Daily Hindu Editorials

🤝The SP’s interests lie in aligning with the BSP — but their capacity to keep the alliance going will be severely tested As Dalits across the country took to the streets this week, protesting the Supreme Court order diluting the provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, an unusual coming together happened in Uttar Pradesh. Samajwadi Party (SP) workers, with a history of violence and hostility towards Dalits and the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), joined the protesting Dalits in large numbers. The SP has since announced grand plans to celebrate the 127th birth anniversary of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar. 👉When it clicked Stunning as these unity moves are, they had been preceded by another incredible event — of Ms. Mayawati offering support to the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP in the by-elections to the VIP parliamentary seats of Gorakhpur and Phulpur. The script was classic David versus Goliath. Gorakhpur was vacated by Yog...

💥India’s innovation policy has to shift beyond a mere focus on R&D spending to transforming the ecosystem On paper, India should be in a good position in terms of research and development (R&D) spending. Our pipeline of researchers seems undiminished; we are ranked third in the world in number of science and technology PhDs awarded and have improved our ranking in the Global Innovation Index, from 66 to 60. And yet, there is no Indian university in the top hundred (QS World University Rankings, 2018) and only 46,904 patents were filed in India in 2016 (China filed over a million patents). Somehow, we have enabled an ethos of publishing, but not “patenting, publishing and prospering”. 👉Between the numbers India’s gross expenditure on R&D has increased by three times over the decade 2005-15, crossing the ₹1 lakh crore mark in 2016-17. The Centre spent 45.1% of the total amount in 2015, while private industry contributed 38.1%. In comparison to the West, the ...

👊The consistent undermining of multilateralism by the U.S. must be countered This week has seen rounds of tit-for-tat tariffs between the U.S. and China, set off by U.S. President Donald Trump levying import duties of 25% and 10% on American steel and aluminium imports, respectively, in early March. Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly used the U.S. trade deficit of over $500 billion as a barometer for the country’s lot in the international trade order, has railed against the U.S. being treated “unfairly” by its trading partners, often singling out China. While it is true that China produces approximately half the world’s steel and that the European Union, India and other countries have complained about international steel markets being flooded with Chinese steel, only 3% of U.S. steel is sourced from China. Interestingly, among those exempted from the tariffs are Canada and Mexico, top sources for U.S steel imports. Mr. Trump has linked the threat of tariffs to the North American Free...

🦌 The verdict in the Salman Khan blackbuck case is a huge blow for conservation The stiff sentence of five years in jail awarded to actor Salman Khan for hunting blackbuck in Rajasthan’s Kankani village in 1998 should send out the message that stardom does not confer impunity. Unlike the average wildlife poaching case, where State forest departments struggle to gather credible evidence, the prosecution in the blackbuck case has been vigorously supported by the local Bishnoi community. What sets the case apart from so many other episodes of poaching and animal trapping in India’s forests is its naked celebration of bloodsport. Stars like Khan, who is no stranger to controversy surrounding hunting expeditions, seem to think conservation is not serious business, and the clock can readily be turned back to an era when the wealthy and powerful organised ‘shikar’ parties to hunt for pleasure. That era is over. If the verdict of the Jodhpur court in the blackbuck case survives the appe...