Why in news?

On August 15, the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan embassy in New Delhi celebrated "victory day," marking five years since the Taliban's takeover of Kabul.

The event, attended by Indian and around two dozen foreign diplomats, signalled how far India-Taliban ties have shifted — from New Delhi's hurried evacuation of its Kabul embassy on August 17, 2021, to today's open, if still unofficial, engagement.

Indian officials describe this as "cautious engagement," while critics call it "opportunistic."

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Why India Is Deepening Engagement?
• Timeline of India's Outreach
• Security Concerns
• The Human Rights Question
• Conclusion

Why India Is Deepening Engagement?

• India invested heavily in Afghanistan after the Taliban's fall in 2001.
• When the Ashraf Ghani government collapsed in 2021 following the U.S. troop withdrawal announced by President Biden, New Delhi faced the prospect of losing its $2-3 billion developmental investment.
• This pushed India to upgrade engagement with the Taliban — without extending formal diplomatic recognition — both to protect this investment for the Afghan people and to build leverage and influence in the country.
• Three strategic factors accelerated this shift:
  • Pakistan-Taliban rift: Pakistan, once the Taliban's principal benefactor, has turned into an adversary, with repeated border clashes between the two. This fracture created a window of opportunity for India.
  • China's growing footprint: Beijing has been building infrastructure and pursuing natural resources in Afghanistan, filling the vacuum left by Western withdrawal.
  • Russia's parallel engagement: Russia, the only country to have formally established diplomatic ties with the Taliban, has been coordinating with India to monitor Chinese influence in the region.

Timeline of India's Outreach

• India's engagement evolved incrementally:
  • August 31, 2021: First official contact — India's ambassador to Qatar met the Taliban's political office chief in Doha.
  • September 2021: India acknowledged the Taliban as those "in positions of power and authority" in Afghanistan.
  • December 2021: India sent its first medicine consignment, distinguishing the Taliban regime from the Afghan people.
  • June 2022: First official Indian visit to Kabul post-takeover to oversee humanitarian aid delivery.
  • January 2025: Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri held a substantive meeting with Taliban Foreign Minister Muttaqi in Dubai.
  • May 2025: EAM S. Jaishankar spoke to Muttaqi by phone after India-Pakistan agreed to halt strikes during Operation Sindoor; the Taliban had condemned the Pahalgam terror attack.
  • October 2025: Muttaqi visited India; both sides upgraded missions to embassy level and appointed chargé d'affaires.

Security Concerns

• India's guiding principle remains that Afghan territory must not be used for anti-India activities or terrorism.
• A UN Security Council 1267 sanctions committee report noted that the terrorist threat from Afghanistan remains largely unchanged, with groups like ISIL-K and Al-Qaeda still active despite Taliban efforts to contain them.
• Notably, the report made no mention of anti-India groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammad — a relief for New Delhi, though it remains watchful.
• Taliban officials have sought to project Afghanistan as a hub for regional economic connectivity rather than terrorism, framing this as a message to both India and Pakistan.

The Human Rights Question

• India has delivered substantial humanitarian aid since 2021, including 50,000 metric tons of wheat and over 445 tons of medicines and disaster relief material.
• However, human rights, women's rights, and minority rights — once part of India's stated concerns — are no longer publicly emphasised.
• The Taliban has systematically curtailed rights for Afghanistan's 22 million women: barring girls over 12 from school, restricting unaccompanied travel, and enabling child marriage.
• India had earlier voiced concern — including in December 2022 over university bans on women — and had backed a UN Security Council resolution (adopted August 30, 2021, under India's presidency) calling for inclusive governance and equal rights for women and girls.
• India has since dropped insistence on these red lines, instead moving forward with development cooperation and visas for Afghans for medical treatment, business, and education.
• Current Status
  • Afghan missions in Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad are now staffed by Taliban-appointed diplomats, though formal diplomatic recognition remains withheld.
  • This is symbolised by the Delhi embassy's flagpole still flying the former Afghan Republic's tricolour rather than the Taliban's flag.

Conclusion

India's Taliban engagement reflects pragmatic recalibration driven by strategic competition with Pakistan and China, rather than ideological alignment.

While New Delhi has protected its economic stakes and security interests, its retreat from earlier human rights and women's rights positions marks a significant, if quiet, shift — raising questions about the balance between strategic necessity and India's traditional foreign policy values.

Why in news?

Recently, a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice of India directed the Union government to conduct a fresh survey of elephant corridors, ruling that these corridors cannot be blocked over fears of crop damage since elephant herds naturally travel long distances.

