UPSC Aspirant 2025-26

(C. Raja Mohan) 👉 The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is the Eurasian forum founded jointly by Beijing and Moscow a quarter of a century ago. 👉 (Imp*) Many have seen India’s oscillation between the BRICS and Quad all these years as a reflection of Delhi’s strategic confusions between the East and the West, and between Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific. 👉 In the early 1990s, strategic autonomy was about creating space for India against the overweening American power after the collapse of the Soviet Union. 👉 The US has facilitated India’s integration with the global nuclear order while Beijing blocks Delhi’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers. 👉 (Imp*) Delhi now sees the trade with China hollowing out India’s manufacturing capability. Its objective on diversifying its economy away from China is shared by the US and the Quad partners. 👉 (Imp*) Delhi is working with Quad partners to offer alternatives to the BRI.  👉 (Imp*) Delhi will continue to attach some value — diplomatic if not strategic — to a forum like the BRICS. After all, the BRICS forum provides a useful channel of communication between Delhi and Beijing at a very difficult moment in the evolution of their bilateral relations. The BRICS is also about India’s enduring partnerships with Russia, Brazil, and South Africa. India also values its ties with the Central Asian states in the SCO. 👉 (Imp*) India’s stakes in the Quad might rise faster than those in the BRICS. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/quad-summit-india-china-relations-brics-nations-7229861/lite/

Answer to Can you share your PSIR strategy? by Shivashish Kumar https://www.quora.com/Can-you-share-your-PSIR-strategy/answer/Shivashish-Kumar?ch=99&share=26b785d6&srid=uQZK9j

Happy holi ❤️ Have a great day ahead!

👉 Subsidising the household renders women’s labour even more invisible and marks them as welfare recipients even as their claims to equitable wages are not acknowledged. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/tamil-nadu-elections-2021-homemakers-salary-women-7225944/lite/ #tamilnadu #womenempowerment #politics

Imp* Old Cold War v. New Cold War. A new Cold War between the US and China will help deepen the US-India partnership and ensure that India is not facing China alone. 👉 Unlike the Soviet Union, China’s immediate objective is regional dominance, not global competition. 👉 Unlike the Soviet Union, China is an economic powerhouse, and it is closely integrated with the global economy in ways that give it great advantage over many countries. China has been using its advantage injudiciously, to be sure, and as the Cold War intensifies, the economic weave between China and the US and its allies will unravel to a large degree. 👉 By the 1970s, the US was rapidly outpacing the Soviet Union in technology, especially consumer electronics. But China is keeping pace with US in technological advancements. 👉 (Imp*) A Cold War is good, especially for weaker powers such as India, but only if it understands its relative weakness. And American strategy also needs to be shaped by its own relatively weaker position in this Cold War. https://theprint.in/opinion/india-and-us-must-know-the-new-cold-war-is-a-different-beast-china-isnt-ussr/605415/ #psir #internationalrelations