Aymanam in Kerala among ‘30 best places to visit in 2022’
Singer Sandhya Mukhopadhyay passes away
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Anti-lynching Bills passed by four States hanging fire
India to make digital maps of all villages
Where is the Ukraine crisis headed to?
Canada invokes emergency powers to quell protests
Ethiopia lifts wartime state of emergency
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Phensedyl smuggling a challenge for BSF
Rajasthan begins exercise to frame new energy policy
Aymanam in Kerala among ‘30 best places to visit in 2022’
Aymanam, a picturesque village beside the backwaters near Kottayam, has found itself in the league of Sri Lanka, Bhutan, London, Oklahoma (in the US), Seoul and Istanbul as among the 30 best places to visit in 2022, in a list published by Conde Nast Traveller magazine.
Sikkim, Meghalaya, Goa, Kolkata and Odisha are among the India locales in the list.
“Kerala’s Responsible Tourism (RT) Mission chose Aymanam village for its activities in 2018, going on to train home-stay operators, community tour leaders (including women) and others in RT practices. This in turn resulted in an increase in a number of tourists visiting the locale to savour its cuisine, culture and village life, including through cycle tours and walking trails through paddy fields,” says K. Rupesh Kumar, State coordinator of the mission.
The village had shot to fame in 1997 as the setting of Arundhati Roy’s Booker Prize-winning ‘The God of Small Things’. The State government declared it a model-tourism village in 2020, following which it shared space with Kumarakom - another popular RT destination. Aymanam bagged the ‘One to Watch Award’ of World Travel Mart, in 2021. A total of over 1,000 people have so far been trained in different skills, as part of the RT venture, he added.
Singer Sandhya Mukhopadhyay passes away
Legendary Bengali singer Sandhya Mukhopadhyay passed away in Kolkata on Tuesday after a brief illness. She was 90.
Sandhya Mukhopadhyay took Bengali songs to new heights, whether it was playback singing for films or songs released during Durga Puja, which emerged as a new genre and labelled modern Bengali songs (“adhunik gaan”).
The singer took her first music lessons from her parents Narendranath Mukhopadhyay and mother Hemaprabha Devi. A trained classical singer who with equal ease took to different forms of singing — from playback to folk songs, Rabindra Sangeet and bhajans — trained under Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and was later associated with legends like Begum Akhtar._nbsp;
With Lata Mangeshkar she sang the classic duet “ Bol Papihe Bol’ ’for the film Tarana in 1951 She was awarded Banga Bibhushan, the highest honour in West Bengal, by the State government in 2011. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the final rites of the singer will be performed with full state honours on Wednesday.
Anti-lynching Bills passed by four States hanging fire
Bills passed against lynching in the past four years by at least three States ruled by BJP rivals and one by the party itself have not been implemented, with the Union government taking the view that lynching is not defined as a crime under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The Union Home Ministry informed Parliament in 2019 that there was “no separate” definition for lynching under the IPC, adding that lynching incidents could be dealt with under Sections 300 and 302 of the IPC which pertain to murder.
On December 22, the Jharkhand Assembly passed the Prevention of Mob Violence and Mob Lynching Bill, 2021, providing for punishment ranging from three years to life imprisonment. The Bill awaits the Governor’s nod.
On August 5, 2019, the Rajasthan Assembly passed the Rajasthan Protection from Lynching Bill, 2019, providing for life imprisonment and a fine ranging from Rs. 1 lakh to Rs. 5 lakh to those convicted in cases of mob lynching leading to the victim’s death.
On August 30, 2019, the West Bengal Assembly passed the West Bengal (Prevention of Lynching) Bill, 2019, that proposes a jail term from three years to life imprisonment for those involved in assaulting and injuring a person and also defines terms such as “lynching” and “mob”. The government also proposed to set up the West Bengal Lynching Compensation Scheme.
India to make digital maps of all villages
India plans to prepare digital maps of all its 6,00,000 villages and pan-India 3D maps will be prepared for 100 cities, Unio Science Minister Jitendra Singh said on Tuesday at an event to mark a year of the updated geospatial policy guidelines.
An ongoing scheme, piloted by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, called SVAMITVA (Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas) was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April 2020
The updated guidelines help private companies to prepare a variety of maps without needing approvals from a host of ministries and make it easier to use drones and develop applications via location mapping. The “trinity of geospatial Systems, drone Policy and unlocked Space Sector will be the hallmark of India’s future economic progress,” Dr. Singh said in a statement.
