Sunday View: The Best Weekend Op-Eds, Curated Just For You

A selection of the most thought-provoking Sunday op-eds from across newspapers. Sit back with your chai, and enjoy.

Nothing like a cup of coffee and your Sunday morning reads. 

(Photo: iStock)

1. To Avoid Another Gorakhpur, Think out of the Box

In his column in the Hindustan Times, Chanakya writes that the tragedy in Gorakhpur points to a larger need to revamp public health infrastructure in India. Apart from the long-term process of strengthening periphery healthcare system, he offers three possibilities to improve public health — telemedicine, using Big Data and investing in medical schools

Revamping the health sector is never an easy task, but it isn’t impossible.I am not a public health expert but my friends who are in know of such things tell me that three steps are needed if UP — or for that matter any other state — want to improve the healthcare system and avoid such deaths.Over the years, BRDMC has been creaking under tremendous pressure; it has been taking in more patients than it is supposed to. This is because it caters not just to patients from Gorakhpur and its neighbouring districts but also from Bihar and Nepal. On any given day, reports said, about 200 to 250 encephalitis patients are treated at the hospital, and the mortality rate is 7% to 8%. 

2. Not Protecting Cows or Arresting Romeos, Eradicating Encephalitis Is Yogi Adityanath's Greatest Challenge

Writing in his column in the Hindustan Times, Karan Thapar argues that Japanese encephalitis is a preventable disease and writes that he is against calling for Yogi Adityanath's resignation, since he believes he can put an end to the hundreds of deaths caused by the disease every year in Uttar Pradesh.

It’s not that we don’t realise this. We just don’t care. As Gorakhpur MP, Yogi Adityanath raised this issue in Parliament 20 times between 2003 and 2014. In 2009 he pointed out to the Lok Sabha that Japanese encephalitis first appeared in UP in 1978 but 31 years later “a large part of eastern UP and western Bihar are in the grip of an epidemic and every year thousands of children die because of this disease.”The Yogi made similar speeches in 2011 and 2013. In 2014, he directly addressed his own BJP government and, in particular, Health Minister J P Nadda. But deaths from Japanese encephalitis continued. Thus, between 2004 and 2017, there was a total of 15,315 – 54% or 8,267 in UP alone.

3. Why the Gorakhpur Story Is Not About One Night of Horror

Writing for the Times of India, Neelesh Misra examines the reasons behind the Gorakhpur tragedy and argues that the situation is a result of the government unable to monitor poor governance by local functionaries and when mainstream media ignores public health issues

The story of the dead children of Gorakhpur is about poor governance over years, maybe decades — not just medical negligence. Just like the story of dozens of kids being sodomised and killed in Noida’s Nithari was not just the story of a psychopath — but equally the story of poor governance — of a town where municipal cleaners did not clean a huge drain for ten years so the body parts could never be detected. The Gorakhpur region is one of the filthiest areas of Uttar Pradesh. Vast parts of the city don’t even have an underground sewerage system, forcing people to use septic tanks or defecate in the open. The villages face the same sanitation issues that cities do but successive governments have just not bothered to build means to keep villages clean

4. Across the Aisle: India at 70 – the Economy

In his continued analysis of the state of Indian economy after 70 years of Independence in his column 'Across the Aisle' for The Indian Express, P Chidamabaram presents five metrics by which to quantitatively judge economic progress — jobs, investment, GDP growth, credit growth and industrial production.

The first metric was JOBS. The ES has no separate section on jobs, only a two-page write-up on ‘Employment and Skill Development’. The ES has given no numbers on the jobs created, except a claim that among those who received skill training, 4,27,470 persons were given employment! Nothing is mentioned about states or sectors which have created the 4,27,470 jobs. Nothing has been said about the number of jobs likely to be created in 2017-2019. The silence on the most challenging issue tells the truth: India is witnessing moderate, but jobless, growth.

5. Can Yogi Do More for Electricity Than Gau Raksha?

In his column 'Swaminomics' in The Times of India, Swaminathan Aiyar analyses UP CM Yogi Adityanath's governance record, with a special emphasis on providing electricity in the state. He argues that Yogi's radical reform to have a new police station in every district to prevent electricity theft may prove to be a game changer in electricity distribution in Uttar Pradesh.

