Daily Hindu Editorials

💥 PM Modi and President Macron deepen ties to work around global uncertainties Much like the pioneering India-France strategic partnership of 1998, the agreements signed during President Emmanuel Macron’s visit are set to strengthen bilateral cooperation at a time of global flux. The Joint Vision Statement on the Indian Ocean Region is clearly aimed at countering China’s growing presence in the region. And the International Solar Alliance, recommitment to starting the Jaitapur nuclear power plant, and joint ventures on climate change cooperation are reactions to the U.S. abdicating its role by announcing its pullout from the Paris accord. The “reciprocal logistics support” agreement, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi called a “golden step” in defence cooperation, is a signal to Russia and to the U.S.-led alliance that partnered in the “Quadrilateral”, that both New Delhi and Paris feel the need to diversify strategic postures beyond their current choices. Finally, by bringing 6...

💥With the GST e-way billing set for April 1, firm timelines and simplification will be key The GST (goods and services tax) Council chaired by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has decided to stick to the prescriptions of the group of ministers on the rollout of the e-way bills system. So, starting April 1, all inter-State movement of goods above the value of ₹50,000 will require the generation of an e-way bill to help track their movement. The original rollout plan for February 1 had to be aborted as the IT system couldn’t handle the lakhs of e-way bills being generated by consignors and transporters. As proposed by the ministerial group, the e-way bill system for tracking intra-State movement will be launched in a phased manner, with all States to be on board by June 1. From April 1 onwards, every week a few States will start the system for internal trade. While such an approach may give the government an opportunity to fix the chinks in the system, this is a compliance nightmare...

💥The Supreme Court’s judgment on passive euthanasia must compel more debate on technological self-determination Last week, in Common Cause v. Union of India, the Supreme Court ruled that every individual has the right to die with dignity. It upheld the practice of passive euthanasia — the removal of life-support mechanisms from persons who, for the most part, have slipped into a persistent vegetative state in order to allow them to die in the natural course of things — and laid down a set of detailed procedural guidelines to facilitate this process. These include “advance directives” and “living wills”, which are instructions issued by a person specifying what should be done to her in the event of a terminal illness, and who will decide if she herself is incapacitated from giving or withholding consent. The court also addressed situations where a patient was terminally ill, but had not issued an advance directive. In such situations it held that the consent of the patient’s clos...

💢 To check the increasing lurch to the right, the left and centre-left must upgrade their toolkits Results of Assembly elections in Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland, coming after the results in the 2016 Assam elections, and alongside the ascendance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in as many as 17 other States gives rise to a vision of a monochromatic India. Many may well deplore this state of affairs, since democracy is generally seen as a platform to encourage the ‘blooming of a hundred flowers’ of varying colours and shapes. What is more important in the extant situation, however, is to understand how this phenomenon has come about, and try to assess what it signifies. 👉 Message from Tripura Perhaps the most significant of the recent victories achieved by the BJP and its allies was in Tripura. The electoral alliance of the BJP and the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) produced a spectacular result, winning 43 of the 59 seats up for elections. The in...

💢 There is a lack of jurisprudential clarity on the fees charged by private schools Regulating school fees is one of the most significant legal and political challenges policymakers in India face. The issue of fee regulation finds itself at the intersection of constitutionally protected freedoms enjoyed by private schools and the need for making quality education affordable and accessible. Over the years, the issue of skyrocketing tuition fees has confronted parents. Adding to their burden is the annual and steep hike in tuition fees along with additional costs such as fees for transport, extra-curricular activities and sports. Every academic year sees the media reporting instances of unhappy parents expressing their anger against what they perceive to be unjust hikes. The managements of such schools claim that these hikes are reasonable and justified as the costs of maintaining a fully functional private school with quality teaching and world-class infrastructure are quite ste...

💢 The demand for death penalty for those who rape children is thick on rhetoric and thin on empirical evidence The amendments to the Indian Penal Code passed by Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh introducing the death penalty as a possible punishment for the rape of a girl below the age of 12 years is a perfect example of lawmaking that is as thick on rhetoric as it is thin on empirical evidence. Though child sexual violence is one of the relatively better documented areas in criminal justice, little of that research is reflected in the imagination and passing of these amendments. What is the purpose of these amendments? Statements from politicians in the two States will reveal the three interests that drive this move: first, there is the belief that harsher punishments will deter people from committing child rape; second, justice for child survivors demands that the law provide for the death penalty; and third, our abhorrence for the crime makes the perpetrator ‘deserving’ of t...

💥Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron at the International Solar Alliance Founding Conference in New Delhi on Sunday In the new world order, India should give primacy to rules that will chart a path for its own sustainable prosperity The inaugural International Solar Alliance (ISA) summit underlines India’s place in the new world order. Global equitable sustainable development, which is the basis of the ISA, suggests a ‘third’ way to the inequality and environmental damage characterising the current U.S. and China-led models. This vision follows from India’s call for ‘climate justice’, which reframes climate change as a social and not a physical problem. The shift fills the gap in the thrust of the ‘Chinese dream’ and ‘America first’, both of which ignore sustainable development. In January, the big takeaway from the ASEAN-India Summit was that countries in the region questioned the benefits of China’s model of a new order and the U.S.’s commitme...