Big Brother? 100 Small Brothers Are Watching You
In his weekly column in The Times of India, Swaminathan Aiyar writes that Aadhaar is not the biggest threat to privacy as there are several other ways a person’s data can be hacked and compromised. Aiyar says that cyberspace is a global commons defying all regulation.
He quotes a top cybersecurity expert who estimates that every email and phone call is monitored by at least a hundred invisible entities, of whom 52 per cent are private actors and 48 per cent are state actors (of more than one country).
India needs a Privacy Act, not just to check excesses in government snooping but to guard against private snooping. When civil rights are being breached massively by undesirable private actors of all sorts, to focus on government misuse alone — as activists are doing — is myopic.
Fifth Column: Modernity or Murder, Mr Modi?
Dear fanatic Hindus, if you don’t want to be made a laughing stock in front of the rest of the world then please stop your violent obsession with cows, is how Tavleen Singh begins her weekly Indian Express column.
It is hard to understand why a Prime Minister so passionate about making India a modern, digital, prosperous country has seemingly not noticed that hunting and killing Muslims on the pretext of cows and love jihad does not sit well with modernity...Has he noticed that hunting Muslims is serving mostly to distract these same young Indians from far more important tasks?
She questions why the Hindu fanatics aren’t being deployed for Swachch Bharat or not going and teaching basic literacy to the disadvantaged children. Singh also supports caring for the cows at a national level, but not the murderous barbarism fuelling the cow protection.
Ground Zero at Gorakhpur
As you head for Gorakhpur from Hisar, a mere 40km drive, you can hardly sense the importance of being there, is the mournful beginning of Deepender Deswal’s column in The Tribune.
A village, which lost 1,503 acres, made way for Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) to build a 2,800 MW — 700x2 MW in first phase — nuclear plant.
But, where is the plant? The answer may lie as much inside the compound as outside — 33 years after the district administration recommended Gorakhpur as a fit place for the mega project...where people can be persuaded to part with their land in exchange for hefty monetary compensation: Rs 537 crore so far to 481 landowners. That has been but one story since 1984.
All political parties, the ruling BJP included, opposed it, sat on long dharnas with local protesting residents. Many of them, especially the BJP, then, backtracked, after coming to power in 2014.
Out of My Mind: An Outrage in the Capital
Meghnad Desai’s weekly wisdom in his column in the Indian Express focusses on the swathes of trolls, patrolling the internet, threatening any and all free speech they disapprove of. The Swedish Embassy was targeted for having Barkha Dutt, and author Swati Chaturvedi at an event and were told all Swedish goods coming into the country will be boycotted.
The event was cancelled. It must be one of the most humiliating defeats for Freedom of Speech on Swedish soil as much as in India....To cancel an event which has been publicised because of threats to boycott the Swedish products amounts to submitting to virtual blackmail. Nothing had happened except threats issued by trolls.
Desai argues that this sort of incident is something all upholders of free speech must voluntarily resist.
Can Opposition Offer India an Alternative Vision?
At this time of the year, Kolkata’s haze of heat was punctuated by the scintillating red of the gulmohar trees that, unlike their slightly reticent cousins in Delhi, were in full bloom, is how Pavan K Varma picturesquely begins his Asian Age column.
He writes of a recent panel discussion where the upcoming Presidential Elections were discussed, as was the shape the country’s future politics will take after BJP’s recent sweep of the Uttar Pradesh elections.
The gathbandhan between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party was a last-minute, ad hoc and perfunctory alliance, arrived at a few days before the last date of filing nominations for the first phase of the elections....a complete contrast to the systematic electoral planning done by the BJP for the past 18 months.
Is it possible for a disparate group of regional satraps to eschew their personal egos and local priorities to come together as a convincing force to oppose the BJP? For the Opposition to be effective, it must be able to present a credible alternative vision of India, and also show why this vision would be in the greater interest of India.
Across the Aisle: That Sinking Feeling — 1
There may come a time for a nation when the whole of it shares the same mood – be it of anger or despair – and for P Chidambaram, that time for India has come in 2017, as he writes in his weekly Indian Express column.
He writes that a narrative is seemingly emerging from various strands of conversations and comments that the India imagined in 2014 is “falling apart.”
There is a rise in violence, be it terrorist incidents in Jammu & Kashmir or attacks by Maoists in Naxal-affected areas. The local people can be weaned away from the influence of Maoists only if the State is seen to be recognising the rights of the people, especially the tribal people, and addressing their grievances and needs.
He writes of voices of Opposition like Mr A S Dulat, a former director of R&AW: ‘There is a sense of hopelessness. They (Kashmiris) aren’t afraid to die...This has never happened in the past’ and ‘Kashmiris are disappointed to see that nothing happened after (Mr) Modi took over. Where has (Mr) Vajpayee’s insaniyat ka daira gone?’
Coopting Universities - Honouring Erdogan
“We have grown so used to India’s public universities dignifying foreign dignitaries with degrees that it has come to seem like a harmless ritual, rather like breaking a coconut to mark an auspicious beginning. But degrees aren’t coconuts and universities aren’t officiating priests, so perhaps it’s time to think about the implications of this custom” is how Mukul Kesavan opens his column in The Telegraph.
Kesavan argues that the entire practice of giving honorary degrees to heads of states is wrong as “universities are meant to be autonomous, self-governing institutions, not ready-to-hand props for public diplomacy.”
He further states that such an act is a way that the university diminishes itself and negates its own autonomy
Was PM Modi Right to Say Triple Talaq Mustn't Be Politicised? Yes, He Was
Triple talaq is a personal matter best left to individuals to decide for themselves, is the musing Karan Thapar begins his weekly column with, in the Hindustan Times.
No doubt each time triple talaq is uttered it only affects the lives of two individuals, but you also can’t deny it transgresses fundamental rights which the State is expected to defend. Furthermore, if you believe in the sanctity of marriage...and if marriages have to be registered and recognised by the State, then divorce must also have similar sanction. It cannot be left to the whims of individual husbands.
He writes that if triple talaq infringes human rights and the State is expected to uphold, it must not become an issue on which political parties take opposing sides.
Finding the Paper Trail
In a lighter selection this week, Mini Kapoor writes about why the physical editions of the book work better, for her column in The Hindu.
Maybe it is that having read on tablets for a few years, readers are finding that returning to old favourites in that format just does not compare with the memory-jogging pleasure of flipping through a print copy. The digital revolution has still not yielded anything for those of us who settle even into a new book only after flipping through its pages, with a half an eye closed to prevent ourselves from finding out the ending.
Keeping a list of books read in life, running your eyes through the list is to know not only the reading life, but glimpse the curvature of your personal evolution, intellectually and emotionally, she quotes Pamela Paul, the editor of The New York Times Book Review.
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