Daily Hindu Editorials

For Offline Reading   =>  Click here 👉The BJP and the PDP can finally go back to being the polar opposites of each other👈 A marriage of convenience ends the moment a divorce becomes more convenient. In Jammu and Kashmir, the post-poll coalition of the two polar opposites, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Peoples Democratic Party, was never meant to coalesce into a credible pre-poll alliance. But while the PDP would have been willing to wait till the Assembly election in 2020 before breaking ties, the BJP had its compulsions for pulling out of the alliance before the Lok Sabha election next year. Both parties feed off the denominational divide, the BJP depending on the Hindu vote bank in Jammu and the PDP on the Muslim vote bank in Kashmir. Neither party’s campaign rhetoric would have appealed to the other’s support base. The divorce was thus foretold from the beginning: what was left to be decided was the most opportune moment for separation. For the BJP, the cont...

👉The standoff in Delhi has placed everyone in a bad light👈 One crisis, many causes. The immediate provocation for Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal sitting on a dharna at the residence of the Lt. Governor might have been a run-in with the bureaucracy, but the crisis is rooted in the understanding (or misunderstanding) of the constitutional limits of the powers of the elected government in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. The Aam Aadmi Party government has a history of confrontation with the Centre on the question of who is the administrative head of a region that is less than a State and more than a Union Territory. Since the party came to power in 2015, the demand for Delhi to be given the status of a full-fledged State, allowing it among other things powers over the police, has become strident. Differences extend to the LG’s discretionary powers to appoint the Chief Secretary, with the AAP nursing a grouse that the bureaucratic cadre came directly under the Centre. Matters...

👉As the 2019 Lok Sabha election nears, a kinder and gentler NDA is in the BJP’s interest👈 Last week, Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah was busy reaching out to miffed National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners — the first time he was doing so since the Telugu Desam Party quit the alliance in March and the Shiv Sena announced in its national convention resolution that it would fight the 2019 general elections alone. Mr. Shah met Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on June 6, and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Parkash Singh Badal the following day. The first initiative was an effort to calm tempers, and the second a belated attempt to attend to grouses long articulated. With Opposition parties coming together to take on the BJP in 2019, the outreach is seen as a realisation in the BJP that the NDA needs to be held together closer. Alliances are held together by the delicate threads of needs, complementarity of vote bases and, often, a common political rival who...

👉Against a united opposition in 2019, the BJP will need to keep all its allies together👈 A friend in need is the friend who comes a-calling. After four years of being in a situation where it was a much sought-after ally, the Bharatiya Janata Party is now reduced to the role of a supplicant before potential electoral partners, the Shiv Sena and the Shiromani Akali Dal. The Sena has always been a difficult ally for the BJP, despite a close ideological affinity. Even so, an editorial in the Sena mouthpiece Saamna, insisting that the Sena would fight the coming elections alone, ahead of the meeting between BJP president Amit Shah and Sena supremo Uddhav Thackeray, revealed a new level of assertion in a stormy relationship. Unable to adjust to its role as a junior partner of the BJP, the Sena is eager to return to its pre-2014 status as the unquestioned leader of the alliance. Indeed, Mr. Thackeray is under some pressure to demonstrate that he is as domineering as his father Bal Thack...

👦We need more data before making easy correlations to explain popular verdicts👈 Prime Minister Narendra Modi conducted a roadshow while inaugurating an Expressway and made an indirect campaign speech at a rally in a neighbouring district just a day before the Lok Sabha by-election in Kairana, Uttar Pradesh, on May 28. The Bharatiya Janata Party lost Kairana. In the Modi era, a BJP victory in any Assembly election is attributed to the “Modi magic”. This is due to the unprecedented time Mr. Modi devotes to campaigning in State elections. For example, Mr. Modi participated in 34 rallies in Gujarat, 31 in Bihar, 24 in U.P., and 21 in the Karnataka Assembly elections. After the BJP secured 104 seats in Karnataka, commentators again lauded the “Modi magic” and “wave” for taking the BJP past 100 seats. 👉Complex realities Problematically, these are anecdotal conjectures, unfounded on systematic post-poll surveys probing the effect of a Modi rally on last-minute voter decisions...

