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The Assam Rifles is planning critical operational changes so that it can be deployed for conventional roles along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in contingencies, while continuing to perform its traditional counter-insurgency duties in the Northeast and guarding the India-Myanmar border.
Officials familiar with the matter said this issue was discussed along with other topics during the Assam Rifles Inspector General’s Conference held in Shillong last month.
They said there are plans to ensure availability of more than 70 per cent of Assam Rifles soldiers for deployment along the LAC in the next few months in case of an immediate requirement.
Assam Rifles has 46 battalions and a sanctioned strength of more than 65,000 troops. Of these, 20 battalions are involved in guarding the India-Myanmar border and 26 battalions are involved in counter-insurgency roles, including two in Jammu and Kashmir.
The latest plans of Assam Rifles signals India’s growing focus towards China and securing the LAC. Over the past three years — since India and China got into the ongoing military standoff along the LAC in eastern Ladakh in 2020 — the defence establishment has taken several measures to increase vigilance and strengthen deployment along the LAC.
Express Network
For a new govt in Chhattisgarh recent spate of Maoist attacks poses a challenge (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
Chhattisgarh has seen a spate of incidents of Naxal violence after the Assembly elections took place in the state last month, leaving six people dead and several others injured since November 17 – the last day of polling. This comes in the backdrop of an uptick in Maoist violence this year, after it touched an all-time low in 2022.
Last year, incidents of Left Wing Extremism had killed 10 security personnel, with 32 Maoists also getting killed. This year, however, 25 security personnel, 31 civilians and 20 Maoists have been killed so far.
The latest Naxal attack in the state came on Sunday, when CRPF sub-inspector Sudhakar Reddy was killed and Constable Ramu seriously injured in a gunfight in Bastar region’s Sukma district.
Two other personnel of security forces were killed this week in the Maoist-affected Bastar region – a BSF jawan in Kanker district and a Chhattisgarh Armed Force constable in Narayanpur district a day earlier. Both were killed in IED explosions.
At the beginning of this year, in January, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said at a public rally in Chhattisgarh’s Korba district that the aim was to “free India of Naxalism” before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
However, towards the end of the year, in November, he said at an election rally at Jashpur that with a “double engine-sarkar”, work could be undertaken towards “ending Naxalism in the next five years”.
Editorial
Political, not constitutional (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Polity ad Constitution)
Politically, it is a good thing that a temporary provision in India’s Constitution (Article 370) has ceased to be operative.
The decision has been upheld on December 11, in three judgments (one main and two concurring) of the Constitution Bench of five judges of the Supreme Court: It has facilitated a complete integration of Jammu and Kashmir into the Union of India.
If that was all that had happened, the unanimous judgment would have been and should have been welcomed. But this is not all that happened.
What was actually done by the Centre was, in my view, not according to the provisions of the Constitution, nor in accordance with well-settled principles of federalism, a basic feature of the Constitution as was held in a 1994 judgment of a Constitution Bench of nine judges.
Ideas Page
The allgorithm – savvy regulator (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The past couple of months have seen a flurry of activity related to the regulation of artificial intelligence. The US White House issued an executive order for the regulation of AI, the European Parliament and the European Council have agreed on a legislation to regulate AI, the UK hosted a summit on AI safety that resulted in the Bletchley Declaration, and at the GPAI summit in Delhi this week, participating countries agreed to create a global framework on AI trust and safety, among other things.
This wave of high level discussions will soon begin to highlight the downstream challenge — the urgent need for regulatory skill-building in the digital age.
This is the problem of being able to develop capabilities at roughly the same pace as the pace of new risks emanating from new technology.
While governments, as a whole, have a role in confronting the nascent challenges being thrown up, the specific arms of governments, regulatory agencies, will be at the forefront dealing with this issue.
Explained
Post office bill 2023: Why it was brought in, criticism (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
After being passed in the Rajya Sabha on December 4, the Post Office Bill, 2023, was brought to the Lok Sabha for consideration on Wednesday (December 13). Seeking to repeal the 125-year-old Indian Post Office Act of 1898, the Bill contains provisions that allow the Centre to intercept, open, or detain any item, and deliver it to customs authorities.
The Bill aims to “consolidate and amend the law relating to Post Office in India,” which today provides many services beyond simply mail delivery, the primary concern of the Indian Post Office Act of 1898.
The Post Office network today has become a vehicle for delivery of different citizen-centric services, which necessitated the repeal enactment of a new law, the Bill states.
The agri terms of trade (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Terms of trade (ToT) for Indian agriculture — movement in prices of farm commodities relative to that of non-farm goods and services — have recorded significant improvement in the last decade and a half, going by data derived from national income statistics.
ToT can be calculated using so-called implicit price deflators. Gross Value Added (GVA) — the value of all goods and services produced in an economy minus the value of their inputs consumed during a given year, net of product taxes and subsidies — is estimated at both current and constant prices. Current prices are price levels for the given year, while constant prices are those that prevailed during a fixed “base” year.
The deflator is the ratio of GVA at current prices to the GVA at constant prices, thereby also a measure of inflation relative to the base year.
The implicit price deflator can be worked out for the economy’s individual sectors — agriculture and allied activities, industry and services — as well.
The deflator for agriculture GVA divided by that for non-agriculture GVA, then, gives the ToT for the farm sector in a given year.