PSIR 4 IAS

 IIAP 3 Centers of Excellence (COEs) i) Centres of Excellence for Mango in Kolar, ii) Pomegranate in Bagalkot and iii) Vegetables in Dharwad established in Karnataka under Indo-Israel Agricul tural Project (IIAP). MIDH Division of Ministry of Agriculture & Farmer's Welfare, Government of India and MASHAV -  Israel's Agency for  International Development Coop- eration -  are leading Israel's largest G2G cooperation, with 29 operational Centres of Excellence (COEs) across India in 12 States,  implementing advanced Israeli Agro-Technology tailored to local conditions. These Centers will help farming community of Karnataka to get access to the latest innovative Israeli technologies and adopting them to increase produc- tion and productivity which will help in increasing the farmers income.  These COEs have the capacity of 50,000 grafts production and 25 lakh vegetables seed- lings production annually. About 20,000 farmers have visited these COEs to gain kno...

  Abraham Accord Abraham Accord = UAE and Israel signed a US-brokered agreement aiming to establish formal relations between the two countries UAE and Israel would establish formal diplomatic relations and in exchange, Israel would suspend its plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.  With this, UAE will become the 1st Gulf country to establish diplomatic and economic relations with Israel and 3rd Arab nation to recognise Israel after Egypt (in 1979) and Jordan (1994) Gulf countries are the 7-Arab states bordering the Persian Gulf = Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE.  For decades, there has been a consensus among many Arab and Muslim-majority states that they will not end a state of hostility with Israel until it agrees to a deal granting statehood to the Palestinians. About Arab-Israel Conflict Hussein-McMahon (1915) correspondence contained British support of an independent Arab state for Arab assistance in opposing the Ottoma...

India-Vietnam 17th meeting of bilateral Joint Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technological Cooperation Economic and defence engagement: To explore closer cooperation in civil nuclear energy, space, marine sciences and new technologies.India had earlier announced a LoC of US$500 million for procurement of defence equipment from India. Vietnam is negotiating with India for both BrahMos and Akash missiles.  Cooperation at Multilateral and Regional forums including at the UNSC where both are elected to be non-permanent members in 2021, based on their strong convergence of views on many global and regional issues.  Both agreed to step up cooperation and coordination at important regional forums under the ASEAN framework.  Vietnam has supported India's bid to become a permanent member of the UNSC and APEC. Both agreed to enhance their bilateral cooperation in line with India's Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI) and the ASEAN's Outlook on Indo-Pacif...

India-Maldives India announced a slew of new connectivity measures for the Maldives to help the island nation deal with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic  It include:  An “air bubble agreement ” for travel, a direct ferry service and a submarine cable for telecom connectivity . US $500 million assistance for the Greater Male Connectivity project (GMCP) to connect Male to three neighbouring islands - Villingili, Thilafushi and Gulhifahu islands. GMCP would be the largest civilian infrastructure project in Maldives.  US $400 million LoC comes in addition to a previous LoC of $800 million that was announced in 2018. Strategic Importance of Maldives : Maldives lies in close proximity to the west coast of India and have the potential to allow a 3rd nation’s naval presence in the area Maldives is situated at the hub of commercial sea-lanes running through the Indian Ocean. More than 97% of India’s international trade by volume and 75% by value passes ...

  Japan’s Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) With COVID-19 and trade tensions between China and the United States threatening supply chains or actually causing bottlenecks, Japan has mooted the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) as a trilateral approach to trade, with India and Australia as the other two partners. The initiative is at the strategy stage and has some way to go before participants can realise trade benefits. What does supply chain resilience mean? In the context of international trade, supply chain resilience is an approach that helps a country to ensure that it has diversified its supply risk across a clutch of supplying nations instead of being dependent on just one or a few. Unanticipated events — whether natural, such as volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes or even a pandemic; or manmade, such as an armed conflict in a region — that disrupt supplies from a particular country or even intentional halts to trade, could adversely impact economic ac...

“While some measures can be taken, several Chinese investments are quite substantive. It is not possible to fully block them. A worrisome factor is that these Chinese companies have linkages of some sort with the Chinese military,” one government official said on condition of anonymity. In June 2017, China passed a national intelligence law, which gave Beijing powers over Chinese companies’ overseas investments as well — “Military and Security Developments involving the People’s Republic of China 2019”, requires Chinese companies, such as Huawei, ZTE and TikTok to support, provide assistance, and cooperate in China’s national intelligence work, wherever they operate. Moreover, Article 7 of the law states, “Any organisation or citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law... The state protects individuals and organisations that support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence work.” It has direct security implications for...

