BIMSTEC: It is a regional organization comprising seven Member States lying in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of Bengal, constituting a contiguous regional unity. It came into being on 6 June 1997 through the Bangkok Declaration. It constitutes seven Member States: five deriving from South Asia, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, and two from Southeast Asia, including Myanmar and Thailand. The permanent Secretariat of BIMSTEC is operational since September 2014 in Dhaka. There are 14 priority areas 1) Counterterrorism and transnational crime, 2) Transport & Communication, 3)Tourism, 4) Environment and Disaster Management, 5)Trade and Investment, 6) Cultural Cooperation, 7) Energy, 8) Agriculture, 9 )Poverty Alleviation, 10) Technology, 11) Fisheries, 12) Public Health, 13) People-to-People contact 14) Climate Change. India is the Lead Country in four areas, viz Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime, Transport & Communication, Tourism, and Environment and Disaster Management.
Veer Savarkar International Airport: Also known as Port Blair Airport, is a customs airport located 2 km south of Port Blair. It is the main airport of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India. It is named after the Indian freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.
It is a civil airport, and its facilities are shared with the Indian Navy. The terminal is managed by the Airports Authority of India, while the traffic is handled by the Indian Navy.
Veer Savarkar: Born in 1883 near Nasik in Maharashtra, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was popularly called Veer Savarkar. He was the first to acknowledge the mutiny of 1857 as the first struggle for Independence and wrote the book ‘The History of the War of Indian Independence’. He was a passionate promoter of Hindutva since childhood. He was sentenced to 50 years in the cellular jail of Andamans, also known as Kala Pani, for revolting against the Morley-Minto reforms(Indian Councils Act 1909) in 1911. After his release from jail, he worked on the abolishment of untouchability in Ratnagiri. Serving as the president of the Hindu Mahasabha political party, he opposed the Quit India movement in 1942. He founded the organizations Abhinav Bharat Society and Free India Society. He was a critic of the Indian National Congress and its acceptance of India’s partition. He was also a critic of Mahatma Gandhi and called him a ‘hypocrite’.
‘National Multidimensional Poverty Index: According to the ‘National Multidimensional Poverty Index: A Progress Review 2023, India has registered a significant decline of 9.89 percentage points in the number of multidimensionally poor, from 24.85% in 2015-16 to 14.96% in 2019-2021. It claims that about 13.5 crore people came out of multidimensional poverty during the period, assessed by identifying. It said that rural areas witnessed the fastest decline in poverty from 32.59% to 19.28%, primarily due to a decrease in the number of multi-dimensionally poor in States such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Rajasthan. Delhi, Kerala, Goa and Tamil Nadu have the least number of people facing multidimensional poverty.
Along with the Union Territories. Bihar, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh top the chart where the percentage of the total population who are multidimensionally poor is high. Multidimensional poverty in urban areas, during the same period, saw a decrease from 8.65% to 5.27%. Uttar Pradesh registered the largest decline in the number of poor with 3.43 crore people escaping multidimensional poverty.
