No fear of covid pandemic.

Beware of fake job providers. Don't pay anyone anything.

Corona has hit the cramming industry very hard in New Delhi, India.

Gossips about democracy, democratic process, political brouhaha.

UPSC Prelims exam to be conducted on 04/10/2020 (Sunday).

Sentence is a group of words having complete sense. Four types are: 1. Assertive sentence; 2. Interrogative sentence; 3. Imperative sentence; 4. Exclamatory sentence. 'He goes there.' ; 'How are you?' ; 'Do good to others.' ; 'what a pretty girl!' are examples of above-said sentences.

India & China current situation: Finally, there is some good news from India’s northern front. After months of tension, sabre-rattling and some bloodletting along a small section of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), India and China seem to have agreed to bury the hatchet, at least for the time being. The agreement came about after a meeting between India’s Minister for External Affairs S. Jaishankar and the Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) foreign ministers’ meeting in Moscow on September 10. To the pleasant surprise of the international community, a joint statement was issued after the meeting between Wang and Jaishankar, signalling an easing of tensions between the two countries and averting an imminent limited military conflict.

The joint statement pledged that the militaries of the two countries would “quickly disengage, maintain proper distance, and ease tensions”. The statement reaffirmed the “series of consensus” that committed the two countries to a cooperative relationship. After the Wuhan summit meeting in April 2018, President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given a solemn commitment that both countries would not take any action that would impact on the core national interests of each other.

One of the key consensus points was that China and India are not strategic rivals but partners who have a stake in the development of each other’s economies. The joint statement said that the two countries would adhere to the existing agreements and protocols in “bilateral boundary affairs” and that the two militaries would “maintain peace and tranquillity in the border areas and avoid action that will escalate matters”. Foreign Minister Wang told the media in Moscow that China was willing to take conciliatory steps, including the withdrawal of troops and heavy equipment.

The special representatives designated by the two governments will continue to hold discussions on the boundary questions and the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) will continue with their meetings. Many analysts have noted that the joint statement does not mention the LAC but instead used the words “border areas”. Many analysts have concluded that the concept of the LAC has become redundant after the incidents witnessed this year.

It could also be a signal that the status quo ante may not be restored as demanded by the Indian side. The fact of the matter is that China never accepted the LAC as the border and has always stated that the claim line it put forward in 1959 is the only border it recognises. It is now widely agreed that the Modi government’s foolhardy move to abrogate the constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir, turning Ladakh into a Union Territory and including parts of Aksai Chin on the new Indian map was the trigger for the Chinese to change certain facts on the ground.

The situation along the Sino-Indian border in Eastern Ladakh seemingly got out of hand in early September. For the first time in more than 45 years, there were reports that Indian and Chinese troops had resorted to firing warning shots on August 29 and 30, and on September 7. Both sides blamed each other for breaking the commitment of not using firearms along the LAC. The 1996 Agreement on “Confidence Building in the Military Field” along the Indo-China border has a clause prohibiting the use of firearms “within two kilometres of the line of actual control”.

The Indian Express: News Analysis: Open the Door: A new government policy that proposes to rank Indian institutes of science on the proportion of the women they employ must be heartily welcomed. Such an equity rating will measure the institutes on childcare facilities, but also the concrete opportunities they provide their women colleagues to become leaders. In doing so, the Department of Science and Technology signals a larger realisation that equality and gender parity cannot come without institutions actively seeking to create the conditions for it.

The odds have been stacked against the Indian woman scientist for a long while now. If she has managed to hold on to her interest in the face of endemic and widespread bias about girls in STEM and make it to college, her talent has inevitably run into more walls. In 2005, a government task force found that while the number of women entering university to study science has gone up by 30 per cent from the 1950s, they drop off just as they are about to enter teaching or pursue doctoral research. The reasons are not unknown — given the choice between nurturing a family and a career in research, women may end up choosing, or being compelled to choose, the “mommy track”. But it is also true that scientific institutions — like many other institutions — have not given much thought to re-designing their systems to accommodate talented women. The IITs, especially, are striking offenders, with a dismal record in employing women at the faculty level, though other institutions do not fare much better.

