📰 Kushinagar connect to Sri Lanka
Premier Mahinda’s son Namal to lead team at PM Modi’s inauguration
•When Prime Minister Narendra Modi declares open the Kushinagar International Airport in Uttar Pradesh on October 20, a sizeable Sri Lankan contingent, led by a member of the first family, will be present.
•Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa, nephew of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and son of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, will travel to Uttar Pradesh, along with ministerial colleagues and a group of 100 Buddhist monks to attend the event, according to officials in Colombo.
•The airport is expected to provide seamless connectivity to tourists from Sri Lanka, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, etc. Kushinagar is the centre of the Buddhist circuit, which consists of pilgrimage sites at Lumbini, Sarnath and Gaya. Buddhist pilgrims consider Kushinagar a sacred site where, they believe, Gautama Buddha delivered his last sermon and attained ‘Mahaparinirvana’ or salvation.
•The inaugural flight on Wednesday will land at the airport from Colombo, Sri Lanka, carrying the 125-member delegation of dignitaries and Buddhist monks. Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris termed the inaugural Buddhist pilgrims’ flight to Kushinagar “a landmark” in the India-Sri Lanka relations.
•To mark the occasion, Sri Lanka will present to India photographs of two murals painted by renowned Sri Lankan artist Solias Mendis at the Kelaniya Rajamaha Vihara, a popular Buddhist temple near Colombo, officials at the Sri Lankan High Commission in New Delhi told The Hindu.
•One of the murals depicts ‘Arahat Bhikkhu’ Mahinda, son of Emperor Ashoka delivering the message of the Buddha to King Devanampiyatissa of Sri Lanka. The other shows the arrival of ‘Theri Bhikkhuni’ Sanghamitta, the daughter of the Emperor, in Sri Lanka, bearing a sapling of the ‘sacred Bodhi tree’ under which Siddhārtha Gautama is believed to have obtained enlightenment.
Tapping Buddhist links
•The gesture comes at a time when Sri Lanka and India have agreed to strengthen ties through their shared Buddhist heritage. Enhancing connectivity between the neighbours and tourist exchanges were among the key talking points during Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla’s visit to Sri Lanka earlier this month.
•In a virtual bilateral summit with PM Mahinda Rajapaksa in September 2020, Mr. Modi announced a $ 15 million grant to Sri Lanka for promoting bilateral Buddhist ties. The airport inauguration and the enhanced connectivity to a site revered by Buddhist pilgrims is one of many initiatives in India’s apparent outreach to the Sinhala-Buddhist majority of the island nation.
•Despite India’s known support to the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration in defeating the LTTE in 2009, sections among Sri Lanka’s southern population remain India-sceptics, wary of the big neighbour who “interfered” in Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict, “sided with Tamils”. They resist India commenting on power devolution or conduct of elections to provincial councils in Sri Lanka, and oppose any Indian role in developing “national assets”.
Cultural diplomacy
•In the decade after the civil war, which coincides with China’s growing influence in the island nation, New Delhi seems keen on recasting its image as a friend and collaborator, using religious and cultural diplomacy.
•During his recent visit, Foreign Secretary Shringla, who travelled across the island, made the first stop in the central Kandy district, to offer prayers at the famed Buddhist temple Dalada Maligawa or the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic. India regularly invokes the Buddha and Buddhist history in its messaging in Sri Lanka, especially on social media.
•When India sent the first consignment of 5 lakh doses of Covishield vaccines to Sri Lanka in January this year, the Indian High Commission in Colombo in a tweet linked its arrival to a “blessed Poya Day”, or full moon day considered holy by Buddhists. The mission also wishes Sri Lankans on Twitter on almost every full moon day, and has images of the Buddha adorning its compound wall.
•Sri Lanka, too, considers promoting shared Buddhist ties a matter of “paramount importance”, as was outlined in the Integrated Country Strategy prepared by Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to India Milinda Moragoda.
•On the growing emphasis on shared Buddhist ties, senior political scientist Jayadeva Uyangoda said: “A cynic might say this marks the beginning of a soft saffronisation [of bilateral ties], but when seen at a serious level, it signals that India is going to have a more assertive foreign policy stance towards Sri Lanka than in the recent past.”
