India and Qatar elevate ties in trade, energy and investment

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held talks in New Delhi, India and Qatar decided to elevate their ties to a "strategic partnership", double the target of bilateral trade to USD 28 billion in the next five years, and bring Qatari investment of USD 10 billion to India. They also discussed exploring a Free Trade Agreement be-tween India and Qatar, elevating ties while focusing on trade, investment and energy. Trade between the two countries is $14 billion annually, and they set a target to double it to $28 billion by 2030. Qatar's sovereign wealth fund has $1.5 billion FDI in India, and the joint statement said that the Qatar side announced a commitment to invest USD 10 billion in India. Within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), India has signed strategic partnerships with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait; Qatar is the latest to join that club.

HIT REFRESH

New Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar comes to his office in a challenging moment fort the Election Commission. To begin with, there is controversy over the appointment. Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, part of the three-member panel, has made his protest over the "midnight decision" public, alleging it was "disrespectful" and "discourteous" of the government to go ahead while the appointment process was being challenged. The government acted as per the law it enacted after being prodded by the SC; this controversy will be resolved after the issue gets its day in court. But the new CEC's task is an arduous one. In recent elections, the Opposition has stepped up the decibel levels of questions about the fairness of the poll process. These have ranged from a clamour over the alleged unreliability of EVMs to doubts over delays in making turnout data public to accusations of illegitimate additions and deletions in electoral rolls.

Policing, not protection

Our legal system has, however, been very resistant to a recognition of rights within such variants of live-in relationships. Almost from the onset, legal innovations such as those in the Domestic Violence Act of 2005 have been interpreted by courts in a manner that restricts the kind of relationships to which protection is offered. This has been abundantly obvious in judgments given in Velusamy vs D Patchaiammal (2010) and subsequently in Indra Sarma vs VK Sharma (2013), in which the Supreme Court offered a restricted definition of "relation-ships in the nature of marriage". The UCC in Uttarakhand also operates within the logic of a restricted definition by not only making registering such a relationship mandatory but also imposing restrictions on who can enter such relationships and creating a regulatory apparatus with a highly coercive potential. This Act's apparent legal approval of a form of non-marital relationship is counterintuitive. It imposes all the trappings of a conventional marriage, which undermines the experimental nature of such relationships, especially among the young, who seem to be the target of the new law.

'Lifestyle purchases, online gaming, and dining out top discretionary spending'

Indian Consumers allocated 29 per cent of their expenditure to discretionary spending in 2023, with online gaming commanding a slightly higher share than dining out and ordering in, a new study has found. The study analysed bank statements of over 30 lakh "tech-savvy borrowers" who sought loans via fintechs and NBFCs. The analysis excludes credit card and cash transactions. A majority of consumers (73 per cent) had a monthly income of up to Rs 40,000. Lifestyle purchases, including fashion and electronics, dominated discretionary spending, accounting for an average share of 63 per cent. The study found that 22 per cent of entry-level earners (up to Rs 20,000 per month) and 18 per cent of emerging professionals (earning between Rs 20,001 and Rs 40,000) incurred online gaming-related expenses in 2023. For high-income earners (above Rs 1 lakh), the figure was lower at 12 per cent. Among these, those in tier-1 cities, including metros like Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, and Bangalore, spent an average of Rs 5,081 per month on online gaming. In tier-2 cities, like Agra, Ranchi, and Rajkot, the spend was 6 per cent lower at Rs 4,763.

What is deposit insurance cover, and how will raising it help you?

The Government is considering increasing the insurance cover for bank deposits from the current limit of Rs 5 lakh, Financial Services Secretary M Nagaraju said. The deposit insurance cover is offered by the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC), a specialised division of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). RBI has imposed several restrictions on the Mumbai-based bank, including superseding its Board of Directors for 12 months, citing supervisory concerns and "poor governance standards". The objective of the DICGC is to protect "small depositors" from the risk of losing their savings in case of a bank failure. The insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh per depositor is for all accounts held by the depositor in all branches of the insured bank. DICGC insures all commercial banks, including branches of foreign banks functioning in India, local area banks, regional rural banks, and co-operative banks. However, primary co-operative societies are not insured by DICGC.

No, you can't be gulped by a whale. Here's why

There are broadly two families of whales - baleen whales and toothed whales. There are 14 species of baleen whales including blue whales, humpback whales, and grey whales. Instead of teeth, these whales have baleen, which is essentially a filter-feeding system inside their mouths. There are more than 70 species of these whales including sperm whale, beaked whale, and killer whale. Dolphins are a type of toothed whale. Neither baleen whales nor toothed whales can swallow a human. Although they have huge mouths, their throats are much smaller - a humpback's throat is roughly the size of a human fist. Toothed whales have a larger oesophagus than baleen whales. However, they too are in-capable of swallowing an entire human. Sperm whales are exception. They are the only whales with throats large enough to swallow a human. But it is a billion-to-one thing for a sperm whale to swallow a human, in part because encounters are extremely rare.

New CEC, under new law

The Election Commission of India (ECI) is a three-member body comprising the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and two Election Commissioners (ECs). The CEC is first among equals at the ECI, in some ways like the Chief Justice of India among the judges of the Supreme Court. No law of Parliament existed earlier for the appointment of the CEC and ECs. The President made the appointment on the advice of the Prime Minister. Incumbent CECs have traditionally been succeeded by the next senior-most EC. Seniority was usually determined based on which EC was appointed earlier to the Commission.

The new CEC has been appointed under a new law - The Chief Election Commissioner And Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service And Term of Office) Act, 2023- which lays down the procedure for the appointment of both the CEC and ECs. Under the procedure prescribed in the Act, a Search Committee headed by the Law Minister (currently Arjun Ram Meghwal) and having two senior officials serving as Secretaries to the Government of India must draw up a shortlist of five candidates. This shortlist is to be sent to a Selection Committee made up of the Prime Minister, the Leader of Opposition, and a Cabinet Minister nominated by the PM. Section 8 of the Act gives this Committee the power to also consider names outside the shortlisted five.