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The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) declared the Popular Front of India (PFI) and its front organisations including its student wing- the Campus Front of India (CFI) as an “unlawful association” under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
The Muslim organisation has been banned for five years along with eight associates or front organisations.
The MHA has also issued another order empowering States to notify places associated with PFI and its front organisations where unlawful activity is taking place.
According to the order, District Magistrate will make a list of immovable properties of the organisation and make an order that no person who at the date of the notification was not a resident in the notified place shall, without the permission of the District Magistrate, enter, or be on or in, the notified place.
State Governments of Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat have recommended a ban on PFI, MHA said. It added that if there is no immediate ban, the group will continue its subversive activities, disturbing public order and undermining the constitutional set-up of the country; encourage and enforce a terror-based regressive regime; continue to propagate anti-national sentiments and radicalise a particular section of society with the intention to create disaffection against the country and aggravate activities which are detrimental to the integrity, security and sovereignty of the country.
The ban comes close on the heels of a countrywide raid on September 22 when 109 members of the groups were arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and other agencies. MHA will now set up a tribunal under UAPA to try the case where PFI could defend its case against the ban.
In a notification, MHA said some of the PFI’s founding members are the leaders of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and have linkages with Jamat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), both of which are proscribed organisations.
It said that the group also has linkages to global terrorist organisations such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and participated in terror activities in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
It said the PFI cadres linked to ISIS have been killed in these conflict theatres and some have been arrested by State Police and Central Agencies.
PFI and its associates “operate openly as a socio-economic, educational and political organisation but, they have been pursuing a secret agenda to radicalise a particular section of the society working towards undermining the concept of democracy and show sheer disrespect towards the constitutional authority and constitutional set up of the country.”
Centre extends free ration scheme for three months (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The government on September 28 extended by three months its programme to provide free rations to the poor at a cost of over ₹44,700 crore, as it looked to ease pain from high inflation and make political gains in the upcoming Gujarat election.
The scheme to provide 5 kg of wheat and rice free of cost to 80 crore poor every month, which was ending on Friday, will now run through December 31, 2022, I&B Minister Anurag Thakur said.
The Pradhan MantriGaribKalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) was started in April 2020 to help the poor whose livelihoods were shuttered by a nationwide lockdown aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus.
ASI finds Buddhist caves, temples in Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in M.P. (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 1, Art and Culture)
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) earlier this year discovered Buddhist caves and stupas, and Brahmi inscriptions, dating back to the 2nd century, and Hindu temples from the 9th-11th centuries, and possibly the world’s largest Varaha sculpture also dating to the same period, at the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh.
The Varaha sculpture is among the many monolithic sculptures of the 10 incarnations of Lord Vishnu that were discovered by an ASI at the national park earlier this year. The exploration took place 84 years after the last such effort in 1938.
A total of 46 new sculptures have come to light and have been reported,” ShivakantBajpai, Superintending Archaeologist, Jabalpur Circle, Madhya Pradesh, who led the exploration team, said. Ten sculptures had already been found and reported in the previous ASI survey of 1938.
Dr.Bajpai said the exploration in the Bandhavgarh area is being carried out in three phases, the first of which was completed in the Tala range in May-June this year. In the next two phases, the Khitouli and Magadhi ranges of the tiger reserve will be explored.
The ASI team discovered 26 mostly Buddhist caves dating back to the 2nd and 5th centuries. The caves and some of their remains had ‘Chaitya’ (rounded) doors and stone beds typical of Mahayana Buddhism sites.
This discovery brings the total number of caves found in Bandhavgarh to 76, as 50 are already in the records since the last survey.
Apart from this, the ASI team found 24 inscriptions in Brahmi text, all dating back to the 2nd-5th centuries. The inscriptions mention sites such as Mathura and Kaushambi, and Pavata, Vejabharada and Sapatanaairikaa. The kings they mention include Bhimsena, Pothasiri and Bhattadeva.
The remains of 26 temples date to the Kalachuri period between 9th-11th centuries. In addition to this, two Saiva mutts have also been documented. The Kalachuri dynasty, which spread over parts of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, is also associated with the earliest Ellora and Elephanta cave monuments.
Some remains of the Gupta period, such as door jambs and carvings in caves, have also been found.
Editorial
Globe-changing reverberations of the Ukraine war (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February will long be debated. Every big power has fears of being surrounded.
On its historically vulnerable western front, Russia had one supportive neighbour, six North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) adversaries, and two who are ambiguously inclined, while Ukraine’s relations with the European Union (EU) and NATO were always a matter of contention.
