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India’s goods exports grew 6.2% in October, only the second such uptick this year, but imports jumped 12.3% to a record high of $65.03 billion, fuelled largely by higher imports of gold, which rose 95.4%, and oil.
The monthly goods trade deficit widened to an all-time high of $31.46 billion.
Despite the headline growth, October’s outbound shipments’ value of $33.6 billion was the lowest since last November.
Modi launches mission for most backward of the Scheduled Tribes (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
75 PVTGs [Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups] of the country who have been deprived of even basic amenities so far.
All previous governments did was count them and classify them. I don’t want to just add up numbers. I want to bring people together,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he launched the ₹24,000-crore PM-PVTG Development Mission and a Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra focused on government scheme saturation to the last mile in tribal districts.
In addition to launching these schemes, the Prime Minister released the 15th instalment of the PM-Kisan payout to farmers, and dedicated a host of projects worth over ₹7,000 crore to the nation, including a campus of the IIM in Ranchi, and projects in the coal, railways, roads, petroleum and natural gas sectors in Jharkhand.
Mr. Modi’s remarks, while celebrating the birth anniversary of tribal icon Birsa Munda in his birthplace in Jharkhand, came hours before election campaigning came to a close for the Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, where large numbers of farmers reside and the Model Code of Conduct is in place.
Editorial
As Gaza war rages, waiting for the other shoe to drop (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The Israel-Hamas war is now in its sixth week. Like the proverbial landlord, West Asians and much of the world, are currently in suspended animation wondering when and where the “second shoe” will drop and how big a crater it would cause on regional and global geopolitics and the economy.
While West Asia is no stranger to such shoe falls, several aspects of the current scrimmage are familiar, although some are new.
We need to dwell on them briefly before making any prognosis of the crisis. It has been just over 50 years since the 19-day Yom Kippur War of 1973, 41 years since Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and 17 years since a 33-day inconclusive war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.
Israel was forced to leave Gaza in 2005, largely due to Palestinian resistance after a 38-year-long occupation. Since then, it has launched several military campaigns against Gaza: 2008 (lasting 22 days); 2012 (eight days); 2014 (50 days); and 2021 (11 days).
Almost all Gaza conflicts involved Hamas firing rockets and the Israel Defense Forces making extensive air raids and missile attacks with occasional forays by armour-tipped infantry.
Their ceasefires were always mediated by Egypt, the only Arab country that has a border with Gaza. Of late, Qatar has developed some proximity with Hamas and the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a sister militancy in Gaza, through financial support and sheltering their leaders.
Opinion
A grave error in the law (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
In a long-awaited judgment in Supriyo, on October 17, the Supreme Court held that same-sex couples do not have the right to marry under the Special Marriage Act.
In doing so, the court not only laid down a fundamentally wrong interpretation of the Constitution but also overlooked its own precedents.
The petitioner’s argument on right to equality was simply this. Article 14 guarantees equality and equal protection of the law and Article 15 prohibits discrimination on grounds including sex.
The court has held in Navtej (2018) while decriminalising homosexuality that ‘sex’ under Article 15 takes in ‘sexual orientation’.
When the state refuses to recognise marriages of homosexual couples, solely on this ground, it violates the constitutional guarantee of non-discrimination.
The majority judgment justifies the exclusion of the Special Marriage Act by saying that the object of the statute was not to discriminate against same-sex persons.
Further, it is stated that absence of a law (to regulate same-sex marriages) does not amount to discrimination.
Text & Context
The price of persistent federal frictions (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
Disputes between the Centre and States regarding economic policies have a long history in India. However, in recent years the frequency and intensity of such disputes have increased and assumed the character of ‘persistent frictions’ in the federal system.
The current context of economic relations between the Centre and States is very different from the 1980s and 1990s. Continuing economic reforms since 1991 has led to the relaxation of many controls on investments, giving some room to States, but the autonomy regarding public expenditure policies is not absolute as State governments depend on the Centre for their revenue receipts.
Several States have recently pushed back as a result of which the ‘give and take’ equation between the Centre and the States has given way to a more hardened stand by both, leaving little room to negotiate.
The increasingly fractious Centre-State ties have chipped away at the edifice of cooperative federalism.
News
FATF team in India to hold on-site review meetings (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
A Financial Action Task Force (FATF) team is in India as part of the process to conduct the country’s mutual evaluations to ascertain if authorities have put in place and effectively implemented the required legal framework against money laundering and terrorist financing.
It is learnt that the team arrived in Delhi in the first week of November. During the on-site visit, expected to last around two weeks, the FATF team will hold meetings with senior government officials and representatives of the private sector.
Usually, such an FATF team comprises over a dozen members. They include FATF Secretariat officials and domain experts.
