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@Evening: 🙅♂️ Pakistan Has Learnt Its Lesson After Wars With India, Says PM Of A Country In Dire Straits
1. 🆕 What's New: 📰 Catch-up
A win for India as Beijing is forced to relent on the designation of a Pakistani terrorist at the UN.
In a first, Indian Army clears over 30 women officers for command roles.
Earth's long-term warming trend continues, with year 2022 becoming the joint fifth-hottest year on record.
Half of all iPhones could be made in India by 2027.
Viacom18 won the media rights of the upcoming Women’s IPL for 2023-2027 period.
2. 🤔 Twitter Think: 🔕 Pak PM talks peace standing on shaky ground
Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif has called for "serious and sincere talks" with PM Narendra Modi on issues like Kashmir after having "learnt its lesson" after three wars with India.
The wars have "only brought more misery, poverty, and unemployment to the people," he said, and that Pakistan wants to "live in peace with India."
Sharif was in conversation with a Dubai-based Arabic news channel.
A walk back as an afterthought: The Pakistan Prime Minister's Office issued a clarification in response to the interview.
The PM has "repeatedly stated on record that talks can only take place after India has reversed its illegal action of August 5, 2019. Without India's revocation of this step, negotiations are not possible," the Pakistan PMO said in a tweet.
The Kashmir issue must be resolved "in accordance with the UN resolutions & aspirations of people of Jammu & Kashmir," it added.
Neighbour in trouble. Timing and context matter. This "peace" talk, notwithstanding the clarification, is coming at a time when Pakistan is in the middle of a crippling crisis, just like Sri Lanka was sometime ago.
Plus, the PM is likely to be asked by President Arif Alvi to secure a vote of confidence from the National Assembly soon.
This isn't a stable or credible position from which to talk about "peace." Yet, it might mislead a few on both sides anyway.
Let's just say: If Pakistan has learnt its lesson, so has India.
3. 📚 Word Watch: The Legend of Birsa Munda
A new hockey venue in Rourkela — prepared in just 15 months, ahead of the ongoing world cup in Odisha — is named after the legendary tribal freedom fighter Birsa Munda.
Munda was born in the tribal belt of undivided Bihar in 1875.
He rallied tribals against British colonial rule and forced conversions.
He passed away in a Ranchi jail, in 1900.
In 2021, the Modi government declared 15 November as 'Janjatiya Gaurav Divas' to mark Munda's birth anniversary.
The Legend of Birsa Munda is a book on India's biggest tribal icon, written by Tuhin A Sinha and Ankita Verma.
It reconstructs the tough life story of Munda, which lasted just a few months shy of 25 years.
The book especially provides a backdrop of the British excesses and how the Indian society was deliberately exploited and tortured to keep the flag of the Raj flying.
"A lion-hearted warrior. Healer. Spiritual guide. A forgotten hero," says the publisher Manjul Publishing House, about Birsa Munda.
Read the review of the book written by Aashish Chandorkar.
🎧 Swarajya audiobook: Chip War
Almost three years after the pandemic, where lies the biggest calamity?
Economic historian Prof Chris Miller answers this question in what Swarajya writer Tushar Gupta calls "the best non-fiction book of the year 2022."
In fact, it was the FT business book of the year 2022.
The book in question is Chip War: The Fight For The World’s Most Critical Technology.
Gupta speaks at length with host Diksha Yadav about the book and its hotly trending subject — the battle over the chip supply chain, which has intensified over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic — on a Swarajya audiobook.
4. 📷 Picture Speaks: ⛏️ ASI at work on Delhi site thousands of years old
The ASI said on Twitter that it's all set to excavate Delhi's Purana Qila once again.
Purana Qila is a sixteenth-century fort built by Sher Shah Suri and second Mughal emperor Humayun.
This is the third season of excavations there, once again led by Vasant Sawarnkar, the ASI said.
The previous two periods of excavation were 2017-18 and 2013-14, long after the excavations of 1969-73 led by Padma Vibhushan B B Lal.
What's striking is that ASI notes this site as having harboured habitation continuously for 2,500 years.
It is identified as the ancient settlement of Indraprastha, the capital of the Pandavas.
Further, evidence of layers predating the Mauryan period was found during the closure of last season's excavations.
5. 📔 Culture Cutlet: ✖️🟰➕ The Kaprekar behind the special numbers
Today is the birth anniversary of Dattatreya Ramachandra Kaprekar, the Indian mathematician behind what's called the "Kaprekar numbers."
A Kaprekar number n is such that n2 can be split into two so that the two parts add back up to n. Let's look at a couple of examples.
9 is a Kaprekar number. Why?
Because 92 = 81, and also 8+1 = 9.
Similarly, 452 = 2025, and also 20+25 = 45.
See the pattern? Try it with 55 and 99 on your time.
Another idea to explore is the "Kaprekar constant," 6174.
D R Kaprekar (1905-1986) was, amazingly, largely self-taught.
He worked in number theory, with early interest in mathematics stoked by his dad's fascination with astrology.
He was born on this day, 1905, in Dahanu, Maharashtra.
After obtaining a BSc degree from Fergusson College in Pune, Kaprekar took up a teaching job in a town called Devlali.
He taught in Devlali till his retirement in 1962.
Such was his love for mathematics that he once said, "A drunkard wants to go on drinking wine to remain in that pleasurable state. The same is the case with me in so far as numbers are concerned."
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