On 79th Independence Day, Focus On 'Naya Bharat', Op Sindoor Success: 10 Points
Operation Sindoor will be the centrepiece of the 79th Independence Day celebrations that will be led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the Red Fort today. Multiple officers instrumental in the operation are on the annual military honour rolls.
Here are the top 10 points in this big story:
PM Modi will hoist the national flag and deliver the traditional address to the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort at 7.30 am.
The theme of this year's celebrations is ' Naya Bharat ' and the celebrations will serve as a platform to commemorate the continuing rise of a prosperous, secure and bold New India, the government has said.
But the showstopper will be Operation Sindoor -- India's strongest retaliatory action against Pakistan-backed terror bases and the following armed offensive by Islamabad -- which will find mention in the Prime Minister's address.
Floral decorations celebrating the successful four-day operation that took place in May have made an appearance in parts of Delhi, its logo is on Gyan Path, the avenue at the heart of the city.
The Op Sindoor logo has also been emblazoned on the Independence Day invitations and it is expected to adorn the dais. A special fly-past of helicopters will be held to honour the armed forces.
Thirteen armed forces officers - nine from the Indian Air Force and four from the Army - have been awarded the Vir Chakra, the third-highest wartime gallantry award, for their role in Operation Sindoor.
Seven top military officers have been awarded the Sarvottam Yudh Seva Medal - a rare honour given for exceptional operational planning, coordination and execution - for their role in the seamless tri-service operation.
Special preparations have been made in view of the terrorist threat from across the border. The authorities have deployed more than 40,000 paramilitary personnel, NSG commandos at 7 points and their snipers at 15 locations, Delhi Police personnel will be stationed on about 270 rooftops around the Red Fort.
Tech surveillance in and around the Red Fort will include around 1,000 CCTVs cameras. The security measures have been bumped up with anti-drone system and eight air defense guns. There will be strict vigil on the roads within a 9-km radius. Kite flying has been strictly prohibited in the area.
Around 5,000 special guests from different walks of life have been invited to witness the celebrations at the Red Fort this year. Over 1,500 people from various states and Union Territories will witness the ceremony in traditional attire.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hindu
4 minutes ago
- The Hindu
A conservation manual, drafted by the ordinary citizen
In his Independence Day addresses delivered from the Red Fort, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been exhorting fellow citizens to preserve the memory of those who overthrew colonial rule. Even as his reminders have been timely, his tactics — enumerating a few freedom fighters' names and including some of their words in his speeches — are as well-worn as the Archaeological Survey of India's (ASI) approach to conserving the nation's built heritage. With a few exceptions, the ASI has largely been content with selecting monuments, isolating them, repairing them and occasionally polishing them. Given the enormity and complexity of India's past and the risk of large sections of it fading from our collective consciousness, it is time to articulate a more thoughtful and holistic approach to the conservation of ASI monuments. Acknowledging that the current frameworks informing conservation are the result of certain historical circumstances is important. Driven by a conviction that edifices, if properly analysed, can unlock histories of communities and thus allow for governing them more effectively, colonial officers located and catalogued pillars, rock-cut caves, stupas, temples, mosques, citadels, water reservoirs, and other edifices, promulgated historical preservation laws, and prescribed procedures for maintaining their structural integrity. John Marshall's Conservation Manual (1923) advocated extensive repair of ancient monuments and reshaping their immediate surroundings into gardens. Marshall's handbook continues to inflect the preservation of about 3,600 ASI sites, along with new laws, amendments, and provisions of international agreements. Notwithstanding these efforts, field surveys, audit reports, and court rulings establish that many protected monuments are falling apart. Recommendations of a conservation policy enunciated in 2014 are being irregularly followed. Not surprisingly, the government has begun to invite corporations to adopt monuments. A road map for conserving monuments Studying the writings of modern India builders is one way to begin articulating a new approach to conserving monuments. Consider lessons provided by Sarvodaya, Mahatma Gandhi's transcreation of a collection of essays by John Ruskin, a Victorian art critic. His rendering accentuated the art critic's advocacy of improving the social condition of all individuals irrespective of their backgrounds, discussed the importance of all vocations, and endorsed his admiration of craftspersons and their labour, even as it critiqued Ruskin's valorisation of Britain's imperial ambitions. Might the lessons that Gandhi