The recent locust attacks in and around India have been driven by a combination of factors, posing significant threats to agricultural production and food security. Here are the reasons behind these locust attacks, the threats they pose, and the steps taken by India to tackle this challenge:

Reasons behind the Locust Attacks:

1. Favorable Weather Conditions: The heavy rainfall and cyclonic activity in the region, particularly in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, have created ideal breeding conditions for locusts, leading to their rapid multiplication and subsequent migration.
2. Climate Change: The changing climate patterns, including the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, have contributed to the creation of favorable environments for locust breeding and proliferation.
3. Cross-Border Movement: The locust swarms have originated in regions such as Yemen, Somalia, and Ethiopia, and their cross-border movement has facilitated their spread to neighboring countries, including India and Pakistan.

Threats Posed by the Locust Attacks:

1. Crop Damage: Locust swarms can devour large quantities of crops, posing a significant threat to food production and agricultural livelihoods, particularly for small-scale and subsistence farmers.
2. Food Security Concerns: The widespread destruction of crops can lead to food shortages and price fluctuations, jeopardizing the food security of affected communities and regions.
3. Economic Impacts: The damage to agricultural sectors can have cascading effects on local and regional economies, affecting industries, employment, and overall economic stability.
4. Ecosystem Disruption: Locust infestations can disrupt the balance of local ecosystems, affecting biodiversity and the overall ecological equilibrium.

Steps Taken by India to Tackle the Locust Threat:

1. Surveillance and Early Warning Systems: India has enhanced its locust monitoring and early warning systems, utilizing satellite imagery, drones, and field-level monitoring to detect and track the movement of locust swarms.
2. Coordinated Response: The Indian government has established a coordinated response mechanism, involving various ministries and agencies, to plan and implement control measures across affected regions.
3. Locust Control Operations: India has deployed specialized equipment, such as sprayers and pesticides, to conduct large-scale locust control operations, targeting the breeding grounds and migratory routes of the insects.
4. Capacity Building and International Cooperation: India is working with international organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), to enhance its technical capabilities and share best practices in locust management.
5. Awareness and Preparedness: The government has launched public awareness campaigns to educate farmers and communities about the locust threat and the steps they can take to mitigate the impact.
6. Research and Innovation: India is investing in research and the development of innovative solutions, such as eco-friendly pesticides and biological control methods, to combat the locust menace more effectively.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) plays a crucial but often unacknowledged role in the background of human life. While the importance of emotional intelligence has become more widely recognized in recent decades, the need to understand and develop this skill set is particularly pressing in the current generation.

1. The role of Emotional Intelligence in human life:
   • EQ helps individuals better understand and manage their own emotions, as well as empathize and navigate the emotions of others.
   • It is a key driver of interpersonal relationships, effective communication, decision-making, and overall well-being.
   • Emotionally intelligent individuals tend to have stronger social skills, resilience, and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances.
2. The need to understand Emotional Intelligence in the current generation:
   • The modern world is characterized by increasing complexity, technological advancement, and fast-paced lifestyles, which can often lead to emotional overwhelm and disconnect.
   • The younger generation, in particular, is navigating a landscape where digital communication and social media have altered the way they interact and process emotions.
   • There is a growing recognition that technical skills and cognitive intelligence alone are not sufficient for success in both personal and professional realms.
3. Coping with Emotional Intelligence before its recognition:
   • Prior to the widespread acknowledgment of emotional intelligence, individuals and societies relied on more intuitive and implicit ways of developing and applying emotional skills.
   • Traditional systems, such as family structures, community networks, and cultural practices, often played a crucial role in nurturing emotional awareness, empathy, and conflict resolution.
   • However, the rapid social and technological changes of the modern era have disrupted many of these traditional support systems, leading to a greater need for explicit training and development of emotional intelligence.
4. The importance of addressing Emotional Intelligence in the current generation:
   • Developing emotional intelligence can help individuals better navigate the challenges of the modern world, including managing stress, fostering meaningful relationships, and making informed decisions.
   • Incorporating emotional intelligence training in education, workplace, and community settings can equip the younger generation with the necessary skills to thrive in a complex and emotionally demanding environment.
   • Addressing the importance of emotional intelligence can also help bridge the gap between cognitive and emotional development, leading to more well-rounded and adaptable individuals.

