- At UNGA week, India signals realignment with the Global South
Context; India stepped up its engagement with the Global South quite visibly during External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s hectic consultations at the United Nation’s 80th high-level week, with strong criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza, U.S.-led trade turmoil, and the lack of UN reform in focus in statements.
- More than half of his approximately 30 one-on-one bilateral meetings with Foreign Ministers were with countries of the developing nations, while nearly all the multilateral meetings India hosted or Mr. Jaishankar hosted focused on the Global South’s issues, and non-western groupings.
- The multilateral meetings included the BRICS, IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa), India-CELAC (South American countries), India-SICA (Central American Integration System), FIPIC (Pacific Island countries), L-69 (developing countries from the Global South) and C-10 (African Union representatives) and the “High-Level Like-Minded countries of the Global South”.
- Meanwhile, Mr. Jaishankar also met with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and his Japanese counterpart on the sidelines of other groupings, but there was no Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting, raising questions about whether a date can still be agreed on for the Quad Summit India is due to host this year.
Gaza situation
- A significant shift at the UNGA week was indicated by India’s position on the Israel war on Gaza. New Delhi, which has been an outlier from other Global South countries thus far and abstained on resolutions calling for a ceasefire, was instead seen backing a number of statements sharply critical of Israel during the UNGA. These included statements by the BRICS Foreign Ministers and the IBSA Trilateral Commission, which said the “Ministers expressed grave concern about the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory and strongly condemned the Israeli attacks against Gaza, which, after almost two years, continue to cause unprecedented suffering to the civilian population of the territory, ravaged by deaths, destruction, forced displacement, and famine”.
- The statements are much tougher than previous statements that India has agreed to being a part of, indicating a greater alignment with Global South priorities on the issue.
- Referring to India’s commitment to dealing with the “especially acute” “predicament of the Global South” during India’s statement at the General Debate, Mr. Jaishankar listed a number of issues they faced: from the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, to energy and food security, “non-market trade practices”, tariff volatility and uncertain market access.
- “The resource-stressed ones scrambled to survive, only to hear sanctimonious lectures thereafter,” he said, in a sharp dig at global superpowers for not doing more for the Global South.
- In its 48-point “priority paper”, the Permanent Mission of India expressed its disappointment over the lack of movement on UN Security Council reform in the previous session.
- It also stressed maintaining “India’s active engagement as a leading voice of the Global South”, emphasising different areas such as climate finance, development financing, etc, and strengthening coordination with important groups like the Landlocked Developing Countries, Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States as well.
- Astrosat, India’s first space observatory, completes a decade among the stars
Context: India’s first dedicated space astronomy observatory, AstroSat, completed a decade of operations.
- Ten years ago, on September 28, 2015, the PSLV-C30 (XL) rocket carrying AstroSat lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.
- Though the designed mission life of AstroSat was five years, it continues to provide valuable data.
- In the last decade, the multi-wavelength space observatory with five payloads aboard has made major interesting discoveries.
- Commemorating the milestone in a post on X, the Indian Space Research Organisation said, “On this day 10 years ago, AstroSat, India’s first multi wavelength astronomy observatory was launched by ISRO. From black holes to neutron stars, from the nearest star Proxima Centauri to first time detection of FUV photons from galaxies 9.3 billion light years away, AstroSat enabled groundbreaking insights across the electromagnetic spectrum from UV/Visible to high energy X-rays.
Five payloads
- AstroSat was designed to observe the universe in the visible, ultraviolet, low and high energy X-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum simultaneously with the help of its five payloads.
- The five payloads are the Ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT), Large Area X-ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC), Cadmium–Zinc–Telluride Imager (CZTI), Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT), and the Scanning Sky Monitor (SSM).
Collaborative effort
- Astrosat was realised by the ISRO with the participation of all major astronomy institutions, including the Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, and the Raman Research Institute (RRI), some universities of India and two institutions from Canada and the U.K.