Daily Hindu Editorials

The National Medical Commission Bill is unlikely to provide a dynamic new thrust to medical care in India There is no doubt that the Medical Council of India (MCI) has outlived its utility and should be reformed or replaced. The remit for the proposed new body, the National Medical Commission, should be clear, direct and workable. A regulatory body should be expected only to regulate and not to formulate policy, which is the function of Parliament and requires inputs from a number of sources, preferably with different points of view. The fundamental flaw in the proposed Medical Commission is the lack of clarity on its function. Unfortunately, in the National Medical Commission Bill, 2017 in the chapter titled “powers and functions of the commission”, the phrase “lay down policy” occurs repeatedly. The Commission is also expected to “assess the requirements in healthcare, including human resources...” Such complex tasks, which require inputs from multiple agencies, will be done poorly

With Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit, India and Israel have fully normalised bilateral ties Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to India this week was the final step in the process of fully normalising the bilateral relationship. That process began in 1992 when India established diplomatic ties with Israel, with major milestones in 2003 when Ariel Sharon became the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit India, in 2015 when President Pranab Mukherjee visited Israel, and in 2017 when Narendra Modi became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Israel. With Mr. Netanyahu’s six-day visit, the focus is now on the future, and their joint statement drew a 25-year timeline in which to realise the potential of the strategic partnership. The close personal equation between the two leaders was evident throughout the visit, with Mr. Modi hosting Mr. and Ms. Netanyahu in Gujarat, where they flew kites and took part in a roadshow. Mr. Netanyahu also made the traditional trip to the Taj Mah

Virat Kohli’s Test team is still to prove its credentials on difficult overseas tours The familiar free-fall outside the Indian subcontinent has returned to haunt Virat Kohli’s men. In the two Tests of the current three-match series in South Africa, India lost a closely-fought game by 72 runs at Cape Town and then collapsed to a 135-run defeat in the next clash in Centurion. Trailing 0-2 and helming a unit searching for batting cohesion, skipper Kohli has to cope with a tough challenge. He sparkled with a 153 in the second Test but, as it used to happen during Sachin Tendulkar’s heyday in the 1990s, that proved to be a fine but futile effort in a lost cause. The stench of defeat is an unfamiliar odour for the national cricket team, with Kohli’s troops performing splendidly over the last two years. Yet, it would be prudent to accept that the cloak of invincibility was donned at home where rivals ranging from Australia to Bangladesh were humbled, and when India travelled, it was to secu

As the U.S. recalibrates ties with Pakistan, India should maintain a cautious distance With a New Year tweet from his handle accusing Pakistan of “lies & deceit” in return for “33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years”, U.S. President Donald Trump ‘appears’ to be radically resetting his administration’s Pakistan policy, with implications for the rest of South Asia. To be sure, this is unlikely to have the gravity or determination of the post-9/11 threat from the American administration which at the time made it clear to Pakistan that if it didn’t cooperate with the U.S. in the war on terror, it would bomb Pakistan “back to the stone age”. The threat did work for some time. 🔷  A clever ploy? A less worrisome interpretation of Mr. Trump’s outrage would be that it is a clever ploy to gain more leverage in a region where the U.S. is seemingly losing ground. It is steadily losing its Afghan war, losing ground to China in the region, and China is increasingly interested in po