What to Read in Indian Express Editorial( Topic and Syllabus wise)

EDITORIAL1 : SCO Reminder

Context

India’s refusal last week to sign the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) joint statement has brought to the fore the big gap between the forum’s declared commitment to combatting terrorism and its traditional blind eye to Pakistan-sponsored violent extremism in India.

Need a different stand

• While the outrage in Delhi is understandable, it is a timely reminder that India can’t rely on multilateral forums to fight its battles against terrorism.
• The 2025 SCO Defence Ministers’ meeting in Qingdao, Chinaomitted any reference to the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam from the proposed joint statement.
• India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh pushed to include the Pahalgam attack in the SCO joint statement to highlight regional terrorism, but Pakistan blocked it.
• Meanwhile, the statement mentioned militant activity in Balochistan,frustrating India and reflecting a tilt toward Pakistan’s narrative.

Quite a common episode

• An episode of this kind is quite common in multilateral gatherings, where each country has a veto over the wording of the final declarations.
• But the SCO outcome is a timely reminder to Delhi not to romanticise the forum as an instrument to promote a multipolar world.
• The forum is dominated by China and Beijing is unlikely to do anything other than protect the interests of its all-weather ally, Pakistan.
• Nor can India expect Russia to restore the balance in favour of India. As it gets drawn into a deeper strategic dependence on China, Moscow has no incentive to stand up for Delhi against Beijing.
• As China rises to be a great power, its protective cover over Pakistan has only become stronger.
• The recent trilateral meeting that Beijing convened with Pakistani and Bangladeshi officials in Kunming is a sign of things to come. Beijing has the resources and political will to expand its South Asian protectorate to include Bangladesh.

Suggestions

• To cope with the new dynamic, Delhi should discard two illusions that have gripped its regional policy.
• One, that it can diplomatically isolate Islamabad in regional and global forums. Second is the notion that it can unilaterally set the terms of engagement with Bangladesh.
• To be sure, Pakistan has become far weaker than India on several counts, especially in the economic domain. Yet Islamabad retains significant capacity to trip up India as its recent outreach to the US and its deepening partnership with Chinahave shown.
• Since the change of government in Dhaka last August, Bangladesh has shown that it can cause acute discomfort to Delhi by aligning with forces hostile to India.
• If Delhi is locked in conflicts with its two large South Asian neighbours, Beijing will take advantage.
• Delhi can’t simply demand that all its friends and partners automatically back India in its disputes with Islamabad and Dhaka.
• The answer to this regional challenge is twofold. For one, Delhi must stop deluding itself that it has the luxury of ignoring the current regimesin Islamabad and Dhaka.
• To the west, it needs to revive channels of communication with Islamabad and Rawalpindi; to the east, it needs to stop talking down to Dhaka.

Conclusion

India’s tricky situation with Pakistan and Bangladesh is also being turned into a dangerous strategic trap by the politics of religious polarisation within. If Delhi does not reverse course, it may be setting itself up for failures in the neighbourhood.

 

EDITORIAL2: The Panchgaon way

Context

The Green India Mission relies on outdated and distorted data from the Forest Survey of India and is implemented by the Forest Department, which lacks a science- and nature-based approach. A new, people-oriented, science-driven strategy is needed to truly green the Western Ghats.

Western Ghats: The green gold of India

• The Western Ghats is one of the eight hotspots of biological diversity in the world and is spread across six states—Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
• The forests in the Western Ghats are the water towers of peninsular India. As many as 58 major rivers originate here, including the sacred Godavari, the Cauvery and the Krishna.
• In the last six decades, the forest cover in the Western Ghats has been severely fragmented due to human activities.
• People started clearing the forest for growing tea and coffee and for teak plantations. With an increase in human activity and urbanisation, a whopping 40 percent of the original forests is lost in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. 
• The ghats not only sustain 50 million people, but they are also home to about 4000 species of flowering plants, 645 species of evergreen trees, about 120 species of mammals, 500 species of birds and many reptiles, butterflies and fishes.

A new, people-oriented, science-driven strategy

• Pachgaon in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district shows the way. Pachgaon was assigned Community Forest Rights (CFR) under the Forest Rights Act of 2006over 1,000 ha of land. It is exercising this right to good effect.
• Through bamboo sales, Pachgaon earns a good income. So its people have stopped setting fire to tendu leaves to stimulate fresh growth.
• This is despite the fact that tendu leaves, too, were a good source of income. Additionally, they have voluntarily set aside 30 hectares as a sacred grove.
• With this, the forest is registering healthy growth and sequestering large quantities of carbon.
• This has also meant security of livelihoods and greater self-respect for the people.Earlier, many villagers used to migrate all the way to Gujarat to earn a living. Now, very few people leave the village.

Way forward

• This is clearly the way forward for effectively greening the Western Ghats. The entire region is crying out for an honest implementation of the Forest Rights Act and assignment of Community Forest Rights to a substantial proportion of the populationthat has been living inside forests or on their fringes for over three generations.
• At the same time, we should take forward the process of democratic decentralisationand involve people in the decision-making process.
• This is exactly what the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panelrecommended, and it remains the way forward.