After the Putin-Biden Geneva encounter in mid-2021, the high intensity of interactions between NATO members and Russia raised hopes of a detente, but Russian President Vladimir Putin chose invasion over negotiation, ignoring the degraded and inexperienced state of his armed forces, Ukraine’s military being the biggest in Europe with 2,00,000 men, 6,00,000 reserves, 1,000 tanks and 130 aircraft, Ukraine’s willingness to resist, and NATO’s determination to punish Russia.
Ukraine has been massively assisted by NATO weaponry, training, communications, satellite and human intelligence, reconnaissance, information processing systems and total control over the global media.
While the World Bank is slow to help devastated war-torn nations such as Yemen and Afghanistan, it rushed $4.5 billion to Ukraine, while the International Monetary Fund came up with $1.4 billion.
The West fails to understand how hypocritical its sanctions appear. For example, the United States exerted much effort persuading India and others to boycott Iranian and Venezuelan oil, only to try to get those shipments back on the market after its opposition shifted to Russia.
For its confused objectives, poor strategy and weak logistics, Russia has paid a high price, militarily, economically and diplomatically.
More human losses have already been sustained than during its 10-year intervention in Afghanistan. The war has also caused huge devastation in the most industrial parts of Ukraine, with over 10 million persons crossing to neighbouring countries and over seven million internally displaced.
The current Ukraine counter-offensive that claims to have retaken 6,500 square kilometres and driven Russian forces back to the Kharkiv border, led to the announcement by Mr. Putin of holding a referendum in the occupied provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson (on joining Russia), mobilising 3,00,000 Russian reservists, and threatening to use nuclear weapons. Ukraine and NATO regard these actions as evidence of Russian weakness, noting that an army in retreat loses morale rapidly, and Russian public opinion is highly prone to mood swings.
In nature’s warning signs, a nudge to riparian states (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Disaster Management)
There has been an increase in the magnitude, the frequency and the intensity of floods in many parts of the world. As an example, nearly a third of Pakistan is experiencing devastation, with a spread of diseases and severe shortage of potable water after intense flooding.
In June this year Assam experienced one of its worst floods in living memory which affected over 30 districts. In some districts in Assam and Bihar, flooding is a recurrent feature, and thus a major impediment in ensuring poverty alleviation and meeting Millennium Development Goals.
Flooding is still considered to be a natural phenomenon that cannot be entirely prevented. But it is compounded by the lack of transparency in the sharing of hydrological information and also information relating to activities (such as by one riparian state) that are transboundary in their effect (affecting other riparian states), thus serving as an obstacle in understanding the magnitude of flooding.
In accordance with customary international law, no state has to use its territory in a manner that causes harm to another state while using a shared natural resource; this amounts to saying that there is a binding obligation on all states not to release water to cause floods in another co-sharer of the river water.
This obligation gives rise to other procedural norms that support the management of floods, which include notification of planned measures, the exchange of data and information, and also public participation.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in the Pulp Mills on the River Uruguay (Argentina vs Uruguay) case (2010), upheld that conducting a transboundary environmental impact assessment (TEIA) of a planned measure or projects on the shared water course is part of customary international law.
In fact, the ICJ noted that the acting state must notify the affected party of the results of TEIA to “enable the notified party to participate in the process of ensuring that the assessment is complete, so that it can then consider the plan and its effects with a full knowledge of the facts”.
Closer home, there is the case of China being the upper riparian in the Brahmaputra, which spans India and Bangladesh, enjoying apparent leverage vis-à-vis lower riparian India.
During the monsoon, flooding has been the recurrent feature in the last several decades in Assam. India faces other woes in the form of the construction of dams by China.
China’s excessive water release, as a “dam controller”, in violation of customary international law has the potential to exacerbate flooding in Assam in future.
India’s main concern is that there is no comprehensive sub-basin or all basin-level mechanism to deal with water management of Brahmaputra.
Opinion
Rediscovering the Bay of Bengal (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, India & Its Neighbourhood)
The Bay of Bengal (the Bay) is experiencing an increase in geo-economic, geopolitical, and geo-cultural activity. It is poised to once again play a key role in shaping the maritime order in Asia.
Therefore, it is noteworthy that at the fourth BIMSTEC summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the opening of the Centre for Bay of Bengal Studies (CBS) at Nalanda University.
