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Recently, Bihar government has announced that it will undertake a socio-economic survey of all castes and communities (SECC). The origin of the Census in India goes back to the colonial exercise of 1881. Census has evolved and been used by the government, policymakers, academics, and others to capture the Indian population, access resources, map …

Recently, Israel signed a free trade deal with the United Arab Emirates, its first with an Arab country, building on their US-brokered normalization of relations in 2020. The UAE was the first Gulf country to normalize ties with Israel and only the third Arab nation to do so after Egypt and Jordan. …

Recently, a proposal for setting up ‘Grievance Appellate Committees’ for hearing appeals regarding social media posts has been put forward by the government of India. One or more ‘Grievance Appellate Committees’ will be constituted by the Central Government as per the draft of the proposed amendments to the IT Rules, 2021. The appellate committees will …

Recently, India and Sweden hosted the Industry Transition Dialogue in Stockholm, as a part of their joint initiative i.e. Leadership for Industry Transition (LeadIT). This high level dialogue has contributed to the UN Conference ‘Stockholm+50’ and set the agenda for COP27 (Climate Change). LeadIT The LeadIT initiative lays specific focus on hard to abate sectors that are …

Sri Lanka plans to develop Trincomalee port into an industrial hub that would spark global interest. The proposal is a long-standing plan to monetise land that belongs to the Sri Lanka Port Authority, by getting foreign and local investment for a special economic zone, an industrial park, or an energy hub. Trincomalee …

Recently, the 2021 Report on International Religious Freedom (IRF) was released by the US Department of State. The document is distinct from the IRF report released by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan federal government entity while the IRF is part of the US State Department. The former’s …

Recently, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has released the data, which showed that the US has surpassed China becoming India’s top trading partner in 2021-22. Major export items from India to the US include petroleum, polished diamonds, pharmaceutical products, jewellery, frozen shrimp, whereas major imports from the US include petroleum, rough diamonds, liquified natural gas, gold, coal, waste and scrap, …

Union Information and Broadcasting at the 17th Asia Media Summit applauded the Indian media for its role during the Covid-19 pandemic. It ensured that awareness messages on Covid-19, important government guidelines and free consultations with doctors reached everyone in the country. It strongly fought against the menace of fake news and misinformation on a real time basis. The media has significantly …

Recently, a petition was filed before Delhi High Court, challenging the exclusion of a single man and a woman having a child from surrogacy and demanded the decriminalization of commercial surrogacy. The petitioners have challenged their exclusion from availing surrogacy under the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021 and Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021. …

Recently, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) released a revised Draft National Data Governance Framework Policy. The new draft, ‘National Data Governance Framework Policy’, is a replacement of the now scrapped ‘India Data accessibility and Use policy’. The objective of the policy is to modernise the government’s data collection, with …