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Continuing its reign as the best higher education institution in the country, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras has secured the top spot for the fifth consecutive year in the latest national rankings released by the Minister of State for Education, Rajkumar Ranjan Singh.
The latest edition of the National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF) revealed no major upsets in terms of the results, with the IITs continuing their dominance in most categories.
IIT-Madras also bagged the first position in engineering for the eighth year in a row and was assessed as the second-best research institution in the country, narrowly missing the top spot by 2.2 marks, which was claimed by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru.
Interestingly, IISc, which the QS World University Rankings has adjudged as the top research university globally, ahead of Harvard, Princeton University and MIT, was edged out to the second position in the ‘overall’ category for the fifth consecutive year.
A closer look at the score breakdown shows IISc (with 83.09 marks) falls behind IIT-Madras (86.69 marks) on parameters such as student strength, online education, published and granted patents, and the number of economically and socially deprived students.
Govt. & Politics
India to US: Ease defence sale norms, transfer of technology (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
India asked the United States to remove the “stringent hurdles” — existing in the form of complicated rules and regulations — in sales of military equipment and transfer of critical defence technologies to it, top government officials told The Indian Express.
This was among a range of issues Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin discussed at their bilateral talks on Monday, which saw the two sides committing to a closer collaboration on “our shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific”.
At the meeting, officials said, India also conveyed to the US side in detail that Pakistan cannot be trusted with western military equipment and platforms as they could share the technology with China for them to be reverse engineered.
Austin arrived in New Delhi from Singapore on Sunday. It’s his second visit to India.
At the meeting, officials said, the Indian and the US sides discussed military capacity building, ensuring a greater maritime domain awareness, strategic infrastructure and logistics, besides future collaboration on a range of defence technologies, with an emphasis on the underwater domain.
Editorial
No sisterhood (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Even as fanfare over the new Parliament building was projected as the major event, the image of the nation’s ace wrestlers being dragged by the police could not easily be set aside.
These wrestlers publicly complained about sexual harassment and when there were efforts to whitewash the allegations, they resorted to a sit-in at Jantar Mantar in Delhi.
Delhi Police, which reluctantly filed FIRs, have been very dutiful in pointing out that Jantar Mantar is a public place and wrestlers cannot be allowed to occupy it.
In a way, Delhi Police are correct: Women are not allowed to occupy public places when they complain. As medal winners, they were accorded a place; as women and as complainants, they have none.
The unresolved episode of their protests helps open our eyes to a number of systemic and public blind spots. All over the country, during the past few years, it has been common for the police to rush to file FIRs when self-appointed protectors of culture, nationalism and community pride ask for FIRs to be filed.
But when it came to women wrestlers, it required the intervention of the Supreme Court for Delhi Police to file FIRs.
So, the very first elementary systemic failure is the abdication of routine duty by the police. Nobody will be held accountable for that.
Explained
Adverse possession: What is it, what has the Law Commission said about it (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
“There is no justification for introducing any change in the law relating to adverse possession,” the 22nd Law Commission has said in its recent report.
The Law Commission, headed by former Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court Ritu Raj Awasthi and comprising retired Kerala High Court judge KT Sankaran, said in its 280th report that there is no reason for increasing the period of limitation.
However, two of its ex officio members filed a dissent note stating that the law does not stand judicial scrutiny and “promotes false claims under the colour of adverse possession”.
The concept of adverse possession stems from the idea that land must not be left vacant but instead, be put to judicious use.
Essentially, adverse possession refers to the hostile possession of property, which must be “continuous, uninterrupted, and peaceful.”
According to the Law Commission’s report, the rationale behind this comes from considerations that the “title to land should not long be in doubt”, “society will benefit from someone making use of land the owner leaves idle,” and “persons who come to regard the occupant as owner may be protected.”
The maxim that the law does not help those who sleep over their rights is invoked in support of adverse possession. Simply put, “the original title holder who neglected to enforce his rights over the land cannot be permitted to re-enter the land after a long passage of time,” the report dated May 24 reasoned.
Economy
Monetary Policy: Why will RBI go for an extended pause? (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India will begin a three-day meeting on June 6, to discuss the second bi-monthly monetary policy for fiscal 2023-24. The decision of the panel will be announced by Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das on June 8.
Most economists and analysts expect the RBI to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.5 per cent, drawing comfort from the gradual easing of inflation. It is expected that the six-member panel will keep the policy stance as ‘withdrawal of accommodation’.
In the April policy, the MPC members, in a surprise move, unanimously decided to pause RBI’s rate hike cycle. The pause in repo rate – the rate at which RBI lends money to banks to meet their short-term funding needs – in April was for the first time since the RBI started its rate hike cycle in May 2022 to check inflation.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das, however, stated that it was a pause and not a pivot, a line that he has reiterated subsequently.