Whatsapp 93125-11015 For Details
Addressing the country from the ramparts of Red Fort in New Delhi, marking 75 years of the nation's Independence, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India was entering a decisive phase in its war against corruption and that nepotism and misogyny were some of the big challenges that were not just a political issue but existed in other institutions of society and public life, and needed to be combated.
In his ninth consecutive speech from the Red Fort, Mr. Modi said it was a historic day for India and the completion of 75 years of Independence was a time to step towards a new direction with a new resolve.
Our nation has proved that we have an inherent strength from our diversity and the common thread of patriotism makes India unshakeable," Mr. Modi said, as he termed India the "mother of democracy".
He also gave a call for setting big resolutions and spelled out "Panch Pran" (five resolves) to fulfil the freedom fighters' dreams for the country at India's Independence centenary by 2047.
He said Indians should focus on the five pledges — a resolve of developed India; removing any trace of the colonial mindset; taking pride in our legacy; our strength of unity; and fulfilling the duties of citizens with honesty, which should be done by the Prime Minister and Chief Ministers as well.
"In no part of our mind or heart should there be any ounce of slavery," the Prime Minister said elaborating on how India's mindset should be completely decolonised.
"How long will the world continue to give certificates to us? Shall we not set our own standards? Can a country of 130 crore people not make an effort to exceed its standards?" he asked, while also pointing to the New Education Policy (NEP) as one that would serve this purpose. He also said that the country should be proud of every Indian language.
Mr. Modi dedicated a big part of his speech to hit out at corruption, saying it was seen that some people do not have enough space to hide their illicit money while many in the country do not have enough space to live, an obvious pointer to the recovery of huge amounts of allegedly unaccounted cash and other assets during raids at some leaders of Opposition parties.
"Corruption is eating the country like termites and we have to fight it with full might. It is our endeavour that those who have looted the country have to return it," he said, while also slamming efforts to "glorify" them, an apparent reference to the Opposition parties defending those accused of corruption.
Editorial
The fragility of the Northeast’s integration (Page no: 6)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The integration of Northeast India into mainstream Indian life has been on the national agenda from the very start of India’s journey as an independent nation.
The region has always been seen to be somewhat alien and needing assimilation, which found (and finds) reflection in administrative terms too. Two such measures, on opposite ends of the spectrum, should characterise this predicament: the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution introduced in 1949 and the draconian Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), promulgated in 1958. Seventy-five years after Independence, the question is how successful has this integration been?
The British had also considered leaving this “Mongolian Fringe” — a term British India Foreign Secretary Olaf Caroe coined in a paper in 1940 — as a Crown Colony.
This entity was to be a combination of hill regions of the Northeast and Upper Burma. The Governor of Assam, Robert Reid, flagged this in a 22-page note in 1937 titled ‘A Note on the Future of the Present Excluded, Partially Excluded and Tribal Areas of Assam’, by saying people here, “neither racially, historically, culturally, nor linguistically”, had any affinity with the rest of India.
There were other similar thoughts too as David R. Syiemlieh documents in his On the Edge of Empire: Four British Plans for North East India 1941-1947.
These “Excluded” and “Partially Excluded” areas Reid mentions, were constituted largely of the unadministered hills of Assam separated from its revenue plains by an “Inner Line” created by the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation 1873, and this was a year before Assam was separated from Bengal and made a Chief Commissioner’s Province.
Earlier, Assam was annexed into British Bengal after the First Anglo Burmese War 1824-26 and the signing of the Treaty of Yandabo.
British Assam was virtually the entire Northeast of today, excluding two kingdoms, Tripura and Manipur. In these kingdoms too, though no Inner Line was introduced, the British brought in similar administrative mechanisms separating “excluded” hills from the revenue plains.
In Tripura, the plains of Chakla Roshanabad were annexed to British Bengal and the Tripura kings were allowed to be landowners there but not claim sovereignty over them. In Manipur, the hills and the central revenue plains of the Imphal valley came to be treated as separate administrative regions in 1907.
The Crown Colony plan was ultimately dropped on grounds of administrative feasibility. Reid’s idea probably was also influenced by a memorandum to the Simon Commission in 1929 by a nascent Naga nationalist body, Naga Club, which argued that Nagas were not Indians.
The Sixth Schedule was independent India’s first administrative instrument for undivided Assam’s tribal belt. The works of Verrier Elwin, British-born Indian anthropologist, who advocated for tribals to be encouraged to live by their own geniuses, were its inspiration.
