Title: Ramallah Recall
(Narendra Modi’s visit signals India’s strategy to grow ties with Israel and Palestine separately)
• Last year Mr. Modi became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Israel.
• The Ramallah visit has come just weeks after his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited India.
• On the other hand, late last year India voted along with a vast majority of member-states at the UN General Assembly against U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
• India’s policy objective is clear and rooted in political realism. It wants to maintain the balance in its relationship with both Palestine and Israel, and strengthen bilateral ties with each separately.
• This balance is vital for India, for which Israel is a source of defence equipment and agricultural technology. But Israel also faces political isolation internationally over its occupation of the Palestinian territories and does not have diplomatic ties with most countries in West Asia.
• With the Ramallah visit, the message Mr. Modi is sending out is that India’s partnership with Israel is not at the expense of its principled support for the Palestinian cause.
Title: Woods and trees
• (We must review the strategy to revive forests, and move away from monoculture plantations)
• The Environment Ministry’s ‘India State of Forest Report 2017’ based on satellite imagery, may present a net positive balance in the form of 24.4% of India’s land area under some form of forest or tree cover, but this is a broad-brush assessment.
• According to the report, forest and tree cover together registered a 1% rise over the previous estimate two years ago. However, such an estimate listing very dense, moderately dense, open and scrub forests mapped through remote sensing does not really provide deep insights into the integrity of the green areas.
• In its audit of various regions, the Ministry’s report has calculated a cumulative loss of forests in Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal of nearly 1,200 sq km.
• The impact of such a terrible loss must be seen against the backdrop of the Northeast representing a global biodiversity hotspot.
• Any gains achieved through remediation programmes in Odisha, Assam, Telangana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Manipur cannot compensate for it adequately.
• India must review the programmes that it has been pursuing to revive forests, and move away from monoculture plantations that are favoured by even forest development corporations in many States.
Title: Ramallah recall and woods and trees
Vocabulary words:
Counterpart (noun) = Equivalent (समकक्ष)
Sovereign (noun) = A ruler, monarch (शासक)
Bilateral (adj) = Involving or relating to two parties especially Countries (द्विपक्षीय)
monoculture (noun) = The cultivation of a single crop in a given area
Imagery (noun) = Visually descriptive or figurative language (कल्पना)
Assemblage (noun) = A collection or gathering of things or people (संयोजन)
Equate (verb) = Consider to be the same (बराबर)
Endow (verb) = Provide with a quality (प्रदान करना)
Exploitation (noun) = Unfair utilization (शोषण)
Cumulative (adj) = Increasing in quantity, progressive (संचयी)
Erode (verb) = Gradually destroy (नष्ट करना)
Indigenous (adj) = Originating or occurring naturally in a particular place (स्वदेशी)
Renaissance (noun) = A revival of or renewed interest in something (नवजागरण)
Broad-Brush (idiom) = something lacking in details
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