts. But one item of expense on which they’re certainly not skimping is their children’s education.
•The latest Value of Education report from HSBC, after surveying the aspirations of 8,481 parents across 15 countries, reiterates that Indian parents continue to pull out all stops when it comes to their offspring’s education.
Greener pastures abroad
•The 2017 report found that Indian parents spent a hefty $18,909 (about ₹12.3 lakh) towards their children’s school and college education in tuition fees, books and transport. About 83% of them engaged private tutors and 94% were keen to fund a post-graduate degree.
•But most importantly, both for undergraduate and postgraduate courses for their wards, a majority of Indian parents — a good 55% — were eyeing varsities overseas. This is much higher than the global average of 41%.
•This is despite expecting to pay through their nose for this luxury. Indian parents estimated the cost of a foreign undergraduate degree at $42,625 and a post-graduate degree at $41,590, taking theiroutlay to about ₹55 lakh.
•Quizzed about the reasons for sending their wards abroad, (globally) the parents surveyed diplomatically said that a shot at learning foreign languages, gaining international work experience and exposure to new ideas were the main motivations.
•But what remains unsaid for Indian parents is the widespread belief that the quality of foreign educational institutions, their faculty and research opportunities, are vastly superior to what is on offer at home.
•No doubt, HSBC’s findings are based on a limited sample of parents — probably from the more affluent sections of society. But macro-level data reiterates the trend (or is it a fad?).
•Data from global agencies tell us that this trend of young people heading abroad to pursue college education, is the strongest in Asia. But lately, India has emerged as the torch-bearer of this trend.
•The total number of Indian students pursuing college education abroad has vaulted from 62,350 to 2.55 lakh between 2000 and 2016, data from UNESCO-UIS showed. That’s a moderate growth of 6% annually. But student migration from India has gathered steam in the last three years, even as that from other origin countries slowed.
Rising numbers
•Between 2013 and 2016, there was a 24% jump in the number (stock) of Indian students studying abroad. This growth outpaced that for China (which saw a 12% expansion), South Korea (5% decline), Saudi Arabia (16% increase), Germany (2% decline) and France (6% increase). These countries have traditionally been the biggest contributors to the international tertiary student pool.
•Globally, India now accounts for the second largest population of international college students (2.5 lakh) after China (8 lakh).
•With its outbound student growth rates beating China’s lately, it is no wonder that many foreign varsities have been raising the pitch for their marketing blitzkrieg (though not student aid) in India.
One-way street
•Growth rates apart, the other unusual facet of student migration from India is that it is largely a one-way street. Data from HSBC showed that, while China had more than 8 lakh students lodged in varsities abroad in 2016, it had also half as many international students lodged at its own campuses.
•In Malaysia, inbound students pursuing college were neck-and-neck with outbound ones. Singapore has managed to attract more than twice the number of college students it sends overseas. But in India, the number of students lodged abroad is at more than four times the inbound numbers.
•Data from Open Doors 2017 on Indian students in the USA starkly highlighted this one-way stampede. In the five years to 2016-17, the number of Indian youth pursuing the American dream at colleges there shot up from 1 lakh to 1.86 lakh, but the number of American students studying in India fell from 4,600 to about 4,100.
Dollar drain
•The rising global mobility of Indian students is a welcome trend in some respects. It enhances job prospects and encourages cross-pollination of ideas for the students who make the cut. But the trend has economic downsides too. If the hordes of bright students who head offshore for their higher studies decide to settle there permanently, the brain drain cannot be very good for India’s demographic dividend story.
•A more immediate problem than the brain drain though, is the dollar drain. As more Indian parents pack off their children right from undergraduation, foreign exchange remittances towards their support are growing by leaps and bounds.
•In 2016-17, Indians spent $3.7 billion towards ‘maintenance of close relatives’ and ‘studies abroad’, with these two items accounting for 45% of all outward remittances under the RBI’s Liberalised Remittance Scheme. More worryingly for a country that runs a perpetual trade deficit, these outflows have grown thirteenfold since FY12, from $279 million. Upgrading the quality of domestic educational institutions is therefore a must-solve problem for India’s policymakers. It can staunch the brain drain, attract more international students onshore and thus help keep the balance of payments in check.
📰 Zealous frog fathers guard eggs against ‘cannibals’
Bush frogs breeding in bamboo stems don’t mind pulling off an all-nighter on protection duty
•These doting dads don’t mind staying up all night to look after their babies. Male white-spotted bush frogs zealously watch over their eggs for 37 days, leaving only once tiny froglets emerge. If the adults lower their guard even for a day, other males ‘cannibalise’ the eggs, scientists say.
•The observations of the bush frogs’ parental care and novel records of cannibalism, published on December 14 in Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology (a journal dedicated to animal behaviour), add details to a breeding pattern that scientists first recorded in 2014: that of the white-spotted bush frog Raorchestes chalazodes (rediscovered in 2011 after 125 years and found only in the Western Ghats’ Agastya Hills in Kerala and Tamil Nadu) breeding inside hollow bamboo stems.