The Schedules mandated the formation of Autonomous District Councils in which, among others, tribal customary laws were given legitimacy.
The temples that Jawaharlal Nehru built (Page no: 6)
(GS Paper 1, Significant Personalities)
As India celebrates 75 years of Independence, Indians will see this as an occasion to recall Jawaharlal Nehru’s immortal speech, “A Tryst with Destiny”, delivered on the night of August 14, 1947, and its haunting poetic expressions — “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India awakes to life and freedom.”
For most, that speech and the man who spoke those words symbolised the spirit of a new nation just born. For them, some of the recent attempts to undermine Nehru’s place in history may seem like a minor distraction.
Nehru’s luminous legacy is deeply laid in India’s growth story since Independence. In May this year, when the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) launched India’s largest public issue and collected ₹21,000 crore from the market, the nation was aware that this was a Nehruvian institution established in the early years of independent India.
Equally, when we look at the celebrated names of global CEOs and corporate leaders, we can recognise many of them as Nehru’s ‘children’, as they were educated at the iconic Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIM).
In 1947, Nehru, as Prime Minister, inherited an India that was politically shattered, socially divided and emotionally devastated.
Yet, with restraint and self-confidence, he steered the country through those turbulent times and laid out the vision of a modern, progressive nation that quietly earned the respect of the global community.
Nehru’s vision of India was anchored in a set of ideas such as democracy, secularism, inclusive economic growth, free press and non-alignment in international affairs and also in institutions that would lay the foundation for India’s future growth.
These institutions touched every kind of economic activity, ranging from agriculture to aviation and space research. An agnostic Nehru described them as “the temples of modern India”.
There were around 75 of these institutions including the Bhakra-Nangal dam, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the LIC, the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Indian Oil Corporation, the National Library of India and the National Institute of Design.
Nehru saw them occupying the commanding heights of a stable, self-sustaining economy with people’s welfare as their central mission. Nehru’s inclusive vision ensured that these institutions spanned the entire social spectrum.
When the IITs were planned, Nehru also established a network of Kendriya Vidyalayas. Along with large projects in steel and petroleum, Nehru saw the importance of promoting small and cottage industries and set up the Khadi and Village Industries Commission. When Bhilai, Durgapur and Rourkela were taking shape as functional townships, the Prime Minister also felt the need for a well-designed, modern city and thus was born Chandigarh. Chandigarh was perhaps India’s first ‘smart city’ when that term was not yet fashionable.
OPED
A road map for India-EU ties (Page no: 7)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
While India celebrates its 75th year of Independence, it also celebrates 60 years of diplomatic relations with the European Union (EU). A cooperation agreement signed in 1994 took the bilateral relationship beyond trade and economic cooperation.
The first India-EU Summit, in June 2000, marked a watershed in the evolution of the relationship. At the fifth India-EU Summit in 2004, the relationship was upgraded to a ‘Strategic Partnership’.
The two sides adopted a Joint Action Plan in 2005 towards strengthening dialogue and consultation mechanisms in the political and economic spheres, enhancing trade and investment, and bringing peoples and cultures together.
The 15th India-EU Summit, in July 2020, provided a common road map to guide joint action and further strengthen the partnership over the next five years.
The road map highlights engagement across five domains: foreign policy and security cooperation; trade and economy; sustainable modernisation partnership; global governance; and people-to-people relations.
The India-EU partnership has grown rapidly ever since. Bilateral trade between the two surpassed $116 billion in 2021-22. The EU is India’s second largest trading partner after the U.S., and the second largest destination for Indian exports. There are 6,000 European companies in the country that directly and indirectly create 6.7 million jobs.
Beyond the economic partnership, India and the EU have several avenues of collaboration. For example, the ‘green strategic partnership’ between India and Denmark aims to address climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, and the India-Nordic Summit in May focused on green technologies and industry transformation that are vital for sustainable and inclusive growth. All this will act as a catalyst for enhanced cooperation between the two regions.
Cooperation with the EU in the defence sector has also increased substantially. This is critical for India at this juncture, to reduce its hardware dependence on Russia in the backdrop of the Ukraine conflict and seek diversification of its armament imports from other regions with latest technologies in wake of its confrontation with China.
