| | The Agnipath model for short-term induction of soldiers into the three services is a major departure from the military’s decades-old recruitment system that was discontinued when the government announced the new scheme in June 2022. It seeks to recruit soldiers for only four years, with a provision to retain 25% of them in regular service. The appraisal process will be as granular as it can get and leaves no room for ambiguity, said a second officer, revealing the highlights. HT brings you a round-up of the most important and interesting stories, so you don’t miss your daily dose of news. | THE BIG STORY Army lays down rules for Agniveer retention The Army has come up with a detailed assessment system for retention of Agniveers after the fourth year of service, based on performance parameters including operational aptitude, weapons proficiency, physical fitness and tests to evaluate other soldierly skills, senior officers familiar with the development said on Tuesday. Agniveers decorated with gallantry awards will have an edge over their peers, Hindustan Times has learnt. Read more. | STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED | | | THE BIG QUESTION As protests defer demolitions temporarily, what's next for Joshimath residents? Protests erupted in Joshimath as the administration moved to demolish unstable buildings, including two precariously standing hotels, even as more structures developed cracks due to land subsidence that has threatened settlements in much of the hill town. At least 45 more buildings were discovered with cracks, taking the total number of such structures to 723, with many possibly needing to be torn down. But the first of such demolitions, of buildings marked with a red X, ran into trouble on Tuesday as residents held demonstrations over compensation. Read more. |  The game is afoot. He was born on January 6, 1854, and lived at 221B Baker Street. This detective will now be working in the public domain. It’s elementary. What's changed for Sherlock? | | | From the Edit Page Why delimitation in Assam is important The process to redraw the boundaries of parliamentary and assembly constituencies in Assam kicked off on New Year’s Day. The proposed delimitation has stoked fears and controversy, with some groups and Opposition parties saying it may end up further marginalising communities seen as outsiders to the state by the political establishment. Historically, Assam’s politics has been associated with a complicated set of social divisions — that between the Assamese and Bengali languages, tribal and non-tribal groups, and tea plantation and reserve forest areas, among other things. Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stormed to power in 2016, however, the state has seen an extraordinary flattening of these social divisions, at least electorally, to a single Hindu-Muslim cleavage. This is a consequential backdrop for the proposed delimitation in Assam because one part of the state has a high spatial concentration of Muslims, and the other parts of Assam have very few Muslims; in elections, this maps to areas where the BJP does poorly and very well, respectively. Read more. | NUMBER THEORY Bihar’s socioeconomic landscape: The known and unknown facts The Bihar government has started the first phase of the caste census on January 7. While this will include the basic task of house listing, the second phase will collect detailed social (read caste) and economic information. The government has said that it hopes to complete the entire process by the first half of this year. While it is true that India has not had a proper caste-census since 1931 – this is what makes the Bihar government’s decision to conduct one a statistically and politically important decision – what is not is that in the absence of data, we know nothing about the broad socio-economic attributes of the state’s population. Various government surveys do provide information about this question at the broader, social-group level. Here are five charts that summarise what we can expect to know from the caste census in the state when its results are published. Read more. | FROM THE FIELD In C’garh Maoist hotbed, conflict brews on communal lines It is 10am, and a nervous silence hangs over the village of Gorra. The silence, by itself, is not unusual. The village is inside a dense forest, its 40 homes and 200 people, as in most tribal settlements, are set wide apart. Far away from any urban habitation, Narayanpur district, which houses Gorra, has for decades been known as the gateway to “Abhujhmaad” - 4,000 square kilometres of forest and hills only just beginning to be mapped by the government, and the most secure bastion of the Maoist leadership. The uneasy calm comes from conflict, albeit one that is broadly disconnected from the government vs Maoist battle. Instead, it’s a communal conflict whose fault lines are becoming ever clearer in a state that will see elections in late 2023. Read more. | | | Infographic of the Day  (Click to expand) |  Avatar: Copyright has lapsed | Photo of the Day Cavafy’s chandelier | HT This Day: January 11, 1934 Intrigues in the land of thunderbolt Three nations- Britain, Russia and China—will start intriguing against each other owing to the death of the Dalai Lama, temporal ruler of the mysterious land of Tibet, which was announced recently, writes the diplomatic correspondent of the “Daily Express,” London. 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