learned and promoted inspire the ASI's new conservation manual to propose the following: when an edifice is conserved not only is its structural fabric to be tended, but the lives of all those who live around it and visit it are to be improved; and interpretive materials at an edifice should enable visitors to appreciate its builders' sophistication, inventiveness, and resilience. Conservation is a shared concern of contemporary practitioners of diverse disciplines including translators, health-care professionals, wildlife biologists, mycologists, and economists. By convening dialogues among and between these experts at various venues, listening to how they comprehend terms such as repair, preservation, and restoration and observing how audiences respond to them, the ASI can identify more principles of their new conservation manual. Translators today are attentive to the style and mood that the authors of source texts have sought to nurture and are grasping how sentences are formed and meanings generated in unalike languages. They are recognising that connotations change over time. Thus, their outputs are intricate works in dialogical relationships with assorted pasts, and not obsequious reproductions of texts initially written in other languages. Can such viewpoints inspire the ASI conservation manual to recommend that archaeologists acknowledge their distance between the deep past and contemporary moment and make their physical interventions of a monument's fabric clearer for visitors to discern? Contemporary translators sophisticated thinking of a particular language aptness to render anew a certain text may also be used to inform a clause in the new manual: that periodic reviews be undertaken of the aptness of preservation materials to ensure that they do not harm historical fabrics. Varied perspectives are important Humans preserve themselves by saving memories. Listening to divergent perspectives allows memories to be exercised and sustains their propagation. Such insights should inspire the ASI to study how visitors are using protected monuments today and craft conservation principles thereafter. One way to do so would be to offer visitors opportunities to participate in open-ended conversations about their experiences. Wildlife biologists are also thinking about protection. They reason that supporting a range of interactions occurring among and between sundry biotic and abiotic elements in an ecosystem and exchanges between networks are more efficacious strategies for restoring waning populations than safeguarding individual animals. Following this line of reasoning, might the ASI conservation manual recommend that archaeologists pay more attention to linkages between monuments and water bodies, fields, deserts, forests and settlements around them and deliberate whether certain boundary walls may be dismantled. Mycologists have found that fungi are far from unsettling sights. Fungi are powerful agents that break down organic matter, form mutually beneficial relationships with plants including helping them access nutrients, cause diseases in humans but also provide medicines, and help produce food. Such discernments can stimulate the ASI's manual to encourage the conservation of thousands of small, half-forgotten ancient monuments strewn across the country. Old city walls, cisterns, cenotaphs and dovecotes can have multiple benefits for communities living around them including securing neighbourhoods, recharging ground water aquifers, bringing visitors who might boost local economies, providing habitats and creating public spaces. Finally, contemporary economists' findings may also be generative. They have shown that value is produced by how things work and not just by their appearance. Following this dictum, the conservation manual may propose that it is more important for archaeologists to restore a haveli's natural ventilation systems than to regularly repaint its façade. Emphasising a particular resource's scarcity is another way in which value is created. Thus, further research should be undertaken to advance our knowledge of what makes ASI monuments sites of national significance. The new knowledge be used to justify larger budgets for their protection. The economic concept of creative destruction as an impetus for growth may also be utilised. For example, it can guide the transformation of old temples submerged in the reservoirs of large dams into laboratories for developing and testing technologies to document underwater sites and forge innovative alliances between historians, geologists and marine biologists. The citizen's role In a country as diverse as ours, conservation's meaning and value are always going to be positional and contested. Thus, all of us as ordinary citizens can help shape a new conservation manual by becoming more aware of our own locations and actions. We can also assist by further educating ourselves. Learning to read the language of the stones that monuments are built of, will allow us to listen to stories they tell and amplify largely silenced voices. We will also be able to glean builders' biases and use monuments as mirrors to confront our prejudices. Ultimately acquiring such literacy will empower us to discover India as a monument without walls and preserve ourselves as we shape a new future. Nachiket Chanchani is an Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, U.S.
