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The Army has to be future-ready as lessons can be learnt from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said.
Speaking at the 75th Indian Army Day event at the Army Service Corps (ASC) Bengaluru, Singh said that in the coming days all major armed forces of the world will be boosting their security mechanism.
Rajnath also said India’s reputation has increased significantly in the international fora as was seen after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to leaders of Ukraine and Russia to ensure the safe evacuation of stranded Indian students.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Ukraine President (Volodymyr) Zelenskyy, Russian President (Vladimir) Putin and US President Joe Biden and the war was stopped for a few hours during which students were safely evacuated.
Earlier, when India used to speak, no one would take it seriously, but now when we speak, the world listens to us carefully.
It was the first time the Army Day parade was held outside the national capital. Singh said organising the Army Day in Karnataka is a tribute to the people of the state who laid down their lives for India’s freedom.
This is also a tribute to Field Marshal KM Cariappa who was from Karnataka. Our Army has stood up to the challenges.
If our country is known for a few things, I would say the Indian Army is one of them. If any catastrophe happens and people get to know that the Army personnel have reached, they have a sense of belief that things would normalise.
Editorial page
The good cooperative (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Companies are investor-owned entities that exist primarily to maximise their return on capital. This is reflected in the value of their shares, whether or not traded in an exchange.
The investor-owner eventually seeks capital appreciation and the highest possible price for the shares he may want to sell or pledge to raise further monies.
Cooperatives, on the other hand, are organisations owned by members who could be producers or consumers. These members may own shares, but value the cooperative mainly for the services it provides them.
Such services, if it is a producer-owned cooperative, would include purchase, processing and marketing of their produce or supplying them inputs used in production.
Success metrics in this case are not earnings per share or dividend payout ratios, but the procurement price of produce and the timeliness of payment or the provision of quality cattle feed, farm extension and animal healthcare support, fertilisers and credit at least cost.
Both companies and cooperatives, however, at the end of the day are business enterprises whose raison d’être is — or should be — to deliver value to their owners.
Take the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). An apex organisation of dairy cooperatives in Gujarat, it is ultimately owned by 36.4 lakh farmers pouring milk to 18,154 village-level societies across the state.
But for the farmer-owner, it is the price paid for her milk that really matters, just as a company’s share price is for the investor-owner.
In the last 20 years, the average procurement price paid to producers by GCMMF’s district milk unions has gone up from Rs 184 to Rs 820 per kg of fat. Amul full-cream milk, containing 6 per cent fat, currently retails at Rs 63 per litre in Delhi.
The producer’s share of that, at Rs 820/kg fat and 1.03 kg to a litre, works out to about Rs 50.7 or over 80 per cent. In other words, GCMMF is not just helping process and market the milk of farmers, but is also getting them the highest possible share in the consumer rupee.
How has this been possible? The simple answer is professional management. The Amulorganisational model, from the time of VergheseKurien to B M Vyas and R S Sodhi, has been based on an elected board of directors operating through a chief executive and his team, which include marketing and finance professionals, project engineers, veterinarians, agronomists and nutritionists.
New Global order (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The Voice of the Global South summit that Delhi convened last week did not produce any spectacular outcomes; it was not supposed to.
The forum, however, marks an important effort by India to make global governance work for the developing nations, whose concerns tend to get a short shrift in international forums.
The virtual forum has provided valuable inputs from the Global South that could facilitate India’s ambition to steer the G20 summit in Delhi to success later this year.
The forum is also about India reconnecting with a global group of nations that had fallen off the Indian foreign policy radar since the end of the Cold War.
Over the last three decades, Indian diplomacy’s focus has been on reordering its great power relations, bringing stability to the neighbourhood and developing regional institutions in the extended neighbourhood.
That 120 odd nations attended the meeting underlines the willingness across the Global South to support Indian leadership on addressing the global challenges that have had a massive impact on the condition of the many developing countries.
The twin crises produced by the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian war in Ukraine have had a devastating and disproportionate impact on the Global South.
While the future of this particular forum is not clear, the idea that India must reclaim the leadership of the developing world appears to have gained much currency in Delhi.
