Daily Hindu Editorials

💥 Daily Word Bytes - 1  from editorial  - Mahathir's Challenge 💥 undoing (noun) – downfall/ruin, defeat, ousting/loss of power. Hindu Editorial usage :     Will the corruption scandal be the undoing of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak? go for (phrasal verb) – be attracted to, prefer, favour. Hindu Editorial usage :     Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has many things going for him in the May 9 general election suffice (verb) – be enough, be sufficient, be adequate. Hindu Editorial usage :     but whether they will suffice in the face of a corruption scandal is an open question. in the face of (phrase) – when confronted with; despite, notwithstanding, regardless of. Hindu Editorial usage :     but whether they will suffice in the face of a corruption scandal is an open question. lavish (adjective) – generous, liberal, bountiful/plentiful. Hindu Editorial usage :     With the economy growing at 6%...

💥 Daily Word Bytes - 1  from editorial  - GST's Complicated 💥 compliant (adjective) – accommodating, cooperative, obedient/dutiful. Hindu Editorial usage :     The new compliance system and a proposal for cess on sugar send the wrong signals barring (verb) – excluding, omitting, leaving out. Hindu Editorial usage :       Indeed, at its meeting last week the Council decided to introduce a new compliance system under which a single monthly GST return will have to be submitted by firms, barring a few exceptions.   under way (adverb) – in progress, going on, happening. Hindu Editorial usage :     Discussions over simplifying GST returns have been under way for months and considered by the Council, a committee of officers and a Group of Ministers provisional (adjective) – interim/transitional, temporary, tentative. Hindu Editorial usage :     Yet, the solution offered has gaps. For instance, in the second stage o...

👉Simultaneous polls will prevent citizens from keeping their elected representatives on permanent notice👈 Intent on creating a unified India through the adoption of one language, one dominant religion, one culture, one nation, one tax, and now one poll, the Bharatiya Janata Party seeks nothing less than the renegotiation of the basic terms of the political contract that inaugurated democracy in the country. 👉Inherent problems A great deal has been written and said on the advantages and disadvantages of simultaneous elections ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi began to speak of this practice as a good thing. Commentators charge the government with institutionalising managed democracy and with double-speak. Instead of scheduling simultaneous elections to the Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat Assemblies in late 2017, the Election Commission held the Gujarat polls a month later in December, for obvious reasons. The argument that simultaneous elections will prevent corrupti...

👉The new compliance system and a proposal for cess on sugar send the wrong signals👈 With collections from the goods and services tax peaking at over ₹1 lakh crore in April, industry hoped the GST Council would make life simpler for an increasingly compliant tax-payer base. Indeed, at its meeting last week the Council decided to introduce a new compliance system under which a single monthly GST return will have to be submitted by firms, barring a few exceptions. However, this will only be done in a phased manner — with the first of three transition stages to begin six months from now. Discussions over simplifying GST returns have been under way for months and considered by the Council, a committee of officers and a Group of Ministers. Nandan Nilekani, chairman of Infosys Technologies, the firm in charge of the GST Network’s IT system, has been consulted. Yet, the solution offered has gaps. For instance, in the second stage of the transition to simpler returns, buyers will get prov...

👉Will the corruption scandal be the undoing of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak?👈 Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has many things going for him in the May 9 general election, but whether they will suffice in the face of a corruption scandal is an open question. With the economy growing at 6%, helped along by lavish infrastructure spending, Malaysia’s overall outlook could not appear more robust. But Mr. Razak’s opponent and erstwhile mentor, the 92-year-old former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, is hoping to exploit the incumbent’s links to a billion-dollar corruption scandal in a state investment fund. The battle lines have been sharply drawn, but there possibly exists an advantage for the ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front), led by the United Malays National Organisation, insofar as it has had a long record in office. Also, almost 70% of the population are bumiputras, mainly Malays and other indigenous groups, that have traditionally voted for the UMNO. This grou...

👉The political class must keep the armed forces out of electoral rhetoric👈 Indian military history came into focus in a rather embarrassing manner recently. Last week, while on the campaign trail in Karnataka, Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticised the Congress party for insulting two illustrious generals of the Indian Army. Both these military icons, Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa and General K.S. Thimayya, are from the local Coorgi (now Kodava) community. And this case of “disrespect” goes back many decades, to the 1947-48 war (Pakistan) and the 1962 war (China). 👉Import and subtext A translation of what the Prime Minister, who spoke in Hindi, is: “In 1948 we won the war against Pakistan under General Thimayya’s leadership. But after such gallantry, the saviour of Kashmir, General Thimayya, was repeatedly insulted by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Defence Minister V.K. Krishna Menon. And for this reason, General Thimayya, to retain the sanctity of his position,...

👉How A.V. Meiyappa Chettiar acquired the broadcast and recording rights of the poet’s works👈 Subramania Bharati, the modern Tamil poet who attained posthumous fame and whose books remain bestsellers, may not have recognised “the © symbol that figures in the imprint pages of every published book today”. As mentioned in the prologue of historian A.R. Venkatachalapathy’s book Who Owns that Song? The Battle for Subramania Bharati’s Copyright, the word copyright occurs only once in Bharati’s writings, and he would have perhaps been amazed to learn that his poems could later earn money by being used in song recordings and in films. Bharati died poor, with half his works uncollected or unpublished in his lifetime. Legal battles broke out after his death — filmmakers and publishers vied to acquire copyright to his works and many people demanded that his writings be made public property. Finally, the Tamil Nadu government acquired rights to his poems and then made them available to the pu...

👉A single market will enable Africa to transform into a supplier of manufactured goods👈 The African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) is a potential game changer for the world’s poorest region. The pact — signed by 44 of the 55-member African Union (AU) in March — seeks to create a single market in goods and services, free movement of persons and investment, and eventually a customs union with a common external tariff. In recent years, intra-regional commerce as a share of Africa’s overall trade has risen to 15% from 8% in 2011, points out Moody’s, the ratings agency. But then exports within Africa accounted for a mere 18% of the continent’s total exports in 2016, compared to 59% and 69% of intra-regional exports in Asia and Europe, respectively, according to the Brookings Institution. With a number of African countries ranking among the world’s fastest-growing economies over the last two decades, the ACFTA could tap into the immense potential for closer trade integration. ...

Understanding the complex history of the twin conflict zones of Syria and Lebanon is a work in progress. A number of books deepen our understanding of this conflict. Syrian history over the last seven years can be best understood when seen in continuity from the Lebanese civil war; in turn, the Lebanese civil war can be explained better by going back to World War I when the French returned to Syria after the Treaty of Versailles and established Greater Lebanon. One book that I have repeatedly consulted in this regard is The War for Lebanon: 1970-1983 by Itamar Rabinovich. It is an excellent account of the first fully televised civil war of our times and captures the various phases of the conflict, starting with the U.S. intervention in Lebanon in 1958 and the setting up of the principal base of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in Beirut in 1972. No civil war begins with a single move and the Lebanese civil war, which was partially driven by Syria’s unwillingness to...