Ensuring accountability and upholding ethical governance in the implementation and use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is a crucial challenge that organizations must address. Here are some key strategies organizations can employ:

1. Establish Ethical AI Frameworks and Principles:
   • Develop and adopt a set of ethical principles and guidelines to govern the development, deployment, and use of AI systems. These may include principles such as fairness, transparency, privacy, accountability, and human-centricity.
   • Ensure these principles are aligned with the organization’s values and are clearly communicated to all stakeholders.
2. Implement Rigorous Governance Structures:
   • Create cross-functional AI governance committees or boards that include representatives from various disciplines, such as legal, ethics, data science, and subject matter experts.
   • These committees should be responsible for reviewing and approving AI initiatives, assessing potential risks and ethical implications, and ensuring compliance with established principles and regulations.
3. Conduct Comprehensive Risk Assessments:
   • Implement robust risk assessment processes to identify and mitigate potential harms, biases, and unintended consequences that may arise from the use of AI systems.
   • Consider the societal, environmental, and economic impacts of AI applications, and develop mitigation strategies to address these risks.
4. Ensure Transparency and Explainability:
   • Strive for transparency in the development, deployment, and decision-making processes of AI systems, enabling stakeholders to understand how the systems operate and the rationale behind their outputs.
   • Prioritize the development of interpretable and explainable AI models, which can be more easily understood by users and stakeholders.
5. Implement Accountability Mechanisms:
   • Establish clear lines of responsibility and accountability for the performance and outcomes of AI systems, including identifying specific individuals or teams responsible for their oversight and management.
   • Develop mechanisms for monitoring, auditing, and evaluating the ongoing performance of AI systems to ensure they continue to align with ethical principles and organizational goals.
6. Empower Employees and Engage Stakeholders:
   • Provide comprehensive training and education programs for employees involved in the development and deployment of AI systems, fostering a culture of ethical AI awareness and responsible decision-making.
   • Engage with external stakeholders, such as regulatory bodies, civil society organizations, and the public, to gather feedback, address concerns, and build trust in the organization’s use of AI technologies.
7. Advocate for Robust Regulatory Frameworks:
   • Actively participate in the development of industry-wide or governmental regulations and guidelines for the responsible use of AI, helping to shape policies that promote accountability and ethical governance.
   • Collaborate with policymakers, industry peers, and other stakeholders to contribute to the establishment of coherent and effective regulatory frameworks.

Institutionalised standards of collective justice are central to assessing fairness in international practices. Institutions such as the UN Security Council, the World Trade Organization, and others play an important role in moral assessment through the provisions of international standards, such as the prohibition of trade-distorting practices. Not only international institutions, but countries’ own values, such as India’s Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, are thought to aid in maintaining fairness in relations.
However, a big challenge in international relations is making one’s interests and actions consistent with the values they profess. While most countries pledge their commitment to non- interference and peaceful conduct of foreign policy, in reality, their national interests are defined in realist terms that hurtle them down the path of power maximisation and pit them against their co- aspirants.
Reasons for not adhering to fairness in international relations:

