Whatsapp 93125-11015 For Details
Days after India and China held the 19th round of military talks on resolving existing issues on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, Indian military commanders on the ground are discussing possible modalities for limited disengagement at certain mutually-accepted points along the boundary.
The discussions, an official source said, are aimed at setting the stage for limited disengagement along the LAC on further orders, even as regular interactions between local military commanders on the ground will continue alongside other confidence-building measures.
A limited disengagement is being chalked out in phases. However, its implementation is subject to approvals at appropriate levels.
This development is taking place at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping are in Johannesburg for the BRICS Summit and all eyes are on a possible meeting between the two leaders on the Summit sidelines. Moreover, Xi is scheduled to travel to Delhi for the G20 Summit next month.
Last week, India and China held Major General-level talks at Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) and Chushul, based on which the subordinate commanders have been chalking out various possible plans for limited redeployment of troops in their respective areas of responsibility.
PM at BRICS: Looking forward to bilaterals, India will soon be a global growth engine (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
AS he began his three-day official visit to South Africa for the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that he looked forward to holding bilateral meetings with some of the leaders present there.
All eyes are on a possible meeting between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit in Johannesburg. On Tuesday, the two leaders met along with other BRICS leaders at the Leaders’ Retreat.
Speaking at the BRICS Business Forum leaders’ dialogue earlier in the evening, Modi said the people of India have made a commitment to make it a developed country by 2047.
Covid-19 pandemic has taught us the importance of resilient and inclusive supply chains. Mutual trust and transparency is very important to achieve this. We can collectively work towards the welfare of the Global South and make a significant contribution towards that.
Stressing that India will become a US$ 5-trillion economy soon, Modi said India will become the growth engine for the world in the coming years, and the ease of doing business has improved with “mission-mode” reforms being undertaken by his government.
Govt & Politics
SC: Can’t say no Article 370 since Jan 1957 (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
The Supreme Court asked how it can be contended that Article 370 of the Constitution ceased to operate after January 1957, as that would mean the Indian Constitution would not apply to the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The net consequence would be that the Constitution of India, in its application to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, would stand frozen as of January 1957.
The CJI was responding to submissions of senior advocate Dinesh Dwivedi, who, while arguing against changes made by the government to Article 370, said the provision had ceased to operate after the J & K Constituent Assembly went out of existence in January 1957.
Dwivedi cited the speech by N Gopalaswami Ayyangar to the Constituent Assembly of India on the “commitment” made to the people of J&K to buttress his argument that the country cannot return from it.
G20 countries gave record $1.4 trillion to support fossil fuels in 2022: report (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
G20 members provided a record $1.4 trillion (approximately Rs 116 lakh crore) in public money to support fossil fuels in 2022, according to a study — Fanning the Flames: G20 Provides Record Financial Support for Fossil Fuels — by International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and partners.
The report, to be released (August 23), states that the amount, which includes fossil fuel subsidies ($1 trillion), investments by state-owned enterprises ($322 billion) and lending from public financial institutions ($50 billion), is more than double the pre-Covid-19 and pre-energy crisis levels of 2019.
The report comes ahead of the Leaders’ Summit when the Group of 20 will meet in Delhi on September 9-10 and attempt to gain consensus on climate change.
These figures are a stark reminder of the massive amount of public money G20 governments continue to pour into fossil fuels despite the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change.
The G20 has the power and the responsibility to transform our fossil-based energy systems. It is crucial for the bloc to put fossil fuel subsidies on the Delhi Leaders’ Summit agenda and take meaningful actions to eliminate all public financial flows for coal, oil and gas.
Explained
5 things you did not know about Chandrayaan, other moon missions (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The Chandrayaan-3 mission has been generating a lot of discussion around India’s space programme, and Moon missions in general. Here are a few things you may not be aware of.
Chandrayaan-1, India’s first mission to the Moon in 2008, was just an Orbiter. When the spacecraft was being assembled, President A P J Abdul Kalam visited the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) office. According to an account by former ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair, Kalam asked scientists what evidence Chandrayaan-1 would have to show it had been to the Moon.