The shackles of 1861 need to go (Page no: 7)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
As India is celebrating 75 years of Independence, the police continue to be in the public gaze, most often for antagonistic reasons. Criminal laws and procedures, though modified, and the shadows of India’s colonial legacy do not appear to leave the police agency any time soon.
India’s parliamentarians rose to the occasion and passed The Probation of Offenders Act, 1958, with an objective more to reform, rather than punish, offenders.
Realising the urgent need to check the social evil of dowry, the Dowry Prohibition Act was passed in 1961. More revolutionary changes were made in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in 1983 and 1986 and by introducing Sections 498A (cruelty by husband and his relatives) and 304B (dowry death) along with certain amendments in the Evidence Act. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, was enacted in 1989.
The definition of rape has been widened and offences related to sexual assault made tougher. Comprehensive laws such as the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, and the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, have been enacted. Electronic documents and signatures have been given legal sanctity to facilitate online transactions and check cybercrime under the Information Technology Act of 2000.
The National Investigation Agency was constituted in 2008 (after the deadly 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai) to investigate and prosecute offences affecting national security. All these statutes have added a progressive and more humane chapter to the history of our criminal justice system.
The constitutional courts have also made far-reaching contributions. By reading down Section 377 of the IPC, the Supreme Court granted relief to the LGBTQ+ community.
Custodial torture and sexual harassment of women have been held to be violations of fundamental rights. The jurisprudence of providing compensation to victims of crime has evolved over time.
The right to privacy has been recognised as a fundamental right. The demon of ‘sedition’ (Section 124A), which was brought into the IPC in 1870 to suppress the national movement, has recently been caged by the Supreme Court so that its constitutionality can be decided and its alleged misuse be curbed.
Attempts have been made to blend some elements of the inquisitorial system into the (prevalent) adversarial system by making judicial inquiry into custodial death and custodial rape mandatory and dig out the truth to punish the guilty.
However, the police continue to be haunted by allegations of being a brute force. The trust deficit does not appear to have bridged despite the power to arrest having been curtailed, the use of handcuffs restrained, the presence of a lawyer permitted during interrogation, CCTV cameras installed in the police stations, and human rights bodies allowed to keep a constant eye. Lawmakers are still reluctant and the judiciary apprehensive about making voluntary confessions before a police officer admissible.
Explainer
The conflict over Nagorno Karabakh (Page no: 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh has been at the centre of three major wars and multiple clashes for decades.
The recent flare-up began on August 3 after Azerbaijan claimed that it had captured the territory in Karabakh in a retaliatory campaign, after an Armenian attack killed one Azerbaijani soldier.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains stalemated despite the several ceasefire agreements reached in the past. Both Baku and Yerevan claim absolute historic ownership of the region which is located within the boundaries of Azerbaijan but is populated largely by ethnic Armenians.
Following Azerbaijan’s announcement of capturing Karabakh, the military in Nagorno-Karabakh disputed the claim and accused Azerbaijan of killing two soldiers, declaring a “partial mobilisation” in response to the clash.
Armenia has called on the international community to help stop Azerbaijan’s “aggressive actions” claiming that it continues its “policy of terror” against the population of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Russia has also accused Azerbaijan of breaking the ceasefire agreement of 2020 and claimed that it was “taking measures to stabilise the situation” with Armenian and Azerbaijani representatives.
The nine-point agreement of November 10, 2020 was signed by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The agreement imposed an immediate ceasefire, a timeline for withdrawal from Azerbaijan’s occupied regions, the introduction of Russian peacekeepers, and the need for new transport corridors.
However, this failed to initiate a peace agreement because it altered the power balance between the two countries and lacked clarity on several issues resulting in the subsequent ceasefire violations on both sides.
The recurring ceasefire violations have been triggered due to several unresolved issues. The major issues include delimiting the border between the two countries, the nature of new transportation corridors in the region, and the future of Nagorno-Karabakh and its current ethnic Armenian population.
First, the issue of delineating the shared international border. Following the 2020 agreement, a substantial amount of territory was handed over from Armenian Karabakh to Azerbaijan making the once soft border between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, a hard international border.
However, Armenia and Azerbaijan have never agreed upon a boundary between them in the past and the 2020 ceasefire statement did not make it clear on how exactly the border should be drawn out.
Second, the dispute over transport routes. The overland route that goes from Stepanakert (a city within the Nagorno-Karabakh region) to Armenia has become an issue between the two countries.
