VISION

VISION

Material For Exam

Recent Update

Thursday, July 16, 2020

The HINDU Notes – 16th July 2020

13:03




📰 India should believe in the EU

Their ties assume significance as a rules-based order gets challenged by the rise of exceptionalism

•In today’s fragmented world, the power of any aspiring global player depends on the number and quality of its bilateral and multilateral relationships. In which partner should India invest? The European Union (EU) is one.

•The EU and India have much in common. Both aim to enhance strategic autonomy and their global standing. Diversifying strategic value chains is also a common interest, as is the urgent need to address climate change. The EU and India can support each other in these endeavours.

•On purely economic terms, the EU is India’s first trading partner and the biggest foreign investor, with €67.7 billion worth of investments made in 2018, equal to 22% of total FDI inflows. But there is still room for improvement — especially when compared to EU investments in China which, in the same year, amounted to €175.3 billion. Enhanced business cooperation can help both the EU and India diversify their strategic value chains and reduce economic dependency — notably on China. India could succeed in attracting EU investment that might be moving out of China, but to do so, it must address the mutual trust deficit. Facilitating people’s mobility and connectivity is a good way to improve mutual understanding and create opportunities for innovation and growth.

Talks on FTA

•The EU and India must also tackle the elephant in the room: the stagnating Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations. A new study from the European Parliament assesses the potential impact of an EU-India trade agreement at between €8 billion and €8.5 billion gains from increased trade for both sides, with a more significant increase of trade gains likely to flow to India. The study also refers to additional potential gains from enhanced coordination on the provision of global public goods, such as environmental standards.

•On climate change, the EU is building on its ambitious target to render the continent carbon-emission neutral by 2050, through its new industrial strategy, the Green Deal. “Investing in fossil fuel-driven recovery is a wasted opportunity, and we only have one chance to make it right”, says the Executive Vice President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans. Should both the EU and India succeed in transforming into carbon-neutral economies by 2050, we all would gain from the investment.

•In geopolitical terms, India finds itself facing increasingly restive, powerful rivals. The Indo-Pacific region is increasingly the focus of attention, so India should capitalise on its geopolitical leverage there. Stronger cooperation with like-minded, democratic powers can support this effort, especially towards assertive competitors like China. Even India’s strongest bilateral relations with individual EU member states do not come close to the potential of dealing effectively with the EU as a whole. New Delhi must learn how to maximise benefit from this strategic partnership.

Ruptures caused by COVID-19

•The ruptures caused by COVID-19 have been the occasion for the EU to prove its worth. The measures put in place at supranational level show a strong willingness to buttress the fundamental pillars on which the EU is built. The “Next generation EU proposal” submitted by the European Commission has surprised many by its bold approach. This is indeed a game-changer, not only in its financial implications — as it allows the EU to take on debt — but because it shows that the ties that bind the EU extend well beyond treaties and individual members’ self-interest.

•But the value of the EU reaches far beyond its economic clout. The EU champions the rules-based international order, which is being increasingly challenged by the proliferation of exceptionalism. The EU and India must join forces to promote sustainable reform of multilateral institutions, with the World Trade Organization (WTO) first in line.

•Hence, a strong partnership would help both EU and India become global decision-makers.

📰 China’s post-COVID aggression is reshaping Asia
Read More
Read more »
at
Labels:

GS SCORE Weekly PIB Compilation 1-8 July 2020 PDF Download

08:11
GS SCORE Weekly PIB Compilation 1-8 July 2020 PDF 
PIB Compilation - 1st- 8th July 2020




Click Here to download GS SCORE Weekly PIB Compilation 1-8 July 2020 PDF


Click Here to Like our Facebook page for latest updates and free ebooks
Read More
at
Labels: , , ,

THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT ARTICLES 16.07.2020

07:25
Read More
at
Labels: , ,

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

India’s Military Ties with Nepal - Gurkha Regiment

17:46
What is the issue?
  • Relations between India and Nepal are currently strained with Nepal's Parliament approving a new map with Indian territories included.
  • In this context, here is a look at the special ties between the Indian and Nepalese armed forces.
How did India’s military ties with Nepal evolve?
  • Soldiers from Nepal form a significant part of Indian Army’s legendary Gurkha regiment.
  • India’s military connection with Nepal goes back to the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
  • His army in Lahore enlisted Nepalese soldiers called Lahure or soldiers of fortune.
  • British India raised the first battalion of the Gurkha Regiment as the Nasiri regiment on April 24, 1815.
  • By the time the First World War started, there were 10 Gurkha regiments in the British Indian Army.
  • When India got freedom, these regiments were divided between the British and Indian armies.
  • This was done as per the Britain–India–Nepal Tripartite Agreement signed in November 1947.
  • Six Gurkha regiments with a lakh-odd soldiers came to India.
  • This went on to raise another regiment called '11 Gurkha Rifles'.
  • This was to accommodate soldiers of 7th Gurkha Rifles and the 10th Gurkha Rifles, who chose not to transfer to the British Army.
What are the current practices?
Read More
Read more »
at

Daily Current Affairs, 15th July 2020

17:36





1) World Youth Skills Day celebrated on 15 July
•United Nations celebrates World Youth Skills Day globally on 15 July every year. The day is celebrated as an opportunity for young people, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions, and public and private sector stakeholders to acknowledge as well as celebrate the importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship.

 •The theme of World Youth Skills Day 2020 is “Skills for a Resilient Youth“.

2) Indian Railways creates ‘Post-Covid Coach’ to ensure safer journey
•The Indian Railways has launched a new state-of-the-art, ‘Post COVID Coach’ in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19 virus infection. The Indian Railways’ production unit, Rail Coach Factory, Kapurthala, has developed this new Post COVID Coach.

 •The salient features of the Post COVID Coach are handsfree amenities, copper-coated handrails & latches, plasma air purification and titanium di-oxide coating for COVID free passenger journey.

3) Indian Railways on mission to become ‘Green Railway’ by 2030
•The Ministry of Railways is on a mission mode with the goal of transforming Indian Railways into Green Railways by 2030. The Ministry of Railways has taken a number of major initiatives towards mitigation of global warming and combating climate change.

 4) HRD Minister releases ‘Pragyata’ guidelines for online education
•Union Human Resource Development Ministry has released ‘Pragyata’ guidelines for Digital Education. As per the guidelines, online classes for pre-primary students should not be for more than 30 minutes. It further mentions that two online sessions of up to 30-45 minutes each should be conducted for classes 1 to 8 and four sessions for classes 9 to 12.

 •The PRAGYATA guidelines include eight steps of online education that is, Plan, Review, Arrange, Guide, Yak(talk), Assign, Track, and Appreciate.

5) Madhya Pradesh tops in implementing PM Svanidhi scheme
•Madhya Pradesh has topped among the other states in the implementation of PM Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi). The scheme is presently benefiting the beneficiaries of 378 urban bodies of the state. Till now 8,70,330 street vendors have registered under the scheme, out of which 1,76,000 street vendors have been issued the identity cards and vending certificates. Part from this, 15,500 cases have been approved in the state along with interest free loan of around 15 crore 50 lakh.

6) China successfully launched “APSTAR-6D” telecommunication satellite
•China successfully launched “APSTAR-6D” telecommunication satellite via a Long March 3B carrier rocket from Xichang Satellite Launch Center. China Academy of Space Technology has developed the commercial satellite ‘APSTAR-6D’. APSTAR-6D marked the 18th Rocket Launched by China in the year 2020.




7) UNICEF INDIA partners with FICCI for #Reimagine Campaign
•UNICEF INDIA has tied-up with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s (FICCI), Socio-Economic Development Foundation (SEDF) to jointly develop UNICEF’s #Reimagine Campaign. The campaign aims to support the most vulnerable populations and children during the COVID-19 response and its after-math in India. It will also help in avoiding the potential long-term damage to business operations as well as employment pipeline.

 •To support the UNICEF INDIA campaign, FICCI SEDF will leverage its resources such as cash and core assets to mobilize funds in order to generate support for the most vulnerable population affected due to COVID disruption. It will also reach out to its membership base to garner support for the campaign.

8) Vidhu Nair appointed as Ambassador of India to Turkmenistan
•Government of India has appointed Dr. Vidhu P. Nair as the next Ambassador of India to Turkmenistan. He is presently serving as the Director in the Ministry of External Affairs. He is a Foreign Service Officer of 2002 batch.

