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31 January 2025 : Indian Express Editorial Analysis

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1. For the Yamuna to flow

(Source – Indian Express, Section – The Editorial Page – Page No. – 14)

Topic: GS3 – Environment
Context
  • Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s claim that Haryana is mixing poison in the Yamuna River has sparked a heated election debate.

Analysis of the news:

Key Issues Concerning the Yamuna in Delhi

  • The discussion about the Yamuna’s state in Delhi revolves around three core issues—drinking water supply, pollution, and environmental flow.
  • Each of these aspects plays a crucial role in the city’s sustainability and directly impacts millions of residents.

Drinking Water Crisis and Dependency on Haryana

  • Delhi’s drinking water supply is heavily dependent on Haryana, which regulates the flow of the Yamuna through the Hathni Kund Barrage.
  • The raw water reaching Delhi is primarily received at the Wazirabad Barrage, which, along with other treatment plants, processes it for public consumption.
  • However, during lean seasons, water levels drop, leading to increased ammonia contamination.
  • This frequently results in water shortages and treatment plant shutdowns, sparking panic among citizens as they scramble for alternatives like water tankers.
  • A key solution to this crisis is a joint inspection mechanism involving both Delhi and Haryana, along with an independent monitoring system to ensure the water quality and quantity meet agreed standards.
  • Persistent disputes between the state governments have led to legal battles, and unless a transparent, functional arrangement is established, the issue is bound to recur.

Pollution: Industrial Waste, Sewage, and Regulatory Failures

  • Beyond drinking water concerns, the Yamuna’s pollution is a pressing issue. Contamination arises from multiple sources—untreated sewage, industrial effluents from unauthorized factories, and solid waste dumping.
  • Between 2018 and 2021, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) established the Yamuna Monitoring Committee (YMC) to oversee pollution control.
  • The committee identified 16 major stakeholders, including the Delhi Jal Board, Delhi Development Authority, and governments of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, all of whom had pledged to implement cleanup measures. However, many commitments remain unfulfilled.
  • Major drains such as the Najafgarh, Supplementary, and Shahdara drains continue to discharge untreated sewage and industrial waste into the river.
  • Haryana, too, has fallen short of its promises, with reports showing that approximately 80 million liters of untreated sewage from Gurugram enter the Yamuna daily.
  • Delhi had initiated an “interceptor project” to capture and treat sewage before it reached the river, but incomplete sewer connections, inefficient treatment plants, and ongoing industrial discharge have hindered its success.

Environmental Flow and the Need for Policy Reform

  • Another critical concern is the Yamuna’s environmental flow—the volume of water necessary to maintain its ecological balance.
  • The National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) had tasked the National Institute of Hydrology (NIH) with assessing this issue.
  • The NIH found that excessive upstream water withdrawals drastically reduce the Yamuna’s flow through Delhi, exacerbating pollution and harming aquatic life.
  • The YMC had similarly observed that during non-monsoon months, the Yamuna’s flow is alarmingly low, leading to concentrated pollution and ecological degradation.
  • The committee recommended revisiting the 1994 water-sharing agreement among Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh to ensure a fairer water distribution system.
  • However, political inertia and competing interests among the states make it unlikely that these recommendations will be implemented without intervention from the central government or the judiciary.

Conclusion:

  • Despite clear solutions being proposed, political conflicts and bureaucratic inefficiencies have prevented meaningful progress in addressing the Yamuna’s crises.
  • The river’s deteriorating state is not just an environmental concern but a matter of public health and governance.
  • With elections influencing the discourse, the challenge remains whether political leaders will prioritize real solutions over rhetoric.
  • Citizens, too, must recognize the urgency of the situation and demand accountability from those in power.
  • Until a consensus is reached and tangible actions are taken, neither political promises nor manifestos will bring any real change.
                                         About Yamuna River System

The Yamuna River System is an integral part of the Ganga Drainage System, which is one of the three major river basins in the Himalayan region.

The Yamuna River and its numerous tributaries flow through the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, significantly influencing the landscape and supporting diverse ecosystems along its course.

With a total length of over 1,300 kilometres, the Yamuna is a crucial river in India and an essential tributary of the Ganga River.

Practice Question:  The deteriorating condition of the Yamuna River in Delhi highlights the complex interplay of environmental degradation, governance failure, and inter-state water disputes. Discuss the key challenges and suggest measures for sustainable river rejuvenation. (250 Words /15 marks)

2. It’s time for the AI leap

(Source – Indian Express, Section – The Ideas Page- Page No. – 15)

Topic: GS3 – Science & Technology
Context
  • China’s DeepSeek AI Disrupts Global AI Landscape, raising Questions for India’s AI Future.

