Newspaper Must Read Articles of The Day – 11 August 2015

Front Page/National

• Not for moral policing, says Centre: After blocking over 850 porn websites, the Union government has told the Supreme Court it was not a “totalitarian state” bent on conducting moral policing, and that it does not want to intrude into the private spaces and bedrooms of citizens. But child pornography sites will continue to be banned.

• Indian Mujahideen eyes Kerala youth: The Centre has alerted Kerala that a dormant module of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) having links with the Islamic State (IS) militia may be planning to recruit fighters for strife-torn Syria and Iraq. The significant number of Malayali youths employed in the Middle East is potentially a huge opportunity for the IS to spread roots into India.

• Important visit to a long time ally: The announcement of the Prime Minister’s visit to the United Arab Emirates is being explained as a visit to one of India’s long-term allies, and is particularly important when juxtaposed with the other visits that the Prime Minister may undertake later, most notably to Israel.

• Individuals to come under terror ban list: The government is all set to amend the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) to bring in a clause that would pave the way to designate not just organisations but also individuals under the “banned list of entities.” (Presently, there is no provision for an individual, suspected of having terror links making it to the list of terrorist entities banned, maintained centrally by the Ministry of Home Affairs).

• Job creation, the greatest challenge facing India: The Minister of State for Finance has said that the three major challenges India is facing have to do with job creation, climate change, and the lack of innovation and scalability.

Opinion/Editorial

• Stifling democratic debate: The show cause notices issued to three television channels by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for their coverage of the Yakub Memon issue and events in the run-up to his execution, are unwarranted and have little basis in law. A perusal of the content under question shows only critical discussion by individuals of the judgment dismissing the mercy petition. There was nothing there amounting to defamation or contempt of court, nor was any aspersion cast on the office of the President beyond mere criticism of the decision to reject the mercy petition, as has been alleged.

• Turkey’s complicated war: An explanation of why Turkey has only recently joined the war against the Islamic State.

• A blueprint for higher education: The problems that confront education today are low rates of enrolment, unequal access, poor quality of infrastructure and lack of relevance. The goals remain the same – expansion with inclusion and ensuring quality and relevant education. In this article, the writer gives his views on some of these issues and offers suggestions on how to counter them. Must-read.

• Melting Antarctic ice and rising sea levels: Scientists suggest that the time period over which ice melting could double could be just ten years, which means that rise of sea levels is no longer a linear phenomenon.  Predicting how high sea levels will rise is important since many large and densely populated cities of the world are located along coasts and the implications of even a one metre rise could be devastating.

• Sensitive selling or clever spin: Looking at new commercials in television, we should really understand whether the latest ads coming in are actually intended to counter sexual stereotypes, or whether they intend to take advantage of one half of the population, namely the women, and exploit new opportunities in a swiftly urbanising society?

• Wife, mother, lawyer, priest: It is important to note that Hinduism by itself does not ban the practice of women becoming priests; there is no scripture that disallows it. In fact, in ancient Vedic times, women have been known to enjoy equal freedom in the pursuit of knowledge as men did: they also studied the Vedas. So, if the social justice argument to allow non-Brahmins as priests has gathered steam, why are we silent when it comes to women in the same role?