The official launch of the CBS has once again demonstrated India’s commitment to advancing constructive agendas by forging connections and setting up platforms for all those with an interest in the Bay.
CBS will offer collaborations in areas such as geo-economics and geopolitics, ecology, trade and connectivity, maritime security, maritime law, cultural heritage, and blue economy to generate opportunities for the Bay region.
This will strengthen India’s overall framework for maritime engagement, which aims to advance sustainable economic growth for all by fostering closer nautical ties.
The Bay has long been a major commerce hub for the Indian Ocean. It created a conduit between the East and the West in terms for trade and culture.
An Indo-Pacific orientation and the realignment of global economic and military power towards Asia have had a considerable impact on the Bay region.
The key sea lanes of communication in this area are lifelines for global economic security and are crucial to the energy security that powers the economies of many countries in the region.
Further, non-traditional dangers including terrorism and climate change have become more prevalent. The Bay also provides an opportunity for greater regional cooperation in the environmentally friendly exploration of marine and energy resources.
The Bay has a biodiverse marine environment. It receives water from some of the world’s largest rivers. It is a partially enclosed sea that has given rise to several geological characteristics.
It is home to many rare and endangered marine species and mangroves, which are essential to the survival of the ecology and the fishing sector.
The region’s maritime environment has changed as a result of major powers expanding their economic and geopolitical influence. Political and cultural engagement, together with economic competition, have taken on new dimensions.
More crucially, the Bay’s ecosystem is going through an unprecedented crisis brought on by widespread environmental exploitation and geopolitical unrest.
Species extinction is a result of careless exploitation of the maritime environment, which has severe consequences on biodiversity.
Automation has impacted lower-level jobs in banks (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Union Finance Ministry had asked the heads of public sector banks (PSBs) for a plan to improve employee count. A week ago,BusinessLinehad reported that vacancies announced for clerical posts had significantly decreased this year. The report also showed a declining interest in bank jobs, with increasingly fewer candidates registering for the recruitment/selection programmes.
Earlier this year, on March 28-29, the All India Bank Employees’ Association carried out a strike insisting that recruitment of workers be increased, among other demands.
The strike and the recent news reports together show that the problem of declining manpower has reached an inflection point. In fact, the cutback on hiringsis more pronounced among clerks and sub-staff, while the number of officers has remained constant.
This trend was observed in both PSBs and private sector banks (PVBs). However, it is worth noting that the number of officers in PVBs is three times higher than in the PSBs.
Data show increased ATM usage, surging online and mobile transactions, and a reduction in the number of new bank branches have reduced footfalls in banks and led to the rapid decline in the strength of clerical staff.
Chart 1Ashows the total staff in PSBs and PVBs. It brings out the contrast in recruitment patterns. While the staff in PVBs went up from over 92,000 in FY05 to 5.7 lakh in FY21, the corresponding numbers for PSBs have remained stagnant — 7.48 lakh in FY05 and 7.83 lakh in FY21.
The number of officers, clerks, and sub-staff working in each functioning office of a PSB. In FY06, each working office had 6.6 clerical staff on average, which more than halved to 3 in FY21. Similarly, the number of sub-staff per office reduced from 3.3 to 1.1 in the observed period.
It also shows a similar declining trend among clerks and sub-staff in PVBs. However, it is important to note that there were considerably fewer clerks and sub-staff even in the earlier years in PVBs compared to their counterparts in PSBs.
It show that the number of officers has remained mostly stagnant. Interestingly, in FY21 there were 14.7 officers for every functioning office of PVBs compared to just 4.3 per office in PSBs. Such a high officer ratio in PVBs meant the disparity between clerical and officer positions was much wider than in PSBs.
News
Eastern Command’s ex chief Anil Chauhan is Chief of Defence Staff (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
The Government, appointed former Eastern Army Commander Lt. General Anil Chauhan as the next Chief of Defence Staff (CDS).
The post has been vacant since the death of the country’s first CDS Gen. BipinRawat in a helicopter crash in December 2021.
The Government has decided to appoint Lt. Gen. Anil Chauhan (Retired) as the next Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) who shall also function as Secretary to Government of India, Department of Military Affairs with effect from the date of his assumption of charge and until further orders.
In a career spanning over nearly 40 years, Lt. Gen. Anil Chauhan had held several command, staff and instrumental appointments and had extensive experience in counter-insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir and North-East India.
In June, the Government amended Service Rules of the Army, Navy and Air Force allowing retired Service Chiefs and three star rank officers eligible for consideration to the country’s top military post.
