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@Evening: 🤦 UK State Media BBC Is Predictably Not A Fan Of PM Modi Just As 2024 Approaches
Karan Kamble
Jan 20, 2023, 08:20 PM | Updated 08:20 PM IST
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1. 🆕 What's New: 📰 Catch-up
The SC will set up a five-judge Constitution bench to hear pleas challenging polygamy and 'nikah halala' practice among Muslims.
Two temples in Australia's Melbourne city were vandalised by Khalistani supporters this month, and India is seeking action.
INS Vagir, the Indian Navy's fifth Scorpene-class submarine, is all set to be commissioned on 23 January.
Air India peegate — the aviation regulator has imposed a penalty of Rs 30 lakh on the airline and suspended the license of the pilot-in-command.
The Ganga Expressway in UP will feature a 3.5-km air strip for Indian Air Force fighter jets.
2. 🤔 Twitter Think: 🫤 The BBC kicks up old propaganda on Modi in 2002
UK's national broadcaster, the BBC, is airing a two-part documentary series, called India: The Modi Question, centred around Modi's involvement as CM during the Gujarat riots of 2002.
The documentary sparked outrage and was removed from some platforms.
Even the Government of India hit back. MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said, "We think this is a propaganda piece designed to push a particular discredited narrative."
"It makes us wonder about the purpose of this exercise and the agenda behind it and frankly we do not wish to dignify such efforts," he added.
Expectedly, British PM Rishi Sunak came out in defence of PM Modi.
"Of course, we do not tolerate persecution anywhere, but I am not sure that I agree at all with the characterisation," Sunak said in response to a question about the documentary asked by Pakistani-origin Labour Party MP Imran Hussain.
"The documentary was rigorously researched according to the highest editorial standards," the BBC said in a statement, in defence of its series.
3. 📚 Word Watch: 🔖 Reading Sri Aurobindo
Twenty-one contributors provide an approachable pathway to the voluminous works of Sri Aurobindo in the book Reading Sri Aurobindo.
According to the publisher Penguin, the book is "packed with insights inviting us to explore Sri Aurobindo’s deep wisdom and vision for resolving the fundamental issues facing individuals, societies, and nations today."
Published in August 2022 to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Sri Aurobindo, the book is edited by author and ORF vice president Gautam Chikermane and Devdip Ganguli, who is a teacher at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Puducherry.
Sri Aurobindo was many things in his life — yogi, philosopher, poet, revolutionary, and much more — but whichever hat he chose to wore, he ultimately left a legacy for the ages.
Why don't you read 'When Sri Aurobindo Invoked The Strength Of India' on Swarajya? Here, he is wearing the hat of a freedom fighter.
🎧 Swarajya audiobook: 🔬 How is science covered in India?
Scientist and author Dr Anand Ranganathan and podcaster Kushal Mehra are in conversation for a Swarajya audio programme on science and its coverage in India.
They touch upon the lack of scientific discourse in India. "There ought to be more science in journalism and more journalism in science," Dr Ranganathan says.
Some other things discussed are ideological bias in science reporting and how readers can be more discerning, human evolution and genome sequencing, Hinduism and science, evolutionary medicine in India, and Dr Ranganathan's latest work.
Ranganathan is the author of Soufflé, The Land of the Wilted Rose, For Love and Honour, and The Rat Eater (co-authored with Chitra Subramaniam).
He is a consulting editor and columnist for Swarajya, with writings also in Newslaundry, DNA, and The News Minute.
In his scientist avatar, he works as an associate professor at the Special Centre for Molecular Medicine, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Ranganathan's forthcoming book is on India's forgotten scientists (Penguin, 2023; co-authored).
4. 📷 Picture Speaks: 👍 New-look temple of democracy
"The New Parliament House is ready!" said a tweet by Rajya Sabha MP and Indian classical dancer Sonal Mansingh, who shared a picture as well.
Within two weeks time, the new Lok Sabha will host President Droupadi Murmu's address to the joint session on 31 January as well as Nirmala Sitharaman's budget speech on 1 February.
The budget session, comprising 27 sittings, will be held from 31 January through 6 April, with a month-long recess in between to examine the budget papers.
It will be the 259th session of Rajya Sabha and eleventh session of the seventeenth Lok Sabha.
The new Parliament building is part of the redevelopment of the Central Vista, the nation’s power corridor.
Something to think about:
"Constructed on time and within budget. Not the India I grew up in," tweeted Shaunak Agarkhedkar, an author and occasional Swarajya contributor.
"A structural break from Nehruvian India…where sloth was artsy, waste was accepted as inevitable, corruption was an “unfortunate” side effect of dynastic entitlement," Rajeev Mantri, co-founder of the India Enterprise Council, said in tweet.
5. 📔 Culture Cutlet: ⚛️ When India entered the nuclear age
India's first nuclear reactor, Apsara, was inaugurated in Trombay on this day — 20 January 1957.
>> "Research reactors are the backbone of the nuclear programme," Dr Homi J Bhabha, the propeller of India's nuclear programme, had said in the early fifties.
"Apsara was dedicated to the nation on this day in 1957 marking the beginning of what is today acknowledged globally as the success story of the Indian nuclear program," the official Twitter handle of 'Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav' said today.
Conceptualised by Dr Bhabha in 1955, Apsara became the first research reactor in Asia to achieve criticality on 4 August 1956.
It was a swimming pool-type reactor of 1 MW power with highly enriched uranium as fuel in the form of plates.
It was used mainly for production of isotopes, basic research, shielding experiments, neutron activation analysis, neutron radiography, and testing neutron detectors.
The reactor was permanently shutdown in 2010.
Apsara-U ("U" for upgraded) was its successor, achieving criticality in September 2018.
It's used extensively for research in nuclear physics, material science, and radiation shielding.
Save & read from anywhere!
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