The controversial visit of a Chinese vessel to Hambantota (Page no: 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
On August 13, Sri Lanka approved the arrival of a Chinese satellite-tracking vessel to its southern Chinese-funded Hambantota port. It was the second approval from the island nation’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after it first cleared the visit on July 12.
In the weeks in between, India raised concerns over the ship’s visit with President Ranil Wickremesinghe, and officially commented on it, while Indian media splashed headlines of a “Chinese spy ship” hovering in the Indian Ocean.
Caught in a delicate diplomatic and geopolitical spot, Colombo gave its nod after “extensive consultations” with “all parties”.
Yuan Wang 5 was described by the Sri Lankan government as a “scientific research ship”. The BRISL (Belt & Road Initiative Sri Lanka), a Colombo-based organisation studying China’s ambitious connectivity project, was the first to draw attention to the visit in a Twitter post late July.
It said that the Yuan Wang 5 will conduct “satellite control and research tracking in the northwestern part of the Indian Ocean Region” through August and September.
Vessels of the Yuan Wang class are said to be used for tracking and supporting satellite as well as intercontinental ballistic missiles by the People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force.
India has expressed its concern over the Chinese vessel visit. The spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs commented twice on the issue.
Addressing the weekly media conference in New Delhi, the official initially stated that India “carefully monitors any development having a bearing on its security and economic interests” and later said that they were “rejecting insinuations” that Sri Lanka was “pressured”.
After India raised the matter with President Ranil Wickremesinghe, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar took it up with his Sri Lankan counterpart Ali Sabry on the side-lines of the recent ASEAN summit in Cambodia.
In a similar bilateral meeting in Phnom Penh, U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken too raised the issue with Mr. Sabry, The Hindu reliably learned from official sources in Colombo.
At the same forum, Mr. Sabry reportedly discussed the matter with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, sources said. An official statement said the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister firmly backed the ‘One China Policy’ that President Wickremesinghe earlier endorsed.
The developments showed that Colombo was caught between the U.S. and India on the one hand, and China on the other. That too at a time when the Sri Lankan government is counting on all their support as the island nation, hit by a devastating economic crisis, embarks on debt restructuring ahead of a promised International Monetary Fund (IMF) package.
World
India gifts Dornier aircraft to Sri Lanka (Page no: 13)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
India handed over a Dornier aircraft to Sri Lanka in the presence of President Ranil Wickremesinghe, reaffirming its security ties with the island nation.
Vice-Admiral S.N. Ghormade and High Commissioner of India to Sri Lanka, Gopal Baglay, were in attendance at the handing-over event held on Indian Independence Day, along with dignitaries of the Government and armed forces of Sri Lanka, including the Defence Secretary, CDS and the Commanders of Sri Lanka Army, Navy and Air Force.
“Security of India and Sri Lanka are enhanced by mutual understanding, mutual trust and cooperation. Gifting of Dornier 228 is India’s latest contribution to this cause,” High Commissioner Baglay said, a day before the arrival of a Chinese space and satellite tracking vessel that India has voiced concern over.
Despite New Delhi conveying its apprehensions at high levels, including to President Ranil Wickremesinghe, Colombo has cleared the visit of the Chinese vessel, after requesting its arrival be deferred by five days.
The gifting of the Dornier aircraft to the Sri Lanka Air Force “is of relevance to and a step to meet its requirements for maritime safety and security,” the Indian High Commission said in a tweet, adding:
It is an example of India’s strength adding to the strength of its friends and neighbours, including those in Indian Ocean Region and the Bay of Bengal, such as Sri Lanka”.
The capability of the aircraft to undertake search and rescue operations “exemplifies its direct benefit to the people”, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.
The gift to the people of Sri Lanka will equip the country to contribute more towards the security of the Indian Ocean Region at large.
In a solemn wreath laying ceremony at the IPKF Memorial, Vice-Admiral Ghormade paid homage to the brave Indian soldiers who sacrificed their lives in Sri Lanka.
Last week, Sri Lanka Air Force announced that the Indian Air force was gifting it a Dornier 228 Maritime Patrol Aircraft, while noting another aircraft would be donated within two years.
The Indian gift was in response to a request from the Sri Lankan government in 2018 for two Dornier Reconnaissance Aircraft to enhance the maritime surveillance capabilities of the island nation.
Sri Lanka is a member of the ‘Colombo Security Conclave’, that began as a trilateral initiate involving India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, and later included Mauritius, for maritime cooperation in the region.