The Hindu Editorial Analysis In English | Free PDF Download

Green shoots of revival

On the positive side, the fact that the summit could be held was a success in itself.
Need of the hour: firm institutional foundation.
Without strengthening itself financially it cannot shed the unwanted tag of being a mere talk shop.
Thailand has proposed 5 pillars 1. Connectivity 2. Trade and investment 3. People-to-people contacts 4. Security 5. Science and technology • Drafting a charter for BIMSTEC
Permanent Working Committee
More financial and human resources for Secretariat
BIMSTEC Development Fund
Negatives: It takes ages for the group to decide on something.
Plans to revitalise the Business Forum and the Economic Forum should be welcome if they help in fully engaging business and industry.
Bay of Bengal Region is now widely viewed as a common space for security, connectivity and development.
Now is the time not just to deliberate, but also to deliver Beyond uniformity
Law Commission: equality within the law governing each community
Adoption of certain universal principles that would address gender bias and other forms of existing discrimination. ➢Marriage ➢Divorce ➢Succession and adoption in all religions
Decriminalising adultery and making it a common ground for divorce
Abolition of the 30-day notice period for civil marriages
Mere existence of difference does not imply discrimination, but is indicative of a robust democracy When the levee breaks
Apart from Kerala other parts of the world too faced extreme events. ➢dry conditions and fire, ➢cyclones, ➢very heavy downpours in short periods of time leading to flooding, ➢failure of seasonal rains leading to droughts
Each of these events interacts with local conditions and activities to manifest a separate pattern of destruction.
MOST IMP POINT:

The meteorological events may trigger the natural disaster, but they do not necessarily cause it.

– • Residents and decision makers look for immediate measures to contain or prevent similar events in future: short term solutions A. 2010 Pakistan floods: breach of the Tori Bund B. 2008 floods in Bihar & Nepal: Kosi temporarily changed its flow path
These levees were built in response to earlier floods.
Short-term solutions demonstrate that some action is being taken, and they also match the political cycle of four to five years, but they do not generally take local ecology and the landscape into consideration and do not address long-term changes taking place as a result of climate change.
Vector-borne diseases: spraying with insecticides, a short-term measure, results in boosting resistance of the pest to the chemical spray. Still too many children out of school
The official numbers of out-of-school children in India are either out of date or contradictory.
National Sample Survey (NSS) carried out in 2014 4.5 crore in the country, which is 16.1% of the children in this 6-14 age group.
It is a matter of serious concern that nearly 10 years after the enactment of the RTE Act, and 16 years after the right to education was elevated to a fundamental right, such a large number of children are out of school.
The data show that out-of-school children came mostly from the rural areas, and a high proportion of them are SCs, STs, Muslims and from other economically backward communities.
99.34% of the families from which out-of-school children came were either landless or marginal.
RTE Act: availability of a school at a distance of 1 km from the residence of the child at the primary level and 3 km at the upper primary level.
If all the infrastructure facilities prescribed in the Act had been put in place during the period of implementation, another reason for dropout (environment not friendly) would have disappeared. •

Provide secure modes of subsidised travel to schools, particularly for girls.

Financial support to poor parents, adequate to enable them to send their children to school.
There is incontrovertible evidence of a positive correlation between economic incentives and a lower drop-out.
Disagreeing with each other is a fundamental human trait.
A family which learns to deal with dissent rather than authoritatively dismissing it is a more harmonious family.
Learning to live with others, the first requisite for a social existence, is about learning how to live with them when they disagree with us.
Dissent, paradoxically, is the glue which makes a decent society possible.
A mature society is one which has the capacity to manage dissent since members of a society will always disagree with each other on something or the other

. • New knowledge and new ways of understanding the world, for good or bad, has always been part of every society.

Science, in its broadest meaning, is not possible without dissent since it is by finding flaws with the views of others that new science is created. No two philosophers agree on one point, and no two social scientists are in perfect harmony with each other’s thoughts.
Buddha and Mahavira were dissenters first and philosophers next.
Dissent is not just about criticism, it is also about showing new perspectives.
Any society which eradicates dissent has only succeeded in eradicating itself.
Gandhi and Ambedkar were dissenters.
Thus, when we hear the voices of dissent from the oppressed and the marginalised, it is ethically incumbent upon those who are better off than them to give them greater space and greater freedom to dissent.
– Important News Court questions press meet by police on activists’ arrests
A division bench of Justices S.S. Shinde and Mridula Bhatkar raised questions about Maharashtra Additional Director General (Law and Order) Param Bir Singh reading out documents and letters, which could be used as evidence, at the August 31 press conference. Myanmar court jails reporters for 7 years
UN, EU call for reporters’ release Mallya gets last chance to reply
The Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court on Monday gave one last chance to Vijay Mallya to file his reply to the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) application seeking to declare him a fugitive economic offender.
The ED had filed an application at the PMLA court on June 22 to declare Mr. Mallya a fugitive economic offender and sought permission to confiscate all his properties, estimated to be worth around ₹12,500 crores. Talks on for logistics deal with Russia
India signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Understanding (LEMOA), with the U.S. in August 2016 after a decade of negotiations. India, Cyprus vow to curb money laundering
India and Cyprus on Monday signed two agreements on combating money laundering and cooperation in the field of environment as President Ram Nath Kovind met his Cypriot counterpart Nicos Anastasiades and held wide-ranging talks here.
Mr. Kovind is in Cyprus on the first leg of his three-nation visit to Europe to continue India’s high-level engagements with European countries.
India was the fastest growing major economy in the world today with a growth rate of 8.2% last quarter, Mr. Kovind said.
“In this context and given Cyprus’ niche expertise in financial services and investment banking, both of us agreed that there was much scope to deepen our investment partnership,” he said in a statement.
This agreement would further strengthen the institutional framework to facilitate investment cross-flows.
“India and Cyprus signed two MoUs [memoranda of understanding] today on combating money laundering and cooperation in the field of environment in the presence of Presidents of both countries.” Xi offers $60 bn aid to Africa
Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC)
Financial neglect A massive fire raced through Brazil’s 200-year-old National Museum in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, probably destroying its collection of more than 20 million items, ranging from archaeological finds to historical memorabilia. Financial News