Group Captain Shaliza Dhami becomes the first woman IAF officer to get a command appointment.

Salhoutuonuo Kruse is Nagaland’s first woman minister 

• Salhoutuonuo Kruse has created history by becoming the State’s first MLA along with Hekani Jakhalu, both of NDPP
• Nagaland has had two women MPs – Rano M. Shaiza of the United Democratic Party and S. Phangnon Konyak of the BJP – since it attained Statehood in 1963. But space in the 60-member Assembly was a bridge too far for them until the NDPP nominated Ms. Jakhalu and Ms. Kruse for the February 27, 2023, elections.
• There were only two other women among the 183 candidates who contested the State polls. One each was fielded by the BJP and Congress. 
• Ms. Kruse, a 55-year-old, was thrilled after being sworn in as one of the 12 ministers, the maximum Nagaland can have.
• “The responsibility given to me is huge, especially as the first of a kind. I shall do my best to encourage women to be brave, sincere, and hardworking so that we can work together and gain whatever we have not gained yet,” she told journalists in the State capital Kohima.
• A social worker who worked for more than two decades with several NGOs, Ms Kruse won the Western Angami Assembly seat in the Kohima district by only 7 votes.
• She said she had faced several challenges after deciding to contest the elections and succeed where her husband could not. He failed to win an election and died in 2021. 
• “The main challenge was contesting the polls as a woman in the Naga society that has a patriarchal mindset, although accommodative to a considerable extent now,” she said. 
• Ms. Jakhalu, the U.S.-educated lawyer and social entrepreneur who founded the non-profit organisation Youth Net in 2006, said she and Ms. Kruse managed to break the glass ceiling. “Ours is a victory of the women of Nagaland,” she said.

India to send 20,000 MT of wheat to Afghanistan via Chabahar

• For sending of wheat, Decision amongst others announced at first India-Central Asia JWG on Afghanistan.
• India will send its next consignment of wheat as an aid to Afghanistan under the Taliban regime via Chabahar, the MEA announced. 
• The decision, which was announced at the first meeting of the India-Central Asia Joint Working Group (JWG) on Afghanistan in Delhi, came after the agreement with Pakistan to extend sending the wheat over the land route expired, and talks on extending the time have failed to proceed.
• While India had sent about 40,000 metric tonnes (MT) of the 50,000 MT promised last year after an agreement with the previous PM Imran Khan government, the shipments had to be called off after floods in Pakistan, and the time period allowed by Pakistan ran out. India has used the Chabahar route in the past, prior to 2021, to send shipments of wheat to Afghanistan
• “To address the current humanitarian situation, the Indian side announced its partnership with UNWFP (UN World Food Programme) for the delivery of 20,000 MTs of wheat for Afghan people through the Chabahar Port,” the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement after the meeting of Senior officials and envoys of India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic,Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
• The JWG meeting comes more than a year after the India-Central Asia summit in January 2022, where the decision to hold a special contact group on Afghanistan was announced.
• At the JWG, India also agreed to offer “customised capacity building courses” for UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) officials and stakeholders and cooperate on initiatives to counter drug trafficking and rehabilitation efforts for Afghan drug users, especially women.
• However, the release did not specify if the training courses would be provided through the Indian Mission in Kabul, which has a ‘technical team’ posted there, or whether the government would extend visas for Afghans to travel to India for the training. 
• At present, India has cancelled all visas issued to Afghans prior to August 2021, when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, and has not issued new visas for Afghan students or others wishing to travel here.
• According to UNODC reports, opium production is up by nearly a third in the past year, especially after the Taliban took control of Kabul. More than 80% of the world’s opium and heroin is smuggled out of Afghanistan, where an estimated 3 million people or nearly one-tenth of the population is addicted. 
• The issues of drugs, the export of terrorism and radicalism, and refugees have been at the top of concerns for neighbouring countries in Central Asia. 

Group Captain Shaliza Dhami becomes the first woman IAF officer to get a command appointment.

• The armed forces have opened up command appointments for women officers following a Supreme Court verdict.
• In the first command appointment for a woman officer in the Indian Air Force (IAF), Group Captain Shaliza Dhami has been selected to take over the command of a frontline combat unit in the Western sector, the IAF said.
• “Having been commended by the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief on two occasions, the officer is presently posted in the Operations branch of a frontline Command Headquarters,” the IAF said in a statement.
• Group Captain Dhami was commissioned in 2003 as a Helicopter pilot and has over 2,800 hours of flying experience. A Qualified Flying Instructor, she has served as Flight Commander of a Helicopter Unit in the Western sector.
• Congratulating the officer, Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur (Retd.), former Additional Director General of the think tank Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS), said on Twitter, “Her younger brother was with us in CAPS, now an Assistant Professor in Imphal.”
• The armed forces have opened up command appointments for women officers following a Supreme Court verdict. The Army recently conducted interviews and approved the first batch of women officers for command appointments.