Daily Hindu Editorials

Governance reforms and recognition of losses are a must to solve the bad loans crisis If the financial performance of India’s largest lender is anything to go by, an end to the severe bad loans crisis may be much farther beyond the horizon than previously anticipated. For the first time in almost 19 years, the State Bank of India reported a quarterly loss of ₹2,416 crore for the three months ended December, compared with a net profit of ₹2,610 crore in the year-earlier period. While the figures are not strictly comparable after SBI completed merger with its associates, the loss was the result of both a massive increase in provisions to account for bad loans and a substantial amount of mark-to-market losses on its holding of government bonds. Provisions for non-performing assets (NPAs) more than doubled to about ₹17,760 crore, from about ₹7,200 crore in the third quarter of 2016-17. On treasury operations, SBI recorded a loss of about ₹3,255 crore, ve...

As India seeks to pursue a multi-dimensional engagement with West Asia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s latest visit to the region has merely underscored its growing salience in the Indian foreign policy matrix. While much focus is often given to India’s ‘Act East’ policy, India’s ‘Look West’ policy too is evolving rapidly. This is Mr. Modi’s fifth visit to West Asia in the last three and a half years and sustained high-level engagements have ensured that India’s voice is becoming an important one in a region that is witnessing major power rivalries playing out. Mr. Modi’s Palestine visit — and the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister — coming just weeks after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s high profile visit to India, has been being looked at with significant interest. Underlining India’s credentials as a “very respected country in the international arena”, Palestinian Presid...

A case to develop low-yield atomic bombs, largely in response to Russia and China’s advances over the years, forms the cornerstone of the Pentagon’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), released this month. This represents a radical break from former President Barack Obama’s 2010 NPR, which envisaged a reduced role for atomic weapons in defence, except in “extreme circumstances”. The new NPR broadens “extreme circumstances” to mean responding to non-nuclear aggression on infrastructure and civilian population in the U.S. and its allies with low-yield weapons. The new NPR conveniently distances the U.S. from any moral high ground, or the promise to eschew nuclear aggression against non-nuclear weapons states that complied with the non-proliferation regime. Instead, it seeks to capitalise on the trillion dollar modernisation of ageing U.S. nuclear arsenal that Mr. Obama had agreed on in return for Republican backing of the 2010 New Strategic Arms R...

Any effort at securing animal welfare will have to be grounded in our own rights as human beings What must the Supreme Court do when a community’s right to cultural freedom comes into conflict with values of animal welfare? At first blush, on a purely intuitive level, this is likely to strike us as a question unworthy of close judicial scrutiny, for judges, we might think, would have to lose their moral capital before they condone cruelty to animals by placing a people’s right to culture on a pedestal. But a group of cases which the Supreme Court referred on February 2 to a Constitution Bench for final determination shows us that resolving this perceived clash is far from straightforward. To provide a morally justifiable answer, the court would have to not only make a hugely imaginative leap in its interpretation but also overcome a series of vexing doctrinal problems that limit the reach of constitutional theory. 🔹Amendment the crux The issue before the Supreme C...

Former PM Khaleda Zia’s conviction heightens political uncertainty in Bangladesh. The sentencing of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia to five years of rigorous imprisonment by a special judge’s court in Dhaka on charges of corruption has upended politics in an election year. Her arrest and possible disqualification from contesting — unless higher courts decide otherwise — has created a political crisis for her Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and equally a challenging opportunity for the ruling Awami League. The BNP is entirely dependent for leadership on the Zia family. With Ms. Zia’s son Tarique Rahman, who has been named the acting chairperson of the party, in exile in London after being convicted in another corruption case in 2016, the BNP is caught in a bind. Elections are scheduled for December 2018, and even before Ms. Zia’s conviction the party was struggling. The BNP had boycotted the previous elections in 2014, practically allowing ...

In addition to vulnerabilities and costs, adaptation projects should also consider issues around equity. While there are ongoing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and restrict global warming to below 2°C or even below 1.5°C, there are also efforts to help us live in a world where average global temperatures are rising. These projects on adaptation have been funded or implemented in a number of countries, either by individual governments or with the help of external donor funds. Failures of adaptation projects Many projects on adaptation begin by studying what climate impacts are expected, what kinds of vulnerabilities exist locally and how these can be addressed in a given local context. However, a 2010 survey by James Ford and his colleagues of over 1,700 projects concluded that adaptation projects were not helping the most vulnerable communities, and benefits were simply reaching those who had been assisted earlier. When several projects from the global Adaptatio...

Last year, India protested against the release of a report, ‘Global estimates of modern slavery: forced labour and forced marriage’, a collaborative effort of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Walk Free Foundation, and the International Organisation for Migration. The report estimated that there were 40.3 million “modern slaves” worldwide in 2016, with 24.9 million in forced labour and 15.4 million in forced marriages. It did not name countries, but the writing on the wall was clear as 17,000 interviews had been conducted in India, and 61.78% of the “modern slaves” were in Asia and the Pacific. Registering its protest with the ILO, India vowed to undertake its own surveys. The Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, and member of NITI Aayog, Bibek Debroy, was scathing in his critique. He called the estimates on forced marriage “confused and fuddled” and urged reliance on the government’s report...