Passage – 1

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said major global firms are looking at India as a major investment destination, which is reflected by a robust inflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) last financial year, and through ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ (Self-Reliant India initiative) the country is shifting its focus from ‘Make in India’ to ‘Make for world’. He said Independent India should be “vocal for local” and asked citizens to glorify Indian products to promote ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’. Unveiling his vision of a Self-Reliant India, the Prime Minister said that the government has unveiled over Rs 110 lakh crore National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) to boost the economy and create jobs. “In order to rapidly modernise India, there is a need to give a new direction to overall infrastructure development,” he said, adding that over 7,000 projects under NIP have been already identified. “This will be, in a way, a new revolution in the field of infrastructure. This is the time to end silos in infrastructure. There is a plan to connect the entire country with multi-model connectivity infrastructure,” he said. NIP will play a crucial role in overcoming the adverse impact of Covid-19 on the economy and catapult the economy in a higher growth trajectory, he said. The government on December 31 last year unveiled the NIP with an aim to make India a $5 trillion economy by 2024-25. The focus of the infrastructure pipeline is to accelerate growth and create employment in both urban and rural areas.
Source: Excerpt from Hindustan Times, written by Rajeev Jayaswal. (Dated 15th August, 2020)

Passage – 2

The central bank doesn’t disclose its foreign exchange management strategy, but it was evident in the last few years that the rupee was not allowed to appreciate despite healthy inflows, resulting in a rapid build-up of foreign exchange. From a low of $275 billion in September of 2013, when rupee came under severe pressure due to socalled ‘taper tantrums’ by the US Federal Reserve, India now has record foreign exchange reserves of [1] billion, as on 21 August — a 95 per cent rise over seven years. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the foreign exchange kitty swelled by $62 billion since March. In this seven-year period, rupee ended the year with an appreciation against the dollar only once — in 2017. This year, the rupee is so far down by 2.04 per cent against the dollar. The latest RBI statement suggested that it is not uncomfortable with the appreciation in rupee, confirming the speculation among currency analysts that a departure was made in the exchange management policy.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said that it will conduct liquidity operations worth Rs 20,000 crore in two tranches through sale and purchase of government securities (G-Secs). The two open market operations (OMOs) of Rs 10,000 crore each will be conducted on September 10 and 17, the central bank said in an official release. This is now the second such announcement in as many weeks. Last week, RBI had announced sale and purchase of GSecs worth Rs 20,000 crore, in two tranches, slated to be conducted on August 27 and September 3. In another move, RBI announced the infusion of Rs 1 lakh crore in mid-September through long-term repo operations (LTROs) at floating rates, or the prevailing repo rate. Moreover, the central bank also gave an option to lenders who have earlier availed funds through LTROs, to reverse their transactions before maturity.
Source: Excerpt taken from the Print.in, written by Manojit Saha. (Dated 2^nd September, 2020.)

Passage – 3

The first batch of five Rafale jets flew out of France on July 25 and will arrive in India on Wednesday, July 29, when the fighter jets will officially be inducted and join the Indian Air Force fleet in Haryana’s Ambala. The fighter jets, built by French aviation firm [1], took off from the Merignac airbase in southern France’s Bordeaux today and landed safely at Al Dhafra airbase in the UAE after a sortie of more than seven hours. The five aircraft will be the first tranche of the 36 planes bought by India from France in a Rs. 59,000-crore inter-governmental deal in 2016. “Delivery of ten aircraft has been completed on schedule. Five will stay back in France for training Mission. The delivery of all thirty six aircraft will be completed on schedule by the end of 2021,” the Indian embassy in France said in a statement.

The Rafale fighter jets are capable of carrying a range of highly effective weapons, including the Meteor air-to-air missile and Scalp cruise missile. The Rafale jets will come with various India-specific modifications, including Israeli helmet-mounted displays, radar warning receivers, low-band jammers, 10-hour flight data recording, infrared search and tracking systems among others. The Air Force has readied the required infrastructure to welcome the jets in its line-up.

Source: Excerpt taken from the NDTV, Reported by Vishnu Som,
Edited by Shylaja Varma. (Dated – 27^th July, 2020)

Passage – 4

On May 8, India’s Defence Minister virtually inaugurated a new 80 km-long road in the Himalayas, connecting to the border with China, at the Lipulekh pass. The Nepali government protested immediately, contending that the road crosses territory that it claims and accusing India of changing the status quo without diplomatic consultations. Among the many escalatory moves since then, Nepal deployed police forces to the region, summoned the Indian ambassador in Kathmandu, and initiated a constitutional amendment to formalise and extend its territorial claims over approximately 400 sq km. India, on the other hand, has conveyed its openness to a dialogue but does not seem to share Nepal’s sense of urgency: its initial statement agreed to a dialogue, but only after the COVID-19 crisis. India has been in effective possession of this territory for at least sixty years, although Nepal claims it conducted a census there in the early 1950s and refers to the 1815 Sugauli Treaty as legitimising its claims. But India’s new road, up to the Lipulekh pass, is not an unprecedented change in the status quo. India has controlled this territory and built other infrastructure here before, besides conducting its administration and deploying military forces up to the border pass with China. The region is of strategic importance, and the new road is now one of the quickest links between Delhi and the Tibetan plateau. In a 2015 statement, China also recognised India’s sovereignty by agreeing to expand trade through the Lipulekh pass.
Source: Excerpt from the brookings.edu, written by Dr. Constantino Xavier. (Dated- 11^th June, 2020)

