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Taking the defence cooperation between India and France to a new level, the two countries announced that they will extend their “ground-breaking” defence cooperation in advanced aeronautical technologies by supporting the joint development of a combat aircraft engine and also an engine for the Indian multi-role helicopter (IMRH) being designed and developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.
This is among the several announcements made by the two sides on the defence front. Both nations also announced cooperation on small and advanced modular reactors and finalisation of the joint Earth observation satellite, among others.
A road map on this project will be prepared between Safran and DRDO before the end of this year,” the joint statement issued after bilateral talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron said.
They also support industrial cooperation for motorization of heavy-lift helicopters under the IMRH programme with Safran Helicopter Engine, France. To enable progress on the IMRH programme, a Shareholders’ Agreement between HAL, India and Safran Helicopter Engine, France has been concluded for engine development.”
These ventures are in line with the spirit of trust that prevails between India and France in the sharing and joint development of critical components and technology building blocks, based on the successful Indo-French experience in technology transfer.
Last month, HAL and General Electric General Electric signed an MoU to potentially manufacture the F-414 engine for the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft-MK2 subject to license approval from the U.S.
Congress. India has been looking for a more powerful engine to power the fifth-generation Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) under development.
India’s third lunar odyssey commences with perfect launch (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
India’s third moon mission, Chandrayaan-3, was successfully launched onboard a Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM-3) rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.
This is India’s second attempt at soft-landing robotic instruments on the lunar surface after the previous attempt, Chandrayaan-2, failed in 2019. Thus far, only three countries, the U.S., Russia and China, have successfully soft-landed on the moon.
Speaking to reporters after the launch, ISRO Chairman S. Somanath said the next 42 days are crucial. The landing is currently planned on August 23 at 5.47 p.m. IST, if everything goes as per plan.
Hailing the launch, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: “Chandrayaan-3 scripts a new chapter in India’s space odyssey. It soars high, elevating the dreams and ambitions of every Indian.”
States
Remembering a long-forgotten hero (Page no. 4)
(GS Paper 1, History)
An exhibition, a walk and a talk to be held this weekend in Kolkata will mark the bicentenary year of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, the last king of Awadh who spent his final years on the outskirts of what was then the capital of British India.
The tribute is the brainchild of visual artist Soumyadeep Roy, who is organising it with the help of, among others, Kolkata-resident Manzilat Fatima, who is the great-great granddaughter of Wajid Ali Shah and his wife Hazrat Mahal.
Since the nawab was an artist himself, we are celebrating and commemorating his birth anniversary through art. We will be hosting an exhibition, a heritage walk, and a talk, with the help of an art grant received from the German consulate back in 2017, has been working on a project on the nawab, and it is his works that will be on display at the exhibition.
I think we live in polarised times and it’s inspirational to look back at personalities, especially artists, who were more liberal in their approach and had to tackle and overcome boundaries and restrictions in their times.
Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was definitely one such artist and personality and there’s something so charming and fascinating in not only the way he made art himself, but also the way in which he facilitated and paved the way for other artists around him.
His grant-aided project, titled Huzn, was an exploration into the peripheral lives around the nawab and the people who migrated to Calcutta with him. While working on it, he parallelly began creating artworks on the nawab and it will be those on display at the exhibition, called Intekhab.
Editorial
Deciphering Maharashtra’s defections, its politics (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The issue of political defections typically takes centre-stage at a particular moment in the life of a polity. This is the intervening period of transition when an old system of political dominance gives way to a new one.
In Maharashtra, the era of Congress dominance, which had weakened by the 1990s, sputtered to an end in 2014. Yet, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not been quite able to take over the reins from the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) combine, given the attitude of the local elites in regions such as western Maharashtra, leading to a chaotic decade of attrition. Whether the dramatic switch of the Ajit Pawar NCP faction to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) signals the birth pangs of a new era of the BJP’s dominance, or is merely a contingent truce, remains to be seen.
The BJP’s singular majority at the national level since 2014 has whetted its desire for State-level dominance in a number of States.
The success of these various State campaigns has been predicated to a large extent on an array of mass defections from erstwhile ruling and/or primary Opposition parties. The volatile politics of the northeastern States, dependent on central aid, fell to this trend the earliest.
The BJP became the ruling party in Assam in 2016 following key defections from the Asom Gana Parishad and the ruling Congress.
This was the model of rapid party expansion, built on defections of leaders particularly from dominant caste/classes, which was later used in Tripura and the wider northeast.
In Arunachal Pradesh, in 2016, almost the entire State unit of the Congress — 44 out of 45 MLAs, including the Chief Minister, Pema Khandu — defected overnight to an NDA ally, and shortly thereafter to the BJP.
Thus, the split of the NCP in Maharashtra now is better understood in the context of national politics. Such a move enables us to move beyond the immediate plane of contingent factors such as leadership successions and the coercive meddling of central agencies.
It will also help explain the split of the NCP and the Shiv Sena (within a dizzying year) in terms of the evolving structural dynamics of Maharashtra politics.
Virtual summit, virtual silence (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
At a media briefing on July 4, India’s Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra vehemently asserted that the fact that the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit was held virtually “in no way signifies, hints, insinuates the dilution in the objectives that we are trying to seek of the SCO Summit.
He did not disclose, however, any reason for not holding the summit physically or in hybrid mode. To emphasise India’s commitment to the SCO, Mr. Kwatra dwelt on the political, economic and cultural initiatives the country had taken and the 134 meetings and events which it had convened during its SCO presidency.
What Mr. Kwatra overlooked was the legitimate point —it is precisely because India had invested so much effort in the SCO that the summit should have been held physically or in a hybrid manner. That would have imparted it greater salience.
Mr. Kwatra’s failure to give even one credible reason for having a virtual summit indicates that India is moving away from the approaches which led it to become an SCO full member in 2017.
At that stage Prime Minister Narendra Modi still held the belief that he could reach a modus vivendi with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the contentious issues which plague the India-China relationship.
Hence, despite the SCO’s origins and the influence exercised by China over it, he enthusiastically went ahead with India’s full membership.
China’s actions towards India in 2020 and the evolving international order have obviously compelled a re-appraisal of Indian interests in the SCO.
This is evident from the point of not only holding a virtual summit but also Mr. Modi’s combative assertiveness on issues of concern to India (terrorism and connectivity) on which it rightly has fundamental differences with China and Pakistan.
On terrorism Mr. Modi said, “Some countries use cross border terrorism as an instrument of their policies, provide shelter to terrorists. SCO should not hesitate to criticise such nations. There should be no double standards on such serious matters.”
While neither Pakistan nor China will change course on terrorism, the issue resonates in the Central Asian Republics that continue to have deep concerns of terrorist groups using Afghanistan.
News
Jaishankar raises ‘outstanding issues’ along LAC with China’s top diplomat (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar discussed “outstanding issues” along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi along the sidelines of the East Asia Summit (EAS) in Jakarta.
Friday’s meet was Mr. Jaishankar’s third high-level engagement with the Chinese side in recent months, following bilateral talks during visits by Foreign Minister Qin Gang to India for the G-20 Foreign Ministers’ meet in March and for a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation gathering in May.
In both meetings with Mr. Qin, Mr. Jaishankar underlined the importance of peace on the LAC as a prerequisite for normalcy in the broader relationship, and called for China to take forward disengagement of troops in the two remaining friction points.
A third meeting between the two Foreign Ministers was expected in Jakarta, but Mr. Qin did not travel because of reported health reasons.
Instead, his predecessor, Wang Yi, who was promoted last year to the Politburo and also heads the ruling Communist Party’s Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, attended the Jakarta meetings.
“Just concluded meeting with Director Wang Yi of the Office of the CPC Central Commission for Foreign Affairs,” Mr. Jaishankar in a message on Twitter
News
Success of Chandrayaan launch vehicle gives Gaganyaan a leg-up (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
With a human-rated Launch Vehicle Mark (LVM) to be used for the upcoming Gaganyaan mission, the LVM-3’s successful launch of the Chandrayaan-3 on Friday gained significance, as it has further enhanced the reliability of the launch vehicle.