The Hindu
4 minutes ago
- The Hindu
In Namibia, India shows a new way to engage Africa
In his address to Namibia's National Assembly in July this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi quoted a Namibian poet, invoked the symbolism of the Welwitschia mirabilis plant (the national plant) and the Springbok, and sprinkled his remarks with phrases in Oshiwambo, earning laughter and applause. The gesture suggested a deliberate effort to engage with culturally meaningful terms, reflecting a more grounded approach to partnership-building. It is a sharp contrast to western engagement, which continues to be shaped by conditional aid, travel bans, and episodic withdrawals such as the recent USAID cutback, and is increasingly tied to migration deterrence, with assistance hinging on controlling outward migrant flows. The steps being pursued India is pursuing a quieter, adaptive approach, favouring alignment over instruction and forming issue-based coalitions. Underlying this appears to be a deliberate three-step logic: evoking shared historical solidarities, engaging in present-day pragmatic cooperation, and investing in long-term, future-oriented ties. This offers insights into what more thoughtful, durable partnerships with African states might look like. The first step anchors diplomacy in a shared anti-colonial heritage, drawing on historical memory not as nostalgia, but as a legitimate force of solidarity. There are gentle but meaningful reminders: that New Delhi hosted the South West Africa People's Organization's first-ever diplomatic office during Namibia's liberation struggle; that Lieutenant General Diwan Prem Chand, an Indian officer, commanded the United Nations peacekeeping forces during Namibia's delicate transition to independence. These references are not incidental. They create a sense of long-haul engagement, contrasting with the episodic presence of many other powers. Second is to highlight the depth and the breadth of current cooperation. New Delhi's bilateral trade with Windhoek is $800 million, modest but growing, and supported by a $12 billion development partnership across Africa. More significant are India's targeted investments in capacity-building, including the India-Namibia Centre of Excellence in IT at the Namibia University of Science and Technology, and the 'India Wing' at the University of Namibia's Ongwediva campus, funded by a $12 million grant. These efforts leverage India's strengths in IT and respond to Namibia's youthful population and digital readiness. Third, and closely linked, India is laying out a road map for the future by pivoting toward knowledge-based cooperation. Namibia's recent adoption of India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the first country in Africa to implement this, signals a quiet revolution in tech diplomacy. If this succeeds, it will offer a model for transferring not just digital tools but also regulatory frameworks, institutional design, and user-centric tech architectures that India has stress-tested at scale. Advantage Namibia Crucial to this approach is the choice of partner. Namibia's political stability, rich mineral resources and growing technological base offer a strong foundation for India's engagement, grounded in shared histories and aligned futures. President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah's call to reform global economic and financial systems for fairness and resilience echoes India's own vision for inclusive, equitable governance. More than a bilateral partner, Namibia is a key collaborator in the Global South's broader effort to reshape international rules in line with their collective aspirations, agency, and demand for a more just world order. While India and Namibia share a compelling vision for partnership, consistent follow-through remains a challenge. India's developmental ambitions are often criticised for uneven implementation, and its engagement with Africa has seen long lapses, evident in the recent visit to Namibia by an Indian head of government, the first in nearly three decades. Though symbolically important, the visit's outcomes were modest: two memoranda of understanding on entrepreneurship and health, and Namibia's accession to the Global Biofuels Alliance and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure. These are valuable steps but fall short of the scale the moment, and the bilateral potential, clearly calls for. Notably absent was any major agreement on Namibia's critical mineral reserves. As a leading uranium producer, Namibia is a natural partner for countries such as India seeking resilient low-carbon supply chains. The visit offered a clear opportunity to outline a strategic framework, including resource access, local workforce development, or investment in value addition. Though the issue was acknowledged, discussions ultimately failed to produce concrete outcomes. Regardless, India's approach, while not without its gaps, stands out not just for what it offers but also how it engages. India's quiet recalibration emphasises trust built through inclusive dialogue, acknowledging histories, and letting African priorities shape the agenda. Move beyond symbolism The upcoming India-Africa Forum Summit, anticipated in the near term, could serve as a vital platform to formalise and solidify these diplomatic efforts through institutional cooperation. It presents an opportunity for India to build on recent momentum and demonstrate that its commitment to partnership and mutual respect is backed by enduring political resolve. Delivering on this vision, however, will require more than symbolism. It will entail confronting structural and operational shortcomings at home and ensuring that India's strategic ambitions are matched by sustained investment and institutional coherence. Ultimately, India's credibility as a Global South partner will rest not only on what it commits to but also on how consistently and collaboratively it follows through. Veda Vaidyanathan is Fellow, Foreign Policy and Security Studies at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress. The views expressed are personal
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
4 minutes ago
- Business Standard
GST reforms: Suggestions to boost ease of doing business and reduce costs
There should be no restrictions on taking input tax credit (ITC), on the essential principle that once tax is paid, it should either be refunded or go into the ITC chain TNC Rajagopalan Listen to This Article In his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made many announcements, but the one that caught the attention of the businesses — small and big — was the promise of a Diwali gift by way of next generation goods and services tax (GST) reforms. Daily-use articles will become cheaper and facilities will increase for small businesses and entrepreneurs, he said. His announcement has raised expectations of rationalisation and reduction of tax rates, especially on goods and services of everyday consumption. On reforming some other aspects of the GST regime, here are some suggestions. There