When the scientists said it would have pictures of the lunar surface, Kalam apparently shook his head and said that would not be enough. He then suggested that the spacecraft carry an instrument that could be made to fall on the Moon’s surface.
ISRO heeded Kalam’s advice and made design changes to accommodate a new instrument. This Moon Impact Probe hit the lunar surface, and became the first Indian object on the Moon.
Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashed on the lunar surface on Saturday. An earlier version of the same lander was supposed to go on India’s Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, but did not.
Young Indians, aging workforce (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
While addressing the nation on Independence Day, Prime Minister Modi made a special mention to India being a youthful nation and highlighted the opportunities that lay before India’s youth.
Today, while the countries around the world are witnessing an age structure that is growing old, India is moving energetically towards its youthful age structure.
It is a period of great pride because today India has the highest population under the age of 30. This is what we have in my country, the youth below the age of 30 years; my country has crores of hands, crores of brains, crores of dreams, crores of resolutions! So, my brothers and sisters, my family members, we can get the desired results.
People hardly get the kind of opportunity that our youngsters are getting now, and so we don’t want to lose it. I have utmost faith in our youth power.
There is huge potential/capability in our youth power and our policies as well as our ways provide an enabling environment to strengthen it.
However, an analysis of India’s workforce, sourced from CMIE’s Economic Outlook data, shows that while India may be the country with the most youthful population, its workforce is rapidly ageing. In other words, the young are increasingly getting driven out of the job market.
Editorial
BRICS might have beens (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
As the BRICS summit gets underway in South Africa, it is worth remembering that there is perhaps no other grouping in which the gap between aspiration and reality is as wide as in this one.
The BRICS was born in a moment when a particular configuration of the global order seemed possible. At its most ambitious, it was meant to be an ideational challenge to the way in which the global system thought of development and the rebalance of power in the international system.
Now the same argument is being used to advocate for an expansion of the BRICS to create what Cyril Ramaphosa called a “common desire to have a more balanced global order.”
The BRICS was always going to be a challenging grouping, since there was nothing organic to hold it together. It had no common enemy, except a vague desire to balance the West.
It had no commitment to common political values. It positioned itself as a grouping for development, without specifying any real alternatives to the current global system.
Its first summit was held in 2009, at a moment when the world thought the collapse of western economies was imminent.
So long as the BRICS countries did not themselves have deeply conflicted interests, it served as an alternative mode of socialisation, both of leaders and publics, in a way that was not focused on the West. But at this historical juncture, the lack of an organic function is coming to haunt the BRICS.
Resisting landslides (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Disaster Management)
The deaths and destruction by landslides in Himachal Pradesh last week have led to much-needed attention on the Himalayan ecosystem – the world’s youngest and roughest mountain chain.
Tectonic or neo-tectonic activities, associated with numerous subsurface processes like rock deformation, exhumation and reworking of rocks and surface processes such as erosion, weathering and rain/snow precipitation make the ecosystem inherently fragile.
Climate-induced excessive events like freezing/thawing and heavy rain/snow precipitation lead to avalanches, landslides, debris flow, glacial lakes outburst floods, landslide lakes outburst floods and flash floods. They add to the precariousness of the mountain system. The Himalaya is further stressed by anthropogenic activities.
To live with these adversities, we need to build resilience against geo-hazards caused by natural processes, environmental degradation and anthropogenic activities.
A network of relevant sensors, real-time monitoring, analysis and integration of data and the development of an integrated Early Warning System (EWS) based on AI/ML algorithms are measures that need to be adopted urgently.
Ideas Page
Not the new NAM (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
Judging by this newspaper’s headlines in the last few days, Delhi is more interested in a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Johannesburg than in the agenda of the BRICS forum.
This is not surprising. Most multilateral meetings are usually overshadowed by important bilateral meetings among member states.
