Crude Oil Production at 28 Year Low Amid Rising Demand; Following in China’s Footsteps Would Take India to Dead End
Crude Oil Production at 28 Year Low Amid Rising Demand; Following in China’s Footsteps Would Take India to Dead End
Fuel dealers protest arbitrary excise, Jamiat cleric tells Muslim baiters to ‘go to Pakistan’, IMD’s monsoon forecast challenged, India didn’t play 1950 FIFA Cup because of cold feet, not bare feet
A newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas | Contributors: MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, Sushant Singh and Tanweer Alam | Editor: Pratik Kanjilal
Snapshot of the day
May 31, 2022
Pratik Kanjilal
The UPSC topper this year, Shruti Sharma, is from Jamia Millia Islamia and was coached by its Residential Coaching Academy. Another 22 from Jamia have cleared the exam. This is the university which vitriolic TV anchor Suresh Chavhanke had accused of “UPSC Jihad”.
No candidate from the Kashmir division figured among the seven UPSC aspirants who qualified this year from the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir. The count of seven, with one already successful candidate repeating the examination, is the lowest for over a decade in J&K, reports The Hindu. Two Muslims, four Hindus and a Sikh have qualified from the Jammu division. Across India, 21 Muslims have made it, but that is just 3% of this year’s intake.
Modi’s PMO tends to control everything and ministers must seek his nod even for press meets, says Anil Swarup. The former Union secretary has spoken about the Modi government’s method of evaluating civil servants. He also wonders how there could have been a compromise in the matter of Ranjan Gogoi, former chief justice and now nominated Rajya Sabha MP, in which he was accused of sexual harassment by a court staffer.
Domestic crude production has hit a 28-year low. It has been in decline since FY15, dropping to just 28.4 million tonnes in FY22, the lowest since FY94, and a decline of 11.8% from 32.2 MT in FY95, increasing the economy’s vulnerability to skyrocketing global oil prices. The demand for crude has, however, increased over those years and imports of petroleum products rose to 212 MT in FY22, 676.5% higher than the 27.3 MT imported in FY95.
India has received 34 million barrels of discounted Russian oil since Moscow invaded Ukraine on February 24, according to Refinitiv Eikon data, more than trebling the value of total imports from Russia year on year. The volumes of India’s seaborne oil imports from Russia exclude CPC Blend, which is also exported via Russia’s Black Sea port, but mostly supplied by Kazakhstan. As Europe stops buying Russian crude, Moscow’s ‘dependence on India’ is expected to grow,
Although the US replaced China as India’s biggest trading partner in FY22, imports from China saw the sharpest rise in at least a decade, growing 44.4% YoY to $94 billion. The trade gap was heavily skewed in favour of China, at $72.91 billion, as against $42.11 billion a year ago. Growth in exports to China is tepid because of lockdowns there in the last four months of FY22, Chinese restrictions on steel manufacturing and a real estate slump.
Gujarati Dalits will ferry a 1 tonne brass coin dedicated to BR Ambedkar to Parliament for the 75th anniversary of Independence. They want to remind MPs that they have failed to eradicate untouchability. It would be a pity if the national media, obsessed with mandir-masjid disputes, fails to focus on the Ahmedabad-Delhi yatra that creatively re-imagines the constitutional idea of India, says Ajaz Ashraf.
When it rains, it sometimes does not pour. Skymet Weather challenges the Indian Meteorological Department’s conclusion that the monsoons have hit Kerala three days early. “Declaring monsoon based on single-day observations amounts to gross violation of standards, never attempted in the past. Any reputed scientific body can ill afford to bend rules and criteria, just to prove the forecast right. Such a step, if taken knowingly, becomes highly objectionable and if otherwise, amounts to an illusion of knowledge.” The rival agency noted yesterday: “Monsoon does not seem to be kicking up soon over Kerala and peninsular India. Today, seven out of the 14 earmarked stations have recorded NIL rainfall and two more locations have registered less than 1mm.”
The Centre’s jiggery-pokery on oil prices and the hefty share of excise it has cornered continues to invite trouble. Fuel pump dealers in 22 states will not buy any diesel or petrol from oil marketing companies today, and demand reimbursement of losses they incurred on the overnight excise duty reductions announced by the Centre earlier this month. They want insulation against frequent excise duty changes. “Since June 2017, when the dynamic pricing mechanism was put in place, excise duty has been revised eight times, with five instances of excise duty cuts leading to lower retail price and losses to dealers,” the Delhi Petrol Dealers’ Association said in a statement supported by counterparts in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, and 15 other states.
The Eastern and Western Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs) of the Railways will be delayed for the fifth time. They were to be completed next month. Initially expected to be completed in 2017, the deadline has been extended to 2024.
“It will be a bulldozer this time”: In Varanasi, Hindutva groups impatiently await the demolition of the Gyanvapi Mosque. But most ordinary Hindus in Varanasi would rather leave it to the courts to decide the mosque’s fate. They do not want a riot, reports Scroll.
Tamil Nadu-based Hindutva YouTuber Karthik Gopinath was arrested by the Chennai police for allegedly illegally collecting funds in the name of temples managed by the state government. Karthik Gopinath runs popular rightwing YouTube channel Ilaya Bharatham. According to the police, he collected money on the fundraising platform Milaap for the Siruvachur Mathura Kaliamman temple without permission from the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments department of the government, which manages the temple. The money was not given to the temple.
Two weeks after a case was filed over hate slogans raised by a 10-year-old boy in a Popular Front of India rally in Alappuzha district, another FIR was registered by the Aryancode police in Thiruvananthapuram district after some girls carried swords during a march conducted by Durga Vahini, a women’s organisation affiliated to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
Maulana Mahmood Madani, leading cleric of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, has said that those who do not want Muslims to live in the country and practice their faith freely must “go to Pakistan”. He has told NDTV that people in power are not clearly saying that attacks on the Ganga-Jamuni civilisation are unacceptable.
The Delhi High Court yesterday observed that the speech delivered in Amravati, Maharashtra, by former JNU student Umar Khalid, arrested in a UAPA case about alleged conspiracy behind the Delhi riots in February 2020, was in bad taste but not a terrorist act. The court was hearing his bail plea challenging a trial court’s March 24 order denying bail.
A Supreme Court panel recently held that the Hyderabad rape case encounter was not justified and recommended action against 10 policemen. The ‘encounter’ was widely lauded by politicians, media and celebrities in 2019. AltNews has kept track of who said what and how the bloodlust was fanned, coarsening the media environment.
Among the candidates nominated by Laloo Prasad Yadav’s RJD for the Legislative Council in Bihar is Munni Rajak, who is from the lowest socio-economic stratum. The washerwoman doesn’t have a mobile phone and lives on a railway platform. Earlier, Yadav got Bhagwati Devi, a Mahadalit stone-cutter, elected to the Lok Sabha.
Former Congress leader Hardik Patel has confirmed that he will join the BJP on Thursday, in the presence of state president CR Paatil.
One of the great myths of Indian football, concerning the national team’s failure to participate in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil after qualifying for it, has been kicked out of the park. It was cold feet, not bare feet, Jaydeep Basu reveals.
Mamata Banerjee gently ribbed a pakoda-eating local party leader about the size of his tummy (‘Madhya Pradesh’) in a hilarious exchange that is rare in Indian politics.
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