Table of Contents
Why Antigua and Barbuda?
Extradition प्रत्यर्पण arrangement with Antigua and Barbuda – Commonwealth Mehul Choksi – PNB scam Henley Ranking Quality of Nationality Powerful Passport
• Common reasons for migration of wealthy individuals include safety, climate, financial concerns, opportunities for education and work/business, and standard of living.
• A large number who get residency in a country, however, never actually move there.
• India’s Citizenship Act does not allow dual citizenship.
• Difficult for authorities to keep a tab on a person who has not surrendered his/her Indian passport after becoming a citizen in another country.
In call for separate North Karnataka, some old wounds, some new politics
• Flagging the alleged discrimination to the North in the state Budget, a couple of organisations raised a demand for a separate state of North Karnataka last month
• On the ground there is no demand of separatism Vokkaliga – South Lingayat –North Bombay Karnataka Hyderabad Karnataka Old Mysore The arid and drought-prone regions of Hyderabad-Karnataka (comprising the districts of Bidar, Gulbarga, Yadgir, Raichur, Koppal and Bellary) and Bombay-Karnataka (Bijapur, Hubli-Dharwad, Belagavi, Gadag and Bagalkote districts) have not kept pace with the South. Hyderabad-Karnataka, especially, has areas with alarmingly low HDI indicators, resulting in stunting and malnourishment in children. These are also areas characterised by great inequality.
Taking stock at 71
• On the midnight of August 15, 1947 Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru delivered his most unforgettable speech
• Thousands of Hindus and Muslims were butchering terrified refugees across Punjab.
• Hope ?? In the new era of independence and modernity, such bestiality would be a thing of the past
• India built temples of modern India – dams, bridges, steel mills, IITs, large corporations but still faces mass violence based on temples and mosques.
1.RELIGIOUS / ETHNIC RIOTS Ranchi-Hatia riots (1967) Gujarat riot (1969) Moradabad Riot (1980) Nellie massacre in Assam (1983) Bhiwandi riots (1984) 1984 – The massacre of the Sikhs in Delhi after Indira Gandhi’s assassination in Orchestrated and led by local Congress leaders. More Than 2800 Sikhs Stabbed & burnt to death (Nadir Shah – 1739) 2002 – assailants of the BJP butchered some 1,050 people in retribution for the torching of a train in Godhra that killed 58 Hindu karsevaks returning from Ayodhya.
2.VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Systematic violence against the female foetus – illegal abortions Women actively participated in freedom movement but today the unborn girl child is massacred in Haryana, Punjab, Jammu, Rajasthan and other parts of north India. 0-6 years girl-to-boy sex ratio of India – far worse than all of Africa and much of Asia. How did we so successfully use ultrasonography, a simple technology to aid life, to facilitate the death of unborn innocents?
3. EDUCATION – We have failed in school, college and university education 12th class students struggle with basic arithmetic. Only 9 of our institutions ranked among the top 500. (China 22 S.Korea 15 Taiwan 11)
4. DEVELOPMENT – Eastern part of the country languishes behind the rest of nation. Need for permanent housing, electricity, conveyance, household consumption How could these state governments survive despite delivering so little across vast tracts of unimaginable poverty and deprivation, such as in much of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Orissa? Conclusion PROS at 71 – Our industrial achievements, impressive growth rate, entrepreneurial spirit and our ever-growing and increasingly prosperous middle class. CONS at 71 –
• Not sufficient investments for a fair, just and humane society.
• Sectarian violence, lynching in the name of cows, the proliferation of rape, the excess of callous violence, failure in education. Let’s pray for a more just India at 81. The India that we had dreamt of in our tryst with destiny.
Refocusing on Africa
• India’s Africa strategy is emerging
• The new strategy builds on India’s soft power in historical, trade, and cultural links, particularly with eastern Africa
• Aims – to secure India’s foothold on the continent, secure access to resources, build markets for Indian goods and services, and support India’s global ambitions
• The strategy is also focused on building alliances Q. Which countries did PM Modi visit in July 2018? New jargon – the western edge of the Indo-Pacific.
• Engaging with its Diaspora and private sector links to build development partnerships, where India has a comparative advantage in English-language training and research
• India-Africa forums
• Working with Japan on an Asia Africa Growth Corridor. PM Modi – “India is putting Africa at the top of its priorities and is keen to build partnerships that will liberate its potential rather than constrain its future.’’
East African Community
Q. Which is the latest entrant in the group?
Significant barriers
• India’s development partnerships – notorious for their low disbursement rates and slow delivery.
• Only 4 % of Indian grants in 2017-18 were committed to Africa.
• Credit lines to Africa have a 40 per cent disbursement rate, and of the $10 billion in credit promised between 2015-20, only $1.5 billion have been committed through 2019 and an even smaller fraction disbursed.
• Concessional financing scheme – which subsidises private Indian companies bidding on African infrastructure projects – shows no signs of functioning a year after its announcement.
Let’s share
Copyright for the digital age! Aaron Swartz, a tech prodigy and political activist, sneaked into MIT and secretly downloaded paid journal articles in 2010 He aimed to make these journals openly available to online users as he believed in the fundamental principle of freedom of information. “Information wants to be free” goes the slogan of the social movement encouraging open-source software. Open-source software (OSS) – whose source code is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose
• Legal environment for modifying and distributing the creative works in the form of open content or free content. • The free software and open access movements
• The aura of the information age is not just about new ideas but about a shift in the paradigms of communication and control • Digital feudalism – we do not want to own the products we purchase, we simply rent
• The expansion of intellectual property (IP) rights threatens to reach the point where they suppress any and all other rights of the individual and society.
• Copyright laws – expanding to digital
• We need to bring that open-source mentality to the content layer. More Than 75% websites run on open-source software
• The Directory of Open Access Journals reports that nearly 4,000 publications are available to the masses via the internet
• It is essential to liberate data, liberate knowledge — especially data that taxpayers have already paid for. Free Culture movement Wikipedia Stack Exchange arXiv.org – science article sharing site In 2012, Google launched a worldwide campaign named Take Action for building a free and open world wide web. Google’s argument: “A free and open world depends on a free and open internet. Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future. The billions of people around the globe who use the internet should have a voice”. Conclusion
• Net neutrality – is consequential for a developing nation like India as open internet establishes a network of online democracy, innovation and creates a level playing field for everyone.
• A world in which free access to knowledge is a basic human right and sharing is the norm, not the exception.
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