Career Pathway

+91-98052 91450

info@thecareerspath.com

EDITORIAL TODAY (ENGLISH)

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.Ashwin blows up cricket’s dubious ‘spirit of the game’ again

The conduct of a cricket match is governed by a detailed set of rules that have evolved over time. In addition, there are some aspects during the course of a cricket match that are governed by conventions. These conventions are sometimes bunched together in a catchall phrase: “spirit of the game”.

Where does the “spirit of the game” come from?                                       

An answer comes from the way in which the game’s governing body International Cricket Council (ICC) was formed. In a meeting in England in 1926, it was decided to limit ICC’s (then called Imperial Cricket Conference) to countries that were within the British Empire. This meant that some of the early participants in international matches like the U.S, which had been playing against England 1859, went out of the circuit. The spirit of the game thereby came to reflect what was deemed proper primarily by upper-class Englishmen. In other ICC countries, the spirit of the game percolated through an elite Anglophone layer that dominated the game.

Much has changed in the last century. ICC today has over 100 members, including Afghanistan, the so-called graveyard of empires. Even within the original constituents of the Empire, such as India, Anglophone dominance has given way to a new set of elites who are guided by a different set of conventions. The only thing holding the expanding cricket family together is the codified rules of the game.

Conventions vary and cricket’s original “spirit of the game” is often illogical and one-sided.

That’s the source of the problem that R. Ashwin’s actions have brought to the surface over two different IPL editions. The Anglophone world believes he has violated the “spirit of the game”. Ashwin defends himself by pointing out that he always plays within the boundaries set by the codified rules. He’s right.

Going forward, there will be more players who blow up the “spirit of the game”. The game’s spread across countries and social groups will ensure that. It won’t be a bad thing because the “spirit of the game” is often unfair. Surely, Eoin Morgan, captain of England’s 2019 World Cup winning team, knows how it played to his advantage in a nail-biting final.

2.Caste obsession: Demanding better, contemporaneous socio-economic data from GoI would serve Bharat better

Following Centre’s rejection of demands from some states to enumerate castes in the Census, Akhilesh Yadav has promised a “caste census” in UP if voted into office. BJP’s OBC wing has meanwhile turned the demand on its head remarking that states are free to do their own caste enumeration exercises. But states conducting their own caste counts is a sureshot recipe for trouble. Congress’s Siddaramaiah realised this after piloting a caste census as Karnataka CM, only to put it on the backburner when data leaks stoked off intense identity politics.

The current bickering too has politics written all over it. BJP was defensive after its failed attempt to subcategorise OBC reservation. But it sent out strong signals through other moves like OBC reservation in the all-India quota for medical admissions and increasing OBC representation in the Union Cabinet. BJP also appears confident that there’s no great groundswell for a caste census. Nevertheless, opposition parties are clutching to a caste census as a potential tool to upset BJP’s applecart.

Supreme Court’s delay in adjudicating on the 10% EWS quota, which has taken reservations past the Indra Sawhney judgment’s 50% cap, isn’t helping. Reinforcing the cap would have dampened all future reservation demands, which can only subdivide a shrinking pie for a swelling youth population facing slow job creation. A better course for governments, Centre and state, would be to tackle the paucity of data on many socio-economic indicators that makes policymaking akin to flying blind.

The last poverty estimates are a decade old. Though many parties now promise unemployment allowances, the lag in unemployment data is unhelpful. Household consumption expenditure surveys are needed more regularly. Recall that data from UPA-2’s socio-economic and caste census findings of 10.69 crore “deprived” households among 24.39 crore households merged with the JAM trinity had helped NDA government better target subsidies to the poor. This newspaper recently reported about the average height of Indians across caste groups declining from 2006 to 2016, in contrast to global trends. This signals malnutrition in some sections but contemporaneous data to guide effective remedial action is missing. In progressive democracies this would be a scandal. In India, it passes unnoticed. Whether or not SECC shows 46 lakh castes and is therefore unusable is less important than all political parties recognising the importance of data. GoI must expedite the 2021 Census and release its socio-economic data without the unhelpful delays many key 2011 Census findings suffered.