The complete geospatial policy would be announced “soon” as the liberalisation of guidelines had yielded very positive outcomes within a year’s time. The Geographical Information based system mapping would also be useful in forest management, disaster management, electrical utilities, land records, water distribution, and property taxation, he added.
Dr. Singh estimated the size of the Indian Geospatial market in 2020 to be ?23,345 Crore including ?10,595 crore of export which was likely to grow to ?36,300 crore by 2025.
The SVAMITVA scheme was launched by PM Modi on April 24, 2020. The scheme, Mr. Modi said at its launch, would help establish “clear ownership” of property in rural areas by mapping of land parcels using drone technology and providing a ‘record of rights’ to eligible households by issuing legal ownership cards to them.
So far drone surveys have covered close to 1,00,000 villages and maps of 77,527 villages had been handed over to states. Property cards had been distributed to around 27,000 villages, according to current information on the SVAMITVA portal.
Where is the Ukraine crisis headed to?
(Only the most important points)
Conflicting Signals:
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had declared Wednesday (February 16), which U.S. officials had said could be the date of a Russian attack, as a day of “national unity”.
But top officials of the Biden administration say, in on-the-record interactions, they don’t believe Mr. Putin has taken that call. They warn, however, that Russia has mobilised enough troops to launch an invasion “any day”. And then came Russia’s announcement, on Tuesday, that it’s pulling back some troops from the Ukraine border but will continue large military exercises.
Encircling Ukraine
Russia has maintained that it has no plans to invade Ukraine. When he met the visiting French President, Emmanuel Macron, in Moscow last week, Mr. Putin told him Russia would not escalate.
When Russia says it won’t escalate or launch an invasion, what it actually means is that it won’t take escalatory steps without “a provocation”. The West had warned that there could be a “false flag operation” in the rebel-controlled Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which Russia could use as an excuse for an attack.
And invasion could trigger severe sanctions from the West. Even if the Russian economy is better-positioned today to offset the impacts of the sanctions, a full-scale invasion comes with other risks. Russia could overrun Ukraine within weeks and install a friendly regime in Kiev, but managing the post-invasion status quo in Europe’s largest country where the public opinion on Russia is almost evenly split would not be easy.
Last time when Moscow made a large military intervention — in Afghanistan in 1979 — it didn’t end well. So, is Mr. Putin ready to take such a risk on Ukraine? Or would he take a less risky route of providing more arms to the rebels in Donbas to push the frontlines of a civil war that has been frozen since 2015?
Troops and talks
Escalation is not the only way forward. On Monday, at the same time Russia was building its military pressure around Ukraine, in a choreographed meeting that was telecast on the state TV, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told President Putin that the diplomatic possibilities are “far from exhausted”. He proposed continuing talks with the West and Mr. Putin was seen endorsing Mr. Lavrov. The meeting was telecast at a time when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was in Ukraine.
Germany, Europe’s largest economy and the destination of two Russian gas pipelines, is an important country for Moscow. Berlin, which has warned of sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine, has also been sensitive towards Russia’s security concerns — it refused to send weapons to Ukraine and barred other NATO members from sending German-made weapons. On Monday, Mr. Scholz said in Kiev that Ukraine’s entry into NATO “was not on the agenda right now”. He met Mr. Putin in Moscow on Tuesday.
Ukraine has also shown signs of a compromise. Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s Ambassador to Britain, told a BBC interview that Kiev was considering giving up its bid for NATO membership to avert war.
President Joe Biden has already told Mr. Putin that the U.S. has no plans to deploy offensive missile systems in Ukraine. He has also offered signing an agreement with Russia on ruling out deploying such missiles and stationing permanent combat troops on reciprocal terms. But those offers did not lead to a breakthrough as Russia wants guarantees that Ukraine would never be taken into NATO.
What’s to be seen is if this is enough to convince the Kremlin to opt for a ramp-off?
Canada invokes emergency powers to quell protests
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he has invoked emergency powers to try to quell the protests by truck drivers and others who have paralysed Ottawa and blocked border crossings in anger over the countrys Covid restrictions.
Trudeau ruled out using the military and said on Monday that the emergency measures “will be time-limited, geographically targeted, as well as reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address”.
For the past two weeks, hundreds and sometimes thousands of protesters in trucks and other vehicles have clogged the streets of Ottawa, the capital, railing against vaccine mandates and other virus precautions and condemning Trudeaus Liberal government.
Members of the self-styled Freedom Convoy have also blockaded various US-Canadian border crossings, though the busiest and most important—the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit—was reopened over the weekend.
The prime minister met virtually with the leaders of Canadas provinces and planned to address the nation late in the afternoon.
