Daily Hindu Editorials

Budget 2018 does well to focus on senior citizens, but action must be broad based Finance Minister Arun Jaitley stressed in his Budget speech last week that “to care for those who cared for us is one of the highest honours”, underscoring the importance the Centre attaches to providing economic support for India’s growing population of senior citizens. He then announced several tax and related incentives to ease the financial burden on people aged 60 and above, all of which are very welcome given that the elderly face steeply escalating health-care costs on declining real interest and pension incomes. From affording a five-fold increase in the exemption limit on interest income from savings, fixed and recurring deposits held with banks and post offices to ₹50,000, and doing away with the requirement for tax to be deducted at source on such income, the Budget offers much-needed relief. This it does by leaving a little more money in the hands of elderly savers who ...

A large-scale vocational education system would help raise the productivity of individuals and the economy Basic education has slipped in priority in the national policy matrix over the decades. The Census and several other data sets have pointed to various dimensions of the problem. Recently, the Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2017, published by a non-governmental organisation and containing data from 26 districts in 24 States, has some national-level findings that should cause concern. Focussing on the 14-18 years age group, the ‘Beyond Basics’ study has tried to assess, inter alia, whether this cohort of young people is enrolled in any educational institution, whether they are both enrolled and pursuing work, how well they have been prepared in previous schooling, their access to technology, and what occupies their time. This is an important segment of the population, on the threshold of adulthood, and, importantly, political participation. The insights from...

Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta has made an important statement before the Supreme Court (“India can’t be refugee capital: govt.”, The Hindu, February 1, 2018). Whether he intended it to or not, it contains a vision, a vision of India. Mr. Mehta presented that vision in terms of what India should not be. Responding to a plea by Rohingya refugees in India, Mr. Mehta said in the Supreme Court last week: “We do not want India to become the refugee capital of the world.” He went on to say to the Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India that if the Rohingya were given refuge, “People from every other country will flood our country.” And, he added: “This is not a matter in which we can show any leniency.” Four positions can be distilled from those observations: “We” speak for India; that India does not want refugees; people from ‘every other’ country are likely to flood India; we will not let India bec...

Matters are coming to a head in the Maldives, with President Abdulla Yameen’s government pitted against the judiciary, polity and sections of the bureaucracy. Mr. Yameen has ruled since 2013 when he won power in an election, the result of which is still contested. He defeated Mohammad Nasheed, who had been deposed in 2012 and who, in 2015, was sentenced to 13 years in prison on charges of terrorism. Mr. Nasheed is now in exile. In an order on February 1, the Supreme Court cancelled his imprisonment term and that of eight other political leaders, reinstated 12 parliamentarians who had been disqualified last year, and ordered Mr. Yameen to allow the Maldivian parliament, or Majlis, to convene. Mr. Yameen has thus far failed to comply with any of these orders, despite an official statement on February 2 about his government’s “commitment to uphold and abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court”. The most egregious failure is the government’s refusal to cancel th...

Rahul Gandhi must lead the Congress in a brainstorming session to nuance a new narrative The Congress’s 3-0 score in Rajasthan, where it trounced the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in two Lok Sabha constituencies and one Assembly seat in by-elections, comes shortly after it breached the outer walls of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s citadel of Gujarat last year: it emerged from that contest with the air of a victor even though it did not win the election. 🔹A challenging year It is amidst these first green shoots in what had been an arid political landscape for the Congress that its recently elected party president Rahul Gandhi promised to create a “Shining New Congress” within six months. This is as he readies the party organisation for eight Assembly polls, including Rajasthan, this year, with the general election then due by the summer of 2019. The Congress’s victories in Rajasthan have lifted spirits not just in the party but across the Oppositi...

This needs more effort, but given the high burden of cervical cancer in India, waiting longer could be unethical The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine has run into more trouble. In January, a Rome-based epidemiologist, Tom Jefferson, of the Cochrane Collaboration highlighted in a paper worrying gaps in published data on the vaccine, designed to prevent HPV-related cervical cancer. Dr. Jefferson found that only two-thirds of the clinical trials on the HPV vaccine, manufactured by Merck Sharp and Dohme (MSD) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), had been published. This is particularly important in the light of his previous findings. Last year, Dr. Jefferson and other vaccine safety experts had questioned the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) assertion that HPV vaccines are safe, after they found that the EMA had relied mainly on MSD’s and GSK’s analysis of clinical trial data to reach this conclusion. This is a problem because drug manufacturers have been known to cherry-pick da...