Passage – 5

One thing struck us as a major difference between the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and its predecessor. The earlier national policies on education (NPE) from 1986 and 1992 presented themselves as attempts to consolidate and build on earlier efforts, particularly the NPE, 1968. The new NEP 2020 policy, on the other hand, is very keen to establish that it is different from everything in the past, including in its name. Nowhere does this attitude come across as starkly as it does in the section on higher education.

It comes across fairly clearly on how the higher education ecosystem will be by 2040. By this time — if the policy has its way — the Indian higher education ecosystem will be populated with higher education institutions (HEI). These will comprise Universities and Colleges and the public and private sectors, all of which will be ‘multidisciplinary’, with each populated by more than 3,000 students, with at least one “in or near every district”. Universities will conduct research and post-graduate and under-graduate teaching, some research-intensive and others teachingintensive. Colleges will largely teach at the under-graduate level, with a number of them having their medium of instruction in either bilingual or local / Indian languages. The colleges can manifest in clusters around universities as constituent colleges or may be standalone autonomous ones. Ideally, all HEIs will eventually become “independent self-governing institutions” with considerable “faculty and institutional autonomy”. They will have complied with a series of regulatory exercises that are “light-but-tight” and will be operated by a large number of private accreditors, overseen by a new set of regulatory institutions at the national level.
Source: Excerpt taken from downtoearth.org.in, written by Nitin Mehta & Gagan Mehta.
(Dated 14^th August, 2020)

Passage – 6

Days after India-Pakistan tensions spilled over into a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi are expected to meet via a video conference at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meeting on September 24. “All member countries have confirmed participation in the meeting, to be chaired by Pradeep Kumar Gyawali, [1] of Nepal. The respective Foreign Ministers will take part,” sources familiar with preparations for the meeting told The Hindu, referring to the eight members of SAARC, including [2], Bangladesh, [3], India, [4], Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. A senior Indian official also confirmed that Mr. Jaishankar will attend despite the incident at the SCO virtual meeting of National Security Advisors on Tuesday. During that meeting, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval stormed out after he saw that the Pakistan Special Advisor on National Security Moeed Yusuf had used a map of Pakistan that claimed Indian Territory.

“This was in blatant disregard to the advisory by the host [5] against it and in violation of the norms of the meeting. After consultation with the host, the Indian side left the meeting in protest at that juncture,” the MEA had said about the incident. When asked, the sources said that no specific guidelines on background or maps have been issued by the SAARC Secretariat in Kathmandu that is also the Chair of the SAARC at present, but they hope it would go “smoothly”. A meeting of SAARC Finance Ministers, where an Additional Secretary represented India instead of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, and Pakistan was represented by its Special Advisor on Finance, took place on Wednesday without incident.
Source: Excerpt taken from The Hindu, written by Suhasini Haider. (Dated 17^th September, 2020.)

Passage – 7

In the middle of a pandemic, the geopolitics of the world’s most troubled region took a historic turn this week, when the UAE and Israel, under the benevolent gaze of US President Donald Trump, signed an agreement to “normalise” relations. The deal opens up new opportunities for India to play a much larger role in the regional security and stability in the Gulf, where New Delhi enjoys special relations with both Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem. The barebones of the deal envisages establishing regular diplomatic relations between the UAE, the rising influential power in the Gulf, and Israel, the “Incredible Hulk” of the region, but a country officially not on speaking terms with most of its Arab neighbours. In his first tweet, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed said: ‘During a call with President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, an agreement was reached to stop further Israeli annexation of Palestinian territories. The UAE and Israel also agreed to cooperation and setting a roadmap towards establishing a bilateral relationship.” In return, Israel agreed to “suspend” its annexation plans for West Bank that would have been deeply destabilising. Benjamin Netanyahu gets a diplomatic victory, which may be short-lived, given the nature of Israeli politics. But Israel gets a diplomatic and economic opening with the big power in the Gulf that could open other doors, give its security interests legitimacy and, perhaps, open the door to Middle East peace.

Many of the other Arab powers, such as Oman, Bahrain, Egypt and Jordan, apart from the big global powers, and India, have welcomed the deal. Iran has slammed it, as have Turkey and Syria. Saudi Arabia has been very quiet. Given the close ties between Mohammed bin Zayed and Mohammed bin Salman, it is unthinkable that KSA was not consulted, particularly when the US is the third pole in this agreement. The deal gives UAE pole position as the premier Gulf Arab power, with diplomatic leverage with Israel and the US. “This deal is about positioning in Washington, DC,” said James Dorsey, Gulf and Middle East expert.
Source: Excerpt from the Economic Times, written by Indrani Bagchi. (Dated – 16^th August, 2020)