Kosovo-Serbia tensions

GS Paper - 2 (International Relations)

Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo flared anew after Kosovo's police raided Serb-dominated areas in the region's north and seized local municipality buildings. There have been violent clashes between Kosovo's police and NATO-led peacekeepers on one side and local Serbs on the other, leaving dozens of people injured on both sides.

Why are Serbia and Kosovo at odds?

1. Kosovo is a mainly ethnic Albanian populated territory that was formerly a province of Serbia.
2. It declared independence in 2008. Serbia has refused to recognize Kosovo's statehood and still considers it part of Serbia, even though it has no formal control there.
3. Kosovo's independence has been recognized by about 100 countries, including the United States. Russia, China and five EU countries, most of them with separatist regions of their own, have sided with Serbia.
4. The deadlock has kept tensions simmering and prevented full stabilization of the Balkan region after the bloody wars in the 1990s.

What’s the latest flare-up about?

1. Serbs boycotted local elections held in northern Kosovo, where they are a majority.
2. Recently, newly elected ethnic Albanian mayors moved into their offices with the help of Kosovo's riot police. Serbs tried to prevent the new mayors from taking over the premises, but the police fired tear gas to disperse them.
3. Serbs engaged in fierce clashes with NATO peacekeepers, leaving more than 50 rioters and 30 international troops injured.
4. The election boycott followed a collective resignation by Serb officials from the area, including administrative staff, judges and police officers, in November 2022.

World’s largest lakes have shrunk

GS Paper - 3 (Environment)

More than 50 per cent of the world’s largest lakes and reservoirs have shrunk over the past three decades primarily due to climate change and human activities, according to a new study, published in the journal Science. From these water bodies, approximately 600 cubic km of water was lost between 1992 and 2020 — an amount equivalent to the total water used in the United States for the entire year of 2015.

How was the study carried out?

1. For their study, they examined 1,975 of the world’s largest lakes, including 1,052 natural lakes and 921 reservoirs — researchers studied lakes which are larger than 100 sq km and reservoirs with more than 1 cubic km of storage capacity.
2. The analysis was done following a novel methodology that involved combining two-dimensional water areas with one-dimensional water levels to estimate the three-dimensional change in water storage.
3. Researchers used 250,000 lake-area snapshots captured by satellites between 1992-2020 to survey the area of 1,972 of Earth’s biggest lakes.
4. Combining recent level measurements with longer-term area measurements allowed us to reconstruct the volume of lakes dating back decades.

What are the findings of the study?

1. The researchers found that out of the 1,052 natural lakes that were examined, 457 had significant water losses in the past three decades. Meanwhile, 234 natural lakes gained water and 360 of such water bodies didn’t show any notable trend.
2. They attributed 57 per cent of the net decline in the water quantity in natural lakes to human activities, such as unsustainable consumption of water, and increasing temperature and potential evapotranspiration (PET) — loss of water due to both evaporation and transpiration — with the latter two indicating the role of climate change.
3. The study also pointed out the worst affected largest lakes across the world and why they are shrinking in size.
4. For instance, the Aral Sea in Central Asia, Lake Mar Chiquita in Argentina, the Dead Sea in the Middle East, and the Salton Sea in California have mainly dried due to unsustainable water consumption.
5. In India, apart from Tso Moriri Lake, Andhra Pradesh’s Pulicat Lake and Kolleru Lake have been affected but they didn’t feature in the study as they were “below our threshold so did not make it in our analyses,” Rajagopalan said.
6. Another finding is that contrary to previous studies, natural lakes located in humid tropics and high altitudes are also experiencing water shortages.

What are the consequences of shrinking lakes?

1. According to the study, nearly two billion people, one-quarter of the global population in 2023, have been affected as they live in basins with large water bodies that have witnessed a significant drop in their water levels in the past three decades.
2. Many of these drying lakes have been identified as important sources of water and energy (hydropower),” the researchers said.
3. The reduced size of these lakes not only results in freshwater decline and environmental degradation but also disrupts the water and carbon cycles.

India’s overhaul of Internet laws

GS Paper - 3 (ICT)

The most important law is the Draft of Digital India Bill, which will be the successor to the decades-old Information Technology Act, 2000, the country’s core Internet law. The Digital India Bill will “harmonise” all the other tech laws being worked upon. Naturally, a lot is riding on the Digital India Bill as India looks to achieve its digital economy target of $1 trillion, or 20 percent of the GDP, over time.

What is the new law for the Internet?

1. Currently, the Information Technology Act, 2000 is the core framework that regulates entities on the Internet.
2. However, the law needs an update since it was framed for an Internet era that looked very different from the Internet of today.
3. The government has also on occasion found it difficult to promulgate rules since the parent Act is limited in its scope.
4. The core objectives of the new Digital India Bill are to ensure an open and safe Internet in the country to safeguard users’ rights and reduce risks for them online; and accelerate the growth of technology innovation.

What do we know about the Bill so far?

1. Revisiting safe harbour: Safe harbour – as prescribed under Section 79 of the IT Act, 2000 – is legal immunity that online intermediaries like social media platforms enjoy against content posted by users on their platforms.
2. Classification of intermediaries: So far, India’s Internet laws do not classify platforms based on their nature. The only distinction has been made with respect to platforms’ size – a platform with more than 5 million Indian users has been called a “significant” social media intermediary and has added obligations.
3. User harms: A perusal of the public statements that Chandrasekhar has made gives the impression that the Digital India Bill will have a big focus on user harms that are unique to the online space. A long-held complaint has been that offences on the Internet are largely borrowed from offences in the offline world prescribed under rules like the Indian Penal Code (IPC).