Sorry Greta, India Needs More Coal to Power Growth
In his piece for The Times of India, SA Aiyar offers a counter-perspective to what 16-year-old climate change activist Greta Thunberg has to say. He argues that India, being a lower middle income country, needs to rely increasingly on coal power to meet basic needs and that thermal energy still has a future in India.
Aiyar points out that the per-capita carbon emissions of developing nations is relatively lower than that of European nations and countries like India are getting the short end of the stick.
“Widespread activist attempts to stop all oil and coal production are hypocritical. A total switch to solar and wind energy is impossible since these are produced only intermittently when the sun shines and wind blows, maybe 25% of the year on an average. For the rest of the time, India needs coal-based electricity.”SA Aiyar in The Times of India
History Headline: Mirage-2000 to Rafale, the Story in Between
Former Chief of Air Staff S Krishnaswamy feels that India needs to adopt a more professional approach to defence procurement and stop politicising every military acquisition.
Writing in The Indian Express, he recounts his tryst with the last fighter aircraft that India bought from France’s Dassault Aviation, the Mirage 2000, Rafale’s predecessor.
“The MIG-29 is superb in its air superiority role but it does not have the same quality and versatility as that of the Mirage-2000. At the end of the day, the Air Force bears the responsibility and the bureaucracy exercises the power to say yes or no, while the government takes a distant stand.”S Krishnaswamy in The Indian Express
Fifth Column: What Lynching Means
In her column for The Indian Express, journalist Tavleen Singh expresses her disappointment over what RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had to say about mob lynchings in his Vijayadashami address in Nagpur on Tuesday, 8 October.
She insists that lynchings aren’t just riots or routine breakdowns in law and order but acts which are carried out in public “to create terror and to revive the most primitive kind of imagined justice.”
“I have seen many, many horrific videos of Muslims killing Hindus, and they are very upsetting. But, a lynching has a specific context. It does not mean a riot, it does not mean any old act of public violence, it means a public hanging or stoning to death by a mob. It means punishing someone in such a manner that others will see it as a warning and a lesson.”Tavleen Singh in The Indian Express
There May Not Be a Word for Lynching in Most Indian Languages. We Need One.
Also writing about Mohan Bhagwat’s comments on lynching in The Indian Express, Saikat Majumdar says that even though lynching isn’t a word or practice of Indian origin, India now needs to make room for such a word. Language, in his opinion, is always incomplete and evolving, and with the rising incidents of lynching in India, the concept is no longer alien to us.
“The uproar isn’t just about language — the assumption lurking under this claim, that the practice of lynching too, is alien to India, is what has taken the nation by storm, most of all, people with conscience who have been tormented by the spate of execution-style murders by frenzied mobs, in most instances, of members of minority groups perceived to have violated customs and beliefs held by the mainstream. I have to say that Bhagwat is right.”Saikat Majumdar in The Indian Express
Modi-Xi Mamallapuram Summit Not Purely Informal
Writing in The New Indian Express, former MEA secretary Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty opines that the second India-China informal summit may be more significant than is immediately apparent.
Even though relations between the two nations have been sour lately, Chakravarty feels that the summit provides an opening for mutual co-operation, strategic communication and managing conflicting interests.
“While China has been challenging India’s influence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, there are limits to how much it can contain Indian influence and challenge India’s interests. Without a cooperative paradigm, the much-heralded Asian Century will be a chimera if conflicting interests are not managed wisely and cause India and China to be at loggerheads.”Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty in The New Indian Express
Inside Track: Discipline Panel?
With several seasoned leaders of the Indian Nation Congress frequently acting against the party’s interests, Coomi Kapoor, in her column for The Indian Express, asks: what exactly is the role of the Congress Disciplinary Committee?
“According to party insiders, the committee sometimes meets, but normally Antony defers any controversial issue for discussion to another session. The last time the Disciplinary Committee took any meaningful action was the revocation of the suspension against Mani Shankar Aiyar over a year ago.”Coomi Kapoor in The Indian Express
Dissent Is a Gandhian Virtue. It Is Not Sedition
According to Karan Thapar, the sedition law in India has been misused to stifle healthy dissent and criticism of the government, compromising India's democratic foundation.
In his column for Hindustan Times, Thapar writes that this runs contrary to what Mahatma Gandhi would have wanted for the nation he helped liberate. Citing a 1995 court ruling, he argues that even “assaulting the sovereignty of the country” doesn’t count as dissent.
“It’s clear what India thinks of Mahatma Gandhi. Officially, we revere him. It’s another matter we honour his memory more in the breach than in the observance. But what would Gandhi make of us? No one bothered to ask when we marked his sesquicentennial. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve embarrassed him. Indeed, at times, he might even want to disown us.”Karan Thapar in Hindustan Times
Out of My Mind: Hail Macaulay for Our Outdated Laws
In his column for The Indian Express, Meghnad Desai writes that colonial laws were built to keep Indians in order and that several of them translate poorly when it comes to modern India.
He points out that the Indian Penal Code, which originates from British-India, is full of obsolete principles that endanger the freedom of speech. Have the courage to remove or at least reform the IPC, he insists.
“Warren Hastings had hoped to rule using existing Hindu and Muslim legal texts but soon that friendly approach was abandoned. English laws were to be used to keep Indians in order. The British rulers never understood their subjects — the mob as they called it. They needed someone to fashion tools for keeping Indians in order.”Meghnad Desai in The Indian Express.
Why the Mirchi Over Nimbus? Tradition Doesn’t Follow Logic
Author Shobhaa De, in her column in The Times of India, tackles the fierce criticism that Defence Minister Rajnath Singh recieved for performing a ‘shastra puja’ before taking delivery of the first Rafale fighter jet from France. She argues that such tradition isn’t derived from logic, but from emotion and beliefs and that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with it.
“We also break coconuts, tie green chillies with lemons, string garlands, sprinkle holy water, apply kumkum before taking delivery of anything we deem precious — from a brand new refrigerator to a spiffy car. It is a part of our tradition. And tradition does not follow logic. It is an emotion based on age-old beliefs. What was valid to our ancestors continues to exercise a hold over our collective consciousness even today. Nothing terribly wrong with it.”Shobhaa De in The Times of India
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