The bench was hearing an ongoing writ petition on managing human-elephant conflict, which had earlier also sought a ban on using fireballs, spikes, and similar methods to drive elephants away.

The Court asked the Centre to report on steps taken to prohibit such "coercive measures" that divert elephants' natural movement.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Why Do Elephants Move Long Distances?
• India's Elephant Landscapes and Population
• Fragmentation of Corridors: Region-Wise Challenges
• Why Corridors Matter?
• Corridor Mapping and Key Findings

Why Do Elephants Move Long Distances?

• Asian elephants are highly mobile, social mammals. A male elephant's home range — the area used for food, water, and shelter — typically spans 50 to 300 square kilometres, expanding further depending on resource availability.
• Elephants move through their range either in herds or individually, with home ranges varying by habitat type, food and water availability, population density, and human disturbance.
• According to studies by the National Centre for Biological Sciences and the Wildlife Institute of India, elephant movement is strongly shaped by seasonal food and water distribution.
• For instance, elephants migrate into Kerala during dry months, drawn to the relatively moist forests of the Western Ghats.
• Historically, climate change and drought have also driven such migrations. Corridors are essential to this movement, enabling elephants to find food, disperse naturally, and move seasonally.
• But these routes are increasingly disrupted by infrastructure, mining, and farmland expansion.

India's Elephant Landscapes and Population

• India has four principal elephant landscapes:
  • Western Ghats — 11,934 elephants (53.2%), across Karnataka (6,013), Tamil Nadu (3,136), and Kerala (2,785)
  • North-Eastern Hills and Brahmaputra floodplains — 6,559 elephants (29.2%)
  • Shivalik Hills and Gangetic plains — 2,062 elephants (9.2%)
  • Central India and Eastern Ghats — 1,891 elephants (8.4%)
• India's total elephant population stands at 22,446 (SAIEE 2021-25).
• 

Fragmentation of Corridors: Region-Wise Challenges

• Western Ghats: Once a contiguous elephant habitat, this landscape is rapidly fragmenting due to changing land use, coffee and tea plantations, invasive plant species, and farmland fencing — a concern flagged in the latest all-India elephant population estimation report.
• Shivalik and Brahmaputra plains: Similar fragmentation has been recorded here, chiefly driven by railway lines, roads, power infrastructure, and other land-use changes.
• Central India and Eastern Ghats: This landscape presents the biggest conservation challenge, with elephant numbers rising steadily since the mid-to-late 1980s.
  • Movement here began with El Niño-linked drought in erstwhile southern Bihar and later intensified due to iron ore mining in Jharkhand and Odisha.
  • Over the past two decades, elephants have moved into Chhattisgarh from Jharkhand and Odisha owing to habitat loss and mining pressure, further expanding into Umaria and Shahdol (Madhya Pradesh) and Gadchiroli (Maharashtra).

Why Corridors Matter?

• Corridors provide more than physical connectivity — they enable genetic exchange between fragmented elephant populations, maintaining genetic diversity.
• They also give elephants access to food and water during seasonal changes, reducing the likelihood of crop raiding and human-elephant conflict.

Corridor Mapping and Key Findings

• The government's last major corridor-mapping exercise in 2023 documented 150 elephant corridors across 15 States within the four major landscapes.
• A subsequent report on human-elephant conflict in South India identified bottlenecks across 32 corridors in the region, citing highways, railway projects (such as the Bengaluru-Chennai line), hydel projects, high-tension power lines, electric fences, quarries, corridor narrowing, tea and coffee estates, resorts, and ashrams as key obstructions.
• West Bengal recorded the highest number of corridors — 26 across its northern and southern regions.
• Corridor sizes vary widely; the Charmar-Jingol corridor, largely in Chhattisgarh, is a notable example at 20 km long and 2.5 km wide, facilitating movement of an estimated 80-100 elephants from Odisha into Chhattisgarh's interior.

Conclusion

Elephant corridors are vital lifelines connecting fragmented habitats, enabling seasonal movement, genetic exchange, and reduced human-elephant conflict.

With infrastructure, mining, and land-use change increasingly obstructing these pathways, the Supreme Court's intervention signals growing judicial recognition that safeguarding corridors is essential — not just for elephant conservation, but for long-term conflict mitigation between humans and India's largest terrestrial mammal.

About United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO):

• It is a British Royal Navy-sponsored organisation that was formed in 2001 with an office in Dubai to handle distress calls during maritime security threats.
• In 2014, it was moved to Portsmouth in the K.
• It is the primary point of contact for commercial vessels with military forces in the region.
• The UKMTO works in West Asia and the Indian Ocean Region through an information framework agreement and operates a “Voluntary Reporting Scheme (VRS) within the Voluntary Reporting Area (VRA)” outlined in a maritime security chart.
• UKMTO issues several categories of communication to the maritime community. These are in the form of Warnings, Advisories, Reports, and Records of Maritime Information Exchange Meetings.
• The UKMTO hosts all warnings on its website as well as hosting notices from partner organisations.

