INDIAN EXPRESS

PM: Dawn of Al age, need a global framework for trust, transparency

Saying that the world is at the "dawn of the Al (Artificial Intelligence) age", Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for collective efforts to establish a global framework for Al that upholds shared values, addresses risks, builds trust and ensures access to all, especially the Global South. Co-chairing the Al Action Summit with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, Modi underlined the need for open-source systems that enhance trust and transparency, and building data sets "free from biases". He also offered to host the next summit in India.

In proposed immigration law: Tougher rules & specific roles

The role of universities, hospitals, and other medical institutions admitting foreign nationals will be specified, along with matters related to passports and visas, when a new legislation planned by the Modi government comes into effect. Among the key provisions in the new Bill is a penalty up to Rs 5 lakh for unauthorised entry, and up to Rs 10 lakh for fake passport. The Immigration and Foreigners Bill, 2025, is likely to be introduced by Union Home Minister Amit Shah in the ongoing Budget session of Parliament. The proposed legislation will replace the existing laws - the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920; the Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939; the Foreigners Act, 1946; and the Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act, 2000.

THE SECOND STRIKE

US President Donald Trump has opened another front in the trade wars. He signed orders levying 25 per cent tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports without any exception or exemption. Trump is also reported to have talked about unveiling "reciprocal tariffs" over the next few days. The tariffs on steel and aluminium will hurt a large swathe of countries - Canada, Mexico, Brazil and South Korea are among those likely to be affected - and have already evoked strong reactions. A few days ago, he had signed orders imposing 25 per cent additional tariffs on Canada and Mexico and 10 per cent on Canada. However, the tariffs on Canada and Mexico were delayed by 30 days following talks between Trump and the leaders of the two countries, which led to some concessions by the latter.-

Deal-making with Trump

Summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump will be a paradoxical moment in the diplomatic history between the two nations. Modi and External Affairs Minister SJaishankar have negotiated many tricky waters over the last decade and will hopefully get this one right, too. For a quarter of a century, since President Bill Clinton's visit to India in March 2000, the bilateral relationship has been on a continuous upward curve that has defied intensely sceptical conventional wisdom. The nations have found ways to overcome longstanding and difficult disputes, including those over Pakistan and nuclear non-proliferation. Trump is widely criticised for his 'transactional approach' to US diplomacy. This may not be bad for India. What you see is what you get, and there is no confusing ideological rhetoric. Modi is no less transactional. He and his national security team discarded many ideological shibboleths that guided Indian foreign policy in the past. In recent years, Delhi has shown the capacity to downplay the temptation for normative pontification and make deals based on presumed national interests.

The idea of a university

The University Grants Commission (UGC), which was set up in 1953 and became a statutory body in 1956 to regulate Indian higher education, is time and again at the centre of public debate due to its policy decisions. Though India boasts of ancient universi-ties like Nalanda and Takshashila, our under-standing of what kind of institutions they were-their disciplinary matrix and their pedagogical methods is too limited to re-construct their models. Our contemporary universities, for good or bad, have travelled far by inheriting the structures of the Western model. Over the last 800 years, the concept and practice of university education have undergone a sea change, resulting in a vast body of knowledge about its past and future. Knowing how people acted and made choices in the past will help us make informed choices in the present. Though we use terms such as liberal arts education, conference, seminar and research to refer to knowledge production in contemporary times, we have yet to make sense of them as historically handed-down legacies with loaded content; simply reproducing them as blanket terms will not help us.

In a new nation, when abolition of zamindari system was challenged in Supreme Court

Two Small coal mines and a run-down European-style palace built in 1913 by its former zamindars outline Kashipur, a grimy village in West Bengal's Purulia district. It is from here, in 1951, that India's most consequential constitutional case began. Sankari Prasad Singh Deo, the zamindar from Kashipur, moved the Supreme Court challenging the new nation's first plank for social revolution - the abolition of the zamindari system. Barely five months into the working of the new Constitution, on June 5, 1950, the Patna High Court had struck down the Bihar State Management of Estates and Tenures Act, 1949, as unconstitutional. Chief Justice JG Shearer, an Englishman who had stayed back after Independence, and two other judges had said the law violated the zamindars' right to equality since their land was taken without a "just" compensation. "Any law that would fall foul of fundamental rights is unconstitutional," they had said

EARTH'S INNER CORE MAY HAVE CHANGED SHAPE: WHAT NEW STUDY SAYS

The Inner core of the Earth may have noticeably changed shape over the past few decades, according to a new study. The change in shape could have happened at the inner core's outer boundary, the analysis said. The study, 'Annual-scale variability in both the rotation rate and near surface of Earth's inner core', was published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Monday. John Vidale, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Southern California and co-author of the study, told The New York Times, "The most likely thing is the outer core is kind of tugging on the inner core and making it move a little bit." Scientists study the inner core as it helps generate the Earth's protective magnetic field and is even linked to the length of days.

