Daily Hindu Editorials

👉There is no way the country can reap its demographic dividend without fixing vocational education Salvaging the Indian demographic dividend must be a key part of India’s growth story. In 2016, the Government of India formed the Sharada Prasad Committee to rationalise the Sector Skill Councils (SSCs), which are employer bodies mostly promoted by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the Confederation of Indian Industry and other industry associations, and improve ‘Skill India’. The committee submitted its report in 2016. Now over a year later, it may be prudent to look at the reforms it suggested and action taken in the vocational education/training (VET) system. The two goals in ‘Skill India’ are, first, to meet employers’ needs of skills and, second, to prepare workers (young and old) for a decent livelihood. The recurring theme in the report is its focus on youth. Each recommendation underlines that the VET is not just for underprivileged commu...

👍YES | Gopal Shetty ✒There was a need for the court to step in so that innocent people are not implicated The recent Supreme Court ruling on the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, is clear in intent and is nothing new. So, I am baffled by the reactions to the judgment. What it does is to direct the police to verify all the facts of a case before registering a complaint under the Act so as to ensure that justice is done to both the complainant and the accused. The Constitution, drafted by B.R. Ambedkar, premises equality before law, which means that all citizens of the country are equal, including Dalits and Adivasis. Ambedkar gave us the mantra of Bandhutva (brotherhood) and we all should follow it and protect all the citizens of this country. 👉Misuse of law But let us not be oblivious to the fact that there are a few people today who misuse the very law that was enacted to protect them. And if someone is misusing...

🢁 The RBI’s inflation projections belie households’ and manufacturers’ expectations The Reserve Bank of India’s policymakers have acted predictably in opting to keep interest rates unchanged and in retaining the ‘neutral’ stance. Price stability, after all, remains the Monetary Policy Committee’s primary remit, and trend line retail inflation continues to run above its medium-term target of a durable headline inflation reading of 4%. But as with all central bank policy statements, it is not only the action but also what is said that is closely scrutinised for clues on what may lie ahead. The RBI’s bimonthly monetary policy statement, unfortunately, ends up sending mixed messages as its outlook for inflation and assessment of the factors contributing to price gains are at variance. The MPC has appreciably lowered its projections for CPI (consumer price index) inflation for the fourth quarter of 2017-18, and for the new fiscal year. It sees price gains having slowed to 4.5% over J...

🎰After surviving the no-trust vote, the Sri Lankan government must reboot itself The resounding defeat of a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in Sri Lanka’s parliament provides an opportunity for its bickering leaders to reassess their priorities. However, it may not end the prevailing political uncertainty as the three-way competition among President Maithripala Sirisena, Mr. Wickremesinghe and their common rival, former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, is likely to continue. The confidence of parliament has been numerically settled in favour of the Prime Minister now, with Tamil and Muslim parties backing him in the crucial vote, but in electoral terms the question of political supremacy is still open. For nearly two months, the power-sharing arrangement between Mr. Wickremesinghe’s United National Party and President Maithripala Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party has been unravelling. Their national unity government came under strain after both part...

👩Smriti Irani’s cure is worse than the disease Has Smriti Irani, Union Minister for Textiles and Information and Broadcasting (I&B), become an embarrassment for the government? Her fake news press release is not the first time she’s stumbled on a banana skin. There have been several earlier occasions and each time she’s thrown the skin herself. Let me recount the facts, and then you can decide for yourself. The fake news episode is, of course, the worst. Only infrequently does the Prime Minister’s Office overrule a decision by a senior colleague in less than 24 hours. It’s even more rare for this to be made public. Ms. Irani was not allowed to claim she changed her mind. She was ordered to do so. 👉Ever since 2104 However, Ms. Irani’s gaffes go all the way back to 2014, beginning with contradictory claims about her Bachelor’s certificate. Eventually, she was moved from the HRD Ministry. By then she was considered “the most controversial Minister in the NDA gove...

💻Data science can help us get insights into key sectors but privacy should not be compromised Data and data science have suddenly emerged into the spotlight. First, there was a data breach at Facebook, which saw allegations of the U.K.-based Cambridge Analytica (CA) illegally accessing over 87 million users’ information for personalisation of digital campaigns. Then there were allegations that the official mobile apps of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Congress party had sent user data without consent to foreign companies for analytical purposes. The rapid rise of data science can be attributed to the voluminous amount of information that is being generated with every activity of ours in this digital age — IBM says that 90% of the world’s data has been generated just in the last two years — and the strides concurrently made in the world of mathematical modelling, computation, and Artificial Intelligence-powered algorithms. These trends are creating unprecedented, fa...