Revamped airport
•The terminal building at the airport is spread across 3,600 sqm and was constructed at an estimated cost of ₹260 crore. It can handle 300 passengers during peak traffic. The Airports Authority of India signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Uttar Pradesh government in 2019 for taking over the operation and development of the unused airport.
📰 A shadow foreign policy for the first time
Premier Mahinda’s son Namal to lead team at PM Modi’s inauguration
•When Prime Minister Narendra Modi declares open the Kushinagar International Airport in Uttar Pradesh on October 20, a sizeable Sri Lankan contingent, led by a member of the first family, will be present.
•Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa, nephew of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and son of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, will travel to Uttar Pradesh, along with ministerial colleagues and a group of 100 Buddhist monks to attend the event, according to officials in Colombo.
•The airport is expected to provide seamless connectivity to tourists from Sri Lanka, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, etc. Kushinagar is the centre of the Buddhist circuit, which consists of pilgrimage sites at Lumbini, Sarnath and Gaya. Buddhist pilgrims consider Kushinagar a sacred site where, they believe, Gautama Buddha delivered his last sermon and attained ‘Mahaparinirvana’ or salvation.
•The inaugural flight on Wednesday will land at the airport from Colombo, Sri Lanka, carrying the 125-member delegation of dignitaries and Buddhist monks. Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris termed the inaugural Buddhist pilgrims’ flight to Kushinagar “a landmark” in the India-Sri Lanka relations.
•To mark the occasion, Sri Lanka will present to India photographs of two murals painted by renowned Sri Lankan artist Solias Mendis at the Kelaniya Rajamaha Vihara, a popular Buddhist temple near Colombo, officials at the Sri Lankan High Commission in New Delhi told The Hindu.
•One of the murals depicts ‘Arahat Bhikkhu’ Mahinda, son of Emperor Ashoka delivering the message of the Buddha to King Devanampiyatissa of Sri Lanka. The other shows the arrival of ‘Theri Bhikkhuni’ Sanghamitta, the daughter of the Emperor, in Sri Lanka, bearing a sapling of the ‘sacred Bodhi tree’ under which Siddhārtha Gautama is believed to have obtained enlightenment.
Tapping Buddhist links
•The gesture comes at a time when Sri Lanka and India have agreed to strengthen ties through their shared Buddhist heritage. Enhancing connectivity between the neighbours and tourist exchanges were among the key talking points during Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla’s visit to Sri Lanka earlier this month.
•In a virtual bilateral summit with PM Mahinda Rajapaksa in September 2020, Mr. Modi announced a $ 15 million grant to Sri Lanka for promoting bilateral Buddhist ties. The airport inauguration and the enhanced connectivity to a site revered by Buddhist pilgrims is one of many initiatives in India’s apparent outreach to the Sinhala-Buddhist majority of the island nation.
•Despite India’s known support to the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration in defeating the LTTE in 2009, sections among Sri Lanka’s southern population remain India-sceptics, wary of the big neighbour who “interfered” in Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict, “sided with Tamils”. They resist India commenting on power devolution or conduct of elections to provincial councils in Sri Lanka, and oppose any Indian role in developing “national assets”.
Cultural diplomacy
•In the decade after the civil war, which coincides with China’s growing influence in the island nation, New Delhi seems keen on recasting its image as a friend and collaborator, using religious and cultural diplomacy.
•During his recent visit, Foreign Secretary Shringla, who travelled across the island, made the first stop in the central Kandy district, to offer prayers at the famed Buddhist temple Dalada Maligawa or the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic. India regularly invokes the Buddha and Buddhist history in its messaging in Sri Lanka, especially on social media.
•When India sent the first consignment of 5 lakh doses of Covishield vaccines to Sri Lanka in January this year, the Indian High Commission in Colombo in a tweet linked its arrival to a “blessed Poya Day”, or full moon day considered holy by Buddhists. The mission also wishes Sri Lankans on Twitter on almost every full moon day, and has images of the Buddha adorning its compound wall.