• Sense of insecurity: Balance-of-power politics around the world, born out of mutual distrust and a sense of insecurity, make it often difficult for nations to strictly adhere to values they profess. For example, countries’ pursuit of nuclear power in spite of their commitment to non-violence and peace.
• Just war theory: While countries often stay out of war to prevent loss of life and property, the decision to involve themselves in war during inevitable situations is often judged by the fairness of the action. For example, U.S decision to deploy nuclear bomb on Japan during World War II.
• Regional supremacy aspirations: Aspirations for regional supremacy and protecting one’s own economy by deviating the rival is often a common practice countries adopt. For example, China’s encouragement to Pakistan in terms of arms funding and helping to veto against the international sanctions despite knowing the threat it poses to India.
• Colonial hangover: While the non-interference and territorial sovereignty is at the centre stage of the global diplomacy, countries meddle with the foreign nation’s internal matters. For example, Britain Parliament discussion over abrogation of Article 370 in India.
• Distributive justice: Instead of taking responsibility over climate change mitigation practices, developed countries, which are majorly responsible for the current climate change, are not ready for an equitable contribution.
• Self-interest: Countries often look after the demands and needs of their own citizens, which come in contrast to international standards. For instance, global carbon control mechanisms do not approve of India’s industrial growth aspirations fuelled by fossil fuels.

With the looming crises of terrorism, climate induced migration, rising inequality after the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economic crisis, etc., it is important to resort to moral practises in international relations.

The nature and character of warfare is changing continuously. The first-generation warfare emphasized massed manpower and line-of-column tactics; the second involved machine guns and indirect fire; the third introduced maneuver and combined-arms warfare; and the fourth involved non-state adversaries. The current fifth-generation warfare is characterized by the use of non-kinetic military actions such as disinformation, cyber-attacks, and social engineering and non-contact warfare that comprises the use of long-range vectors such as rockets and missiles, electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, and unmanned aerial systems (UAS) or drones. These days, UAS have been deployed for intelligence and reconnaissance missions by many countries worldwide. The USA extensively used armed drones like the ‘MQ-1 Predator’ in its counter-terror (CT) and counter-insurgency (CI) operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The drone warfare has been further intensified during the Russia-Ukraine conflict when combat drones and drone swarms have been used. Against this backdrop, counter-drone systems are also being developed. The advent of drone and counter-drone systems has radically altered the way future wars will be fought, due to the following characteristics of this warfare:

• Futuristic technology: Drone warfare removes the risk to the soldiers, makes fewer mistakes than other weapon platforms, and with improvements in technology drones will become even more precise, efficient, and infallible in the future, thus rendering less precise, efficient, and fallible human forms of war obsolete.
• Reduced cost: Compared to other battlefield systems, a vast majority of drones are relatively economical. Therefore, countries with modest means can also mount swarm attacks to saturate and overwhelm the conventional defenses of their adversary.
• Ease of access: The ease with which any user can acquire drone technology from the international market makes it immune to international sanctions.
• Better surveillance and attack: Drones are capable of slipping across international borders with relative ease. They can acquire stealth features that can place them beyond the range of defensive missiles or below the horizon of defensive radar.
  • Their ability to loiter over targets allows them to observe “patterns of life” to provide surveillance data 24/7, identify and track potential targets, and determine the best time to strike to avoid civilian casualties. They are also claimed to be highly effective at satisfying the rules of war.
• Difficult to neutralize: It is hard to counter, and the elimination of some of the swarm’s elements does not neutralize the threat as the swarm is still capable of pursuing its collective mission. Drone in swarms can coordinate, communicate, and adjust their behavior with one another in response to real-time information.

Anticipating this change in modern warfare, DRDO has also developed a detect-and-destroy technology for drones, which has capabilities for hard kill (destroying a drone with lasers) and soft kill (jamming a drone’s signal). It is also working on new platforms to detect and disable drones. electromagnetic charge or shoot them down using electronic jamming, lasers, electromagnetic pulse, GPS spoofing, or a mix of all, deployed in a layered manner. However, barring a few exceptions like Israel, most countries lack effective anti-drone systems. While it is wise to focus on acquiring and building a variety of drones and coupling them with disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, it would be equally wise to focus on counter-drone technologies to mitigate the threats emanating from small rogue armed drones, that would require continuous and urgent research, development, and up-gradation