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The Manipur High Court on Monday admitted a review petition to modify its contentious March 27 order which had directed the State government to recommend the inclusion of the Meitei community on the Scheduled Tribe (ST) list.
The court issued notice to the Union and State governments on Monday, seeking their response by July 5, the next date of hearing.
The review petition filed by the Meitei Tribes Union (MTU) was admitted for hearing by a Bench of Acting Chief Justice M.V. Muralidharan, who had authored the March 27 order which was passed on an initial writ petition filed by the union.
The first respondent shall consider the case of the petitioners for inclusion of the Meetei/Meitei community on the Scheduled Tribe list, expeditiously, preferably within a period four weeks from the date of receipt of a copy of this order.
It is this part of the order that we have sought a modification of. There is a Supreme Court judgment that says that inclusion or exclusion of any community is the prerogative of Parliament and the President.
He said they had initially only sought for a direction to the State to reply to the Centre following procedure.
States
Archaeologist finds Mesolithic-era rock painting in Andhra’s Guntur (Page no. 4)
(GS Paper 1, Culture)
A Mesolithic period rock painting depicting a person tilling a piece of land has been found by D. Kanna Babu, former Superintending Archaeologist of the Temple Survey Project (Southern Region) of the Archaeological Survey of India, Chennai, in Orvakallu village in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh.
Mr. Kanna Babu told that while surveying the lower River Krishna Valley to ascertain the architectural features of shrines, he identified a new prehistoric rock painting on the walls and ceiling of natural rock shelters on a hillock at Orvakallu.
After an intensive exploration, it was noticed that these were shelters for prehistoric humans who lived at this place. Among these five naturally formed caves, two are embellished with distinguished depictions of rock paintings on the back walls and ceilings executed by people of Mesolithic Age, roughly [from] 5000 BC.
Mr. Babu added that the paintings were made with “natural white kaolin and red ochre pigments”, as well as that most of them had been “badly damaged” due to exposure to “air and wind”.
However, some of the sketches and outlines are still intact for the visitors. Ochre is a pigment composed of clay, sand, and ferric oxide. Kaolinite is a soft, earthy, and usually white mineral produced by the chemical weathering of aluminium silicate minerals like feldspar.
Editorial
A rising India, in waltz dance steps with the U.S. (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
India and America are BFF (best friends forever), and each needs the other more than ever before today, united by powerful mutual interests. India took 63 years to reach $1 trillion GDP, seven years to hit $2 trillion, three years to hit $3 trillion, and is estimated to reach $25 trillion by 2047 (according to PricewaterhouseCoopers), 100 years after Independence.
In 1700, India accounted for over 35% of global GDP, making it the world’s biggest, and by the time of the economic crises in 1991, it was down to almost 1%. Today, it is at around 4%-5% and rising.
The United States needs this market desperately, and India needs America’s capital and its technology — military and non-military, both.
By 2030, India will have a working population of one billion, which is more than the entire G-8 population; today, it has Internet coverage almost equal to it.
As recently as eight years ago, India’s per capita mobile data consumption was one of the lowest in the world (122nd), and today it is ranked at one, more than that of the U.S. and China combined, which is helping take prosperity to every nook and corner of India.
Opinion
A summit with substance (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
As world leaders and finance moguls land in Paris for the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, it’s time to take concrete steps for sustainable finance and not let this be another international summit without substance.
French President Emmanuel Macron says the agenda is to increase “financial solidarity with the [Global] South”. India, the president of the G20 this year, is co-chairing the steering committee of the summit with France and can be counted on to be that voice of the Global South.
Every day, the cost of climate change and inaction becomes dearer, particularly for low- and middle-income countries that face the brunt of it.
According to One Planet Lab’s white papers released for the Summit, the scale of investment needed to meet the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, climate COP21 and Biodiversity COP15 objectives set at the global and national levels is to the tune of an additional $4 trillion every year.
If you break down the maths, that’s over $2 trillion a year to meet the Paris Agreement objectives and $2 trillion required to achieve the UN SDGs. But the hard truth is that only $204 billion of official development assistance came last year – a record in itself.
This gap between promises and payment goes to show that international funding is unpredictable and poorly structured, and does not address the liquidity challenges of developing countries.
For instance, only 25% of global climate investment goes to South Asia, Latin America, and Africa, which house some of the most vulnerable regions.
Further, global funds clamp down on the fiscal independence of these countries by posing several conditions before the money comes in.
Domestically, too, the tax structures of developing countries lead to institutional weakness, illicit finance flows, and higher risk perceptions.
Text
Phonons on the chopping block: Are ‘sound particles’ quantum too? (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Quantum computers and artificial intelligence are two of the emerging areas of interest in the realm of computing. Recently, IBM published a paper in which it claimed to have demonstrated that a quantum computer could solve a useful problem that today’s conventional computers can’t, a result merited by concerns that their computations might become too unreliable when they also become complicated.
Quantum computers use qubits as their basic units of information. A qubit can be a particle — like an electron; a collection of particles; or a quantum system engineered to behave like a particle.
Particles can do funky things that large objects, like the semiconductors of classical computers, can’t because they are guided by the rules of quantum physics.
For example, these rules allow each qubit to have the values ‘on’ and ‘off’ at the same time. The premise of quantum computing is that information can be ‘encoded’ in some property of the particle, like an electron’s spin, and then processed using these peculiar abilities.
As a result, quantum computers are expected to perform complicated calculations that are out of reach of the best supercomputers of today.
Other forms of quantum computing use other units of information. For example, linear optical quantum computing (LOQC) uses photons, the particles of light, as qubits.
Just like different pieces of information can be combined and processed by encoding them on electrons and then having electrons interact in different ways, LOQC offers to use optical equipment — like mirrors, lenses, splitters, waveplates — with photons to process information.
In fact, any particle that can be controlled and manipulated using quantum-mechanical phenomena should, on paper, be usable as an information unit in a quantum computer.
News
India gifts INS Kirpan to Vietnam, focuses on enhancing defence relations, security (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
India gifted the indigenously-built in-service missile corvette INS Kirpan to Vietnam to enhance its naval capabilities. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh announced this after bilateral talks with his visiting Vietnamese counterpart General Phan Van Gang.
Progress on various bilateral defence cooperation initiatives was reviewed during the meeting, with both sides expressing satisfaction at the ongoing engagements,” a Defence Ministry statement said on the talks while stating that the two Ministers focused on enhancing cooperation between defence industries of both countries and maritime security.
Both Ministers identified means to enhance existing areas of collaboration, especially in the field of defence industry cooperation, maritime security and multinational cooperation, the Ministry said.
Gen. Phan also visited headquarters of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and discussed ways to enhance “defence industrial capabilities by cooperation in defence research and joint production.
Earlier in the day, Gen. Phan laid a wreath at the National War Memorial and was later given a triservice guard of honour. He arrived in India on Sunday on a two-day visit.
INS Kirpan is a Khukri class missile corvette displacing 1,350 tonnes and was commissioned into the Navy on January 12, 1991.
It has a displacement of close to 1,400 tonnes, a length of 91 metres, a beam of 11 metres and is capable of speed in excess of 25 knots.
The ship is fitted with a medium range gun, 30 mm close range guns, chaff launchers and surface-to-surface missiles, according to the Navy.
UN rights chief seeks to establish presence in China and India (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The United Nations Human Rights chief called for greater political support for his office as he seeks to expand its work by establishing a first-time presence in China and India.
Volker Turk, who took over as High Commissioner late last year, used his opening speech to the Human Rights Council to call for greater cooperation and singled out many countries such as Syria, Iran, Israel, Russia and Eritrea that should do more.
We would now like to scale up engagement,” he told the Geneva council, saying he wanted to do more monitoring work in countries such as Brazil and the United States.
I also believe that it is important for us to establish a presence for the first time in China and India. The U.N. rights office has a presence in 95 countries. There was no immediate reaction from Beijing or New Delhi to Mr. Turk’s suggestion.
World
Xi meets Blinken as China, U.S. agree to ‘stabilise’ relations amid tensions (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday said China and the U.S. had made “progress” on some of the issues recently straining relations as he met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Beijing.
That Mr. Xi met the visiting top U.S. diplomat — the meeting hadn’t been confirmed publicly when Mr. Blinken landed in Beijing on the first visit by the top U.S. diplomat since 2018 — was seen by observers as reflecting a new willingness on both sides to bring some stability to relations.
Both sides are also looking to pave the way for Mr. Xi and Mr. Biden to meet later this year for the first time since Bali in November 2022, when they agreed to prevent relations from sliding into conflict. Talks are expected either at the G-20 in India in September or at the APEC summit in the U.S. in November.
Mr. Xi said Beijing “has made our position clear and the two sides have agreed to follow through the common understandings President Biden and I had reached in Bali.
Both Mr. Xi and Mr. Blinken referred to the goal of stabilising ties. Mr. Xi said he hoped the visit would contribute towards doing so, while Mr. Blinken later told reporters he agreed on the need to “stabilise” relations but was “clear-eyed” on differences.
Business
FM calls for efforts to push farmers to cultivate millets (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman called for concerted efforts to sensitise farmers to shift towards more remunerative but less water-guzzling crops like millets, pulses and oilseeds, and enhance the digital capabilities of rural financial institutions.
Ms. Sitharaman, who was chairing a review of India’s apex rural development financial institution National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development or NABARD along with top officials from the Department of Financial Services, advised it to work towards ensuring efficiency and outcomes at the ground level with improvement in rural income as top priority.
With production and marketing of ShreeAnna as a national priority in the ongoing International Year of Millets, the Finance Minister directed NABARD to encourage farmers to enhance the area covered under Millets, and to protect the returns of farmers who are already growing millets.