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Multiple wings in the government have started to red-flag the Centre’s moves to progressively hike customs duties, especially the more recent offensive targeted at imports of Chinese components and inputs.
A section within the government is in favour of a more nuanced approach in using tariffs as a diplomatic tool, failing which there is a possibility of the gains of India’s manufacturing-focused thrust that include schemes such as Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) being squandered away.
What cannot be missed is that China still accounts for 14 per cent of India’s imports with not just inputs for the domestic industry in sectors ranging from electronics to pharmaceuticals and textiles to leather, but also capital goods, being sourced from China.
This, coupled with the fact that average tariffs in India have jumped to 18.1 per cent in 2022 from 13 per cent eight years ago in 2014, has made India uncompetitive vis-a-vis countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and Mexico.
Express Network
SC to centre: Ensure women get permanent commission in coast guard or we will (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
“Women cannot be left out,” Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud while asking the Central government to ensure that eligible women officers get permanent commission in the Indian Coast Guard. He further said that if the government does not do so, the Supreme Court will take the necessary steps.
All these functionality etc argument does not hold water in the year 2024. Women cannot be left out. If you do not do it, we will do it. So take a look at that.
A Supreme Court bench led by CJI Chandrachud was hearing the plea of Priyanka Tyagi, a woman officer in the Coast Guard, who was seeking permanent commission to eligible women short-service commission officers of the force.
Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra were also part of the Bench, which took note of submissions by Attorney General R Venkataramani that there were some functional and operational difficulties in granting permanent commissions.
EU – India FTA talks are sending a signal to world in support of rules based trade system (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Foreign Minister of Romania, Luminita Odobescu, who participated in the Raisina Dialogue last week, speaks to Shubhajit Roy on a range of issues including strengthening bilateral ties in energy, defence and IT, and Russia’s war on Ukraine.
India is an essential partner for Romania in the South Asia region, both bilaterally, as well as within the framework of the EU-India Strategic Partnership. 2023 was a special year in the history of our ties.
We marked 75 years since the establishment of our diplomatic relations and 10 years of the Extensive Partnership.We have achieved great progress together during all these years and there is genuine and mutual interest to deepen our cooperation.
Together with (External Affairs) minister (S) Jaishankar, we adopted a Celebratory Joint Declaration last Friday (February 23), following the 10th Anniversary of the Extensive Partnership between Romania and India, considering the current complex international context and focusing the cooperation in key areas of energy, IT&C, and manufacturing.
Editorial
Fast food education (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Education)
There is an episode in Kashinath Singh’s fictionalised Hindi language memoir, Kashi Ka Assi (2004), that goes something like this. It is 1953 and the author has recently arrived in Kashi, having left his village.
The young Kashinath has high hopes that the city will be a site of enlightenment and deliverance from the debilitations of rural existence, marked by the dead hand of custom and the economic and cultural dead ends that smother aspirations.
Kashinath is staying with an elder brother, another supplicant for the city’s imagined capacities for improving blighted lives.
Ideas Page
It starts with the district (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
India’s diversity is embodied in its districts. To the policymaker, understanding the full scale of this diversity is key to crafting policies.
In this context, a multidimensional and localised index like the District Development Index for Maharashtra will prove invaluable.
The index captures a district’s progress by giving equal weightage to its potential for socio-economic development and its existing levels of socio-economic development.
In addition to providing an immediate picture of district performance, the index is also built for the long term, so policymakers can tap into the potential presented by various districts.
The average district in India has nearly 1.86 million people, larger than the population of countries like Bahrain (1.47 million) and Luxembourg (0.65 million).
Using NFHS-5 data, they reveal that the average level of the mother’s education equals or exceeds that of the father’s in as many as 195 districts (out of 707 districts studied).
A generation previously, only 11 districts had more educated mothers than fathers. This points to the presence of intergenerational mobility at the district level.
World
Sweden clears final hurdle to join NATO as Hungary approves bid (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Hungary’s parliament approved Sweden’s NATO accession, clearing the last hurdle before the historic step by the Nordic country whose neutrality lasted through two world wars and the simmering conflict of the Cold War.
Hungary’s vote ended months of delays to complete Sweden’s security policy shift and followed a visit by Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on Friday, during which the two countries signed an arms deal.
Sweden is leaving 200 years of neutrality and military non-alignment behind,” Kristersson told a press conference. We are joining NATO in order to defend what we are and everything we believe in even better. We are defending our freedom, our democracy and our values, together with others.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government has faced pressure from NATO allies to fall in line and seal Sweden’s accession to the alliance.
We would like to welcome Sweden alongside Finland into the NATO alliance very, very soon. She encouraged Hungary’s government to quickly complete the process to allow Sweden’s entry into NATO.
To fight climate change, Germany plans to store CO2 underground offshore (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Germany plans to enable underground carbon storage at offshore sites, pushing ahead with a much-discussed technology in an acknowledgement that time is running out to combat climate change, the country’s vice chancellor said Monday.
Europe’s biggest economy is making good progress with expanding renewable energy sources and usage, but a solution is needed for the carbon dioxide emitted by some sectors such as the cement industry that are “hard to abate,” said Robert Habeck, who is also the economy and climate minister.
Germany, which is home to many energy-intensive industries, aims to cut its emissions to “net zero” by 2045. Habeck’s proposed “carbon management strategy,” which still needs to be turned into detailed legislation, foresees enabling the transport of carbon dioxide and its storage under the sea in Germany’s exclusive economic zone, except in marine conservation areas.
It doesn’t foresee allowing storage sites on land, but Habeck said that could be considered later if German state governments approve.
Economy
Fraudulent trading via FPIs: What is it & Why has Sebi warned against it? (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has warned individuals against fraudulent trading platforms falsely claiming or suggesting affiliation with its registered Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs).
These platforms are misleading individuals by claiming to offer them trading opportunities through FPI or Foreign Institutional Investor (FII) sub-accounts or institutional accounts with special privileges.
The SEBI said it has received many complaints where fraudsters are enticing victims through online trading courses, seminars, and mentorship programmes in the stock market, leveraging social media platforms like WhatsApp or Telegram, as well as live broadcasts.
These scamsters are posing as employees or affiliates of SEBI-registered FPIs, and coaxing individuals into downloading applications that purportedly allow them to purchase shares, subscribe to IPOs, and enjoy ‘institutional account benefits’—all without the need for an official trading or Demat account.
These operations often use mobile numbers registered under false names to orchestrate the fraudulent schemes, SEBI.