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Revolving around the themes of ‘Viksit Bharat and Mother of Democracy’, the Republic Day celebrations on 26 January will showcase India’s rich cultural heritage and will have the maximum participation of women, Defence Secretary Giridhar Aramane.
In a first, the Republic Day parade will begin with 100 women artists playing Indian musical instruments such as Sankh, Naadswaram and Nagada, marking a shift from the past when this was done by military bands.
Another first in the parade is the participation of two French Rafale fighter jets and a Multi Role Tanker Transport (MRTT) aircraft in the flypast. A 95-member French marching contingent and a 33-member band contingent will also take part in the celebrations.
French President Emmanuel Macron will be the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations.
The parade will also see the first-ever participation of a 144 personnel tri-service women contingent with 48 personnel from each service. Additionally, the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) contingents will have all-women contingents, the defence secretary said.
Editorial
The wheat test (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Wheat stocks in government warehouses are at a seven-year-low of 16.4 million tonnes (mt) as of January 1. That, by itself, is not cause for concern.
The present stocks are more than the minimum buffer of 13.8 mt to meet the operational requirements of the public distribution system, plus a strategic reserve, for the next three months.
By then, the new crop would start arriving in the mandis. Besides, the government has sufficient rice stocks to more than compensate for any shortfalls in wheat.
That should keep both cereal and overall retail food inflation — at near double-digits now — somewhat under control, at least till the national elections scheduled in April-May.
The measures taken so far — banning wheat and non-basmati white rice exports, not permitting large retailers and traders to hold more than 1,000 tonnes of wheat, and selling grain from the Food Corporation of India’s stocks in the open market — are good enough for that.
Ideas Page
A green blueprint (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
COP 28 was amongst the most headline-grabbing events in the last months of 2023. The event was held at a time when several Indian cities were reeling under poor air quality. Pollution attracted the climate delegates’ attention, rather tangentially, because the COP opened to a thick smog in Dubai.
In 2019, the Centre launched the National Clean Air Action Plan (NCAP) to tackle the increasing air pollution problem. The plan’s report card shows mixed results.
The fact remains that much needs to be done to bring down air pollutants to permissible levels. Air pollution and climate change are closely related as both share common emission sources — fossil fuel combustion, industrial processes and biofuel burning.
Weather extremes such as heat and cold waves lead to air pollution emergencies whose frequency and severity may increase under the influence of climate change. These extreme events could result in distress, diseases, even deaths. Hence, there is no time to lose.
World
Japan becomes 5th country to land on moon (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Japan on Friday became the fifth country to put a spacecraft on the moon but the probe was not generating solar power, its space agency said, during a mission to prove a "precision" landing technology and revitalise a space programme that has suffered setbacks.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) landed the moon's surface at around 12.20am (local time) and re-established communication with earth, but its solar panels were not able to generate electricity, possibly because they are angled wrong.
NATO to hold biggest drills since cold war with 90,000 troops (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
NATO is launching its largest exercise since the Cold War, rehearsing how U.S. troops could reinforce European allies in countries bordering Russia and on the alliance's eastern flank if a conflict were to flare up with a "near-peer" adversary.
Some 90,000 troops are due to join the Steadfast Defender 2024 drills that will run through May, the alliance's top commander Chris Cavoli said on Thursday.
More than 50 ships from aircraft carriers to destroyers will take part, as well as more than 80 fighter jets, helicopters and drones and at least 1,100 combat vehicles including 133 tanks and 533 infantry fighting vehicles.
Cavoli said the drills would rehearse NATO's execution of its regional plans, the first defence plans the alliance has drawn up in decades, detailing how it would respond to a Russian attack.
Scientists map largest deep sea coral reef found till date in Atlantic off US (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Scientists have mapped the largest coral reef deep in the ocean, stretching hundreds of miles off the U.S. Atlantic Coast.
While researchers have known since the 1960s that some coral were present off the Atlantic, the reef's size remained a mystery until new underwater mapping technology made it possible to construct 3D images of the ocean floor.
The largest yet known deep coral reef "has been right under our noses, waiting to be discovered," said Derek Sowers, an oceanographer at the nonprofit Ocean Exploration Trust.
Sowers and other scientists, including several at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, recently published maps of the reef in the journal Geomatics.
The reef extends for about 310 miles (499 kilometers) from Florida to South Carolina and at some points reaches 68 miles (109 kilometers) wide. The total area is nearly three times the size of Yellowstone National Park.
Explained
Maldives and Lakshadweep (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to “those who wish to embrace the adventurer in them” to travel to Lakshadweep provoked an extraordinary personal attack on him by Maldivian government officials, and irate responses by Indians on social media — including announcements that they were cancelling visits to the Maldives — earlier this month.
The Maldives, an archipelago of 1,190 coral islands and sandbanks clustered in 20-odd atolls, sprawls over a patch of North Central Indian Ocean southwest of Kerala and Sri Lanka; Male, the capital, lies about 600 km southwest of Thiruvananthapuram.
Lakshadweep, which translates into Sanskrit and Malayalam as “hundred thousand islands”, is a group of 36 coral islands with a total area of only 32 sq km — India’s smallest Union Territory.
The islands, which are at distances between 220 km and 440 km from Kochi, lie to the north of the Maldives. Both archipelagos are part of the same chain of coralline islands that extends southward beyond the equator to the Chagos archipelago.
Nagara style of temple architecture, in which Ram temple is being built (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 1, Culture)
The Ram temple in Ayodhya will be inaugurated on January 22. Chandrakant Sompura, 81, and his son Ashish, 51, have designed the complex in the Nagara style of temple architecture.
The Nagara style of temple architecture emerged some time in the fifth century CE, during the late Gupta period, in northern India. It is seen in juxtaposition with the Dravida style of southern India, which too emerged in the same period.
Nagara and Dravida may be called ‘styles’, but they cover vast areas and time spans,” Adam Hardy wrote in his highly influential The Temple Architecture of India (2007). Instead of ‘styles’, he refers to the two as “the two great classical languages of Indian temple architecture”.