Daily Briefing: Ranthambore at risk

Before you mull over that, here’s what else we have for you today:

Big Story

A river-linking project proposes to channel the surplus waters of the Chambal River basin to 23 districts of Rajasthan for irrigation, drinking and industrial use. As many as 3.45 crore people are set to benefit. The project, however, is not without trade-offs. The Ranthambore tiger reserve, home to 57 big cats in the state, would be split into two.

Concerns: A dam proposed under the Parbati-Kalisindh-Chambal-Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project (PKC-ERCP) will submerge at least 37 sq km of the Ranthambore reserve. This would effectively cut short the north-south animal movement within the reserve. The government says it will compensate by integrating more land with the tiger reserve. But experts are not convinced. Some argue that wildlife sanctuaries are best kept out of such projects.

Incidentally, the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve isn’t the only one at risk. Similar projects have threatened to drown parts of the Palamu (in Jharkhand) and Panna (in Madhya Pradesh) tiger reserves.

Row: Interestingly, the government carved out a new tiger reserve, Rani Durgavati, to compensate for the losses at Panna. This, too, has its fair share of troubles. As many as 52 villages in and around the reserve have complained about the non-recognition of their forest rights and attempts at forceful evictions. Villages in West Bengal and Maharashtra have made similar submissions. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs is now looking at safeguards.

Only in Express

Uttarakhand passed its Uniform Civil Code (UCC) Bill last year amid much hue and cry. Legal experts have long argued the hits and misses of the law. Well, the state is all set to roll out UCC on January 26 and with it, a portal. The UCC portal has it all. You can register and terminate live-in relationships (as you must, under the new rules), declare heirs for succession, and appeal cases where the application is rejected. The state’s officials are currently under training to help familiarise themselves with the UCC portal. My colleague Aiswarya Raj sat in one such session. Here’s what she found out.

From the Front Page

Friends?: The inauguration of the Z-Morh tunnel, now renamed to Sonamarg tunnel, is crucial for all-weather connectivity to Ladakh. But what also stood at the event was a budding bonhomie between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and newly-elected Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah.

Tragic: A Kerala youth fighting in the Russian Army on the frontlines of the country’s war with Ukraine has been killed. His death comes after months of desperate pleas to return home. In his message to The Indian Express last month, he stated that he had been unsuccessfully knocking on the doors of the Indian embassy.

Must Read

Make-up: A human genome dataset is helping map India’s genetic diversity. As many as 10,000 genome sequences of healthy individuals from 99 ethnic populations of the country have now been mapped. The Genome India project’s second phase would sequence genomes of those with specific diseases. The dataset has the potential to catalyse scientific breakthroughs and revitalise medical research.

Growing together: Is India’s economic growth inclusive? Is our fixation with the wealth of the top one per cent healthy? Ram Singh, director of the Delhi School of Economics, argues that the datasets on income distribution may not tell the full story.

And Finally…

“This is not a tale of heroes who conquer, but of those who persist despite the odds”

It’s a genre-defying coming-of-age thriller set inside the Tihar Jail. It’s one for the underdogs. If you haven’t caught Netflix’s latest offering, ‘Black Warrant’, Anas Arif makes a case for why you must.

Before you go, tune in to today’s episode of the ‘3 things’ podcast, where we talk about a scholarship scam in Himachal, the SpaDex mission and the rise of cybercrimes in India.

That’s all for today’s folks. Until tomorrow,
Sonal Gupta

Business As Usual by EP Unny