Times top10

Today: Serological survey to determine spread of Covid-19 to begin in Delhi; La Liga: Celta Vigo vs Barcelona. Tomorrow: PM Modi’s monthly radio broadcast; Two-week Guwahati lockdown begins; China likely to enact Hong Kong security law

• Why is Xi...? Experts say China’s manoeuvres along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) are aimed at securing strategic gains in the area, as it invests heavily in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor — a BRI project — that snakes through Aksai Chin and Pak-occupied Kashmir towards Gwadar, near the Persian Gulf.
• That means talks aimed at disengagement, though crucial, can only achieve so much. India needs a long-term strategy to counter China — one that requires partners and thus multilateralism (as against protectionism).
• Quad? The conflict will bring New Delhi closer to Washington, as New Delhi sheds the hesitations of “putting all its eggs in the American basket”, Tanvi Madan of Brookings Institution writes on Foreign Affairs. The expectations are, the informal “quad” group comprising US, India, Japan and Australia could be strengthened.
• But... Quad is still not a formal alliance, and there is no military protection (unlike NATO). Hence, some warn against expecting too much from it, at least in the current form. There are also differences between India and the US, over trade, Russia and Iran. “Will the US give India the room it needs”, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the former chief of the Centre for Policy Research, asks here.
• Donald Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy is also a concern. An explosive tell-all by John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, alleges that the US President was “pleading with” Xi Jinping to increase agricultural purchases from the US to improve his electoral prospects in the farm states. Also, in an interview with Axios, Trump said he held off on sanctions against China over the Uighur issue because “we were in the middle of a major trade deal”.
• Magnificent 10? Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, currently pursuing PhD on China under Xi Jinping at Oxford University, calls for a magnificent 7 or 10 to counter China by strengthening multilateralism. He says European countries of Germany, France, and the UK, and in the Asia Pacific, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, India and Australia, plus Canada and Mexico should pool their “diplomatic, financial and political capital” to triage international institutions. Rudd cites Shinzo Abe’s Japan as a model — maintaining economic relations even as it opposes China’s territorial claims over Senkaku Islands. Japan, though, has the US military guarantee.
• Biden? Experts say this ‘multilateralism vs China’ could be Joe Biden’s playbook, if he is the next US President.

The latest on India-China here

• India sped past the 500,000 mark in Covid-19 cases on Friday, just six days after the country’s caseload had crossed 400,000. Fresh daily infections touched another new peak, surging past 18,000 for the first time. Also, there were 381 daily deaths — the first time in four days that the toll had dipped below 400. So far, India has recorded 509,377 Covid-19 cases and 15,681 deaths, while over 295,000 patients have recovered, per data collated from state governments.
• 18,572 new cases were reported nationwide on Friday, surpassing the previous day’s record of 17,870. This was the seventh new peak in daily cases reported in the last eight days. And Friday’s count was again led by Maharashtra, which reported over 5,000 cases in a day for the first time. It added 5,024 new cases, taking its total past the 150,000 mark, to 152,765. The state also reported 175 deaths, which meant the fatality count crossed the 7000-mark, to 7,106.
• Delhi recorded 3,460 fresh coronavirus cases, taking the tally in the city to over 77,000, while the death toll from the disease mounted to 2,492. Sixty-three fatalities were recorded in the last 24 hours, a Delhi health department bulletin said. Infections in Tamil Nadu also spiked for the third day running, at 3,645 fresh cases. The death toll rose to 957 with 46 more deaths.
• Next, the Supreme Court on Friday permitted the Centre and CBSE to cancel the remaining Class X and XII examinations that could not be conducted due to the pandemic and approved the Board’s scheme to award marks to students for the cancelled papers, based on their performance in previous exams held before the Covid situation worsened. The results will be out by July 15. More details here.

• Finally, the DGCA extended the suspension of international flights till July 15 from this month-end. It, however, said schedule services “may be allowed on select routes on a case-to-case basis”. The international schedule flights that may be allowed will be under the travel bubble concept that India had said on Tuesday it was creating with countries like the US, UK, France and Germany. Passengers will be allowed to travel directly on these routes and follow the quarantine rules of the destination country, say sources.

PM Narendra Modi’s launch on Friday of the ‘Atma Nirbhar Uttar Pradesh Rozgar Abhiyan’ isn’t just about politics but also realpolitik and reality. Here’s why:

• Growing jobless: Even before the lockdown commenced, on March 25, UP, which is the most populous state, was in dire straits with the number of unemployed people in the state increasing by a whopping 60% almost in just two years — from close to 21.4 lakh in June 2018 to nearly 34 lakh in February this year, as per a written reply by the state’s labour minister Swami Prasad Maurya to the state assembly.
• See-saw swings: According to the National Statistical Office (NSO), UP’s unemployment rate in the urban areas was the highest in the country, at 16% as of December 2018 — much higher the all-India figure for urban areas at 9.9%. Last year, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) said the state’s unemployment rate grew to 9.95%, as against the national average of 7.7% — and nearly doubled over the 2018 unemployment rate of 5.91%. This year, its unemployment rate more than doubled within 2 months — from 10.1% in March to 21.5% in April.
• The culprit: While the lockdown and the closure of industries — not just in UP but in other states as well — has certainly exacerbated the unemployment problem, the issue has been festering for a while. In fact, when the Yogi Adityanath government came to power in March 2017, the state’s unemployment rate stood at 2.4%. According to this report by Economic Times, a state BJP leader ascribed the rising unemployment numbers — prior to the lockdown — to the increased registration on the state’s job portal by unemployed youth, while offering no explanation as to why so many youth were unemployed in the first place.
• The homecoming: Even as the state was yet to figure out a way to tackle its unemployment problem, the lockdown resulted in the return of 25 lakh migrant workers from other states across India as industries closed down and daily wage jobs dried up, resulting in loss of jobs and wages.
• Saving grace: The unemployment rate in UP — which, incidentally, is home to Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency of Varanasi — is not only lower than the national average of 23.5%, as of April, but also less than half of its neighbouring states of Jharkhand, Bihar and Haryana, at 47.1%, 46.6% and 43.2% respectively. The highest unemployment rate is in Tamil Nadu, at 49.8% with Tripura rounding up the top 5 unemployment club, at 41.2%.

We’re living in the retro-future
In some ways, the pandemic put time on fast-forward. In others, it transported us back—way back—into the past.

Social in the time of isolation
New ways of living on the Internet

Migrant women workers on the road
Largely invisible and already forgotten

Yusuf Memon. The Mumbai blasts convict died on Friday at Nashik Road Central Jail in Maharashtra, confirmed Nashik police commissioner Vishwas Nangre-Patil. Reportedly, Memon had complained of chest pain and breathing problems in the morning and was taken to the district civil hospital where he died during treatment around 10:45 am. The cause of death was yet to be ascertained and the body would be sent to a hospital in Dhule for autopsy.