They may meet senior functionaries of the Department of Revenue under the Finance Ministry and officials of various enforcement agencies, such as the Enforcement Directorate, Narcotics Control Bureau and National Investigation Agency and financial regulators.
Tribal body declares ‘self-rule’ in a few districts of Manipur (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF) representing the Kuki-Zo people in Manipur has announced “self-rule” in the districts dominated by the community members.
The tribal community will have a separate chief minister, and government officials from the community who were forced out of the State capital, Imphal, when the ethnic violence erupted in Manipur on May 3, will be given responsibilities, an ITLF leader said.
ITLF general secretary Muan Tombing told that in the wake of the “selective justice” by the Union government, they were compelled to take the step.
We do not care if the Centre doesn’t recognise us. The Kuki-Zo people in Tengnoupal, Kangpokpi and Churachandpur districts will have self-rule. We have no expectation from the ‘Meitei Manipur government’. There was no response from the Union Home Ministry on the issue.
World
‘Greenhouse gases hit record high in 2022’ (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere hit new record highs in 2022, with no end in sight to the rising trend, the United Nations warned.
The UN’s World Meteorological Organization said levels of the three main greenhouse gases — the climate-warming carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — all broke records last year.
Such levels of heat-trapping gases will mean further temperature increases, more extreme weather and higher sea levels, the WMO said in its 19th annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.
Despite decades of warnings from the scientific community, thousands of pages of reports and dozens of climate conferences, we are still heading in the wrong direction.
The 2015 Paris Agreement saw countries agree to cap global warming at “well below” 2o C above average levels measured between 1850 and 1900 — and 1.5o C if possible.
China, U.S. pledge to step up climate efforts ahead of major UN meeting (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
China and the U.S. have pledged to accelerate their efforts to address climate change ahead of a major UN meeting on the issue, making a commitment to take steps to reduce emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases besides carbon dioxide.
The joint announcement came on the eve of a summit between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. Cooperation between the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases is considered vital to the success of the UN climate talks opening in two weeks in Dubai.
Business
Gold drives trade deficit to new high (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
India’s goods exports grew only for the second time in 2023-24 in October, albeit on a low base, rising 6.2% to $33.6 billion, but imports jumped to a record high of $65.03 billion, 12.3% over last year, fuelled by higher gold inflows.
Consequently, India’s monthly goods trade deficit widened to an all-time high of $31.46 billion, eclipsing the previous record of $29.23 billion in September 2022. October’s outbound shipments’ value was also the lowest since last November, and 2.5% below September’s.
October’s trade figures, with goods exports rising 6.2%, along with indications from the first week of November, confirm that green shoots that we spotted in August are now stabilising.
In 2022-23, India’s goods exports had crossed $450 billion. Between April and October this year, merchandise exports stand at nearly $245 billion, 7% below last year’s figure in the same period as per provisional Commerce Ministry data released.
Officials stressed that though volumes of exports have been rising or stable for some commodities, lower prices vis-à-vis last year were responsible for dragging overall shipment values.
Science
Raychaudhuri, the physicist who quietly defied the system (Page no. 20)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
A young Indian physicist was under pressure. His heart was set on working in the field of general relativity – the study of space, time, and gravity. But the director of his institute stood in the way.
The physicist was told that he had to work on a field of the director’s choosing, or leave. He still kept at it, working on the mysteries of gravity in his spare time.
He ended up writing the most significant paper on general relativity to have come out of India. This young physicist was Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri.
The central result of his paper, published in 1955, is now known as the Raychaudhuri Equation. It was important to the work of Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose, and others – work that revolutionised general relativity.
This year is Raychaudhuri’s birth centenary.
Raychaudhuri was born in Barisal (now in Bangladesh) in 1923 and educated in Kolkata. After completing his MSc in physics from Science College, he joined the Indian Association of Cultivation of Science (IACS) to pursue experimental physics research.
NASA, ISRO prepare to launch joint space mission (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) is set to be launched in the first quarter of 2024 after a few tests, particularly those related to vibration.
He is expecting the launch of NISAR “not earlier than January” from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on board an ISRO Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark-II (LVM-2).
NISAR is a low-earth orbit observatory being jointly developed by ISRO and NASA. The mission has a three-year duration and will survey all of the earth’s land and ice-covered surfaces once every 12 days. This will start after a 90-day satellite commissioning period.
As a result, it will provide spatially and temporally consistent data for understanding changes in the planet’s ecosystems, ice mass, vegetation, biomass, sea-level rise, groundwater, and natural hazards.
“The vibration testing that’s underway, but there’s a whole slew of performance tests that we need to do,” Mr. Barela said, including battery and simulation tests.
They will also test the radars and various spacecraft electronics for performance. “So, a lot of testing remains but the big environments test, the only one remaining now, is vibration.
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director Laurie Leshin said NISAR is “better than anything that was flown in the past”.