9) NABARD organised ‘Digital Choupal’ to mark its 39th foundation day
•National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) organised its first ‘Digital Choupal’ to mark its 39th foundation day. “Digital Choupal” was conducted in the form of a video conference which was attended by participants of different projects initiated by NABARD, to share their experiences about the projects they are involved in.

 •During the ‘Digital Choupal’ session, NABARD also announced Rs 5,000 crore of refinance scheme for banks and financial institutions. With this refinance scheme, the development finance institution aims to offer finance to the beneficiaries of its 2,150 watershed development projects. It also assigned another Rs 5,000 crore to transform Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) into multi service centres. This concessional line of assistance will be available for a period of three years from 2020-21 to 2022-23. NABARD has planned to upgrade 5,000 PACS in the fiscal year 2021, followed by 15,000 PACS in fiscal year 2022 and 15,000 PACS in fiscal year 2023.

10) A book titled “If It Bleeds” authored by Stephen King released
•A new book titled “If It Bleeds”, a collection of four stories, authored by Stephen King has been released. The book published by Hachette India. The book has the story centres around a bomb at Albert Macready Middle School.  It is a sequel to his bestselling work, “The Outsider”.

11) Sachin Awasthi honoured with Global Humanitarian Award 2020
•Sachin Awasthi has been honoured with the “Top Publicist” award in the Global Humanitarian Awards 2020, through webinar took place in London. Sachin Awasthi is a person who organised a 5-day long clean Ganga awareness journey which was begun from Haridwar to Varanasi, it’s also called as Vande Gange Swachhata Jan Jagran Yatra.

12) Ved Parkash Dudeja conferred with ‘Infra Business Leader of the Year’
•Rail Infra and Mobility Business Digital Awards (RIMBDA) has awarded Ved Parkash Dudeja with the coveted ‘Infra Business Leader of the Year’ award for 2020. He is the vice chairman of Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA). He has been awarded for his contribution towards the infrastructure development. Under his leadership, RLDA has launched various commercial projects, multifunctional complex, colony redevelopment and station redevelopment projects.

 •Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA) is a statutory authority under the Ministry of Railways. The statutory body is responsible for the development of vacant railway land for commercial use in order to generate revenue with the help of non-tariff measures and creating assets for Indian Railways.
Read More
at
Labels: , ,

The HINDU Notes – 15th July 2020

15:20




📰 The stand-off and China’s India policy dilemma

As New Delhi seeks to reset ties with Beijing, it must take note of the ongoing Chinese debate on India

•For China, which has long been preoccupied with its relentless pursuit to approach the centre of the world and in managing a turbulent relationship with the United States, the June 15 incident of a violent face-off between Chinese and Indian troops at the Line of Actual Control (LAC), causing casualties on both sides, came as a big jolt. It brought the national focus back on an otherwise not-so-popular topic of China-India relations. The development took China’s strategic community by storm, while the intense debate and discussions that followed, rather than generating a consensus, brought out China’s many dilemmas vis-à-vis India.

No accident

•On one side of the debate are China’s top India watchers such as Lin Minwang and Zhang Jiadong, from Fudan University, and Li Hongmei from the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS) among others, who believe that the present conflict is not an “accident” but an “inevitable result” of what they perceive as “India’s long-standing speculative strategy on the China-India border”. From Doklam to Kashmir to India’s “unending infrastructure arms race” at the LAC, they say, Beijing was “fed up” and “had to teach India a lesson”.

•Their key argument is that China-India relations hold no great prospect in the current international situation. There is no possibility of a negotiated settlement of the border dispute any time soon. India is already a “quasi-ally” of the U.S. with no scope for reversal. With opportunities for cooperation at the global level diminishing, regional competition intensifying and the earlier system of effective management of bilateral differences crumbling beyond control, periodic violent conflicts, they predict, are the “new normal” in China-India ties.

•China, they argue, should reconsider its prevalent strategic thinking that India is not its main strategic challenge and, therefore, peace needs to be maintained in its direction as much as possible. Only by daring to fight, by showing strong determination, the will and the ability on the western frontier can China effectively deter its adversaries on the eastern coast. This is also, what they called, the right way to resolve China’s primary contradiction, that is the China-U.S. problem, by first breaking “its arms and legs”.

