According to the terms of this alliance, Indian rulers were not allowed to have their independent armed forces. They were to be protected by the Company but had to pay for the “subsidiary forces” that the Company was supposed to maintain for the purpose of this protection. If the Indian rulers failed to make the payment, then part of their territory was taken away as penalty. For example, when Richard Wellesley was Governor-General (1798-1805), the Nawab of Awadh was forced to give over half of his territory to the Company in 1801, as he failed to pay for the “subsidiary forces”. Hyderabad was also forced to cede territories on similar grounds.

The final wave of annexations occurred under Lord Dalhousie who was the Governor-General from 1848 to 1856. He devised a policy that came to be known as the Doctrine of Lapse. The doctrine declared that if an Indian ruler died without a male heir his kingdom would “lapse”, that is, become part of Company territory. One kingdom after another was annexed simply by applying this doctrine: Satara (1848), Sambalpur (1850), Udaipur (1852), Nagpur (1853) and Jhansi (1854). Finally, in 1856, the Company also took over Awadh.

The Treaty of Allahabad was signed on 12 August 1765, between the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II, son of the late Emperor Alamgir II, and Robert Clive, of the East India Company, as a result of the Battle of Buxar of 22 October 1764. The Treaty of Seringapatam was signed on 18 March 1792 at the end of the Third Anglo-Mysore War. The Treaty of Bassein was a pact signed on 31 December 1802 between the British East India Company and Baji Rao II, the Maratha Peshwa of Pune in India after the Battle of Poona.

Susceptible, Undetected, Tested (positive), and Removed Approach’ (SUTRA) is a mathematical model devised by IIT scientists to predict active COVID cases in country. model uses three main parameters to predict the course of the pandemic.

World Press Freedom Index
India’s rank: 142/180
Released by: Paris based Reporters Without Borders (RSF). It has been published every year since 2002 by Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) or Reporters Without Borders.
The Index ranks countries and regions according to the level of freedom available to journalists. However, it is not an indicator on the quality of journalism. The parameters include pluralism, media independence, media environment and self-censorship, legislative framework, transparency, and the quality of the infrastructure that supports the production of news and information.