Analysis of the news:

The Emergence of DeepSeek and Its Disruptive Potential

  • DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, has drawn worldwide attention with the release of its R1 model, which excels in advanced reasoning tasks.
  • What makes this development remarkable is the efficiency with which DeepSeek has achieved performance on par with OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4, but at a fraction of the cost—just $6 million for training using 2,000 Nvidia H800 GPUs.
  • These cost and efficiency metrics are significantly better than most frontier AI models.
  • The global AI community is divided in its reactions. Some view DeepSeek as “AI’s Sputnik moment”, marking a major shift in AI leadership, while others question the legitimacy of its rapid advancements.
  • Regardless, the model’s open-source nature and cost-effectiveness have sparked widespread interest, with startups and researchers worldwide testing and deploying it for various applications.

Engineering Innovations Behind DeepSeek

DeepSeek’s achievement stems from its ability to overcome hardware constraints faced by Chinese developers due to restrictions on acquiring advanced Nvidia GPUs. Instead of relying on brute-force computation, DeepSeek optimised its training process using several AI techniques:

  • Reinforcement Learning (RL) – Used to develop self-verification and complex reasoning capabilities.
  • Mixture of Experts (MoE) – A system that activates only relevant model sections for specific tasks, improving efficiency.
  • Memory and Compute Optimisation – Techniques that reduce memory usage and speed up processing.
  • Dual-token Prediction – Predicting two words at a time instead of one, enhancing inference speed.

These optimisations have resulted in a model that is faster, more efficient, and cheaper to deploy, making AI technology more accessible to a wider range of users, including startups with limited resources.

Implications of DeepSeek for India

Impact on AI Application Development

  • DeepSeek’s low-cost and open-source nature presents a game-changing opportunity for Indian developers.
  • Unlike proprietary models, DeepSeek allows businesses to run AI locally without dependence on foreign cloud servers.
  • This means Indian startups can build AI-powered solutions while maintaining data sovereignty and reducing operational costs.
  • Additionally, DeepSeek’s significantly lower API pricing (one-tenth to one-twentieth of global AI models) will enable a broader spectrum of Indian companies—particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)—to integrate large language models (LLMs) into their products and services.

The Need for Fundamental AI Research in India

  • While India has a strong AI talent pool, most efforts have been focused on building applications rather than developing foundation models.
  • If India aims to lead in AI innovation, it must invest in fundamental AI research rather than simply fine-tuning existing foreign models like Meta’s LLaMA or DeepSeek.
  • Indian universities and companies must actively install, experiment with, and fine-tune models like DeepSeek to develop India-specific AI models for diverse applications, from vernacular language processing to sector-specific automation.

AI Research Funding and Infrastructure Needs

  • DeepSeek’s success did not happen overnight; it was the result of hundreds of researchers working for nearly two years.
  • India must take a similar mission-driven approach, with a combination of government, private sector, and philanthropic funding to support cutting-edge AI research.

The IndiaAI Mission’s GPU cluster will be crucial in this endeavor, providing computational infrastructure for Indian researchers to train large-scale AI models efficiently. However, merely having GPUs is not enough—multi-disciplinary teams with expertise in:

  • AI frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow)
  • Reinforcement learning and attention mechanisms
  • Hardware acceleration and distributed computing

must be assembled to drive India’s AI ambitions forward.

The Road Ahead: Building India’s Own AI Foundation Models

  • Currently, India has few large-scale AI model development efforts. The DeepSeek moment should serve as a wake-up call for the country to launch competing AI initiatives to build its own foundation models.
  • Government-backed initiatives, corporate R&D investments, and philanthropic funding can help drive such efforts.
  • By focusing on low-cost AI training methods, scalable infrastructure, and AI research at the intersection of multiple disciplines, India can emerge as a global AI leader, rather than remaining a consumer of foreign AI technology.

Conclusion:

  • India possesses the necessary talent and determination to make significant AI advancements.
  • However, a collective push—involving government, academia, and industry—is required to build indigenous AI models that cater to India’s unique needs.
  • The DeepSeek moment should not just be observed; it should catalyse India’s AI ambitions. The time for action is now.
Practice Question:  The emergence of DeepSeek, a cost-efficient and open-source AI model from China, highlights both the opportunities and challenges for India’s AI ecosystem. Discuss the implications of such advancements for India’s AI research, startups, and digital sovereignty. Suggest measures to strengthen India’s AI capabilities in response to global AI developments. (250 Words /15 marks)
For more such UPSC related Current Affairs, Check Out –30 January 2025 : Indian Express Editorial Analysis

 

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