👉The Congress should not oppose Pranab Mukherjee’s RSS visit but encourage more efforts to ideologically combat opponents👈 It was 1985 in Punjab, a politically charged State where nothing seemed to be going right. The last one year in particular had been terrible with the Army charging into the Golden Temple, Indira Gandhi being assassinated and the anti-Sikh riots echoing through time. The mood was clearly against the Congress. Despite this, the new Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, signed with Harcharan Singh Longowal the Punjab Accord that would largely bring peace and economic stability in Punjab. Today, the Congress is in power in Punjab. 👉Engage different viewpoints It is this ethos of engaging with everyone, even with those whom we vehemently disagree with, that has ensured the survival of the Congress and India through testing times. The Congress has always nurtured religious, economic and social inclusivity within the organisation. The party’s culture encourages diffe...

👉The story of Monica Felton, Rajaji, Mandela — and history’s call to today’s democratic forces to rally together👈 This is about two June the 4ths, both of which bear a message for Indian politics today. The first is sited in Madras, 1959. The second, again, in Madras, 1964. An Englishwoman, Marxist by conviction, an authority on urban planning and a passionate advocate of the World Peace Council, Monica Felton, had settled in India’s ‘southern capital’. Why, or for what combination of reasons this long-time London County Councillor representing St Pancras South West for the Labour Party should have chosen, of all places, Madras to settle in is not very clear. But a person from a very different, in fact, totally contrastive politics had made a powerful impression on her. She had little in common with Chakravarti Rajagopalachari’s political views. And yet there was a certain intellectual chemistry between them, love of English literature being certainly high on that shared list...

👉There is very little for the BJP to cheer in the latest round of by-elections, and a lot to learn👈 Of all the Lok Sabha by-elections in this round, Kairana in Uttar Pradesh evoked special interest because of the coming together of the opposition parties against the Bharatiya Janata Party. The candidate of the Rashtriya Lok Dal, a party with a base consisting largely of the Jats, was a Muslim woman, Tabassum Hasan, and she won as a representative of a broad-based coalition, which included the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress. That the RLD chose a Muslim candidate was significant as the party had suffered an erosion in its support base after the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 involving Jats and Muslims. To try to win back his core constituency of Jats with a Muslim candidate was a bold strategy, but RLD leader Ajit Singh was encouraged not only by the process of rapprochement on the ground over the last few months, but also by the backing of the three major o...

YES 👉Be it in the economic, social or educational front, this government has strived to meet expectations👈 Four years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took charge of transforming the lives of more than a billion Indians. That day marked the beginning of a new dawn for the people of India who gave the mandate to him to not only take charge of the government but also to transform their lives in a ‘new India’. 👉Meeting expectations In 48 months, the Modi government has been able to achieve what could not be achieved in 48 years by the dynasty in power. Be it the economic, social, educational, or any other front, this government has strived to meet the expectations of people. The decisive and bold decisions taken by the Prime Minister, without consideration of the political outcomes, have stood the test of time. Demonetisation and the goods and services tax (GST) are testimony to this. Demonetisation brought unaccounted money back into the legitimate economy. More t...

👉The Congress and the JD(S) need to quickly resolve their differences over portfolio sharing👈 Quick and bold decisions are more often made during moments of crises than during periods of relative calm and quiet. After sealing a deal on a post-poll coalition in Karnataka even before the counting of votes drew to a close, the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) are unable to reach an understanding on Cabinet berths and portfolios almost a week after the coalition proved its majority on the floor of the Assembly. Other than on having H.D. Kumaraswamy of the JD(S) as the Chief Minister and G. Parameshwara of the Congress as the Deputy Chief Minister, the two parties have been unable to agree on the contours of the coalition government. The Congress, which was hurried into conceding considerable ground to the JD(S) by a fast-moving opponent in the Bharatiya Janata Party, is now driving a hard bargain on the strength of its own numbers. The reasoning is that the party, with twice as ...

👉The Election Commission must review the use of paper trail machines in the polling process👈 The high incidence of glitches in the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines in Monday’s by-elections should be a major cause of concern for the Election Commission of India. Fresh polling had to be ordered in dozens of booths in Kairana and Bhandara-Gondiya in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, respectively, as a consequence. Ever since the implementation of the VVPAT system last year, machine malfunction and subsequent delays in polling have been recurring issues. Close to 4.2% of the VVPAT machines deployed in the Karnataka Assembly elections this month developed glitches during the testing as well as polling processes. The overall fault rate was as high as 11.6% in the by-elections held in four parliamentary and nine Assembly constituencies on Monday. The ECI has suggested that these machines were more prone to malfunctioning due to their sensitivity to extreme weather condit...