•Inserting an endoscope into these bamboo stems, herpetologist Seshadri K.S., who is with the National University of Singapore, observed the breeding behaviour of the critically endangered bush frogs in Tamil Nadu’s Kalakkad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve for his recent work.
Loud alarm calls
•“The males both attended to the eggs by sitting on them [possibly to keep them hydrated], and physically guarded them by standing between the eggs and the entry hole, scaring away intruders by producing loud alarm calls and even lunging at them,” said Mr. Seshadri.
•The frogs deterred katydids (a kind of cricket) and even cockroaches this way.
•However, when these protective fathers were removed from their egg clutches, Mr. Seshadri found that a majority (more than 70%) of the eggs perished: some were eaten by ants or infected by fungi. However, the main reason was that other male bush frogs entered the stem and ate unattended eggs. This is the first known instance of cannibalism among tree frogs of the Rhacophoridae family.
•“This could be because eggs are a source of nutrition,” said Mr. Seshadri. “But it could be a territorial display which also frees up available nesting sites.”
•Egg-laying sites within bamboo stems are highly prized because ideal cavities (which have to be cracked open by other animals) are few.
📰 A measured leap: on planetary system
The amazing story of the discovery of a planetary system
•Scientists have announced the discovery of two new exoplanets, Kepler-90i and Kepler-80g. Exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, are routinely being discovered, with the number of those that have already been found now standing at 3,567. But this announcement by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the U.S. is particularly significant. First, with the discovery of the planet Kepler 90i, orbiting the star Kepler 90, we now know of another star besides the Sun that has eight planets orbiting it. Second, Christopher Shallue, a software engineer at Google, and Andrew Vanderburg, of the University of Texas, Austin, have discovered it using a deep learning neural network — an artificial intelligence tool that mimics the workings of a human brain. They “trained” their computer to analyse light readings made by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, which are archived and made available for anyone to use. During its mission from 2009 to 2013, the Kepler Space Telescope surveyed nearly 200,000 stars, with 35,000 possible planet signals. The duo’s network was made to learn to identify true signals using 15,000 previously vetted signals. They then studied the weaker signals recorded from 670 star systems that had multiple known planets orbiting them, finally coming up with this discovery. The network also identified another Earth-sized exoplanet, Kepler 80g, orbiting the star Kepler 80. This is a very stable system in which Kepler 80g and four of its neighbours are locked together in a so-called resonant chain.
•Deep learning and neural networks have been used in other applications successfully, as in the AlphaGo AI player of the Go game. This is not also the first time that automation has been used in identifying exoplanets. After the initial years of their discovery, when the number of known exoplanets grew, the need for automating the initial vetting process became clear. The preprint of the Shallue-Vanderburg’s paper, to be published in The Astronomical Journal, mentions the Robotvetter program, the first attempt at automating the process of rejecting false positives in the signal. The preprint describes the careful process of doing away with the false positives and systemic blips before coming up with the true signals — in this case, the two signals corresponding to Kepler 90i and Kepler 80g. It also indicates the caveats and failure modes in the model where it needs to be improved before it can be used to function independently. Here, then, is the takeaway — good science not only solves problems but also can take a hard look at itself, at where and how it can improve. This is a leap for humankind, a measured leap.
📰 Lone great white pelican a visual treat
It has a distinctive beauty to watch compared with the other migratory birds
•Mingled with the thousands of winged guests is the lone great white pelican (Pelecanus onocrotalus) at Asia’s largest freshwater lake, Kolleru Lake, offering a rare visual treat to bird watchers.
•In the past week, the feathered guest has been found spending the days with the grey pelicans and painted storks at the Atapaka Bird Sanctuary in the Kolleru Lake in Krishna district, earning its prey in the water body.
•Noticing its presence from at least 200 metres, forest department’s boatman G. Suresh has been involved in studying its movements.
•“Those who see the white pelican at the sanctuary are being considered lucky.
•“I have been fortunate to see it many times this winter. It has a distinctive beauty to watch compared with the other migratory birds,” the forest department’s boatman told The Hindu.
Big size
•Physically, the white pelican which is also known as rosy pelican is almost double the size of the grey pelican. According to sanctuary officials, the single bird has been avoiding staying on the iron bunds erected in the sanctuary and hides behind the local bushes when visitors approach it on the boat.
•“The sighting of the white pelican is very rare in the Kolleru Lake. We have documented the white pelican in 2008 and 2013. In 2013, a pair of white pelicans was sighted at the sanctuary which is very rare in the wetlands in South India,” said P. Gracious, an authority on the Kolleru Lake. Mr. Gracious said the bird could be treated as ‘Passing Migrant’ and must have missed its flock. “The lone white pelican has never been seen breeding or nesting in the Kolleru Lake till date,” confirmed Mr. Gracious.
