Whatsapp 93125-11015 For Details
Days after the devastating three-way train accident in Odisha, which claimed the lives of 275 passengers and left more than 900 injured, the Indian Railways has decided to secure the goomties that house signalling equipment on railway station premises with a double-lock arrangement.
A goomty is a small cabin at level crossings or near stations where railway equipment is kept. In a circular to the General Managers of all Zonal Railways, directed them to launch a month-long safety drive to ensure that the goomties located within the railway station limits are provided with double locks.
The instructions to secure the signalling equipment come at a time when a signalling failure is suspected to be the reason why the Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express entered the loop line while its signal was cleared for passage on the main line at the Bahanaga Bazaar station in Balasore district of Odisha.
Senior officials were told to inspect and ensure the existing double-locking arrangement for relay rooms, a sensitive installation that controls the signals, points and the interlocking system at railway stations, where the stationmaster would have one key and the signal maintainer the other. They were also told to ensure that an SMS alert is generated upon opening or closing of relay rooms.
Editorial
A word of advice to the Delhi police (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The protest by India’s medal winning wrestlers has been in the news for long. Two cases of sexual harassment were reportedly registered on April 28, 2023 by the Delhi police against the president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), after the intervention of the Supreme Court of India, based on a petition filed by a few wrestlers.
The cases were under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) concerning the outraging of the modesty of a woman and sexual harassment, while the other was with respect to outraging the modesty of a woman under the IPC.
While the investigation of these two cases is under way by the Delhi police, the complainant wrestlers are still consistent in their demand— the arrest of the accused.
They too offered to undergo a narco-analysis test when the accused offered to undergo any such test to prove his innocence.
Some of the allegations date back to previous years, the implication being that there was a delay in lodging the complaint with the police.
At the stage of the registration of the first information report (FIR), if a complaint has the ingredients of a cognisable offence, the mandate of the Supreme Court (given in Lalita Kumari vs Govt. of Uttar Pradesh and others (2014)) could not have been violated.
The veracity of allegations (of a cognisable offence) cannot be inquired into before registering an FIR. In case the delay in reporting the matter is over three months, the reasons for the delay are to be explained satisfactorily.
It is also a recognised principle of law that a mere delay in an FIR is no ground to discard the prosecution story, if the truthfulness and plausibility of the explanation for the delay are established to the satisfaction of the court.
Otherwise, it may need corroboration with additional and credible evidence. Therefore, the insistence of the Delhi police on holding a preliminary inquiry and a delay in registering cases does not seem to be justified.
In the short term, stabilise the Line of Actual Control (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
For the last few years, the situation on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) has continued to remain extremely tense; it has just stopped short of a war, with the Doklam and Galwan crises.
Every now and then, the media reports incidents of transgressions and stand-offs between Indian and Chinese troops at the LAC even as both countries incur a huge expenditure in ensuring defensive preparedness as well as better military infrastructure as they induct men, material and equipment close to the LAC.
After Galwan, we have seen one of the biggest mobilisations of Chinese forces into Tibet. There has also been an increase in rhetoric and jingoism in both countries, calling for more aggression.
The seriousness of the matter can be gauged from the statement made recently by India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar at a media group’s meet — that “the situation along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh remains very fragile and quite dangerous in terms of military assessment”.
This state of affairs is not sustainable and can trigger a major conflict, thereby destabilising the entire region and adversely impacting the world, politically and economically.
Therefore, it is in everyone’s interest that the LAC is made stable and the two giant neighbours see a benign rise.
The complexity of the India-China border problem precludes a permanent solution on an immediate basis. Chinese territorial claims include the entire Arunachal Pradesh and the occupied Aksai Chin.
No Chinese government, more so the present one under Xi Jinping, is likely to tone down the narrative that has been built over a long time, which claims Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh as two of the five fingers that are attached to the Tibetan Palm.
Similarly, the Indian political establishment is not in a position to make any concessions to facilitate a mutually acceptable border settlement.
Opinion
Dealing with deepfakes (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
A deepfake is something that a machine has produced using deep learning and which contains false information. It pays to keep the definition of deepfakes, however vague, in front of us because of the way deepfakes distort reality and attempt to persuade us that something false is true.
Shortly after, a photo appeared to show four of the beleaguered wrestlers posing with wide smiles for a selfie in the van.
If you had believed the photo to be real, you might also have believed that the wrestlers had orchestrated a clash with the police and that they wanted to be photographed while being ‘roughed up’.
This is what the person who created the photo may have intended. Though it emerged later that this photo had been morphed, and was not a deepfake, creating such visuals has become child’s play.
Deepfaking is a significant ‘upgrade’ from photoshopping images as it transcends the limits of human skill. Here, machines iteratively process large amounts of data to falsify images and videos, sometimes in real time, and with fewer imperfections.
