Over-Emitting Countries Owe India Rs 1.19 Lakh Per Capita Until 2050; Balasore Crash Was The Terrible Cost Of Ignoring CAG Audits

Kharif MSP hiked, World Bank cuts India growth estimate, Manipur citizens move against internet shutdown, Meitei Leepun chief threatens civil war, most UN peacekeepers killed in action were Indian

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia and Tanweer Alam | With inputs from Kalrav Joshi | Editor: Pratik Kanjilal

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Snapshot of the day

June 7, 2023

Pratik Kanjilal

“The PLA is now firmly ensconced in Aksai Chin and looks set to remain there… posing an increased strategic threat to India,” say John Pollock and Damien Symon, authors of the Chatham House study, ‘Are India and China Bound for Another Border Clash?’ Their work confirms that the PLA pushed on India’s borders for keeps, set up all-weather barracks, and the completion of highway G695 through the contested region of Aksai Chin will change its status permanently. 

With its Defence Minister Boris Pistorius in India, Germany is close to signing off on a $5.2 billion deal to build submarines in India, in a joint venture between Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd and Larsen & Toubro, and Thyssenkrupp AG of Essen. The project will deliver six subs to the Indian Navy, whose craft are being superannuated while deals for building replacements have faltered because the technology transfer implicit in Modi’s ‘Make in India’, and India’s almost complete dependence on Russian arms, puts off European and American manufacturers. 

The government will hike minimum support prices for the kharif crop. The biggest hike to be cleared is for moong dal ― Rs 8,558 per quintal. Paddy is at Rs 2,183. 

The World Bank has pulled down its GDP growth estimate for India in FY2024 from 6.6% to 6.3%, due to lagging private consumption and a sharp global downturn. However, it will remain the world’s fastest-growing economy.  

After Nepal and Pakistan, Bangladesh wants to know ― the ‘Akhand Bharat’ mural in Parliament continues to sow diplomatic discord across South Asia. Bangladesh’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam told journalists in Dhaka that his embassy in Delhi “has been instructed” to contact India’s MEA to “get India’s official explanation on this matter”. The map mural has drawn protests from Nepal and Pakistan because it shows the spread of ancient Indian kingdoms across the subcontinent, including present-day Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. On Friday, Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs had clarified that the mural depicted territory in the Mauryan period, but it could aggravate the trust deficit between Kathmandu and Delhi nevertheless.

The Manipur government is yet to take a position on whether the majority Meitei community should be given Scheduled Tribe status, as recommended by a March 27 order of a single-judge bench of the Manipur High Court. The Kukis and Nagas had begun to agitate immediately against the order. The torching of an ambulance taking a child to hospital in Imphal, accompanied by people of the majority community and with police protection, shows the madness and impunity of the mob in Manipur. 

Two Manipur citizens have moved the Supreme Court against the repeated and mechanical application of internet shutdowns in the strife-torn state. They say that the social, economic and free speech implications of the ban, which was applied on May 3, are “grossly disproportionate”. After two Assam Rifles personnel were injured and a BSF jawan was killed, and arson continued, the ban was extended to June 10.  

Amid chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’, an outfit which calls itself the Bajrang Sena merged with the Congress in the presence of its state president, Kamal Nath. It will support the Congress in the Assembly polls due this year. The BJP should be worried.  

The Hindustan Times reports that in Balasore, the bodies of 205 of the 288 victims of the train crash have been identified and returned to their families ―  sometimes to the wrong families, despite DNA matching. For the rest, mass cremation could be the last resort. In a bizarre twist, an Odisha woman claimed that her husband had perished in the crash, and that she had identified his body. The incensed husband, who is very much alive, exposed her plot to get lakhs in compensation, and she is on the run. 

Detained since August in Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria, nine Indian sailors from the crew of the Norwegian tanker MT Heroic Idun have been released and are to reach India on June 10, after the shipowners paid $15 million in a settlement over charges of stealing oil. 

Most UN peacekeeping soldiers killed in action were Indian. The UN operation in the Congo in 1960-64 took the highest toll, says The Hindu. 

Bail delayed is bail denied: a Mumbai sessions court granted medical bail to Suresh Dattaram Pawar, 62, two days after he died in the Sir JJ Group of Hospitals. Arrested in a cheating case in 2021, Pawar was seriously diabetic and in his bail application, he had said that his leg had to be amputated on April 30 because of neglect in jail and hospital. 

As the Indian secondary school curriculum dumps Darwin and scuppers the Beagle, the Financial Times recalls that in 2018 Satyapal Singh, then India’s minister of state for Human Resource Development, had dismissed the theory of evolution as “scientifically wrong” and called for it to be removed from school and college curricula because no one “saw an ape turning into a man.” Three centuries after George Berkeley, the tree in the quad still casts a visible shadow.