31st May'18 - The Hindu Editorial Complete Analysis

Table of Contents

What is the problem with Air India?

 Due to a lack of buyer interest
 The airline had a debt burden of around ₹4•,781 crore as of March 2017,
 Private airlines such as IndiGo and Jet Airways did evince some enthusiasm but have since opted out of the race.
 Central government to extend the deadline for submitting a bid.
 The Centre had earlier approved the sale of a 76% stake in Air India.
 Which poses a huge financial risk to a buyer.
 A major reason behind its huge losses is the cost of paying interest on its massive debt.
 If no buyer turns up, the government could be forced to either continue running Air India using taxpayer money or just shut it down and sell off its assets

Paper chase

 The Election Commission must review the use of paper trail machines in the polling process
 High incidence of glitches in the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines in Mo
nday‟s by-elections should be a major cause of concern for the Election Commission of India.
 Fresh polling had to be ordered in dozens of booths in Kairana and Bhandara-Gondiya in
Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, respectively, as a consequence.
 Ever since the implementation of the VVPAT system last year, machine malfunction and
subsequent delays in polling have been recurring issues.
 Close to 4.2% of the VVPAT machines deployed in the Karnataka Assembly elections
this month developed glitches during the testing as well as polling processes.
 The overall fault rate was as high as 11.6% in the by-elections held in four parliamentary and
nine Assembly constituencies on Monday.
 ECI has suggested that these machines were more prone to malfunctioning due to their
sensitivity to extreme weather conditions and relative inexperience of polling officers handli
ng them, compared to the ballot and control units for the electronic voting machines (EVMs)
 General election due next year in the hot summer months.

Charting its own path

 20th anniversary of the Pokhran nuclear tests
 India occupies a special position as a responsible state with advanced nuclear
technology, to quote from the 2005 Joint Statement announcing the India-U.S.
nuclear deal.
 Even if India today is not quite at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)-
sanctioned top table of the original five nuclear weapons states
(NWS), it is not in the company either of the other two self-declared
nuclear weapons powers, Pakistan and North Korea.
 This status is a product and a reflection of steady attempt by New Delhi to shift
attention away from its nuclear weapons and towards its civil nuclear technology.
 India could not act like just another nuclear weapons power.
 By the time the NPT was negotiated, the world had witnessed 925 tests by
the NWS, including 96 by the U.S. in 1962 alone.

Continue

 Kargil and the 2001/2002 deployment and By the Mumbai attacks in 2008.
 India had shifted attention away from weapons to the civil nuclear side of things
 India‟s choosing to clear its path to that seat using civil nuclear rather than weapons
development is a purely pragmatic decision.
 Deciding to test in May 1998 at Pokhran was probably the last truly sovereign decision
 This may explain why May 11 is now National Technology Day and a rising India
is protecting its economy by shifting attention away from the Bomb.

Prelims Focus Facts-News Analysis

 Page-1- After 16 days of hikes, fuel prices cut — by 1 paisa

Prelims Focus Facts-News Analysis

 Page-1- ICICI Bank to inquire into allegations against Kochhar
 Panel to probe MD on whistle-blower plaint on breach of bank‟s code of conduct

Prelims Focus Facts-News Analysis

 Page-1- School started by Tilak goes co-ed once more
 Established 138 years ago in Pune, New English School has been a boys-only institution since
1936
 Founded in 1880 by educationists and revolutionaries Vishnu Krushna Chiplunkar, Bal
Gangadhar „Lokmanya‟ Tilak and Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, the school was co-educational until 1936.

Prelims Focus Facts-News Analysis

 34 leopards die each year in Rajasthan, says wildlife report
 The population of the big cat faces several serious challenges in the State, prominent among them man-animal conflict.

Prelims Focus Facts-News Analysis

 Normal monsoon likely, except in east, northeast
 All of India is likely to receive a “normal monsoon”, except the east and northeast
of the country, which are likely to witness “below normal” rainfall, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Wednesday.