The pandemic has led to fears that the doubling of women’s labour at home, due to lack of childcare and the prolonged shutdown of schools, will force them out of jobs or professions, resulting in a setback by close to a decade. Academia is not an exception to this rule. But it has also underlined what feminist scholarship has argued for long — that productivity and merit of (male) professionals is shored up by the devalued domestic labour performed by women. It is not inevitable that academic excellence has to go hand in hand with systemic lack of equity. One way out is to adopt a policy redesign that puts the needs of women at the centre of the institutional agenda, and work around it, rather than force them to square their lives around the institute’s demands. Scientific institutions must recognise that not everyone flourishes on the “level-playing field” — and then find ways to correct this bias. The new policy is a right, and overdue, first step.

News Analysis from the Indian Express: In 2016 and 2017, the year self-proclaimed billionaire Donald Trump won the US presidential election and his first year in office, he filed $750 in income tax returns. In 2017, he or his businesses paid $1,45,400 in taxes in India. Under normal circumstances, or at least before 2016, the real worry for a US president would be about the repercussions of possible charges of being a tax evader. In the Trump era, though, it’s all about image.

The New York Times report on Trump’s taxes over two decades has suggested that he has, like many of the rich, used every loophole in the law to pay less than most working-class families do to the government. But, more importantly, it suggests that Trump is a terrible businessman and his much-touted Art of the Deal has all the honesty of a drunken boast in a bar full of strangers. For Trump, who has carefully cultivated and campaigned on a reputation of being a ruthless, successful businessman — arguing even that his personal wealth means that he is free from lobbyists’ influence — the NYT revelations are more than just a political blow in an election year. They hit at the heart of Trumpism — his braggadocio. What if the man with golden furniture and his name on buildings is broke?

For some in India, there is some petty satisfaction to be had in all this, a small sense of schadenfreude. In his political speeches, Trump insisted that it was by great cunning and even trickery that India had set the terms of trade with the US. And that Trump was the president who would make sure that the money owed to the US did not flow overseas. Turns out, he’s been paying us all along.

News Analysis : The Indian Express Costly Pause: The RBI postponed it's bi-monthly meeting- In an unusual move, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday postponed the bi-monthly meeting of the monetary policy committee (MPC), which was scheduled to be held from September 29 to October 1. While the central bank did not cite any specific reason for doing so, the postponement is presumably due to the fact the government is yet to announce the three external members of the six-member MPC. The four-year term of the last three external members — Chetan Ghate, Ravindra Dholakia and Pami Dua — had ended recently. Considering that the timeline for the departure of the external members was known well in advance, the delay in appointing the new members to the committee is inexplicable. The ensuing uncertainty was best avoided.

It has been argued that with headline retail inflation continuing to be elevated, the delay in appointing the new members to the MPC is unlikely to matter as the new members are likely to maintain status quo on rates. But that would be a myopic argument. Firstly, the new members will need time to not only arrive at an informed view on the stance of monetary policy at this critical juncture, but also to be familiarised with the procedures and working of the committee. Secondly, the MPC statement serves as an important document on two counts: One, for providing greater clarity over the state of the economy, and two, for providing forward guidance. Considering that since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the central bank, while providing some directional guidance, has repeatedly refused to provide any firm estimate of either inflation or growth, this would have been an opportune moment for the RBI/MPC to present its own estimates, and lay out the trajectory going forward.

The RBI had previously sought an extension for the three external members until March due to the ongoing pandemic. This would have given the government ample time to select their successors. Inexplicably, again, this request was not accepted. While reportedly, the search committee for selecting the external members, headed by Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, has recommended a list of candidates, the process of selection appears to have been held up by bureaucratic hurdles. This delay should have been anticipated and avoided. Possible issues of conflict of interest could also have been addressed in time. It is unfortunate that such delays in appointments to key positions are becoming increasingly common. In the past, for example, there have been delays in the appointment of deputy governors of the RBI. There are costs, such instances inject more uncertainty in an already insecure environment. More so, when arguments for modifying the inflation targeting regime are gaining ground.