Thinking through the Nepal policy  The Treaty of Sugauli of 1816 sets the Kali river as the boundary between the two countries in the western sector. There was no map attached to the treaty. Nepal is now claiming that the main tributary of the Kalapani river rises east of the Lipu Lekh pass from the Limpiyadhura ridgeline and hence should serve as the border. Even if the lengthiest tributary may be one principle for a riverine boundary, which is itself debatable, it is not the only one. There are many boundaries which do not follow any geographical principle at all but are the result of historical circumstances, mutual agreement and legal recognition. The inconvenient fact is that the Chinese, at least since 1954, have accepted Lipu Lekh Pass as being in Indian territory. In the Nepal-China boundary agreement of 1960, the starting point of the boundary is clearly designated at a point just west of the Tinker Pass. If no agreement has superseded the Sugauli treaty as has been claime...

South Asia and specifically India, can learn much from the European Union (EU). This is despite the income dissimilarities. South Asia with a per capita GDP of current $1960 is low-middle income, at best. The EU with a per capita GDP of current $34,843 is high income. Also, Europe is rather blandly homogenous in religion and race, unlike diverse South Asia. But the EU is not a gift of nature. Europe has worked hard to bind itself together. Squabbling over borders and leveraging external interventions to destabilize each other, in the classic Mir Jaffar style, is no longer their dominant leitmotif, as in South Asia What is common to both regions is their rootedness in a shared history and culture, though language, food and customs differ. This is something we have not built upon sufficiently. Not surprising then that trade within South Asia is just 5% of its total global trade versus 22% in Sub Saharan Africa and 50% in East Asia (World Bank. 2018) The twenty-seven members of the EU tra...

Foreign students who come to study in India expect to feel safe and secure in the premises of their educational institutions.  Colleges and universities are expected to provide safety and care to foreign students. But recent reports of assault against two African students of Uttarakhand’s Roorkee Institute of Technology have again brought to the forefront the ugly forehead of Indian society’s longstanding underlying bias against dark-toned people. On July 15, Ibrahim Diaby Muhammed, a Nigerian, was beaten and dragged out of his college premises by more than 30 men dressed in security uniforms. He had left the college campus to buy food, but upon returning was verbally confronted by security personnel who refused to allow Ibrahim to enter. After he managed to enter, the university administration allegedly hired private security contractors to throw the student out of the campus. Benjamin Emmanuel, from Guinea, tried to shield his friend Ibrahim from the onslaught but he too was roug...

Few of India’s external partnerships draw the kind of passion that Iran does in Delhi. India’s Iran romance endures despite the huge gap between the hype and reality in ties. The persistent enthusiasm for Iran in Delhi also stands in stark contrast to the perennial under-appreciation of India’s much deeper and wider relationship with Iran’s Arab neighbours. The theory of the case in Delhi for an extra-special relationship with Iran rests on a number of claims — historical connections, civilisational bonds, energy supplies and regional security. All these factors are of far greater import in India’s engagement with the Arabian peninsula. Millions of Indian immigrants in the Arab nations, massive hard currency remittances from them, and the density of commercial engagement with the Arab Gulf outweigh the relationship with Iran. The UAE and Saudi Arabia have, in recent years, extended invaluable support in countering terrorism and blocked attempts to condemn India in the Muslim world. The...

On 5 August 2019, the Government of India (GoI) announced the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution and the bifurcation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) into two union territories. This triggered an unprecedented international response, especially to the restrictions imposed in the region in the aftermath of the decision. To be sure, most countries agreed that the changes in Jammu and Kashmir were India’s “internal matter” and differences should be resolved through dialogue between India and Pakistan. However, some of India’s strategic partners and longstanding friends have expressed concerns and criticised the communication clampdown, the detention of political leaders and the restriction of civil liberties. It has now arguably become India’s biggest diplomatic challenge to combat the narrative that the Indian State is suppressing the rights of Kashmiris. Soon after the announcement, India embarked on a massive diplomatic outreach to assuage the concerns of the glob...