About Narwhal:

• It is a medium-sized toothed whale that belongs to the family Monodontidae.
• The only other member of this family is the beluga whale.
• Scientific Name: Monodon monoceros
• Habitat and Distribution:
  • They live in the Arctic Ocean, mostly in the Atlantic sector, but they have also been recorded in the Pacific sector.
  • Their largest numbers live around Canada, Greenland, and eastern Russia.
  • They usually migrate from under the ice in the winter to inshore waters in the spring and coastal waters in the summer.
• Features:
  • It is best known for its tusk—a long, spiraled tooth that usually only the males develop. (Females occasionally do.)
    • Recent observations suggest that the males use their tusks to hunt fish and to detect the level of salt in the waters through which they swim.
  • Narwhals have stout, torpedo-shaped bodies with a low dorsal ridge in place of a dorsal fin and a concave-shaped tail fin.
  • Like belugas, narwhals have short paddle-shaped front flippers, but they lack their extremely flexible neck and well-defined beak.
  • Adult narwhals are light grey with numerous irregular black spots; the spots are more numerous on the back and fewer on the belly.
  • Narwhals tend to travel in groups of 15 to 20, though larger gatherings of hundreds or even thousands of individuals have been observed.
  • They are one of the deepest diving whales in the world and can hold their breath for 25-30 minutes at a time.
  • Narwhals feed on fish, squid, and shrimp.
  • They use sound to communicate with each other, as well as to navigate their surroundings, hunt, and see.
• Conservation Status:
  • IUCN Red List: Least Concern

About Endoscopic Camera:

• It is a device used to view, capture, and record videos in small, hard-to-reach places of the human body with limited to no visibility.
• It allows doctors to visualize the surgery or diagnostic procedure on a larger medical-grade screen, like a TV display, a computer monitor, or a stereoscopic viewing console.
• Most modern endoscope camera modules utilize “chip-on-tip” technology, where the lens and imaging electronics are combined into a miniature package located at the end of the device.
• Endoscopic cameras illuminate the anatomical area through fiber optics or LEDs on the tip, and the image signal is transferred out from the camera on an electrical cable.
• The light source must provide sufficient brightness and illumination angle to ensure true-color properties and brilliant image presentation to aid medical professionals in their diagnoses and procedures.
• There are many types of endoscopes used for diagnostic, preventative, and surgical applications:
  • Cystoscope: This is used to study the inside of the bladder, urethra, urinary tract, and prostate (in men) and is often inserted through the urethra.
  • Laryngoscope: This is an endoscope used to view the larynx or the voice box and is inserted through the mouth.
  • Otoscope: The otoscope is designed for visual examination of the eardrum and the passage of the outer ear.
  • Gastroscope: This is used to check the upper part of the digestive system, which includes the inside of your throat, food pipe (esophagus), and stomach.
  • Laparoscope: A laparoscope is inserted through the abdomen to study the stomach, liver, abdominal organs, and female reproductive organs such as the fallopian tubes, uterus, and ovaries.
  • Arthroscope: An arthroscope is an endoscope that’s inserted into the joint through a small incision near the site.
  • Duodenoscope: This is a long flexible endoscope inserted through the mouth to the top of the small intestine (duodenum).
• It has revolutionized numerous fields due to its ability to inspect internal or hard-to-reach areas without requiring invasive procedures.
• Its use has expanded across various sectors such as industry, research, and even security.

About Terrier Cyber Quest 2026:

• It is a national-level hackathon focused on cybersecurity, defence, and digital threats.
• It is being organised by the Territorial Army in collaboration with CyberPeace (an Indian non-partisan civil society organisation).
• The competition aims to bring together talent from educational institutions, industry, research organisations, government bodies, and the Armed Forces.
• Participants will work on technology-based solutions to address emerging cybersecurity and national security challenges.
• This year's competition will be held across three tracks.
  • Bug Hunting: Participants will identify security flaws in simulated critical infrastructure system The challenge will begin with an online Capture-the-Flag round, followed by a live final round.
  • AI Kavach: This track will focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Participants will develop solutions for detecting threats, identifying unusual activity, and improving cyber defence.
  • Creators Challenge: Content creators, communicators, and influencers can take part in this track. They will be asked to create digital campaigns on threats such as deepfakes, phishing, online scams, and misinformation.
• The hackathon gives students, technology enthusiasts, and other participants a chance to showcase their skills and work on real-world cybersecurity challenges linked to national security.
• Winners could further get a chance to visit defence establishments and contribute to future cybersecurity initiatives with the Territorial Army.

