Daily Hindu Editorials

Address the breakdown in internal controls and supervisory mechanisms in banks Barely days after news of the ₹11,500 crore fraud at Punjab National Bank broke, another but very different scam of a ₹3,695 crore wilful loan default has surfaced. The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a case against three directors of a Kanpur-based company, and others including unknown bank officials, on allegations of cheating a consortium of banks by siphoning off loans disbursed to the company. If the two cases must be compared, the similarities lie in the breakdown in internal control mechanisms and in the supervisory failure at the banks. In the case of Kanpur-based Rotomac Global, it had availed credit limits from a consortium of seven public sector banks. Given that the facility was made available from 2008 (in the case of Bank of Baroda, which filed the complaint with the CBI), and was used for a range of seemingly unrelated transactions including the import of gems and je...

Removing opacity in party funding and campaign finance is still a work in progress Electoral reforms in the hands of politicians is a classic example of a fox guarding the henhouse. While there are many policies that both major parties disagree with each other on, they form a remarkable tag team when it comes to electoral reforms. Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court, over the last few decades, has readily stepped in to introduce electoral reforms. However, most of these interventions are directed at candidates, and rarely at the parties. The Supreme Court’s recent decision on information disclosure (Lok Prahari v. Union of India) paves a way for future constitutional interventions in India’s party funding regime, including the scheme of electoral bonds. An extension In 2002, the Supreme Court, in a landmark decision in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India (ADR), mandated the disclosure of information relating to criminal antecedents, educational qualificati...

Public discourse around artificial intelligence (AI) is often hijacked by themes that belong in fantasy rather than the real world. Iconic AI from pop culture such as HAL 9000 and Agent Smith epitomise a Manichaean obsession with the idea of ‘superintelligence’ (‘the Singularity’) that could prove to be good or evil, vested as it is with the power to turn humans into either immortals or slaves oppressed by parasitic machines. But the Singularity is not what humanity needs to worry about right now. Machine learning (a more precise term for AI) will certainly continue to surpass human capabilities in specific domains such as medical diagnosis and facial recognition. But an AI that can match human intelligence in all respects is unlikely because it is impossible for AI technology to replicate that which makes human intelligence what it is — its embodiment in a biological substrate refined by millions of years of evolutionary feedback loops. The Big Data leap...

Gunboat diplomacy doesn’t mean an attack, it means a show of strength, says the former Maldivian President, who currently lives in exile The Maldives remains in crisis after President Abdulla Yameen imposed emergency on February 5, following the Supreme Court overturning the imprisonment of his political rivals. Among them is a former Maldivian President and leader of the opposition, Mohamed Nasheed, who wants India to intervene in the situation. In a wide-ranging interview conducted over many days as political developments in the Maldives unfold, Mr. Nasheed, who is with the Maldivian Democratic Party, says he believes that the emergency is not the biggest crisis the Maldives faces. He lists China’s “land grab” and the threat of the Islamic State (IS) as bigger challenges. Excerpts: 🔹The situation in the Maldives appears to be fluid, with the Yameen government’s decision on the emergency. However, given that it appears to control both the judicia...

Will the Florida mass shooting finally lead to regulation of gun ownership in the U.S.? After decades of campaigning to bring about common-sense gun control in the U.S., it appears that a group of children may succeed where even Presidents have failed. Following Friday’s deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 people including 14 students were killed, survivors took to the streets in a relatively rare show of anger directed at President Donald Trump and Congress for not doing more to promote gun control. Their courage is to be doubly applauded, for they appear undaunted by the depressing history of America’s 227-year-old lethal love affair with guns, built on the constitutional right to bear arms, overlaid with a myriad state-level laws that make gun ownership easy. After the devastating school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, a tearful Barack Obama, then President, mooted legislation to tighten the regulation of gun ownership. That was s...

How the Ganguly and Kohli eras compare There isn’t a universally accepted definition of the word “aggression” in the cricketing context. In Australia vocal, in-your-face intimidation that might pass as banter is considered sporting aggression. As it turns out, Australian cricketer Matthew Hayden offered an interesting take on the aggression in the Indian context: he said you needed to look at Rahul Dravid’s eyes to see that he had the fire in his belly, and that his inward aggression drove him. Yet for other Indian cricketers, such as Virat Kohli, the outward variety may work better, and help infuse self-belief in his team. His fist-pumping, animated celebrations and less-than-diplomatic send-offs to batsmen make him a television favourite. Recently, Dravid struck a cautionary note when he said that youngsters would risk being inauthentic to themselves if they start aping Kohli’s every move. A gamechanger Kohli is not the first Indian captain of this il...