Daily Hindu Editorials

👉 Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a short window to build on the positive outcomes of the Wuhan meeting 👈 The recently concluded ‘informal’ summit meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan was more about optics than substance. That doesn’t take away from the fact that the summit was a much-needed one and has added to the ongoing attempts to bring the bilateral relations between the two Asian giants back on track. Most of all, the Wuhan summit has underlined the necessity of an entente cordiale between the two countries, which have become increasingly distrustful of each other. In that sense, Wuhan was about the desire to return to the negotiating table, not about negotiating anything specific. It is, therefore, important to consider the timeline. 👉 The run-up to Wuhan India-China relations have been under great stress in recent years. The 2017 military standoff at the Doklam tri-junction and the war of words that foll...

👉 PM Modi and President Xi change the tenor of India-China ties. They must build on it 👈 For an “informal summit”, the Wuhan meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared to cover much ground over the two days — in terms of public appearances and in the two statements issued. Most of their conversations were unstructured, at informal events where they were accompanied only by translators. There was just one delegation-level meeting. The statements denoted the wide range of subjects discussed, from bilateral to regional and global challenges. On the bilateral front, they decided to “issue strategic guidance to their militaries to strengthen communication”, essentially to avoid another Doklam-like confrontation. Both sides addressed measures to better balance the ballooning trade deficit of about $52 billion (of about $84 billion bilateral trade), mostly by encouraging agricultural and pharmaceutical exports to China. Mr. Modi and Mr. Xi dis...

👉 T here is no substitute for hot-cooked meals to address poor child nutrition 👈 The central principle that should guide the Centre in improving maternal and child nutrition is that early childhood is the foundation for the health and well-being of an individual. Tinkering with the existing national programme of providing hot-cooked meals to children three to six years old, and take-home rations for younger children and pregnant and lactating mothers is fraught with danger. Attempts to substitute meals or rations with factory-made nutrients will inject commercialisation into a key mission, and upset the nutritional basis of the scheme. Good sense has prevailed, and the newly-formed inter-ministerial National Council on India’s Nutrition Challenges has chosen to continue the current practice, overruling the Minister for Women and Child Development, Maneka Gandhi, who proposed distribution of packaged nutrients to beneficiaries. Raising nutritional standards for young children has ...

👉 It is important to use different themes on tobacco products to shock users 👈 Contrary to tobacco companies’ claims, there is now empirical evidence that large, graphic pictorial warnings on tobacco products have a telling effect on consumer behaviour. From 38% in 2009-10, the proportion of cigarette smokers in India who thought of quitting due to pictorial warnings increased sharply to nearly 62% in 2016-17. Though not dramatic, the proportion of bidi smokers who wanted to quit also increased from about 30% to 54%, according to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS), undertaken in 2009-10 and 2016-17, respectively. The increase among adults wanting to quit smokeless tobacco was also significant — 34% to 46% during the two periods. In all probability, the proportion of tobacco users wanting to quit will see an even sharper increase when the next GATS survey is carried out. The reason: the size and graphic nature of the images used as warnings in India. India has come a...

👉 A prescription for engaging science writing   👈 It cannot be easy to make the story of the mosquito seem like an absorbing, pacy thriller. But journalist Sonia Shah does this masterfully in her book The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years, adding yet another work to the growing pile of contemporary writings on medicine. Shah’s chronicle has been released at the right time in India — in the summer before the monsoon rains come, the season when mosquitoes thrive. She trails the pesky vectors and the tenacious malaria-causing parasite that they harbour, the tragedies, and the continuing onslaught of the fever that’s been around for millions of years despite numerous drugs and pesticides. Shah’s book is part of an emerging genre of writing on health that’s caught the attention of readers who are not only students, researchers and academics. Writers like her have begun to tease medicine out of its rarefied preserve by using splendid prose to make niche c...