Key Facts about Territorial Army:

• It is a part of the Indian Army that consists of volunteers who undergo military training and serve when required.
• Unlike regular army officers, Territorial Army officers maintain their civilian jobs while dedicating a few weeks each year to military service.
• It’s a platform for motivated individuals to contribute to national defence without sacrificing their primary professions.
• Often called the “Second Line of Defence,” the TA plays a crucial role in:
  • Relieving the regular army from static duties.
  • Assisting the civil administration in dealing with natural calamities and maintaining essential services.
  • Providing units for the regular Army as and when required.
• Motto: Savdhani Va Shoorta (Vigilance and Valour)
• Eligibility:
  • Nationality: Citizens of India
  • Age: 18 to 42 years
  • Educational Qualifications: Graduate from any recognized university
  • Physical Standards: A candidate must be physically and medically fit in all respects.
  • Employment: Gainfully Employed
  • Serving members of the Regular Army/Navy/Air Force/Police/GREF/Para Military and like forces are not eligible.

About KN-30 Missile:

• The KN-30 is the Western designation for the North Korean Hwasong-11C ballistic missile, also known as the Hwasong-11Da.
• It is an enlarged version of the Hwasong-11 family and belongs to the short-range ballistic missile class.
• Features:
  • It is 10.1 to 10.2 m in length and 1.26 m in diameter.
  • It is powered by a solid-fuel engine and launched from a mobile ground-based launcher.
    • The use of solid-fuel engines offers distinct advantages in terms of faster response times, longer storage capacity, and reduced deployment complexity compared to traditional liquid-fuel missiles.
  • Its estimated range reaches 600-900 km, and its claimed warhead mass reaches 2,500 kg.
  • Maximum speed is approximately Mach 5-6.
  • The missile can fly in a low quasi-ballistic profile at nearly 50 km in altitude, which reduces the engagement window compared with a higher and more conventional ballistic trajectory.

About Chromium:

• It is a naturally occurring element found in rocks, animals, plants, soil, and in volcanic dust and gases.
• There are two forms: trivalent chromium, which is safe for humans, and hexavalent chromium, which is a toxin.
• Properties:
  • It is a hard gray solid with a metallic luster.
  • It does not tarnish in air, when heated it forms the green chromic oxide.
  • Chromium is unstable in oxygen, it immediately produces a thin oxide layer that is impermeable to oxygen and protects the metal below.
• Applications:
  • It is used in iron, steel, and nonferrous alloys. It enhances hardenability and resistance to corrosion and oxidation.
  • The use of chromium to produce stainless steel and nonferrous alloys are two of its more important applications.
  • Other applications are in alloy steel, plating of metals, pigments, leather processing, catalysts, surface treatments, and refractories.

About Squint Eye:

• It is medically known as strabismus.
• It is a condition in which the two eyes do not align properly.
• It can affect children and adults and, when it develops during childhood, can interfere with the normal development of vision.
• In this condition one eye may turn inwards towards the nose (esotropia), outwards (exotropia), upwards or downwards, while the other eye remains focused on an object.
• Causes:
  • Strabismus occurs when the systems that control eye movement and alignment do not work properly together. 
  • Genetic factors can play a role, and children with a family history of strabismus are at higher risk.
  • It is also more common in children with certain neurological or developmental conditions. Being born prematurely or with low birth weight are recognised risk factors.
  • In adults, strabismus can develop due to conditions such as diabetes, thyroid eye disease, stroke, neurological disorders or trauma.
• Treatment: Glasses are often the first treatment when a refractive error contributes to the misalignment. Surgery may be needed when glasses and other treatments do not adequately correct the misalignment.

About Long Tailed Marmot:

• It is a rodent of the high-altitude areas of the Kashmir Himalaya.
• It is also known as the golden marmot and is a member of the Sciuridae family.
• Appearance: It has vibrant golden fur and has relatively long tail, robust body, and golden-brown coat that vary among subspecies.
• Habitat: It inhabits alpine meadows and rocky slopes, where its life is closely linked to the seasonal availability of vegetation.
• Distribution: They are found in parts of Central Asia and South Asia, including Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, and Northwestern India.
  • In India, they are found in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
• Diet: Herbivorous by nature, it feeds on vegetation in its alpine habitat.
• It is a diurnal and social mammal that thrives in challenging alpine habitats.
• Conservation Status:
  • IUCN Red List: Least Concern