Whatsapp 93125-11015 For Details
Describing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s upcoming two-day visit to the United Arab Emirates for the inauguration of the BAPS Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi as a “special occasion”, Abdulnasser Alshaali, UAE’s Ambassador to India, has said it “aligns with the values of tolerance and acceptance that guide our bilateral ties”.
Prime Minister Modi’s February 13-14 visit to the UAE will be his third in the last eight months and the seventh since 2015. He will hold bilateral meetings with President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and, according to the Ministry of External Affairs, the two leaders will discuss ways to further deepen, expand and strengthen the strategic partnership between the countries and exchange views on regional and international issues of mutual interest.
Govt & Politics
PM-SVANidhi boosted annual income of street vendors by Rs 23000: Study (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
A study that evaluated the impact of the PM Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi), a small working capital loan scheme for street vendors, has found that the first tranche of `10,000 led to an additional annual income of `23,460 for each beneficiary.
The study, commissioned by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, was carried out between January and June last year by the Centre for Analytical Finance of the Indian School of Business (ISB).
The report will be used by the Ministry for its own assessment of PM SVANidhi and is not likely to be made public.
PM SVANidhi was launched in 2020 to help street vendors resume their livelihood impacted by the Covid-19 lockdown, by offering them affordable working capital loans.
To begin with, a beneficiary can avail `10,000 and, upon its repayment, `20,000. After repaying the second loan, a beneficiary is entitled to apply for a third loan of `50,000.
Data on the PM-SVANidhi portal, as seen on Saturday, showed that 60.65 lakh first-term loans, 16.95 lakh second-term loans and 2.43 lakh third-term loans have been disbursed so far under the scheme.
Editorial
Classroom vs Coaching (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Education)
In a significant move, the Ministry of Education last month announced several guidelines for coaching centres. This comes in response to concerns about the welfare of students, student suicides and the unregulated growth of private coaching.
The coaching industry generates a revenue of Rs 6,000 crore annually and is growing at the rate of 7-10 per cent every year.
There is now coaching not only for NEET or JEE, but even for CUET, as well as tuitions across subjects taught in schools. A new malaise has crept in where children are moving out of schools after Class X in order to join dummy schools which admit them without requiring them to attend classes, so they can enrol in coaching centres to crack CUET.
This is resulting in those who have opted for science dismissing the value of school. The government needs to reconsider its earlier decision to give weightage to board exam results in applying for competitive exams. If not, we will lose the franchise of high school education completely.
Ideas Page
The intrusive state (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The state of Uttarakhand has attained the hallowed position of being the first state to enact a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) under Article 44 of the Constitution.
The UCC would apply uniformly to people across religions, not including tribal populations. The criticism against it is that there has not been sufficient discussion among communities or even in the state legislature.
While many of its provisions are controversial, an issue that has raised much public debate is the provision for mandatory registration of live-in relationships.
The Act has entered a totally new terrain by introducing provisions of formalising what had hitherto been in the realm of informal sexual relationships between consenting adults and raises constitutional concerns of privacy and personal liberty.
The Code requires the partners to notify the registrar within a month of entering into a live-in relationship and also while terminating it.
World
Trump says warned NATO allies: Pay up or will tell Russia to do whatever it wants (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Donald Trump said that, as president, he warned NATO allies that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that are “delinquent” as the front-runner for the Republican nomination ramped up his attacks on foreign aid and long-standing international alliances. NATO’s leader said Trump’s words could undermine security and put American and European forces at risk.
Speaking at a rally Saturday in Conway, South Carolina, Trump recounted a story he has told before about an unidentified NATO member who confronted him over his threat not to defend members who fail to meet the trans-Atlantic alliance’s defense spending targets.
But this time, Trump went further, saying had told the member that he would, in fact, “encourage” Russia to do as it wishes in that case.
Economy
Proposals for industry body rejected, Centre to regulate e-gaming (Page no. 15)
The government will act as a regulator for the online gaming sector rather an industry-led self-regulatory organisation (SRO). The ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) will now prepare a framework for permitting and certifying online games which involve money.
Earlier, MeitY had proposed an SRO and asked the industry to submit proposals to this effect. However, officials said that the proposals received were heavily dominated by gaming companies and their industry associations, and therefore would not have been able to act as a neutral regulatory body.
As per IT rules, online real money games need to be approved by a regulatory body. Online games, which do not involve real money, do not require any regulatory nod.
The government had notified the online gaming rules on April 6, 2023 and had given three-months to the industry to come up with proposals for SROs. It had planned to notify three SROs.
The SRO applications we are getting are too industry dominated. So we are rejecting them,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and IT said.”We have said very clearly, we don’t want SROs that will be controlled by industry.
We wanted it to be representative of a wider base and we didn’t receive any application like that,” Chandrasekhar said, adding that in absence of SRO, by default the government continues to regulate the space.