👉An objective evaluation of his performance as Prime Minister is long overdue👈 After the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) forged a surprise post-poll coalition in Karnataka, it is being suggested that Haradanahalli Doddegowda Deve Gowda, better known these days as the father of Karnataka’s new Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, could help build an anti-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition ahead of the next parliamentary election. These suggestions come 22 years after he was sworn in as the Prime Minister. The assessment of his prime ministership in the contemporary ‘national’ press was not positive. He was seen as an accidental Prime Minister, who slept through public functions. In the ‘national’ imagination, he remained a ‘regional’ leader, that too of a particular caste. Is this because his tenure was short-lived? Just 325 days, from June 1, 1996 to April 21, 1997. But this is unexceptional. He is among the six Prime Ministers who stepped down within a year. 👉Ten months...

👉Opposition parties need to agree on a political agenda and a tactical alliance to defeat the BJP👈 A string of defeats is the common thread holding the Opposition parties together against the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Ideological divides have been papered over and tactics reworked in the quest to stop the BJP from getting a second consecutive term. The post-poll alliance stitched together by the Congress with the Janata Dal (Secular), which allowed for the swearing-in of JD(S) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy as Chief Minister, provided the occasion for a show of hands in unity in Bengaluru. But more significant than winning over the JD(S) was the presence of Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati on the front stage. Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, still the most respected leader in her party, seemed to share a special moment on the dais with Ms. Mayawati. Of course, the ground for the coming together of the Congress and the BSP was set much earlier...

👍YES 👉This will be a model coalition government which will run its full term smoothly and successfully👈 Who are the naysayers to the above proposition? The ones who, with lightning speed on May 15, without verifying anything, staked claim to form the government? Are they the same people who wrote to the Governor on May 15 without attaching names, lists or signatures of those from their party? Are they the same ones who tried desperately till the last minute to form the government but failed? Are the doubters those who sought seven days time for the floor test? Are they the ones who, through the Attorney General, sought a secret ballot in the Supreme Court? Are they the ones whose Chief Minister, sitting in a solo Cabinet, announced on May 17 huge policy decisions, before the apex court said that this cannot be allowed until a majority is proven? 👉A well-founded fear If I am right in every example above, then, obviously, the naysayers are expressing their frustrati...

👉To understand why we don’t, it is important to understand its origins in the colonial regime👈 Among all the players who strutted and fretted across the stage during the recently concluded Karnataka elections, it is the Governor of the State, Vajubhai Vala, who emerged with least credit to his name. His decision to first invite the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to take a stab at forming the government was perhaps a legitimate exercise of his constitutional discretion (albeit without any recorded reasons for ignoring the post-poll Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) alliance’s claims to having an absolute majority). However, the invitation was extended at 9 p.m., and the swearing in fixed for 9.30 a.m. the next day, ostensibly to ward off any judicial challenges, and present a fait accompli. His decision to grant B.S. Yeddyurappa 15 days to prove his majority, when the latter himself asked for only a week, was troubling enough for the Supreme Court to intervene and order an immed...

👉 Trinamool Congress’s sweep in the West Bengal panchayat polls comes at a high cost 👈 The exact scale of the ruling Trinamool Congress’s victory in the May 14 panchayat elections in West Bengal is still a matter of conjecture, as the fate of the uncontested seats is before the Supreme Court. The next hearing is on July 3. The Opposition, comprising mainly the Left Front and the Bharatiya Janata Party, did not field a candidate in more than a third of the 58,792 seats in the three tiers put together. Should the court clear the TMC’s claim to these seats, it will be the first time since the three-tier rural poll was instituted in 1978 that one-third of the seats have been bagged without even a semblance of a fight. When the results of the contested seats were announced on May 17, it was clear that the TMC had outperformed its rivals, bagging two-thirds at the lowest gram panchayat level. Across the three levels, the TMC secured 76% of the contested seats, the proportion that the L...