Handling a resurgent India

•To deal with a resurgent India, Chinese hardliners suggest a policy of “three nos”: “no weakness, no concession and no defensive defence”. In other words, China should take all opportunities to crack down on India, take the initiative to hit it hard whenever possible. This, it is argued, will not damage China-India relations; on the contrary, it will make it more stable. Didn’t the 1962 China-India war help China to maintain peace and stability on the western front for a long time and directly eliminate American and Soviet ambitions to use India to contain China? In this backdrop there is renewed interest among certain sections of the Chinese strategic community to: keep India under control by destabilising the entire border region, creating tension across the board, from the McMahon Line in the east to the Aksai Chin area in the west; take the initiative to attack and seize territories under India’s control from Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh, and weaken India internally, by supporting the cause of Maoists, Naga separatists and Kashmiris.

Some criticism

•However, on the other side of the debate are Chinese political thinkers and professors such as Zheng Yongnian and Yu Longyu among others, who in their analysis of the Galwan Valley incident, have been somewhat critical about China’s policies towards India, which they say remain mostly tactical, of a “reactive nature” and are characterised by a “tit-for-tat” approach without any clear strategic intent. This, according to them, stokes extreme nationalism in India and unites the otherwise divided nation against China, which not only harms China’s interests but might eventually draw China into an untimely military conflict.

•They criticise those vying to “teaching India a lesson” as being “short-sighted” and not “psychologically prepared for the rise of India”. China, they argue, lacks understanding of the fact that India, as a rising power, is very important to China and will be increasingly crucial in the future, with China-India relations evolving as the most important pair of relations after China-U.S. links.

•If China-India ties are damaged beyond repair, they warn, India alone or in association with other countries will cause “endless trouble for China”. For instance, an openly hostile India will use every possible means to prevent China from reaching the Indian Ocean. On the other hand, the decoupling of China-India relations will further strengthen the “anti-China alliance” between the U.S., Japan, Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia and other countries, who will actively take the initiative to reshape global industrial chains, use the Indo-Pacific Strategy to check and balance China’s military and economic power, and expand international organisations such as the G-7 to weaken China’s influence in international affairs.

Opinion on scenarios

•On a similar note, various commentaries in the Chinese press highlight that downgrading China-India relations to the level of India-Pakistan relations or a ‘Kashmirisation’ of the China-India border is easier said than done as this will require a complete reversal of China’s present LAC policy of being “reasonable, profitable and economical”.

•Strategically too, they say, it is “unwise” for China to take the initiative to get into a comprehensive military conflict with India — “a big country with comparable military strength”— at this point in time. The general view among these military analysts is that if China has an advantage in terms of psychology, equipment, and logistics mobilisation, India too has advantage on various fronts such as deployment, supply line, practical war experience, topography, and climate among others. If India’s disadvantage remains in the fact that its capital lies well within the bombing range of China, China’s key disadvantage is its particularly long supply lines. Therefore, if the conflict ends in a short period of time, it will benefit China. But if it is prolonged, China will be disadvantaged.

•If a war starts, they argue, India will make all efforts to prolong it as long as possible, and the U.S. is likely to help India to attain this objective. Even if the two sides ended in a tie, in India it will be counted a victory and the national morale will rise sharply; on the contrary, in China, the morale will decline if it cannot beat India decisively. Therefore, in its effort to “teach India a lesson”, they fear, China might lose more than it would gain.

What India must note

•The overall consensus within this group is that it is still not the time to ‘resolve’ the India problem. Instead, China, for now, should strive to make India retreat without a military conflict, maintain basic peace and stability at the borders, and, at the minimum, not deliberately push it towards the U.S. Meanwhile, China simultaneously carries out its strategy of weakening India internally by leveraging its social and political differences, completing its strategic encirclement, improving troop deployment in the Tibet region to secure the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and stationing Chinese troops in the Gwadar Port (Arabian Sea), so as to secure China’s Indian Ocean sea routes, among other interests. In the words of another Chinese strategist, Yin Guoming, rather than winning a war, China should aim at attaining a comprehensive and overwhelming advantage in geopolitics vis-à-vis India, which cannot be altered by war.

•To sum up, despite all the jingoism and rhetoric propagated through its official media, China is actually in a serious dilemma over its India policy. As we, in India, seek to reset ties with Beijing in the post-Galwan era, we should take note of the ongoing Chinese debate on India, factor in its many internal contradictions and perceived vulnerabilities vis-à-vis India, and leverage the same to our benefit.

📰 Lost opportunity
Read More
Read more »
at
Labels: