In this section, we are presenting our readers/aspirants compilation of selected editorials of national daily viz. The Hindu, The live mint,The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Economic Times, PIB etc. This section caters the requirement of Civil Services Mains (GS + Essay) , PCS, HAS Mains (GS + Essay) & others essay writing competition.
1.Divide and rue: Kerala Church’s “love jihad” obsession widely and negatively impacted state’s and nation’s body politic
jihad” bogey – never proven – has returned over a decade later to its manger, after perambulating through some north Indian states where it became fodder for criminalising interfaith marriages. That a bishop of the dominant Syro Malabar Catholic Church openly warned of a “love jihad” and “narcotic jihad” threat to the faithful had shocked Kerala into a vigorous public debate. But the Church now finds itself cornered after an influential Catholic priest alleged the equivalent of “love jihad” by OBC Ezhava youth. The heavyweight Ezhava organisation SNDP has hit back, alleging it was Christians, not Muslims, at the forefront of conversions and “love jihad” targeting Hindus.
India’s only state with a sizeable religious diversity of Hindus, Muslims and Christians has always struggled with various community organisations never chary of brandishing their political heft. Yet Kerala has miraculously preserved remarkable communal amity despite the occasional rancour. What has publicly surfaced was drawing room chatter across Christian homes since 2019 amid an explosion of Islamophobic content propagating in Malayalam through WhatsApp, and hence under the radar.
The bishop’s remarks led to Muslim groups marching in protest, BJP demanding investigation into “narcotic jihad”, CM Pinarayi Vijayan asking those in responsible positions to be guarded in their statements, and the leader of opposition VD Satheesan of Congress, which loses most in the Christian-Muslim cleavage, critiquing the bishop for being way out of line. Women groups weren’t far behind either, noting the assault on female agency and autonomy by politically-charged religio-conservative outfits.
The recent Kerala assembly polls saw the Christian vote pulled in different directions, further compounding its waning clout. Churchleaders’ complaints of dwindling numbers haven’t overturned a general phenomenon observed across India. A rapid, secular fertility rate decline has touched all communities equally, although Muslims, as per current data, will take longer to catch up. Turning this state of flux and resultant insecurities into dog whistles and hate speech against other communities is dangerous: Take the Church’s 2009 bogey and its national, individual and social ramifications today. It fed divisive political discourse, led to intrusive laws interfering with interfaith relationships, and now burdens the judiciary, which must reverse an oppressive legal template.
2.Submarine strategy: Undersea naval prowess is shaping strategic battles, India mustn’t lag behind
One of the main thrusts of the recently unveiled AUKUS trilateral security pact between the US, UK and Australia is delivering nuclear-powered submarines to Canberra. This is clearly aimed at countering China’s maritime belligerence in the Indo-Pacific region. In fact, with China as the focus, the strategic-military power plays of the coming decades will be based on naval power, with submarines playing a vital role. Submarines can be great levellers in asymmetric military scenarios given their long range, stealth, strike and force projection capabilities. With nuclear submarines these factors are multiplied further, enabling longer operational periods.
This is precisely why countries from Singapore and Indonesia to Japan and Taiwan – which has been facing the brunt of Beijing’s military intimidation – are inducting submarines at a fast clip to counter Chinese aggression. Disappointingly though, India’s underwater fleet continues to lack the requisite teeth despite the fact that high seas are the only domain in which India can checkmate China given its natural geographic advantages.
However, today the Indian navy has 12 old diesel-electric submarines with only half of them operational at any given point of time. Additionally, the force has inducted just three of the six projected French Scorpene submarines and has only one nuclear-powered submarine with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, the INS Arihant. In contrast, China already has the world’s largest navy with 350 warships, including 50 conventional and 10 nuclear submarines. Unless this gap in naval prowess is mitigated quickly, New Delhi will be hamstrung further in countering Beijing’s desire to dominate the Indian Ocean.
Incidentally, the Defence Acquisitions Council only cleared the decks for project P-75I for construction of six new conventional stealth submarines in June – this, when it was granted acceptance of necessity way back in November 2007. As per plans, India should have at least 18 conventional submarines, six nuclear attack submarines and four nuclear submarines with nuclear missiles. We are nowhere near that target. The defence bureaucracy must quickly address this delay if India is to walk the talk on Quad and its Indo-Pacific ambitions.
3.Submarine strategy: Undersea naval prowess is shaping strategic battles, India mustn’t lag behind
One of the main thrusts of the recently unveiled AUKUS trilateral security pact between the US, UK and Australia is delivering nuclear-powered submarines to Canberra. This is clearly aimed at countering China’s maritime belligerence in the Indo-Pacific region. In fact, with China as the focus, the strategic-military power plays of the coming decades will be based on naval power, with submarines playing a vital role. Submarines can be great levellers in asymmetric military scenarios given their long range, stealth, strike and force projection capabilities. With nuclear submarines these factors are multiplied further, enabling longer operational periods.
This is precisely why countries from Singapore and Indonesia to Japan and Taiwan – which has been facing the brunt of Beijing’s military intimidation – are inducting submarines at a fast clip to counter Chinese aggression. Disappointingly though, India’s underwater fleet continues to lack the requisite teeth despite the fact that high seas are the only domain in which India can checkmate China given its natural geographic advantages.
However, today the Indian navy has 12 old diesel-electric submarines with only half of them operational at any given point of time. Additionally, the force has inducted just three of the six projected French Scorpene submarines and has only one nuclear-powered submarine with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, the INS Arihant. In contrast, China already has the world’s largest navy with 350 warships, including 50 conventional and 10 nuclear submarines. Unless this gap in naval prowess is mitigated quickly, New Delhi will be hamstrung further in countering Beijing’s desire to dominate the Indian Ocean.
Incidentally, the Defence Acquisitions Council only cleared the decks for project P-75I for construction of six new conventional stealth submarines in June – this, when it was granted acceptance of necessity way back in November 2007. As per plans, India should have at least 18 conventional submarines, six nuclear attack submarines and four nuclear submarines with nuclear missiles. We are nowhere near that target. The defence bureaucracy must quickly address this delay if India is to walk the talk on Quad and its Indo-Pacific ambitions.
4.The real deficit in India’s health care system
To accelerate the pace and meet our global health commitments, India must build more institutions for producing professionals and create a conducive environment, with adequate pay packages, to attract and retain the best talent in the workforce.
A new report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) has revealed that India’s health system struggled during Covid-19 because the country doesn’t have an adequate number of trained health personnel. For example, the nurse-doctor ratio is 1.7:1, and that of allied health workers to doctors is 1:1 India’s High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) on Universal Health Coverage recommends a nurse-doctor ratio of 3:1. Other than the lack of an adequate number of health workers, there is also a considerable variation in the number of health personnel available across states and the rural and urban areas.
The State’s focus has been on building physical infrastructure and buying equipment. To be sure, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken of the need for health workers at all levels, but this will take time to translate into reality. The second problem is the focus on tertiary care instead of primary and secondary health care centres, and a focus on the number of specialised health care professionals when India also needs frontline medical professionals. Third, India produces only 13 new medical graduates (doctors and nurses) per annum per 100,000 persons, compared with more than 55 medical graduates in developed countries. More than 30% of the doctors and 50% of the nurses are not part of the current workforce. The government is setting up 157 new medical colleges and 50 nursing institutions, likely to produce about 22,500 doctors and 2,000 nurses every year. This essentially implies, a PHFI calculation shows, that even if 100% of the new graduates join the health workforce, it will take more than 10 years to add 250,000 health professionals to the existing health workforce size of about 170,000.
To accelerate the pace and meet our global health commitments, India must build more institutions for producing professionals and create a conducive environment, with adequate pay packages, to attract and retain the best talent in the workforce.
