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Fresh investment announcements in the July-to-September quarter, the second quarter of 2023-24, have dropped to ₹6.9 lakh crore, 13% lower than in the first quarter, and 21.5% down from a year ago, driven by a sharp dip in proposed outlays by the Union government and foreign investors, and a broad-based contraction across the manufacturing, mining, infrastructure, and electricity sectors.
The decline in investment commitments during Q2 comes on the back of a 45.8% sequential decline recorded in the first quarter, as per Projects Today’s latest investment survey.
A total of 2,238 new projects with an aggregate investment intention of ₹6.88 lakh crore were announced in Q2, as against 2,745 new projects worth ₹7.91 lakh crore in Q1, with the projects’ tally contracting 18.5%.
Private investment plans shrank for the second quarter in a row, albeit at a slower pace of 0.24% compared to the 62.5% contraction in Q1.
Within the ₹3.93 lakh crore of private investment projects in Q2, announcements from foreign investors shrank 66.5% from Q1 levels to ₹28,000 crore.
Though domestic private players announced 17.8% larger outlays in Q2, the number of new projects fell to 844 from 1,180 in Q1.
Editorial
The Israel-Hamas conflict and Nusseibeh’s analysis (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Sooner or later, experts and military observers will busy themselves with analysing and holding forth on who won this (ongoing) ‘war’ between the state of Israel and Hamas.
The verdicts will not be unanimous and will be largely guided by the personal and national biases of the experts. But there will be no — and nor should there be any — difference of opinion about who lost.
Hamas’s lightning, brutal and simultaneous attack on several locations in Israel on Saturday, October 7, 2023, stunned Israel and the international community.
The question of how Israel was caught unawares about this operation underlines the fact that it was a total failure of intelligence on the part of Israel as well as the United States.
Understandably, the authorities here are reluctant to talk about this matter while the war is going on. Many ‘fall guys’ will be found, no doubt, when the inquiries are completed and published.
The world needs to stop taking water for granted (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The theme for World Food Day (October 16) this year — ‘Water is Life, Water is Food’ — calls for urgent action in managing water wisely.
Availability or a lack of water has become even more critical with increasing climate extremes. Countries face severe challenges such as drought, floods, unseasonal rains and prolonged dry spells.
With less than seven years left to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) — the UN’s food agencies — lay stress on the need to adopt innovative and collaborative approaches for improved management, conservation and availability of scarce water resources.
Opinion
Closing the gender pay gap in the workforce (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
When women were missing from the labour force, that was because they were home caring for children; when they were paid less than men, that was because they had lower education than men.
Or so said the economic orthodoxy, including theories popularised by the 1992 Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker. A few feminist economists and sociologists protested, but their voices were drowned out until Claudia Goldin stood on the podium as the President of the American Economic Association in 2013-14 and argued that the answer to the solution of missing and underpaid women did not lie at home but rather, in the market.
When Betty Friedan wrote in 1963 about college-educated women who were frustrated stay-at-home mothers, she noted that their problem has “no name.”
Claudia Goldin, the 2023 Economics Nobel Prize winner, has spent half a century giving a name and voice to their problems. She has chronicled the evolution of the American economy from agriculture to manufacturing to services and noted that as economic production moved from home to factories, women were excluded from market activities.
It was not until offices, schools, and hospitals began to offer more jobs than factories that women found jobs.
However, even when they entered the workforce in droves, overtook men in educational attainment, did not congregate in “female jobs,” and did not drop out from the labour force to have children, women continued to earn less than men.
Text & Context
Israel, Hamas, and the laws of war (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Hamas, a Palestine-based terrorist group, launched an attack on Israel, killing hundreds of civilians and taking many hostage. Israel has retaliated with all its might, triggering a war in West Asia.
There are two separate and independent international law questions related to wars. First, under what conditions or when can countries use force in their international relations? This is known as jus ad bellum, regulated by the United Nations (UN) Charter.
Second, how is a war to be fought, that is, what military actions are permissible? This is known as jus in bello.
Assuming a country is justified under the UN Charter to use force, it still must ensure that it satisfies jus in bello obligations. Justification to use force does not relieve a country of its obligations to use such force in accordance with international law.
News
Study estimates count of UAVs required for the three Services (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
The Chief of Defence Staff, General Anil Chauhan, recently ordered two studies to be conducted on major military platforms used by the three Services.
According to defence sources, these platforms are unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and armoured helicopters. The study on UAVs has since been completed with a recommendation to acquire 31 MQ-9B high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) UAVs and 155 medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) UAVs.
The studies, undertaken by tri-Service teams, are meant to optimise the number of platforms required as well as the resources and avoid duplication,” a defence source with knowledge of the matter explained.
The first study was conducted in August-September and the report has been finalised. For the second study, the terms of reference are currently being finalised and the study is expected to begin in a month or two,” two sources independently confirmed.
Sri Lanka, Bangladesh mull over joining RCEP bloc (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Four years after India walked out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, neighbours Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are now considering their chances of membership in the 15-nation trading bloc.
Sri Lanka has already applied to join the RCEP. President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who begins a visit to China for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Forum, is expected to seek support for his country’s candidacy in meetings with leaders there.
The Bangladesh government — whose Commerce Ministry has recommended joining the RCEP — is expected to take a final decision only after the elections are held there in January 2024, Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen said.
The Sri Lankan Presidential Secretariat confirmed the government’s application for the RCEP membership in an August statement, saying that it recognised “the potential of this vast trade bloc comprising major economies like China, Japan, and [South] Korea”.
World
Blinken raises Hamas issue with Saudi leader during West Asia tour (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for pressure on Hamas during a meeting on Sunday with the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, which has warming ties with Israel but has put normalisation on hold.
The top U.S. diplomat met for nearly an hour with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the royal’s farm residence in the Riyadh area. Very productive,” Mr. Blinken said when asked about the meeting after returning to his hotel.
Mr. Blinken “highlighted the U.S.’s unwavering focus on halting terrorist attacks by Hamas, securing the release of all hostages and preventing the conflict from spreading.
The two affirmed their shared commitment to protecting civilians and to advancing stability across the Middle East and beyond.
U.S. warns of the prospect of Iran getting engaged in war (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation
The U.S. said it fears an escalation of the war between Israel and Hamas and the prospect of Iran getting directly involved.
Speaking on CBS, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan cited the possibility of a new battle front on the Israel-Lebanon border and added, “We can’t rule out that Iran would choose to get directly engaged some way. We have to prepare for every possible contingency.”
Iran is a long-time backer of the militant group Hamas and of Hezbollah in Lebanon, providing them funding and weapons.
That is a risk and that’s a risk that we have been mindful of since the start,” Mr. Sullivan said of the prospect of Iran getting involved in the war, which was triggered by the Hamas attack on southern Israel from Gaza last weekend.
Science
New ‘quantum engine’ does work by flipping the identity of atoms (Page no. 20)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Physicists in Germany have come up with a way to convert the energy difference between two quantum states of a group of atoms into work.
The device adapts the principles of the familiar classical engine to the subatomic realm, giving physicists a way to study the nascent field of quantum thermodynamics in more detail as well as, possibly, build better quantum computers.
All subatomic particles can be classified as either fermions or bosons. Fermions are the building blocks of matter; bosons are particles that carry the forces acting between them.
Now, when a bunch of particles are cooled to very nearly absolute zero, so that their quantum nature comes to the fore, they would all like to have the lowest energy possible – but they can’t. This is known as Pauli’s exclusion principle.