Daily Hindu Editorials

💥The revelation that 39 Indians were killed in Iraq should have been made with sensitivity The government’s announcement that the remains of 39 Indian workers, kidnapped four years ago by the Islamic State, have been found near Mosul in Iraq, has brought a painful closure to the episode. According to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, remains found in a mass grave have been matched conclusively with DNA samples for all but one of the men declared missing almost four years ago. Part of a group of construction labourers held by the IS shortly after the fall of Mosul in June 2014, they had last contacted their families in the middle of that month and said they were being held in a basement while fighting raged outside. Since then, there was no word from them, but for the version of Harjit Masih, the 40th hostage who had managed to escape. Mr. Masih said he was the only one to escape from being gunned down by the IS captors, and had subsequently fled with a group of Bangladesh...

💥The Chinese President further consolidates his power through an administrative rejig China is no stranger to reform. Over the past three decades the structure of the government has changed at least half a dozen times. But the scale of reform pushed through this month is comparable to that of 1998 when Zhu Rongji as Premier shut or merged 15 ministries as part of a major liberalisation drive. This time, Prime Minister Li Keqiang has closed six ministries, two ministry-level agencies and seven vice ministry-level departments. Beijing has also created a powerful anti-corruption agency, while the Vice President, till now holding a ceremonial post, is expected to play an active role in policymaking. The stamp of Xi Jinping, re-elected President for five more years with no term limit, is visible in these reforms. A big decision is the empowerment of the Environment Ministry, which will fight air, water and soil pollution, a top priority for Mr. Xi. Two of his close aides have been ap...

💥Farming must be treated as a market-based enterprise and made viable on its own terms The week-long farmers’ march which reached Mumbai earlier this month, on the anniversary of Gandhi’s Dandi March of 1930, was unprecedented in many ways. It was mostly silent and disciplined, mostly leaderless, non-disruptive and non-violent, and well organised. It received the sympathy of middle class city dwellers, food and water from bystanders, free medical services from volunteer doctors, and also bandwagon support of all political parties from the left to the right. 👉Beyond lip service Indeed, even the Chief Minister of Maharashtra said he supported the cause (not the march), but as head of government his job was to address their issues, not to agitate. The most remarkable thing about the march was that it was successful. The State government agreed to all the demands, including pending transfer of forest land to Adivasis, expanding the scope of the loan waiver and ensuring high...

💥Sri Lanka needs to evolve into a strong but secular-minded state In Sri Lanka, the relationship between the Sinhala Buddhist majority and the Muslim minority has steadily deteriorated since the end of the civil war. When Mahinda Rajapaksa was in power, much damage was caused when violence was unleashed on Muslims by Buddhist mobs, in Aluthgama in 2014. The new government, which was elected in 2015 with the support of the minorities, promised an end to such violence. However, the recent attacks in the Kandy district, where well over 200 homes and 14 mosques were destroyed, resulting in a state of emergency being imposed and social media platforms being blocked, has shown that this government too has not been able to contain the anti-Muslim project that is gaining ground in Sri Lanka. The state of emergency has been lifted. But the continuing nature of the struggle between the two communities calls for a dispassionate assessment of the many complexities undergirding their rel...

💥The Tamil demand for Dravida Nadu is not new At a press conference last week, when Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam working president M.K. Stalin was asked what he thought of the southern States combining to form “Dravida Nadu,” he replied, “If this happens, it is welcome and it will happen I believe.” Given the brouhaha around his remark, it deserves to be properly contextualised historically and in the backdrop of Tamil politics of recent years. Historically, the Tamil demand for a separate State is not new. The idea of Dravida Nadu, named for the ethnicity of its original inhabitants, initially gathered momentum with the support of the Justice Party led by Periyar E.V. Ramasamy. Spurred by events such as the introduction of Hindi in Tamil Nadu schools in 1937, during the early- to mid-20th century, the Tamil political leadership was gripped by fear that under the rule of the Congress Party, Brahminism as a socially dominant force, Hindi, as an official language, and north I...

💧Before the water crisis situation turns more alarming, we have to collectively act — now and here Was Samuel Taylor Coleridge foretelling the impending water crisis in the 21st century when he penned “Water, water, every where,/ Nor any drop to drink” more than two centuries ago in ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’? 👉A wake-up call The grave water situation in Cape Town in South Africa is a wake-up call to everybody across the globe — from policymakers to the common man — that it cannot be business as usual when it comes to water usage. A similar crisis is looming large in other cities in the world as people continue to be reckless in their use of water. The situation is so worrisome that 12 world leaders — 11 heads of state and a special adviser of a high-level panel on water — wrote an open letter to global leaders a week ago warning that the world is facing a water crisis and issued a New Agenda for Water Action. Observing that we need to make “every drop count”...

💥Rahul Gandhi’s plans for transforming the Congress depend on a good electoral showing “Millions of ordinary Congress workers throughout the country are full of enthusiasm for Congress policies and programmes,” Rajiv Gandhi had said at the Congress’s centenary session in Bombay in 1985. “But they are handicapped, for on their backs ride the brokers of power and influence, who dispense patronage to convert a mass movement into a feudal oligarchy.” 👉More things change… Over three decades later, this weekend, his son Rahul Gandhi echoed those words at the 84th Plenary of the party in Delhi as he formally assumed its presidency. The wall between the party rank and file and their leaders, he said, had to be demolished so that talented, energetic, committed, young party workers could occupy centre stage and be given tickets to contest elections rather than those who had parachuted in. Ironically, an hour or so before he spoke, cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu, who recently “p...