The prospect of ending India’s military standoff with China in Ladakh is surely far more consequential than the soaring rhetoric on global issues at the BRICS summit.
Even small steps towards military disengagement and de-escalation in Ladakh would be of greater relevance than the unreal debates about dethroning the US dollar in Johannesburg.
What about expanding the BRICS membership that has emerged at the top of the immediate agenda of the forum? Does not the widespread interest in joining BRICS reveal its greater relevance to world affairs today? Numbers alone, alas, don’t increase the effectiveness of an organisation.
Bigger numbers are more likely to undermine the coherence of any group. The larger the membership, the smaller the least common political denominator.
Having more members will also lead to the challenge of managing a larger number of bilateral differences. The tensions between India and Pakistan, for example, have long limited the effectiveness of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.
The SCO has struggled to manage India-Pak and India-China differences. The conflict between India and China has already cast a shadow over BRICS.
World
Starting tomorrow, treated Fukushima water to enter sea (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Japan will start releasing treated radioactive water from the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean, despite opposition from its neighbours.
The decision comes weeks after the UN's nuclear watchdog approved the plan. Some 1.34 million tonnes of water - enough to fill 500 Olympic-size pools - have accumulated since the 2011 tsunami destroyed the plant.
The water will be released over 30 years after being filtered and diluted. Authorities will request for the plant's operator to "promptly prepare" for the disposal to start on 24 August if weather and sea conditions are appropriate.
The government has said that releasing the water is a necessary step in the lengthy and costly process of decommissioning the plant, which sits on the country's east coast, about 220km (137 miles) north-east of the capital Tokyo.
Japan has been collecting and storing the contaminated water in tanks for more than a decade, but space is running out.
Economy
Price hike on some food items transitory, elevated inflation warrants greater vigil: FinMin (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The recent price spike of certain food items is expected to be “transitory” and food inflation is expected to moderate in the coming months, but global uncertainty and domestic disruptions may keep inflationary pressures elevated for the coming months, warranting greater vigilance by the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
In its monthly economic review for July, the ministry said that the government has already taken pre-emptive measures to restrain food inflation which, along with the arrival of fresh stock, is likely to subside price pressure in the market soon.
The ministry said tomato prices are likely to decline with the arrival of fresh stocks by the end of August or early September. Also, enhanced imports of tur dal are expected to moderate pulses inflation.
Retail inflation based on the Consumer Price Index (Combined) surged to a 15-month high of 7.44 per cent in July 2023, primarily due to higher prices of vegetables, cereals, pulses, and milk and products. Core inflation — non-food, non-fuel segment of inflation was at a 39-month low of 4.9 per cent.
India’s GDP likely to have grown 7.8-8.5% in June qtr: Economists (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Indian economy is expected to have grown 7.8-8.5 per cent in the April-June quarter on the back of robust capital expenditure by Centre and states and a pickup in services sector.
Some drag to growth, however, is expected from weaker momentum in mining, and exports, and a possible slowdown in momentum of government capex as the country will approach the elections, which could dampen economic growth in the second half of the ongoing financial year 2023-24.
The growth estimates are higher than the projection of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which has estimated Q1 FY24 real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth at 8.0 per cent and full year FY24 growth at 6.5 per cent.
Barclays has estimated Q1 GDP growth at 7.8 per cent, while SBI Research and ICRA have pegged Q1 growth at 8.3 per cent and 8.5 per cent.
ICRA said economic activity in Q1 FY2024 was boosted by a “continued catch-up in services demand and improved investment activity”, particularly front-loading of the government capital expenditure.
We peg GDP growth in Q1 FY2024 at 8.5 per cent, exceeding the Monetary Policy Committee’s (MPC’s) forecast of 8.0 per cent.
However, we are circumspect that erratic rainfall, narrowing differentials with year-ago commodity prices, and possible slowdown in momentum of Government capex as we approach the Parliamentary elections, could dampen GDP growth in H2 FY2024 below the MPC’s forecasts.