The Yogi has bitten the bullet. The state has proposed tariff hikes of up to 360% for different categories of rural and urban domestic consumers, the average hike being 22.6%. Industry rates have not been raised at all — the state wants to attract industry, and its rates are already high. This is the very opposite of the populism typical of a new chief minister.Can UP follow the Gujarat model? There, companies in generation, transmission and distribution all show profits. As Chief Minister, Modi cracked down on power theft, raised tariffs, metered and supplied power to almost all villages, and bifurcated electric feeders to villages. This enabled him to supply 24×7 power for domestic use and six hours per day for agricultural pumps.

6. Out of My Mind: Modi's New BJP

Writing in his column 'Out of My Mind' for The Indian Express, Meghnad Desai argues that under Prime Minister Modi, BJP has been transformed to become more inclusive, giving two examples to strengthen his argument. One, the BJP's reach into Dalit votes and the party's thrust on women's issues.

In Modi’s case, few are willing to see firstly how far the RSS has come since M S Golwalkar’s time. Remember when Mohan Bhagwat argued for equality among all, everyone attacked him as being anti-reservation. ‘The RSS and equality?’. Nor do they see the way in which Modi has expanded the political space for the BJP. Modi has fashioned a new BJP ideology without abandoning its core. Hindu nationalism was never enough to win a majority. Atal Bihari Vajpayee reached the limit of that. It is Modi who has forced the BJP/RSS to become inclusive.

7. Fifth Column: Hugs for Kashmir

Tavleen Singh in her column 'Fifth Column' for The Indian Express argues that PM Narendra Modi's statement on embracing or hugging Kashmiris is worrying, since it belies an understanding of the history of the Kashmir problem. She argues that the disenchantment that the average Kashmiri feels is a result of India's making — reflected in mistakes made by former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.

Our current Kashmir problem was created by two mistakes made by Indira Gandhi and Rajiv. Mrs Gandhi made the mistake of wrongly toppling Farooq’s government in 1984 and replacing him with a cipher. This revived memories of old betrayals. Rajiv made a bad situation worse by forcing an alliance between the Congress and the National Conference before the next election. By 1989, when Yasin Malik kidnapped Mehbooba Mufti’s sister, an armed insurgency had begun. It took Pakistan by surprise and it was only later that the insurgents began to receive ‘moral support’ from our friendly neighbourhood Islamic Republic.

8. There Is No One Big Bang Solution to Nuclear Disarmament

Writing for the Hindustan Times, former foreign minister and prime minister of Sweden Carl Bildt argues that nuclear disarmament in the world is still a distant dream, due to a flawed nuclear prohibition treaty.

In recent years, progress toward nuclear disarmament has stalled. Russia is currently modernising its strategic nuclear forces, and has started to mention its nuclear capacity more often in public statements. That explains why efforts to reduce nuclear arsenals in Western Europe have come to a halt. The US, for its part, is also reviewing its options for modernising its nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, Pakistan has continued to produce the fissile materials used in nuclear weapons. Efforts to make West Asia a nuclear-free zone have gone nowhere, largely because of Israel. The international community could not agree on a way forward at NPT review conferences in 2005 and 2015. And, of course, North Korea’s nuclear ambitions have created another nuclear crisis in East Asia.

9. Gained in Translation: Spectator Turning into Onlooker

Writing in the column 'Gained in Translation' for The Indian Express, Kannada writer and theatre artist Akshara argues that there is a shift in theatre over the recent years where the spectator of a performance has transformed into a mere onlooker — with shrinking theatre audiences, lesser festivals and restricted reach.

I wish to propose other little indicators to further my argument. For instance, theatre performances are getting shorter and shorter to suit the attention span of this new breed of onlookers; the new norm being 60-75 minutes. Compare this to a Marathi Sangeet Natak which would go on for a minimum of 180 minutes with two intermissions or a Yakshagana performance that would last the night. See our literary functions. Their very nature has changed. The days when a critic or a literary connoisseur would speak of a text in depth are gone. They have now been replaced by the television model of three to four panelists speaking in spurts, controlled and directed by a moderator, who is constantly looking at his watch. Irrespective of how serious or academic the subject is, the longest a speaker gets is never more than 20 minutes.

From The Quint:

Supreme Court Asks the Wrong Questions in Kerala ‘Love Jihad’ Case
Turning BSF Into ‘Border Dance Force’ Demeans Sanctity of Uniform
The Gap Between Rhetoric and Reality in PM Modi’s I-Day Speech
Why We Should Watch Out Once Dipak Misra Assumes CJI’s Seat