•Sri Lanka, too, considers promoting shared Buddhist ties a matter of “paramount importance”, as was outlined in the Integrated Country Strategy prepared by Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to India Milinda Moragoda.
•On the growing emphasis on shared Buddhist ties, senior political scientist Jayadeva Uyangoda said: “A cynic might say this marks the beginning of a soft saffronisation [of bilateral ties], but when seen at a serious level, it signals that India is going to have a more assertive foreign policy stance towards Sri Lanka than in the recent past.”
Revamped airport
•The terminal building at the airport is spread across 3,600 sqm and was constructed at an estimated cost of ₹260 crore. It can handle 300 passengers during peak traffic. The Airports Authority of India signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Uttar Pradesh government in 2019 for taking over the operation and development of the unused airport.
📰 India needs a caste count
A new intervention strategy can then be fashioned to emancipate groups that are still at the bottom of the ladder
•The Constituent Assembly sat together 114 times to draft a visionary Constitution for India, targeted at transforming an ancient civilisation into a modern nation state. The Preamble inter alia stated that there would be justice (social, economic and political) and equality of status and opportunity.
An economic and social fillip
•In order to fulfil the egalitarian construct of the Constitution, the makers of modern India incorporated into the chapter on Fundamental Rights three path-breaking postulates: Article 17 (abolishing untouchability), Article 23 (prohibition of traffic in human beings and forced labour) and Article 24 (prohibition of child labour). The Constitution outlaws discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex and place of birth and mandates equality of opportunity in matters of public employment albeit with caveats to promote the interests of the underprivileged. Part XVI delineates Special Provisions relating to certain classes, including reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Anglo-Indians in the Legislatures. This reservation system was supposed to end 10 years after the commencement of the Constitution. However, it has been extended every 10 years since. The objective is to provide a political voice to the disempowered. Article 335 provides for reservations for SCs and STs in public employment both under the Union and the States. The Constitution thus provides both an economic and social fillip to the weaker sections who had been discriminated against historically. The aim is to bring about social integration that could pave the way for the creation of a classless ethos.
•In 1990, another step was taken in this direction when the then Prime Minister V.P. Singh decided to act on the recommendations of the Mandal Commission report and provide 27% reservation in public employment to Other Backward Classes (OBCs). This was subsequently extended to educational institutions. This added to the existing 22.5% reservation quota for SCs and STs thereby increasing reservations in educational institutions to 49.5%. This decision led to a nationwide tumult in university campuses and a legal challenge in the Supreme Court.
•In Indra Sawhney v. Union of India, the Supreme Court upheld 27% reservation for OBCs but struck down the 10% quota based on economic criteria. It further fixed the ceiling of reservations at 50%. It also held that a “caste can be and quite often is a social class. If it is backward socially, it would be a backward class for the purposes of Article 16(4).” It also evolved the concept of a creamy layer. It held that individuals from backward classes who had attained a certain social, educational and vocational status in life would not be classified as OBCs for the purposes of reservation. This was done to ensure that those who really require reservation get it. The OBC reservations sparked off similar demands from socially powerful and upwardly mobile caste groups. Reservations provided by successive governments either within the 27% quota for OBCs or beyond the 50% ceiling to various communities were struck down by various courts or are still being challenged.
Demand for a caste census
•The demand for a caste census is growing louder as its findings can be used to cross the 50% hurdle. If it can be empirically established that the OBCs are numerically higher, perhaps it could be argued that the 50% cap on reservation is redundant. But where would that leave merit? Nations are built by an intricate interplay of social inclusion and meritocracies. The UPA government had, albeit reluctantly, acquiesced to a Socio-Economic and Caste Census in 2011 that it then rigorously implemented. In 2016, the Parliamentary Standing Committee of Rural Development observed that “the data has been examined and 98.87% data on individuals’ caste and religion is error free”. However, the NDA government told the Supreme Court and Parliament that the caste census data are flawed and cannot be released. This assertion that flies in the face of the observations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development.