In recent days, Trudeau rejected calls to use the military but otherwise said “all options are on the table” to end the protests, including invoking the Emergencies Act, which gives the government broad powers to restore order.
Ethiopia lifts wartime state of emergency
Ethiopias parliament on Tuesday approved an early end to a six-month state of emergency, which was imposed in early November as Tigray forces fighting the Ethiopian government and their allies advanced towards the capital Addis Ababa.
The move follows a proposal by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmeds Cabinet last month to end the emergency period, as the Tigrayan forces have since withdrawn to their stronghold in the countrys north.
Parliament speaker Tagesse Chafo said officials can now use regular law to deal with the countrys security threats.
Tesfaye Beljige, chief government whip, said the the emergency measures were restricting tourism and economic activities. It was causing more damage than benefits, he added.
Thousands of mainly ethnic Tigrayans were detained under the state of emergency, but many were released after Decembers downturn in fighting. It wasnt clear if the government would release the rest of the detainees.
Fighting broke out in Tigray in November 2020 after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops to topple the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front, the regions former ruling party.
The conflict has claimed thousands of lives and pushed hundreds of thousands into famine.
Phensedyl smuggling a challenge for BSF
Despite the drop in the cattle smuggling and smuggling of other narcotics, Phensedyl, a codeine-based cough syrup remains a challenge for the border guarding forces along the India-Bangladesh border.
On February 14, personnel of the Border Security Force (BSF) arrested two youths for allegedly smuggling it near the Hakimpur border outpost in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district.
A communication shared by the BSF said that two local youths Mostakin Sheikh, 19, and Shaheen Sardar, 21, were allegedly involved in smuggling of the narcotic over the past few days in the region. They were to be paid ?500 for transporting 60 bottles of Phensedyl which was recovered from their possession.
Senior officials of the BSF said it was the difficult to contain the smuggling because Phensedyl is smuggled in low quantities from India to Bangladesh. “In the past few years, we have stopped factories in the hinterland that were manufacturing Phensedyl. Sometimes farmers smuggle it, at other times people throw it over the fence on the other side of the border,” a senior BSF official said.
A bottle costs about ?200 in India and the moment it crosses the border, the price goes up to thousands. BSF officials explained that in Bangladesh, which had a majority Muslim population, the religious faith prohibited consumption of liquor and cough syrups with codeine phosphate were an easy way for people to get high.
Along with Phensedyl another narcotic that is smuggled in huge quantities along the international border is Yaba tablets. According to investigative agencies, these tablets usually originate in Myanmar and come to India from Bangladesh. Yaba is a mixture of methamphetamine and caffeine sold as cheap red or pink pills and works as stimulant to the central nervous system.
In 2021, the BSF south Bengal Frontier seized about 14,147 tablets when it was allegedly being smuggled into India. The seizure in 2019 by the same frontier was 53,763 Yaba tablets.
Rajasthan begins exercise to frame new energy policy
The exercise for framing a new energy policy has begun in Rajasthan with a long-term vision to incorporate the demand, availability and supply of power till 2050. Various aspects of the existing resources, renewable energy, modernisation and the power supply during daytime to agricultural consumers are being studied for the purpose.
Proposals invited
The new policy is expected to evolve a high quality power supply system for domestic, industrial and agriculture sectors in order to arrange uninterrupted supply as per the demand during the next 30 years. A high-level committee has been appointed to examine the issues in the power sector which need to be resolved.
Additional Chief Secretary (Energy) Subodh Agarwal said here on Tuesday that “concrete proposals” were being invited to make the new energy policy more effective, useful and forward-looking and obtain far-reaching results from the innovations. The policy would lay emphasis on optimum utilisation of the available resources for power generation and marketing, he said.
The committee, headed by Rajasthan Urja Vikas Nigam Managing Director Bhaskar A. Sawant, will study the scope for development in the power sector and submit its report to the government shortly. The panel’s members include the representatives of Jaipur, Ajmer and Jodhpur power discoms, Rajasthan Vidyut Utpadan Nigam and the Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
The Energy Department had earlier appointed another committee to address infrastructural issues plaguing the sector. The State government has promoted a discourse at the tri-junction of consumer, economic and environmental aspects to resolve the issues of quality, performance and energy security.
Effective transition
Experts have recommended an effective transition from coal-based power to renewable energy in the State, with an emphasis on infrastructural issues. The significant factors of aggregate commercial and technical losses, efficiency of network and resource mobilisation were taken into account with these recommendations.
The State government had also implemented the progressive solar energy policy and wind and hybrid energy policy in 2019 to harness the renewable power potential.