3. How to tackle erratic monsoon

Recent years have indicated that the patchiness or unevenness of even a normal monsoon is now a trend, not an aberration. Climate science bears this out — the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report specifically mentions erratic monsoons. Better forecasts, climate crisis-mitigating tech, and new crop varieties are the need of the hour

This year’s monsoon was a normal one — that is, if one were to measure it purely in terms of aggregate. That’s how the monsoons, the lifeline of India’s agriculture (a lot of it, some say almost half, is rain-fed), and the weathervane of the country’s large rural economy, are assessed. But this monsoon (like some before it) has shown the futility of evaluating it like this.

A quick summary of this year’s monsoon will read thus: Early onset; a wet June; a dry July; a drier August (usually the rainiest month); a very wet September; no depressions over the Bay of Bengal between June and August; three breaks in the monsoon; and more instances of heavy and extreme rainfall than in recent years. That makes it evident that this monsoon has been far from normal. There may be only a marginal impact on agriculture this year — assessments are still being made — although heavy late-September rains in Maharashtra are reported to have damaged crops. Recent years have indicated that the patchiness or unevenness of even a normal monsoon is now a trend, not an aberration. Climate science bears this out — the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report specifically mentions erratic monsoons. The report also said that global warming will exceed 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels in the next two decades.

4. Gathering storm: On the Congress crisis

No outside talent can help the Congress unless it nurtures its roots and respects its workers

The Congress party is gripped by a crisis after its Punjab strategy to unseat Captain Amarinder Singh as Chief Minister went haywire. The reformist group within the party has questioned the authority of the family triumvirate comprising Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, in a manner it had avoided until now. While the Gandhis were resolute about ejecting Captain Amarinder, they were clueless about what would come afterwards. As it happened, Charanjit Singh Channi emerged as Chief Minister out of a factional scramble, and the party sought to find virtue in his accidental elevation by highlighting his Dalit identity. The Dalits in Punjab are largely with the Congress. Whether the party will accrue additional votes owing to Mr. Channi’s identity remains an open question. Meanwhile, resentment is streaming forth. Navjot Singh Sidhu, who never deserved to be the president of a Congress state unit to begin with, resigned in a huff, embarrassing the Gandhi siblings. Captain Amarinder, now bruised and humiliated, is vengeful and appears willing to do anything to derail the Congress’s prospects in next year’s Assembly election. He could join hands with the BJP or explore other options. Many social fault lines in Punjab may have resurfaced now. Mr. Sidhu has been playing the Sikh communal card, which could have dangerous ramifications.

Mr. Gandhi’s impatience with the party old guard is understandable and even justified to a great extent. What he lacks is a coherent strategy and transparent plan to revamp the party. He owned up to the party’s debacle in the 2019 general election and resigned as party president, but continued to retain ultimate authority. He appoints and removes office bearers and Chief Ministers, while posturing that he is above the fray. This is untenable as his authority without accountability is far too evident. If he wants to be the leader of the Congress, it cannot be in the informal and whimsical manner as it is now. It needs to be formal and consultative, for which he needs to return as the party president. Reviving the Congress will require the leadership’s constant engagement with workers, and the management of the egos and ambitions of individual leaders. The Congress cannot be revived by stealth and subterfuge, or by recruiting boastful charlatans. The burden of revitalising it cannot be shifted to the shoulders of random, untested new recruits, as Punjab shows. Mr. Gandhi is taken in by the self-defeatist notion that the Congress as it exists cannot be revved up until there is a purge and parallel induction of outside talent. No knight in shining armour can help the Congress unless it nurtures its roots and respects its workers. The disastrous Punjab experiment underscores that elementary fact.

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top