Although the government might be aware of the dangers of one’s reach exceeding its grasp, the foreign policy discourse in Delhi is drifting towards exuberance about India’s plans to reorient the G20 and take charge of the Global South.
The international context today is not amenable to major global initiatives. Multilateralism is now in dire straits thanks to the growing military tensions among the great powers — between Russia and China on one side and the US, Europe and Japan on the other.
Major power conflict has been reinforced by the breakdown of the world trading rules and the weaponisation of global finance.
India’s own past experience with the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group-77 developing nations points to the real difficulty of uniting the Global South in pursuit of common goals.
Explained
Qatar Conundrum (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Eight retired Indian Navy personnel who were arrested by Qatari authorities in August, will mark 127 days in imprisonment in Doha on Saturday (January 14). Each has been kept in solitary confinement for the whole period of four and a half months.
In response to a question on the efforts the government was making for their release, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told Parliament that their imprisonment was a “sensitive matter”.
More than a month has passed since that statement on December 8. Earlier this month, a court in Doha extended their confinement by another month, as it has done at the beginning of every month since their arrest on August 30.
The long custody of the veterans for reasons not yet in the public domain is a test for Indian diplomacy, its engagement with the Indian diaspora, and considering that these men were in the Navy, the rules of the game for the re-employment of defence services personnel in other countries — a question that is bound to recur when the
The eight veterans — Captain Navtej Singh Gill, Captain SaurabhVasisht, Commander Purenendu Tiwari, Captain Birendra Kumar Verma, Commander SugunakarPakala, Commander Sanjeev Gupta, Commander Amit Nagpal and Sailor Ragesh — were working at Dahra Global Technologies and Consultancy Services, a defence services provider company owned by an Omani national, a retired squadron leader of the Royal Omani Air Force. He too was arrested along with the eight Indians, but was released in November.
The website of the company, which no longer exists — it was removed after the first media report of the arrests appeared in this newspaper on October 28 — said it provided training, logistics and maintenance services to Qatari Emiri Naval Force (QENF).
On its new website, the company is calledDahra Global and there is no mention of the connection to the QENF, nor of the seven officers who had leadership roles in the company.
Managing Director Commander Purnendu Tiwari (retd) received the PravasiBharatiyaSamman award in 2019 for his services in furthering the bilateral relationship between India and Qatar.
He is the only person from the armed forces to have received the award. He was feted in Doha by then Indian Ambassador P Kumaran, and a former head of the Qatar defence forces’ International Military Cooperation.
Personnel law vs Child marriage prevention act: issues before SC (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The Supreme Court agreed to examine a decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court holding that a Muslim girl can marry a person of her choice after attaining puberty.
A bench headed by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud said the HC’s decision should not be relied on as a precedent in any other case.
In October last year, another bench of the Supreme Court had agreed to hear an appeal on the case and appointed senior advocate Rajshekhar Rao as an amicus in the case.
The SC intervention opens up the issue of regulating the minimum age of marriage for women and the impact it has on personal law.
In October last year, the Punjab and Haryana High Court while hearing a Habeas Corpus petition ruled that a Muslim girl is free to marry a person of her choice after attaining puberty, unless she is under the age of 18.
A 26-year-old Muslim man who had married a 16-and-a-half-year-old girl had moved the High Court seeking custody of his spouse. The Punjab police had taken custody of the girl since she was a minor.
Justice VikasBahl examined the girl’s statement and noted in the judgment that “she had run from the house along with the present petitioner out of her own will as the dentenue is fond of the petitioner and wished to marry him.”
The HC ruling quoted the Principles of Mohammedan Law by Sir DinshahFardunjiMulla, on the capacity for marriage. It states:
Every Mahomedan of sound mind, who has attained puberty, may enter into a contract of marriage.Lunatics and minors who have not attained puberty may be validly contracted in marriage by their respective guardians.
A marriage of a Mahomedan who is of sound mind and has attained puberty, is void, if it is brought about without his consent.
The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights had moved the Supreme Court against the HC ruling. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the child rights’ body, argued that the High Court’s ruling essentially allowed a child marriage, and this was in violation of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006.
The plea argued that the Child Marriage Act is a secular legislation and would apply to all religions, overriding their personal law.