5.Biomedical waste dumping
Covid has caused surge in hazardous waste production
NEWS of heaps of biomedical waste being dumped in the open by hospitals in Hisar is shocking but not surprising — if you go around any large town or city in India, you’d find medical waste discarded close to hospitals, including PPE kits, syringes, gloves, face masks and used medicines. – File photo
NEWS of heaps of biomedical waste being dumped in the open by hospitals in Hisar is shocking but not surprising — if you go around any large town or city in India, you’d find medical waste discarded close to hospitals, including PPE kits, syringes, gloves, face masks and used medicines. Residents of different locations in New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai and Bengaluru have been crying foul over rising heaps of medical waste being dumped in the open. The situation is replicated in the smaller cities, and the Hisar residents are not the first ones to raise a stink over this — similar reports have been coming from other cities in the region such as Gurugram, Ludhiana, Patiala, Jalandhar, Mohali, Panipat and even the non-elite parts of Chandigarh.
Covid-19 has caused a big increase in the biomedical waste production. Before the pandemic struck, India produced around 600 tonnes of biomedical waste a day. In May, when the second wave was at its peak, the country produced 203 tonnes of Covid-related waste per day, ie, a 33% increase over the pre-pandemic figures. The surge in the number of cases has led to a corresponding surge in the generation of hazardous material — all medical gear and safety devices used in the identification of infected persons and their treatment are treated as extremely hazardous.
On paper, India should be able to handle the additional burden of Covid-related waste: Early this year, the Central Pollution Control Board said the country’s 198 biomedical waste treatment facilities — plus such facilities in hospitals — can treat 826 tonnes of biomedical waste per day, which is more than the May peak of 800 tonnes. The dumping of biomedical waste in the open, however, suggests that such figures could be inaccurate and all waste is not accounted for. Moreover, 22 of the 35 states and UTs generate more biomedical waste than they are equipped to treat. The solution lies in creating new biomedical waste treatment facilities in regions where they’re needed desperately, and using a carrot-and-stick policy to make hospitals follow the guidelines on waste disposal.
6.Vaccine diplomacy
UK’s appalling bias against Covishield termed racist
Even as India is keen to help the global community by contributing to the Covax vaccine pool, the UK has struck a discordant note with its discriminatory travel rules under which Indians inoculated with Covishield would be treated as unvaccinated and would have to quarantine themselves for 10 days. – File photo
WITH the second wave of Covid-19 having ebbed considerably and the vaccination rate nearing a healthy average of 1 crore doses daily, India has decided to resume the export of surplus shots from October under the Vaccine Maitri programme. The vaccine diplomacy had kicked off soon after the vaccination drive was rolled out in mid-January. More than 90 countries were the beneficiaries of Made-in-India vaccines. The exports were stopped in April when the second wave intensified, even as several states were already grappling with vaccine shortage prior to the surge in cases. The Centre was accused of being overzealous in providing doses to other nations at the expense of domestic needs. Probably many lives could have been saved had vaccine production and supply issues been addressed well before this devastating wave peaked.
Though the government has assured that vaccinating India’s citizens remains its top priority, it’s vital to get the supply arithmetic right this time to prevent a shortfall in anticipation of the third wave. So far, less than one-fourth of the country’s eligible population has received both doses. With the upcoming festival season set to witness overcrowding in public places and blatant disregard for Covid-appropriate behaviour, the focus should be on fully vaccinating as many citizens as possible at the earliest.
Even as India is keen to help the global community by contributing to the Covax vaccine pool, the UK has struck a discordant note with its discriminatory travel rules under which Indians inoculated with Covishield would be treated as unvaccinated and would have to quarantine themselves for 10 days. Manufactured by the Pune-based Serum Institute, the world’s leading Covid vaccine producer, Covishield is simply a brand name of the AstraZeneca vaccine developed by Oxford University. Ironically, travellers from several countries who have received AstraZeneca shots can enter Britain without quarantine curbs if they meet certain conditions. There is no place for vaccine ‘racism’ in the global battle against the pandemic. After all, no one on the planet is safe until everyone is safe. The UK needs to do course correction on this count.