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An Iranian missile strike on targets in northern Iraq set off an unusual row between the neighbouring allies on Tuesday, with Baghdad recalling its ambassador in protest and Tehran insisting the attack was intended to deter threats from Israeli spies.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards hit what they called an Israeli espionage centre in Iraq's semi-autonomous. Kurdistan region, while the elite force said they also struck in Syria against the Islamic State.
The Guards said the late Monday attack, Iran's first direct military strike in the region linked to the Gaza war, was in response to Israeli “atrocities” against several of its commanders and those of Iranian-allied forces around the Middle East since the conflict started.
In protest at the strike, Iraq recalled its envoy from Tehran and summoned Iran's charge d'affaires in Baghdad, with the foreign ministry saying Baghdad would take all legal steps against what it called a violation of sovereignty.
The strikes, on a residential area near the US consulate in Kurdistan's capital Erbil, were condemned by Iraqi Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani as a "crime against the Kurdish people" in which at least four civilians were killed and six injured.
Front Page
Defence upgrade roadmap: Apex body led by PM, MoD sci-tech unit (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
A top body chaired by the Prime Minister, with the Defence Minister and the National Security Advisor as its Vice Presidents, should determine the country’s defence technology roadmap and decide on major projects and their execution, an expert committee spearheaded by the former principal scientific advisor, Prof K Vijay Raghavan, is learned to have told the government.
This top body, called the Defence Technology Council by the VijayRaghavan committee, is proposed to have an executive committee chaired by the Chief of Defence Staff. The Principal Scientific Advisor, along with the three service chiefs and their vice chiefs, will also be its members.
Furthermore, it will include representation from academia and industry, with two members from each sector, The Indian Express has learned.
The nine-member VijayRaghavan panel was set up by the government last year to review the functioning of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and is learned to have submitted its report this month.
Every fourth PM-Kisan beneficiary added in past 2 months is a woman (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Government Scheme)
Every fourth beneficiary added under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) scheme over the past two months is a woman, according to the data available with the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare.
The new beneficiaries were added to the scheme under the Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra (VBSY), the Centre’s flagship initiative to raise awareness on its schemes.
Launched on November 15, 2023, around six months before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, VBSY aims to achieve beneficiary saturation under government schemes.
As per the data, of the 40,50,375 beneficiaries added between November 15, 2023, and January 14, 2024, under PM-Kisan, 10,61,278 were women, 29,87,884 men and 1,213 others.
Among states that added the maximum number of women beneficiaries under the scheme, Uttar Pradesh is at the top with 1.69 lakh additions, followed by Rajasthan (1.56 lakh), Manipur (1.05 lakh), Jharkhand (90,949) and Kerala (66,887).
In four states — Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram — women outnumbered men when it came to the number of new beneficiaries added under the scheme.
In Meghalaya, women accounted for 68.96 per cent of the 24,557 new beneficiaries added during this period. The numbers stood at 56.57 per cent in Manipur, 54.97 per cent in Nagaland and 50.26 per cent in Mizoram.
In the case of Arunachal Pradesh, women accounted for 48.77 per cent of the new beneficiaries. In fact, all North-East states except Assam (20.67 per cent women) and Tripura (22.67 per cent women) performed better than the all-India average (26.20 per cent women).
Editorial
Davos man and Global south (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Three summits this week — one in Davos, Switzerland and the other two (NAM and G77) in Kampala, Uganda — point to the shifting terrain of global politics in 2024.
The world’s rich and powerful in Davos and the underprivileged in Kampala have a shared problem — dealing with structural changes in the international system.
The old slogans — on globalism in Davos and collectivism of the Global South in Kampala — are no longer credible or sustainable. The summits also highlight the contrast between the agendas of India and China.
The annual gathering at Davos is tempered by the recognition that renewed great power conflict and economic nationalism have upended the apple cart of globalisation.
The back-to-back summits of the Non-Aligned Movement and the G77 in Kampala may find that the renewed political euphoria about the Global South is insufficient to deal with the challenges and opportunities of the changing world order.
