India’s nationalists should learn how to behave themselves: China daily on international affairs

INDIAN EXPRESS | JUNE 28 2016

Launching a harsh attack on Indian public and the country’s media, the editorial called India a ‘spoiled’ and ‘smug’ nation especially in international affairs.

Global Times, a national English-language daily in China, Tuesday published a strongly-worded editorial defending China’s position on the entry of India and other non-NPT countries into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

Launching a harsh attack on Indian public and the country’s media, the editorial called India a ‘spoiled’ and ‘smug’ nation especially in international affairs.

The editorial claimed the rules of the NSG membership prevented India from becoming a member of the NSG and brushed away accusation that it tried to block India’s entry.

“Since its foundation in 1975, all NSG members shall be NPT signatories. This has…CONTINUE READING

Why Brexit is a cautionary tale for us all

PRAVEEN SWAMY | JUNE 25 2016 | INDIAN EXPRESS

Brexit campaigners claimed these hardships could be mitigated by saving the UK was paying the European Union £ 350 million a week — a figure that gained wide currency, even though it had no basis in fact.

In the summer of 2005, fear of the Polish Plumber had gripped all France. The country was preparing to vote in a referendum on a proposed constitution for Europe, and critics used the icon as a simulacrum for the tide of immigrants who would flow in, displacing local workers — one in 10 of whom were unemployed. The thing was, almost no-one had actually seen a Polish Plumber. France’s plumber’s union said there were just 650 in the whole country, mostly hired on short-term contracts to fill a shortfall of almost 6,000 that was crippling the construction industry.

Plumber-phobia paid off, though: France voted against, effectively killing off the…CONTINUE READING

The False Lure of Military Intervention in Syria

EDITORIAL | JUNE 22 2016 | NEW YORK TIMES

The criticism of the Obama administration’s approach to the war in Syrialeveled by 51 midlevel State Department diplomats has raised again the issue of whether limited military strikes by the United States against the government of President Bashar al-Assad would help push it toward a peace deal.

The escalating war in Syria has killed 400,000 Syrians, mostly by Mr. Assad’s forces, and displaced 12 million others. Efforts to maintain a cease-fire by the many sides involved in the fight — the Assad forces, their alliesRussia and Iran and the various anti-Assad opposition groups — have crumbled, while the Islamic State, which has established a…CONTINUE READING

The 10-crore rollback

EDITORIAL | JUNE 23 2016 | THE HINDU

The Finance Ministry has tied itself up in knots on whether a purported target set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for taxmen was articulated or not. On June 16, it said the Prime Minister had asked tax administrators to bring 10 crore households into the tax net, which would effectively double the number of taxpayers. A day later, the Revenue Secretary denied that a target had been set. But the Ministry issued an official clarification the following day, emphasising that the Prime Minister had only asked the Income Tax Department to widen the tax base and take suitable action against tax-evaders. It is not clear why there is such panic about the number, especially if it was a mere statement of intent. As a target, rough or otherwise, it is an ambitious goal for a country where the direct tax base has grown at a snail’s pace over six decades — from six per cent of GDP in 1950-51 to 16.6 per cent in 2013-14. Just four per cent of voters…CONTINUE READING

Regardless of ‘Brexit’ Vote, Experts Say, E.U. Must Rethink Status Quo

JIM YARDLEY | JUNE 18 2016 | NEW YORK TIMES

ROME — Among the well-heeled bureaucrats of the European Union, it is an article of faith that the bloc always emerges stronger from a crisis. The idealistic founders who six decades ago dreamed of stitching warring nations into a peaceful whole knew the path would be bumpy. But always, the union wobbled forward.

Now the dream of an integrated and ever-stronger Europe could sink into the English Channel on Thursday, when…CONTINUE READING

Fast and loose, by AAP

DEVENDER SINGH | JUNE 17 2016 | INDIAN EXPRESS

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Legislators must enforce accountability of the executive, exercise oversight. Making them parliamentary secretaries to ministers is bound to curtail their independence.

The President of India has reportedly declined assent to the bill passed by the Delhi legislative assembly, which retrospectively sought to exempt the post of parliamentary secretary from the purview of office of profit. Articles 102 and 191 debar MPs and MLAs respectively to hold an office of profit under the government. Politics is perhaps the most inventive calling and an insecure executive, with ingenious argumentative power may attempt to peddle oranges as apples.

The defence of the Delhi government, that the MLAs appointed by them as parliamentary secretaries to ministers are not holding an office of profit and therefore they have not incurred disqualification, is a specious argument. The term “parliamentary secretary” does not occur in the Constitution. The Constitution…CONTINUE READING

The Government’s vision for education is a deeply troubling one

JOHN YANDELL | JUNE 16 2016 | THE TELEGRAPH UK

Equally, we should not be misled by the vacuous language of the white paper, its breathless catechism of ‘great’ schools, ‘great’ leaders, ‘great’ teachers and the affront to logic perpetrated by its very title (if excellence is everywhere, it can’t be excellence, can it?).

Beneath the gushing prose lies a coherent, radically different vision of education – and a deeply troubling one.  What is proposed is thewholesale commodification of education, the reshaping of a public service as a series of autonomous businesses.

We need to consider carefully what the new system…CONTINUE READING

Out of my mind: Getting there

 

MEGHNAD DESAI

 

| JUNE 12 2016 | INDIAN EXPRESS

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When Jawarlal Nehru became prime minister, the Cold War had already started and the Americans presumed that as a democracy India would be in their camp.

Narendra Modi’s visit to the USA at long last brings the relationship between the two great democracies on a sure path after nearly 70 years of false starts, bad odour and needless controversy. Jawaharlal Nehru could never quite overcome his British upper-class prejudice against the brash American upstarts. When he was a student in the years before the First World War, Britain was the greatest power and America was a brash upstart.

When he became prime minister, the Cold War had already started and the Americans presumed that as a democracy India would be in their camp. They had…CONTINUE READING

Bangladesh Says It Now Knows Who’s Killing the Bloggers

GEETA ANAND AND JULFIKR ALI MANIK | JUNE 8 2016 | NEW YORK TIMES

His backpack, together with his appearance, from the unshaven beard to the long Punjabi tunic over baggy pants, set off the suspicion that he was an Islamist militant. The man was arrested after he was found to be carrying a machete, an unregistered pistol and six bullets.

The discovery of the weapons raised alarms. For the last three years, atheist writers, freethinkers, foreigners, religious minorities, gay rights activistsand others have been terrorized and killed in Bangladesh by shadowy figures who have struck with machetes and sped off on motorbikes.

Little was known about the attackers, except that they were Islamist…CONTINUE READING