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The Brus, also known as Reangs, are spread across Tripura, Mizoram and southern Assam. In Mizoram, they are scattered in Kolasib, Lunglei and Mamit districts. While many Brus of Assam and Tripura are Hindu, the Brus of Mizoram converted to Christianity over the years.  The conflicts between the Brus and the local Bengali non-tribal people have started taking place in Tripura. In Mizoram, the Bru is called Vai, a term for non-Mizos, indicating they are ethnically and linguistically different from Mizos.  Due to the fear that non-locals will take over their land and its politics, clashes between communities in Northeast India are common conflict ensued between the Mizos and the Brus in 1995.  Mizo organisations demanded the removal of Brus from the state’s electoral roll, claiming that the Brus are not indigenous to the state. But the successive governments didn’t agree to their demand, and soon an armed organisation called the Bru National Liberation Front (BNLF) was forme...

Gender inequalities persist in all areas of social and economic life. Gender budgeting is an important public governance tool that governments can use to assess how budget decisions impact gender equality.  When implemented effectively, gender budgeting helps expose how gender inequalities may have inadvertently become embedded in public policies and the allocation of resources and promotes budget measures that will be effective at closing gender gaps. It is popularly called as, Gender Sensitive Budgeting (GSB) and Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB). In case of EU budget processes ,  it means, the full integration of gender perspectives at all stages of budgeting and planning processes. Practical steps to this end include: 1)A gender-based assessment to take stock of, and make visible, the gendered impacts of budgets – such a gender budget analysis is the starting point for all gender budgeting work. 2)Promoting changes to advance gender equality based on the results of the gen...

Research workers of MIT University created a computer programme in 1964, it provided seamless communication between human & machines. By 1966, they built an app called ELIZA, that helped in building the chatbots.  Eliza was equipped with, the  keyword-enabled responses.  Another language processing bot, A.L.I.C.E, was introduced in 1995 & in 2001 a new version ‘SmarterChild’ was launched. It was considered as the foundation of modern AI chatbots. A decade later, the introduction of AI chatbots like, Amazon Alexa, Google Now and Siri, were introduced.  An AI powered chatbot was founded in 2015 by a group of entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman & Greg Brockman. An artificial intelligence research firm, called OpenAI introduced an advanced version of AI powered chatbot, on November 2022.  ChatGPT is much more than a chatbot,it is called as, a ‘Language Model’. User can ask it to write a program or for a creative task such as writing a story. I...

In the budget speech of the finance minister , introduction of a new initiative was mentioned. It aimed at 100% mechanisation of the cleaning of sewers & septic tanks.  It is officially named as, the “National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE). It will be a centrally sponsored scheme, as a joint initiative of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.  It is aimed at reducing the fatalities of sanitation workers to zero, avoiding contact with human faecal matter, deployment of skilled staff at the work, access to alternative livelihoods for sanitation workers, etc. Scheme also includes the identification & enumeration of sewer and septic tank workers. This scheme mentions about the identification & enumeration of the informal and contractual workers engaged in hazardous cleaning operations. The aim of zero fatalities, was a long awaited initiative found its mention in the NAMASTE scheme. So the s...

  The acceleration of growth of the economy is mostly hampered by the weakening of the savings & investments. Savings & investment rates had steadily gone up from around 10% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the early 1950s to touch peak levels of close to 40% of the GDP at the time of the global financial crisis in 2007–08. However, it has plummeted and stagnated since then. The savings rate has slumped from the peak level of 37.8% of the GDP in 2007–08 to 30.2% in 2021–22, a decline of 7.6 percentage points. The fall in investment rates has been even sharper with the numbers going down from 39.8% of the GDP in 2010–11 to 31.4% in 2021–22, a decline of 8.4 percentage points over the period. The average savings rate shot up from 24% of the GDP in the first decade of reforms to 34% in the second decade but then declined to 29% in the last decade, mainly on account of the slowdown in growth and per capita incomes. Similarly, while investment rates have moved up from 26% ...