Daily Hindu Editorials

💥RJD leader says 2019 and 2020 election will be fought between his party and the BJP in Bihar as the Chief Minister’s party will be reduced to a non-entity With the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) retaining the Jehanabad Assembly seat and the Araria Lok Sabha seat in the recent byelections in the first electoral contest after party supremo Lalu Prasad was sent to prison in the fodder scam cases, 28-year-old Tejashwi Yadav has underscored his position as party leader. At his official residence at 5 Deshratna Marg in Patna, Mr. Yadav speaks of the byelection results and the consequent incidents of communal violence in the State. 👉How do you see the Araria and Jehanabad results? Both Araria and Jehanabad were not the traditional seats of the RJD and we’ve been sometimes winning, sometimes losing them in the previous polls. But this time, our candidates not only retained both the seats with comfortable margins but even our vote share increased substantially. And all this happen...

This is a remainder and a sincere request from our side . Update  the app immediately to newer version which is now available on playstore . all the bugs of the older version are removed and the app now works fine. those who have done already ignore this notice. visit playstore search for The Hindu Editorial app and update the app key takeaways  Improved UI functioning no ambiguity in the interface works fine. Daily notifications of our app will reach you whenever we upload the editorial you can now share our app with your friends with just one click away The reviews and suggestions play an important role so it has been one click away  Download of editorial in pdf version is added important note regarding adds we have been seeing many concerns. since we give prime motive for the user experience we first decided to remove adds but since we are liable to third party we need some sort of revenue to further support our app , for improvements as well in ap...

💥With anti-Iran hawks getting key posts in the President’s team, the nuclear deal is the target It was no secret that U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson did not get along on several foreign policy issues. But when Mr. Tillerson was fired earlier this month, the one point of difference Mr. Trump cited was the Iran nuclear deal. Mr. Tillerson was considered a restraining presence on Iran within the Trump White House. The 2015 deal, widely seen as a signature diplomatic achievement of the Barack Obama presidency, curtails Iran’s nuclear programme in return for lifting international sanctions. But Mr. Trump hated it — he described it as “the worst deal ever” and during his campaign had threatened to “rip up” the deal upon being elected. 👉A difficult choice Under U.S. law, the deal has to be certified every 90 days by the President. Mr. Trump has grudgingly certified compliance twice since his election. In October, he refused to certify the acco...

💥The National Health Protection Mission requires a bold, holistic approach The NDA government’s scheme to provide health cover of ₹5 lakh per year to 10 crore poor and vulnerable families through the Ayushman Bharat-National Health Protection Mission has taken a step forward with the Union Cabinet approving the modalities of its implementation. Considering the small window, just over a year, available before the term of the present government ends, urgent action is needed to roll out such an ambitious scheme. For a start, the apex council that will steer the programme and the governing board to operationalise it in partnership with the States need to be set up. The States, which have a statutory responsibility for provision of health care, have to act quickly and form dedicated agencies to run the scheme. Since the NHPM represents the foundation for a universal health coverage system that should eventually cover all Indians, it needs to be given a sound legal basis, ideally thro...

💥As the U.S. continues to raise benchmark rates, India should take precautionary steps The U.S. Federal Reserve continues to slowly pull away the punch bowl as the party gets going. This week the Fed raised its benchmark short-term interest rate by 25 basis points to 1.50-1.75%, the highest in a decade. While this is only the sixth rate increase since the financial crisis of 2008 — which pushed central banks to cut interest rates to historic lows — it portends further increases in global interest rates. Higher borrowing costs could squeeze both markets and the wider economy. If its dot-plot projections are considered, the Fed under its new Chairman Jerome Powell — who chaired the Federal Open Market Committee meeting for the first time on Wednesday — is expected to raise rates two more times in 2018. And with the American economy projected to grow at a fairly healthy clip amid quickening inflation, the increases in the Fed’s discount rate are expected to gather pace over the nex...

💥India must refresh its overseas China policy and its domestic engagement with the Tibetan community The government’s bid to ease tensions with China has been met with some criticism, particularly over a leaked memo to officials telling them to stay away from events that commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s 1959 flight to India. This has led to the cancellation of several public events related to Tibet. Much of the criticism stems from the perception that the government is attempting to appease China by giving up its “Tibet card”. Clearly, giving in to China’s aggression on the subject is the wrong pretext to nuance its Tibet policy, and as the government has said, where the Dalai Lama goes within India is a sovereign issue. However, the bigger error may be for the government to be using Tibetan refugees in India as a card in its relations with China. 👉Deteriorating ties To begin with, ties between New Delhi and Beijing have deteriorated over the past fe...

💥The move to recognise Lingayats as a separate religion must be seen in a political and historical context “Don’t say, ‘Who is he? Who is he?’ Say, ‘He is one of us. He is one of us.’” This excerpt from a popular vachana (a saying in verse form) of Basava, which views the Lingayat community as a boundless entity where there is no outsider, offers a glimpse of the radical theology of Lingayat dharma, which he founded in the 12th century. In another vachana of his, shedding “disgust” towards “others” is held out as a moral imperative alongside other foundational ones that forbid theft, murder, lies and slander for attaining inner and outer purity (shuddhi). The Lingayats evolved elaborate rituals to mark the distinctiveness of their dharma from the Brahminical, Jaina and folk faiths existing at that time. Composed by men and women from all “castes” (or occupational backgrounds), the extensive body of vachanas are in Kannada, not Sanskrit. They elevate labour to a spiritual ide...

💥The controversy is a wake-up call to press ahead with a robust data protection law click here    https://drive.google.com/file/d/19AIu7w2Hvs8A0ycxEJ0jYvb9FH2ndUYM/view?usp=sharing The world has just learned how a data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested the data of 50 million Facebook users and used that information to feed strategies such as ‘behavioural microtargeting’ and ‘psychographic messaging’ for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in the U.S. Chris Wylie, a former CA employee-turned-whistle-blower, set off a storm with revelations of how the company had deployed a ‘psychological warfare’ tool for alt-right media guru Steve Bannon to try to sway the election in Mr. Trump’s favour. CA chief executive Alexander Nix, who was suspended a few days ago following an undercover report by a British TV broadcaster, said the company has used other dubious methods in projects worldwide — including honeytraps to discredit clients’ opponents. The combination of us...