But first to the ‘Davos Man’, the moniker of the globalist elite that has shaped the world since the 1990s. The Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989, and the Soviet Union in 1991.
The end of the Cold War was followed by a period of relative harmony within the great power constellation dominated by the US.
On the economic front, the so-called Washington Consensus heralded an era marked by the free movement of capital, goods, services, and labour across borders.
Ideas Page
Under guise of gender justice (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
Barely a year after Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s crackdown on child marriage ordering arrests of family members of girls married before the age of 18, he is back in the news for two new initiatives.
One is a move to introduce a Bill for a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the realm of personal laws affecting marriage and related issues.
The other is a new scheme — the Mukhyamantri Mahila Udyamita Abhiyaan (MMUA) — announced with much fanfare and a budget of Rs 4,000 crore, to enable rural women to gain greater financial independence by becoming micro entrepreneurs.
Unfortunately, both the initiatives leave considerable room to wonder if they are really about empowering women and achieving gender equality — or are they furthering the ongoing project of communalising Assamese society?
Explained
Dealing with unruly passengers on flights: What the rules say (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
IndiGo has initiated the process of putting on the no-fly list a passenger who assaulted a pilot after the flight was delayed for several hours amid heavy fog in Delhi.
The airline declared the passenger “unruly”, and further action will be guided by the Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) on “Handling of unruly passengers” issued by the aviation watchdog Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
The CAR lay down the procedure that airlines must follow with regard to unruly passenger behaviour of varying degrees at the time of the incident and subsequently.
Over the past few months, the DGCA has been prodding carriers to proactively report incidents of disruptive passenger behaviour on board aircraft, which the regulator feels could compromise operational safety.
The airline should first inform the passengers concerned that in case their behaviour is deemed unruly as per the guidelines, they could be arrested.
Why Kashmir is without snow (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
One of Kashmir’s main winter tourism attractions, Gulmarg, has been bereft of snow this season, leading to a plunge in the flow of tourists and severely hitting the business of ski resorts.
Government data shows that 95,989 tourists, including 547 foreigners, had visited Gulmarg in January last year, and though the data for the first half of this month is not yet available, officials said the footfall seemed to be at least 60 per cent lower.
Snowfall in Kashmir, however, is much more than just a tourist attraction. It is crucial for the local climate, winter crops and horticulture, availability of waters in streams and rivers, and for the local economy.
Though the lack of snow is the most visible in Gulmarg, a major tourist destination during this time of the year, the whole of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh have remained largely without rains or snow this winter.
Winter precipitation in Jammu and Kashmir, as also Ladakh, is mainly in the form of snowfall. Normally, the region gets its first snowfall in the first half of December, and then through most of January.
But it has been mostly dry this season. Jammu and Kashmir saw 80 per cent rainfall deficit in December, and 100 per cent (absolutely no rain) deficit in January so far, India Meteorological Department (IMD) data show. Ladakh has had no precipitation at all in December or January.
Economy
RBI panel proposes framework for state guarantees (Page no. 19)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Reserve Bank of India’s working group on state government guarantees has proposed that the word ‘guarantee’ should include all instruments, which create an obligation, contingent or otherwise, on the part of the state government.
The purpose for which Government guarantees are issued should be clearly defined. State governments may consider fixing a ceiling for incremental guarantees issued during a year at 5 per cent of Revenue Receipts or 0.5 per cent of Gross State Domestic Product, whichever is less.
State governments may consider charging a minimum guarantee fee for guarantees extended and additional risk premium may be charged based on the risk category and the tenor of the underlying loan.
State governments may publish/ disclose data relating to guarantees, as per the Indian Government Accounting Standard (IGAS).
The implementation of the recommendations made by the Working Group is expected to facilitate better fiscal management by the state governments.
The terms of reference of the Working Group included prescribing a uniform guarantee ceiling for the states, uniform reporting framework for the guarantees given by the State Governments and assessing the adequacy of states’ contribution to the Guarantee Redemption Fund.