💥🇵🇰 Why is terrorism on the rise in J&K? | 💻😔 Only 14% Indian employees 'thriving' at work

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Market Watch

• Indian benchmark indices ended the day marginally higher, with the Sensex up 204 points at 76,810 and the Nifty 50 up 77 points at 23,399.
• Sectorally, Nifty Realty and Nifty IT were the biggest gainers while Nifty Media and Nifty FMCG were the worst hit.

Revival of infiltration routes, dried intel: What’s fuelling surge in terror attacks in Jammu?

The recent surge in terror attacks in Jammu is attributed to multiple factors including old infiltration routes and a deteriorating intelligence network.

• In a meeting today, PM Modi ordered the deployment of the full spectrum of counter-terrorism measures in the region. So far, 50 people have been detained after the Reasi attack.

Key factors: The revival of old infiltration routes like the Samba Kathua is enabling terrorists to infiltrate unnoticed in small batches, causing a spike in attacks.

• The thinning deployment of security forces, due to the shifting of troops to the LAC with China, has left key areas in Jammu vulnerable.
• Highly trained terrorists are staying back in Jammu regions instead of moving to Kashmir, initiating new fronts of operation in Doda, Udhampur, and Reasi.
• A dried-up human and technical intelligence network, with terrorists using encrypted apps like Telegram, has made tracking them difficult.
• Jammu has witnessed a shift from local to foreign terrorism with more than 30 foreign terrorists active in the region, complicating internal security.

The big picture: Authorities are not ruling out a possible China connection, stating that the terrorists want New Delhi to make a mistake and remove troops from the China borders so that India is engaged more in Kashmir and Jammu with more challenges in Ladakh.

• “Hybrid Militancy,” is also a recent development with newer outfits like The Resistance Front (TRF), made up of a network of overground workers (OGWs), who carry out decentralized attacks on “soft targets.”
• They now use “individuals who aren’t listed in police records, and therefore are off the radar, making them harder to track,” and “unlike other terror groups, who glorify their memberships through social media, TRF maintains confidentiality,” to provide an “indigenous identity to outsourced terror”.
• Officials stated that TRF was merely LeT by a new name, which was chosen to avoid religious connotations and instead utilise the politically advantageous term of “resistance”.
• The outfit began as a Karachi-based social media operation and then moved into weapons trafficking and eventually militancy.

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86% of Indian employees 'struggling or 'suffering', only 14% 'thriving' at work: New Gallup report

According to the Gallup 2024 State of the Global Workplace report, a staggering 86% of Indian employees are either “struggling” or “suffering” at work.

• The report identifies three well-being categories: thriving, struggling, and suffering, based on life situation ratings and future outlook.

By the numbers: Only 14% consider that they're thriving, which is significantly lower than the global average of 34% of employees who feel they are thriving.

• India reported the second-highest rate of thriving employees at 14% in the South Asian region, behind Nepal at 22%.
• 35% of Indian respondents reported experiencing daily anger, the highest rate in South Asia.
• However, only 32% reported daily stress, the lowest in the region compared to 62% in Sri Lanka and 58% in Afghanistan.
• Despite the low levels of thriving and high levels of negative emotions, India maintained a relatively high employee engagement (involvement and enthusiasm of employees at workplace) rate of 32%, well above the global average of 23%.

ICYMI

• 📝 Ajit Doval has been appointed as the National Security Advisor for a third consecutive term.
• 🛕 Newly sworn-in Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu has pledged to cleanse the Tirupati-Tirumala administration and protect the Hindu faith.
• ⚖️ The Supreme Court of India halted the release of “Hamare Baarah” a day before its scheduled release.
• ✈️ Ram Mohan Naidu, the newly appointed Civil Aviation Minister of India, has expressed his vision to make air travel cheaper and more accessible.
• 🤖 The United Kingdom is seeing its first instance of a new kind of politician: an AI candidate.
• 🧑🎓 The central government has announced the cancellation of grace marks awarded to 1,563 NEET-UG 2024 candidates.