New airbase coming up in Gujarat near Indo-Pak border to emerge as effective centre for country's security: PM Modi
The Hindu
PM Modi also said that defence forces will release a list of 101 more items that cannot be imported
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday laid the foundation stone of a new airbase coming up in north Gujarat near India-Pakistan border and said it will emerge as an effective centre for the country's security.
Speaking after inaugurating the Defence Expo 2022 in Gujarat capital Gandhinagar, PM Modi also said that defence forces will release a list of 101 more items that cannot be imported. With this 411 defence-related goods can only be procured locally, the PM said.
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"This will give a major boost to the Indian defence industry,” Mr. Modi said. The PM said this is an unprecedented DefExpo as only Indian companies are participating in it for the first time.
Mr. Modi said the air base coming up at Deesa in Banaskantha in North Gujarat will "emerge as an effective centre for the security of the country. The PM also said that the exports of Indian defence products have increased eight times in the last few years.
The country has come a long way, as "earlier we used to release pigeons and now we release cheetahs", PM Modi added.
“Writing, in general, is a very solitary process,” says Yauvanika Chopra, Associate Director at The New India Foundation (NIF), which, earlier this year, announced the 12th edition of its NIF Book Fellowships for research and scholarship about Indian history after Independence. While authors, in general, are built for it, it can still get very lonely, says Chopra, pointing out that the fellowship’s community support is as valuable as the monetary benefits it offers. “There is a solid community of NIF fellows, trustees, language experts, jury members, all of whom are incredibly competent,” she says. “They really help make authors feel supported from manuscript to publication, so you never feel like you’re struggling through isolation.”
Several principals of government and private schools in Delhi on Tuesday said the Directorate of Education (DoE) circular from a day earlier, directing schools to conduct classes in ‘hybrid’ mode, had caused confusion regarding day-to-day operations as they did not know how many students would return to school from Wednesday and how would teachers instruct in two modes — online and in person — at once. The DoE circular on Monday had also stated that the option to “exercise online mode of education, wherever available, shall vest with the students and their guardians”. Several schoolteachers also expressed confusion regarding the DoE order. A government schoolteacher said he was unsure of how to cope with the resumption of physical classes, given that the order directing government offices to ensure that 50% of the employees work from home is still in place. On Monday, the Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) had, on the orders of the Supreme Court, directed schools in Delhi-NCR to shift classes to the hybrid mode, following which the DoE had issued the circular. The court had urged the Centre’s pollution watchdog to consider restarting physical classes due to many students missing out on the mid-day meals and lacking the necessary means to attend classes online. The CAQM had, on November 20, asked schools in Delhi-NCR to shift to the online mode of teaching.