The Modi-Trump meeting

Trump appears focussed on his domestic agenda. He has also spoken of a controversial plan for Gaza, and imposed trade tariffs on several countries and cate-gories of goods. The last, especially, is an area of concern for India. This rapport was built over back-to-back visits by Modi and Trump to each other's countries - at the September 2019 Howdy Modi event in Houston, the Prime Minister famously declared, "Abki Baar, Trump Sarkar"; in February 2020, Trump loved the reception he received from Indians in Ahmedabad. The US has sent back a first batch of 104 Indian illegal immigrants, in shackles, on a military aircraft. It was bad optics, and the political opposition took the government to task for the alleged mistreatment. Another around 800 individuals - 487 presumed Indian citizens and 298 others in the final stages of verification - will be deported soon

President's rule among options for Manipur: the provision and its history

The imposition of President's Rule un-der Article 356 effectively transfers all the functions of the state government to the Centre and the function of the state legislature to Parliament during the period when it is in force. The process begins if the President, on receiving a report from the Governor, is "satisfied that a situation has arisen in which the Government of the State cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution".-

10.

Thales, BDL to provide first supply of portable air defence systems to India

Thales And Bharat Dynamics Limited announced on Tuesday at Aero India 2025 here that they will soon provide the first supply of Laser Beam Riding MAN-PAD (LBRM) Very Short-Range Air Defence missiles and launchers to the Ministry of Defence. Earlier in 2021, a partnership agreement was signed between Thales and BDL to collaborate on the LBRM project with the support of the Indian and UK governments, stated a press release issued by Thales. LBRM, manufactured with up to 60 percent indigenous content in India, are short-range, man-portable air defence systems optimised to counter air threats, including fixed-wing Fighter Ground Attack aircraft, late-unmasking Attack Helicopters, and drones.

11.

House panel for MSP-like pricing for paddy residue

A Parliamentary panel Tuesday recommended setting up a mechanism to determine a minimum price for paddy residue, similar to the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for crops, to discourage stubble burning in winter. "This price should function similarly to a Minimum Support Price (MSP) to provide farmers with guaranteed returns upon selling their stubble," said the Committee on Subordinate Legislation in its report tabled in the Rajya Sabha. The committee further suggested that these benchmark prices should be reviewed and notified annually before the Kharif harvest season. This would ensure they reflect farmers' costs for residue collection, including labour and machinery, it said.-

12.

South Sudan displaces Somalia as most corrupt nation: Survey

Many Countries had their worst showing in more than a decade in an index that serves as a barometer of public sector corruption worldwide. Transparency International, which compiles the annual Corruption Perceptions Index, found that 47 countries out of the 180 it surveyed had their lowest score last year since it started using its current methodology for its global ranking in 2012. It said of its 2024 survey that "global corruption levels remain alarmingly high, with efforts to reduce them faltering." The global average remained unchanged from 2023 at 43, with more than two-thirds of countries scoring under 50. Denmark held on to first place with an unchanged 90 points, followed by Finland with 88 and Singapore with 84. New Zealand dropped from third to fourth, shedding two points to 83.-

13.

GDKP: How a new plan to capture knowledge economy as additional GDP metric could pan out

In a revival of an idea that had been shelved earlier in 2021, the government is looking to capture the knowledge economy as a metric to supplement the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and in-tends to develop a framework to comprehensively capture the im-pact of knowledge on economic and social life in the country. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) had a session on "Conceptual Framework of Gross Domestic Knowledge Product (GDKP) Measurement" chaired by Principal Scientific Advisor Ajay Kumar Sood. At present, all expenditures on Intellectual Property Products (IPP) are recorded under Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF)-the indicator for capital investments in the GDP dataset for the economy. GDKP was discussed earlier in 2021 when NIII Aayog made a presentation on the concept note on exploring the idea of development of GDKP in Indian context

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