However, with an age limit imposed that the retired officer should not have attained 62 years on the date of appointment, retired Service Chiefs were largely ruled out especially so for the present consideration.
Post retirement, Lt. Gen. Chauhan took over as the Military Advisor in the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) from Lt. Gen. Vinod G. Khandare who stepped down from the post in October 2021.
In December 2019, the Government approved the creation of the post of CDS who would also function as the Principal Military Adviser to Defence Minister and Permanent Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC).
In addition, the DMA was created as the fifth department in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) with the CDS functioning as its Secretary.
While the tenure of Service Chiefs is 62 years of age or three years whichever is earlier, the age limit for the CDS is 65 years of age with no fixed tenure defined.
Gen. BipinRawat who had served as the 27th Army Chief from December 31, 2016 till December 31, 2019, took over as the first CDS on January 1, 2020. He, along with his wife MadhulikaRawat and 12 others were killed in a chopper crash on December 08, 2021.
Born on May 18, 1961, Lt. Gen. Chauhan was commissioned into the 11 Gorkha Rifles of the Indian Army in 1981. He is an alumnus of the National Defence Academy, Khadakwasla and Indian Military Academy, Dehradun.
In the rank of Major General, he had commanded an Infantry Division in Baramula sector in Jammu and Kashmir. Later as Lt. General, he commanded a Corps in the North East and subsequently became the Eastern Army Commander in September 2019 and held the charge until his retirement from service on May 31, 2021. In addition to these command appointments, Lt. Gen. Chauhan also served as Director General of Military Operations.
Jaishankar, U.S. NSA discuss strategic ties and Ukraine war (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and White House National Security Advisor (NSA) Jack Sullivan met on Wednesday and discussed issues related to U.S.-India strategic partnership, the Ukraine war and a free and open Indo-Pacific.
The White House said the meeting comprised a review of the strategic relationship and an exchange of views of regional and global priorities.
Mr. Jaishankar specifically mentioned that “the Indo-Pacific situation, South Asia and the Gulf” were discussed. Their meeting also included a discussion of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its impact on food and energy insecurity, according to the White House and a tweet from Mr. Jaishankar.
In the context of the forthcoming G20 Indian presidency, Mr. Jaishankar and Mr. Sullivan discussed approaches to debt sustainability and promoting “a free, open, secure, and prosperous Indo-Pacific”, according to the White House. The Minister is also meeting industry bodies and advocacy groups on his visit.
On Tuesday, he participated in a roundtable with executives organised by the U.S. India Business Council, he is scheduled to meet with the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum. Neither event was open to the press.
The Minister met U.S. Democrat lawmakers at India House, the Indian Ambassador’s official residence. These meetings were not accessible to the press but Mr. Jaishankar’s Twitter handle suggested he had met with Representative Ami Bera, Senator Jon Ossoff , Senator Mark Warner, Senator Chris Coons and Representative Jerry McNerney.
Press access to Indian media organisations for some of the events in the Washington DC leg of Mr. Jaishankar’s visit was uneven or precluded. At a joint press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the government had allocated both question slots available to the Indian press corps to Indian news agencies.
The allocation of the two slots on the U.S. side, however, was decided by resident correspondents at the State Department themselves.
Business
Moonlighting no reason to end WFH, says DXC Tech (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Moonlighting is only one challenge and that is not reason enough for a company to put an end to something (work from home) that had proved to be beneficial for a large chunk of employees, said DXC Technology India MD NachiketSukhtankar. Enterprises have always had multiple other challenges with deviaint employees, he pointed out.
Tech workers have been successfully doing cutting edge work sitting at home and the WFH regime has been benefiting a bulk of the employee population in DXC.
If we discovered any obvious conflict of interest, we will try to understand what it is and approach such instances case by case. We don’t believe in stopping something that proved to be beneficial for most of our employees because we believe in work-life balance.
The Virginia-based DXC Technology, an IT services and consulting firm, recently said it would continue with the work-from-home policy for its 43,000 employees in India.
On the outlook for the market, he said despite soaring oil prices, inflationary trends, fear of a recession or talent issues, there were opportunities everywhere in the marketplace.
Companies need to react to market challenges and changes. Every challenge creates new opportunities for tech providers and their customers and these opportunities will in turn create demand for technology transformation.
Mr. Sukhtankar said the company was currently in the process of hiring and expanding its businesses in India, Vietnam, Eastern Europe and the Philippines.