Deepfake images and videos thus have an unsettling legacy. People worldwide have already used the technology to create a video of Barack Obama verbally abusing Donald Trump, hack facial recognition software, manufacture ‘revenge porn’, etc.
On May 22, a deepfake image purporting to show a towering column of dark smoke rising from the Pentagon received sober coverage from a few Indian television news channels. The image was soon found to have been machine-made.
Explainer
What is affecting trade momentum? (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Mired in a slowing economy, inflationary setting and tighter monetary controls worldover, India’s merchandise exports shrunk 12.7% on a year-on-year (YoY) basis to $34.66 billion in April — a six-month low. Imports fell sharper by 14% to $49.90 billion during the same period.
As reported earlier, the fall in imports and exports is not limited to India as other countries too have recorded similar declines — affirming the notion about slowing global demand.
The essential headwinds observed with respect to global trade are weaker economic activities worldwide, inflation and tightening of monetary policies, disrupted supply chains because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and financial instability because of the collapse of several financial institutions in advanced economies.
The ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe continues to have a bearing on the prices of energy, food and commodities. As observed by the World Trade Organization (WTO), though food and energy prices receded from their post conflict peaks by the fourth quarter last year, “they remained high by historical standards and continued to erode real incomes and import demand” during the mentioned period.
The impact of energy prices was strongest during the winter months in Europe as Russia was among the largest suppliers of energy to Europe before it was sanctioned.
Europe responded to the loss of gas shipments from Russia by shifting to other suppliers, including the U.S., Qatar, Norway and Algeria.
This potentially increased LNG prices elsewhere such as Japan, where the prices doubled between January last year to February this year.
The collapse of financial institutions — such as of the crypto exchange FTX (November 2022) alongside three banks in the U.S. since March (the Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank), and the loss of confidence in Credit Suisse added to the troubled scenario.
As the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in its latest update (in April) concluded, the events raised “the spectre of financial contagion in an already slowing economy”.
News
India, U.S. finalise road map for defence industrial cooperation (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
India and the U.S. on Monday concluded a road map for ‘Defence Industrial Cooperation’ which shall guide the policy direction for the next few years towards cooperation in high technology areas and identifying opportunities for co-development and co-production.
This was concluded during the bilateral meeting between Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and visiting U.S. Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin.
“The two Ministers explored ways of building resilient supply chains. Both sides will identify opportunities for co-development of new technologies and co-production of existing & new systems and facilitate increased collaboration between defence start-up ecosystems of the two countries.
Towards these objectives, they concluded a road map for U.S.-India Defence Industrial Cooperation which shall guide the policy direction for the next few years.
The two sides discussed a substantial range of bilateral defence cooperation issues, with particular focus on identifying ways to strengthen industrial cooperation.
Mr. Austin reached India on Sunday evening from Singapore on a two-day visit. He was given a tri-service guard of honour.
After the meeting, Mr. Singh said on Twitter that the talks revolved around enhancing defence cooperation in several areas, including convergence of strategic interests and enhanced security cooperation.
“India-U.S. partnership is critical for ensuring a free, open and rules-bound Indo-Pacific region. We look forward to closely work with the U.S. for capacity building and further consolidating our strategic partnership,” he said.
Both sides reviewed the robust and multifaceted bilateral defence cooperation activities and agreed to maintain the momentum of engagement, the statement said, while noting that they welcomed the inaugural dialogues held recently focusing on defence Artificial Intelligence and defence space.
World
After a 7-year gap, Iran set to reopen embassy in Riyadh (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Iran is set to reopen its embassy in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday following a seven-year closure, Tehran and a diplomatic source said, sealing a Chinese-brokered rapprochement deal announced in March.
Saudi Arabia severed relations with Iran in 2016 after its embassy in Tehran and consulate in the northwestern city of Mashhad were attacked during protests over Riyadh’s execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.
Iran’s diplomatic mission, which was expelled by Saudi authorities, will return under the leadership of Alireza Enayati, who previously served as Iran’s Ambassador to Kuwait.
Tehran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani announced the reopening in a statement on Monday, confirming earlier comments by a diplomatic source in Riyadh.
Iran’s embassy in Riyadh, its consulate in Jeddah and its representative office to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) “will be officially reopened.
Saudi Arabia has yet to confirm when it will reopen its embassy in Tehran or its pick for Ambassador.
He had previously served as assistant to the Foreign Minister and director general of Gulf affairs at the Foreign Ministry.
After years of discord, the two Middle East heavyweights signed a surprise reconciliation agreement in China on March 10.
Iran and Saudi Arabia had backed opposing sides in conflict zones across West Asia for years.