Daily Hindu Editorials

GENDER BIAS CAUSED ‘EXCESS’ DEATHS OF GIRLS UNDER 5: LANCET STUDY  ( SOCIETY) Almost 2,40,000 girls under five die in India every year due to neglect resulting from society’s preference for sons, a gender discrimination study has found. 29 out of 35 States and Union Territories in the country has ‘contributed ‘ to this excess deaths per year of girls under the age of five in India, , according to a study in the online, open access, peer-reviewed journal Lancet Global Health . That works out to about 2.4 million deaths in a decade. Excess mortality is the difference between observed and expected mortality rates in both genders. And this figure does not include those aborted simply for being female. And round 22% of the overall mortality burden of females under five (in India) is therefore due to gender bias. 👉Regional variation The problem was most pronounced in northern India, with states Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh, accounting for two-thirds of...

💥 Daily Word Bytes - 1  from editorial  -  Singapore sling: When Trump meets Kim Jong-un  💥 sling (noun) – support. (Singapore sling is a cocktail made from gin). Hindu Editorial usage :   Singapore sling: When Trump meets Kim Jong-un loom (verb) – emerge, appear, overlie. Hindu Editorial usage :   Donald Trump’s Iran decision will loomover his meeting with Kim Jong-un in isolation (phrase) – separately. Hindu Editorial usage :   President Donald Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12 cannot be viewed in isolation from the unilateral American decision to withdraw from the nuclear pact with Iran unilateral (adjective) – relating to a method of taking decisions (on international relations) by a  state (country) individually without considering other states (countries). Hindu Editorial usage :   President Donald Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12 can...

💥 Daily Word Bytes - 1  from editorial  - Alien versus alien: On Assam Citizenship Bill  💥 alien (noun) – migrant/immigrant, non-native, foreigner. Hindu Editorial usage :   Alien versus alien: On Assam Citizenship Bill disquiet (noun) – concern/unease, distress, worry. Hindu Editorial usage :   Disquiet in Assam should convince the Centre to reconsider the new Citizenship Bill exaggeration (noun) – overstatement, magnification, dramatization/hyperbole. Hindu Editorial usage :   In Assam, where illegal migration, in fact as well as in exaggeration, has defined the political landscape since the 1980s landscape (noun) – the distinctive features of a field of activity. Hindu Editorial usage :   In Assam, where illegal migration, in fact as well as in exaggeration, has defined the political landscape since the 1980s inevitably (adverb) – automatically, certainly, definitely. Hindu Editorial usage :   Citizenship (Amendment) B...

👉Much groundwork and political consensus are needed to pull off the Ramzan ceasefire proposal👈 Finally, after four bleak years of unremitting conflict, a small ray of light appears to be struggling to get through in Jammu and Kashmir. Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s proposal for a Ramzan ceasefire, backed by a State all-party delegation, has gained some traction in the policy community. Though we are yet to see how Prime Minister Narendra Modi responds, there is little doubt that a ceasefire would be hugely welcomed, most of all by the Jammuites of the border areas and the Kashmiris of the Valley, who have had little respite from violence since 2014. 👉Then and now Yet there is a sting in the proposal. Ms. Mufti talked about a unilateral ceasefire as was declared by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in November 2000. In response, Chief of Army Staff General Bipin Rawat has asked who would then guarantee that the security forces would be defended from attack. The questio...

👉Disquiet in Assam should convince the Centre to reconsider the new Citizenship Bill👈 In Assam, where illegal migration, in fact as well as in exaggeration, has defined the political landscape since the 1980s, public hearings and meetings held by a Joint Parliamentary Committee over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, have inevitably taken place in a charged atmosphere. Parties and civil society groups have argued that the Bill provides legitimacy to Hindus who have migrated from Bangladesh post-1971. It precludes individuals from six religious minorities from three “Muslim-dominant countries” (Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan) from being defined as “illegal immigrants” under the Foreigners Act, 1946. The intent behind this Bill, promised by the BJP in the run-up to the 2014 general election, is to clear a path to citizenship for minorities persecuted in the three countries. The National Register of Citizens, on the other hand, does not distinguish migrants on the basis o...

👉Donald Trump’s Iran decision will loomover his meeting with Kim Jong-un👈 President Donald Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12 cannot be viewed in isolation from the unilateral American decision to withdraw from the nuclear pact with Iran. While the decision could undermine confidence in his word, he is also visibly trying hard to amp up pre-summit goodwill. He has, for instance, effusively greeted the North Korean decision announced over the weekend to destroy its nuclear testing zone — though sceptics argue that the site is unusable anyway and that it is premature to hail the North’s decision. Any which way, the meeting between the U.S. and North Korean leaders will be historic, something that would have been unimaginable even a few months ago. Tensions between the two countries had risen to an all-time high over the winter, and Pyongyang’s series of nuclear and intercontinental missile tests were met with an increasingly stringent intern...