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A few feet away from an Ashokan pillar, inscribed with Ashoka’s policy and Dharma in the Brahmi script, stands a tapering four-tier red sandstone structure rising from an octagonal base on the Northern Ridge.
This is the Mutiny Memorial, built in the memory of those who had fought in the Delhi Field Force, both British and Indians, during the Revolt of 1857.
The structure is prolifically inscribed with written accounts of the revolt. The placard on the structure’s lowest tier read, “In Memory of the officers and soldiers, British and native of the Delhi Field Force, who were killed in action or died of wounds or disease between the 30th May and 20th September 1857.”
Constructed in 1863 on the site of the artillery unit known as Taylor’s Battery, which bore the brunt of rebel fire, the monument has an indifferent gothic design which resembles ‘a telescope badly drawn out’.
Historians believe the arched marble-backed recesses, inset on all sides of the octagonal tower, were poorly executed and occasionally created out of three separate pieces of stone.
It was built to honour those who fought from the British side during the Revolt of 1857 but later after Independence, particularly after 25 years, they re-dedicated it to the memory of those Indians who lost their lives fighting the British.
Professor of history at Ashoka University and historian Nayanjot Lahiri, in her research paper, ‘Commemorating and Remembering 1857: The Revolt in Delhi and its Afterlife’, states: “On one hand, of the destruction, demolition and confiscation that took place in the city and also in some of Delhi’s villages, during and in the aftermath of the revolt.
On the other hand, equally transforming was the British commemoration of their victory, which resulted in the construction of a memorialised landscape by them, around the graves of dead soldiers and the scenes of military action.
The Ideas page
The MP model in agriculture (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Agriculture)
India is today a $3.5 trillion economy. If the current growth trend continues, the country is likely to be a $5.4 trillion economy by 2027 (as per IMF forecast).
The Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict have thrown the global economy into a spin and India’s ambitious target of becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2025 could be somewhat delayed, but it is definitely not out of reach.
India seems to be on the right path and is doing pretty well — especially when compared to its progress in the first six decades after 1947.
As per IMF, it took India almost 59 years since Independence to become a $0.95 trillion economy in 2006. But then it became a $2.3 trillion economy by 2016 — it added $1.35 trillion in 10 years.
And in 2022, it became a $3.5 trillion economy by adding $1.2 trillion in just six years. If India stays this course, the country could rise to a $25 to $30 trillion economy by 2047.
No wonder, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has termed the next 25 years, when India completes 100 years of Independence, as Amrit Kaal.
There are two issues that we want to focus on. First, how inclusive is this growth, and second, how sustainable it is likely to be, especially from an environmental standpoint, given that climate change is already knocking on our doors.
We measure inclusiveness by looking at the record of the laggard states, especially the so-called BIMARU states (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh), and also the performance of the agricultural sector that engages the largest share of workforce — 46.5 per cent in 2020-21.
It is well-known that with development, the workforce moves out of agriculture to higher productivity jobs in urban areas, especially in the construction of new cities and the infrastructure required to run these urban centres.
More than half the world’s population today lives in cities, though India is still roughly two-thirds rural. In the next 25 years, the country’s focus should be on infrastructure construction, including in rural areas, and skilling a large mass of the working population for higher productivity jobs.
The Union budget of 2023-24 has done well on this account, and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman deserves to be complimented for that.
Explained
India’s sticky inflation: Causes and consequences (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Last week, official data showed that in January, India’s retail inflation surged by 6.5%. In other words, the general price level facing the consumers in January 2023 turned out to be 6.5% higher than the price level in January 2022; this is called a year-on-year (or y-o-y) growth rate.
As things stand, it now looks quite likely that India’s inflation rate will be above the crucial 4% level in each of the five years of the current government’s term. To be sure, 4% inflation is the target level under the current monetary policy regime.
For one, the January increase was a sharp turnaround from the deceleration in inflation that was being witnessed in the recent months.
The headline retail inflation rate was 7.4% in September but since then it was fast losing steam every month and fell to 5.7% in December.
This moderation had convinced many to demand that the RBI should avoid raising interest rates — something the RBI did not do when it met on February 8.
In fact, the RBI raised the repo rate — the interest rate at which it lends money to the banking system — by 25 basis points (100 basis points make up a full percentage point).
RBI raises the repo rate when it believes that inflation is not in control. Higher interest rates drag down overall demand for goods and services by making loans costlier. Lower demand is expected to cool down inflation.
Name symbol to Shinde: how EC reached its decision in shiv sena dispute (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Almost seven months after Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde petitioned the Election Commission to recognise his faction of the Shiv Sena as the ‘real’ Shiv Sena, the EC on Friday ruled in his favour.
Following long deliberations and multiple hearings, the EC relied on the “test of majority” to determine which faction would get to use the name ‘Shiv Sena’ and the election symbol ‘Bow and Arrow’ that is reserved for the party under The Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968.
In the so-called Sadiq Ali case, a dispute that arose between two factions of the Congress, the EC in 1971 relied on the test of majority to decide which side should get the party’s name and symbol.
It ruled that the faction backed by Indira Gandhi was the real Congress, and its decision was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court. Two other criteria — a test of party constitution and test of aims and objects — were considered and rejected.
If the number of seats secured by a political party or the number of votes cast in favour of the candidates of a political party can be a relevant consideration for the recognition of a political party, one is at a loss to understand as to how the number of seats in the Parliament and State Legislatures held by the supporters of a group of the political party can be considered to be irrelevant.