Following the launch, LVM project director Mohan Kumar said that the rocket used for the Chandrayaan-3 mission used multiple systems that were rated for humans.
The human-rated S200 [solid strap-on motors] that were used earlier were again used, and the L110 Vikas engine has also completely become human-rated today.
ISRO’s Gaganyaan project is expected to demonstrate India’s human spaceflight capability by launching three astronauts to an orbit of 400 km for a three-day mission, and then bringing them safely back to earth, landing them in Indian seas.
The success of the Chandrayaan-3 launch was celebrated by several public and private sector units all over the country that played an active role in the mission.
For instance, Mishra Dhatu Nigam Limited (MIDHANI), the defence PSU, had developed and supplied various critical and strategic materials for the three-stage heavy lift launch vehicle.
It supplied cobalt base alloys, nickel base alloys, titanium alloys and special steels for liquid engine, nozzles for liquid stages, gas bottles, thrusters, cryogenic upper stage components, rocket motor casing, propellant tanks and investment castings of nickel alloys, stainless steel for exhaust unit, etc.
Kerala government undertaking Keltron in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala Minerals and Metals (KMML) in Kollam, and long-time industry partners of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) such as Ananth Technologies Ltd (ATL) and Kortas Industries Pvt Ltd supplied many components. Keltron supplied 41 electronics modules and various power modules.
Many of the critical components on the mission used alloys from titanium sponge produced by the KKML. KMML has a 500-tonne capacity titanium sponge plant at Chavara, Kollam, a joint venture with the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) and the Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory (DMRL).
A Kerala-based rubber products firm supplied a crucial flex seal. Vajra Rubber Products in Thrissur supplied S-200 thrust vector control flex seal for the vehicle.
Data Protection Bill poses severe restrictions to RTI Act, NCPRI cautions govt. (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
An upcoming amendment to the Right to Information Act, 2005 is set to remove the legal basis allowing government agencies to share personal information in public interest, a move that activists have warned would dilute the transparency law.
In the version of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill cleared for introduction in Parliament, a copy of which was reviewed, there exists a section that would eliminate the majority of Section 8(1)(j) of the 2005 law.
According to that section, personal information cannot be disclosed under the RTI Act “which has no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information”.
The data Bill would remove all these caveats, prohibiting government agencies from sharing private information of any kind, regardless of the public interest it may entail.
The National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI), which has been among the major pressure groups advocating for transparency since 1996, wrote to Members of Parliament raising alarm on this change.
The Bill seeks to amend the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 by severely restricting its scope and adversely impacting the ability of people to access information,” said the letter, signed by NCPRI co-convenor Anjali Bhardwaj and other activists.
Business
FinMin asked to consider imposing customs duty on Chinese stainless steel (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Ministry of Steel has written to the Finance Ministry asking it to look at the possibility of levying customs duty on Chinese stainless steel shipments coming into India.
Such a duty will benefit the domestic stainless steel industry which has been badly hit by such imports and is “facing low capacity utilisation”.
The import of stainless steel from China increased from about 20% to about 60% of overall imports into the country.
This Ministry is of the view that imposition of CD (customs duty) on imports from China will be beneficial and will support the domestic stainless steel industry which is facing the problem of low capacity utilisation due to the surge in the imports. In view of the above, it is requested that the recommendations of the DGTR may be examined for suitable action.
The Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) had, in the sunset clause review, recommended the continuation of customs duty on stainless steel imports from China in April.
In Budget 2022-23, countervailing duties on imports of certain hot-rolled and cold-rolled stainless steel flat products originating from China were revoked.
The Steel Ministry in its office memorandum acknowledged the representation from various trade bodies and noted that a surge was observed in the import of stainless steel flat products from China.
A year before the customs duty on stainless steel imports from China was revoked, that is in 2020-21, stainless steel imports from China were 1,57,000 tonnes, which increased by more than 300% to 6,32,000 tonnes in 2022-23.