•Over time, what has been forgotten is the original dream of transforming India into an egalitarian and classless society. Undoubtedly, while reservations have ameliorated socio-economic backwardness, they have equally created silos whereby the benefits of reservation have been more far-reaching vertically than horizontally. Therefore, a new paradigm of affirmative action is required to fulfil the vision of the makers of independent India given that economic stimuli have not brought about societal integration. Since it has been judicially determined that caste is synonymous with class, a fresh socio-economic caste census is imperative if the previous one is flawed and cannot be released.
•Once it is known what the economic and social status of every caste group is, a new intervention strategy can then be fashioned to emancipate caste groups that are still at the bottom of the ladder and require that socio-economic impetus. The focus of affirmative action would thus shift from emancipating an individual to a caste group as a whole. Only when all castes are equal can society become egalitarian.
📰 Improving livestock breeding
Revised schemes will enhance the productivity and traceability standards of India’s livestock
•Livestock breeding in India has been largely unorganised because of which there have been gaps in forward and backward integration across the value chain. Such a scenario impacts the quality of livestock that is produced and in turn negatively impacts the return on investment for livestock farmers. Approximately 200 million Indians are involved in livestock farming, including around 100 million dairy farmers. Roughly 80% bovines in the country are low on productivity and are reared by small and marginal farmers. To enhance the productivity of cattle, the Rashtriya Gokul Mission was initiated in 2014 with a focus on the genetic upgradation of the bovine population through widespread initiatives on artificial insemination, sex-sorted semen, and in vitro fertilization.
Entrepreneurship development
•The revised version of the Rashtriya Gokul Mission and National Livestock Mission (NLM) proposes to bring focus on entrepreneurship development and breed improvement in cattle, buffalo, poultry, sheep, goat, and piggery by providing incentives to individual entrepreneurs, farmer producer organisations, farmer cooperatives, joint liability groups, self-help groups, Section 8 companies for entrepreneurship development and State governments for breed improvement infrastructure.
•The breed multiplication farm component of the Rashtriya Gokul Mission is going to provide for capital subsidy up to ₹200 lakh for setting up breeding farm with at least 200 milch cows/ buffalo using latest breeding technology. The entrepreneur will be responsible for the arrangement of and would be able to sell at least 116 elite female calves every year out of this farm from the third year. The entrepreneur will also start generating income out of the sale of 15 kg of milk per animal per day for around 180 animals from the first year. This breeding farm will break even from the first year of the project after induction of milk in animals. Moreover, the strategy of incentivising breed multiplication farm will result in the employment of 1 lakh farmers.
•The grassroots initiatives in this sphere will be further amplified by web applications like e-Gopala that provide real-time information to livestock farmers on the availability of disease-free germplasm in relevant centres, veterinary care, etc.
•The poultry entrepreneurship programme of the NLM will provide for capital subsidy up to ₹25 lakh for setting up of a parent farm with a capacity to rear 1,000 chicks. Under this model, the hatchery is expected to produce at least 500 eggs daily, followed by the birth of chicks that are in turn reared for four weeks. Thereafter, the chicks can be supplied to local farmers for rearing. Under this model, the rural entrepreneur running the hatchery will be supplying chicks to the farmers. An entrepreneur will be able to break even within 18 months after launching the business. This is expected to provide employment to at least 14 lakh people.
•In the context of sheep and goat entrepreneurship, there is a provision of capital subsidy of 50% up to 50 lakh. An entrepreneur under this model shall set up a breeder farm, develop the whole chain will eventually sell the animals to the farmers or in the open market. Each entrepreneur can avail assistance for a breeder farm with 500 does/ewe and 25 buck/ram animals with high genetic merit from the Central/State government university farms. This model is projected to generate a net profit of more than ₹33 lakh for the entrepreneur per year.
•For piggery, the NLM will provide 50% capital subsidy of up to ₹30 lakh. Each entrepreneur will be aided with establishment of breeder farms with 100 sows and 10 boars, expected to produce 2,400 piglets in a year. A new batch of piglets will be ready for sale every six months. This model is expected to generate a profit of ₹1.37 crore after 16 months and 1.5 lakh jobs. The revised scheme of NLM coupled with the Rashtriya Gokul Mission and the Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund has the potential to dramatically enhance the productivity and traceability standards of our livestock.
