Daily Hindu Editorials

Yes, No, It's Complicated YES | SUNDAR SARUKKAI Purely intelligent creatures, whether people or machines, are bad for humanity There are three standard counter-responses to the claim that technology can be dangerous in itself. One, the fault is not in technology but in the humans who use such technology: guns don’t kill, only people do. Two, technology is as useful as it can be harmful. Three, technology will always be under our control and so we can literally pull the plug when we want. All these views can be effectively challenged, particularly in the case of artificial intelligence (AI). There is a fundamental difference between a knife, or even more complex machines, and AI, and that is the degree of independence that AI technologies have. An AI machine is an autonomous entity and from what we have seen of such machines, they are like other human beings in terms of their capacities for decision and action. Enforcing a particular view The real worry about these tech...

Its intent is to help prisoners in the process of rehabilitation The Repatriation of Prisoners Act, 2003 follows the dictum of the legendary Supreme Court judge, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, as stated in the Charles Sobraj judgment of 1978: “Compassion wherever possible and cruelty only where inevitable is the art of correctional confinement.” The humanitarian intent behind the Act is to allow convicted foreign nationals a chance to get transferred to their home countries, and prisoners of Indian origin in other states to be brought back to India, to serve the remaining part of their sentences. It is based on the belief that being close to their families in their native countries would help prisoners in the process of rehabilitation. The 2003 Act allows a convicted foreign national to make an application to the Centre to transfer his custody from India to his native country. On receiving such an application, the Centre would get in touch with the officer in charge of the prison and...

As China offers a model for developing countries to follow, India must position itself suitably Each succeeding week brings fresh evidence of how anarchic the international global order has become. Quite a few nations, including many of the newer ones, are seeking a new salience in the affairs of their region, aiming to establish their dominance. This is one cause for many of today’s turmoils. The unfortunate aspect is that while there is greater clarity on the new challenges that nations face, the international system is unable to come up with sustainable solutions to deal with these multiple challenges. For instance, currently the U.S. is seen to be incapable of playing a balancing role in Asian affairs, and to have ceded ground to China. China appears unrivalled in Asia at present given its military might and economic power. The only opposition to China today comes from India. India and China both adhere to a rules-based international order, but a wide gap separates their perc...

Kabul extends a peace proposal to the Taliban. But will it be accepted? Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s offer of talks with the Taliban is the most comprehensive peace proposal to have come from Kabul since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Speaking at the Kabul Process, a two-day security conference in the city with more than 20 countries including India represented, Mr. Ghani promised to recognise the Taliban as a political party, called for confidence-building measures and asked them to recognise the Kabul regime and the constitution. The Taliban was told to open an office in Kabul; passports and freedom of travel were offered to those involved in negotiations. This is not the first official attempt to make peace with the Taliban. In July 2015, Taliban and Afghan government representatives held talks in Pakistan. But the talks collapsed when it emerged that Taliban leader Mullah Omar had died two years earlier. Ever since, the Taliban has stepped up its violent campaig...

But this GDP growth coincides with higher public spending, which risks fanning inflation The latest economic data from the Central Statistics Office reveal that India’s GDP expanded at a brisk 7.2% pace in the three months ended December, an acceleration from the 6.5% posted in the second quarter. On the face of it, the numbers are cause for cheer and optimism, with gross fixed capital formation, a key measure of investment demand, showing a healthy improvement. Sectoral gross value added (GVA) figures also reflect a broad-based pickup in activity from the preceding quarter. The only three laggards last quarter were mining; utility services (including electricity, gas, and water supply); and trade, hotels, transport and communication services. The contraction in mining is of particular concern. The October-December quarter in 2016 was, however, the period when the Centre implemented the widely disruptive demonetisation of high-value currency notes, and so one has to bear in mind the ...