NC Suggestions: The Best Opinion Pieces Of The Day

• Come ye all to our collective Fall

Sankarshan Thakur asks in his column for The Telegraph that ever been to Rupaiyah Falls? No? Are you quite sure? Check again. Look down, look hard, and please take precautions against vertigo, if you have the tendency. Conditions apply to looking down, it could be injurious to your health. To the health of all others.

The GPS location ping of a billion and many many many more is stuck at the same point: Rupaiyah Falls. It cannot be said this is a good or recommended location, but some things can’t be helped. Like someone spewing lies all the time, day in and day out, day after day after day. Can’t be helped. Like someone talking like they never had the benefit of education. Can’t be helped.

Which Chaiwala or Chowkidar or Pradhan Sewak could afford changing clothes every time they appeared another time in public? Which Chaiwala or Chowkidar or Pradhan Sewak could imagine ordering a pinstriped suit monogrammed with their name? And then proceed to preen in it? Just can’t be helped. Which Chowkidar deserts station and loafs about the world? What Sewak can spend many hundreds of thousands getting himself shot while he does a wellness walk around his fairy garden and then falls convex upon a boulder? But it can’t be helped.

A while ago parts of Rupaiyah Falls were suddenly ordered frozen, and we all know what happened: parts of all of us froze. Then, slowly, it began to flow again, in different sizes and colours of runnels, but it was never quite the same again. And since then, it has been falling and falling and those that railed and screamed about Rupaiyah Falls being such a treacherous and precipitous fall are saying nothing no more because they are part of why it is falling. Can’t be helped.

• Beyond the borders: Separated by history, joined by horoscopes 

The triumph and tragedies of the families of several Indian and Pakistani politicians are strangely similar, writes Vinod Sharma for Hindustan Times today. He says take a look at fates that befell Nawaz Sharif and Lalu Yadav. Convicted of graft, the patriarchs who once ruled the universe they surveyed, have been eliminated from electoral politics; flames that gutted their careers leaping closer to their political heirs and successors.

Almost everyone in Sharif’s immediate family, including his sons, Hassan and Hussain, are under a cloud. His daughter, Mariam, and her husband are co-convicts, in fact, in the case relating to certain properties in London for which they have been sentenced to varying jail terms. The matching example in Lalu’s larger family could be the money laundering cases against Misa Bharti and her spouse.

On either side of the border, detractors of these fourth-generation politicians are using innuendoes and insinuations to dent their charisma. They paint them as dynasts devoid of political acumen.

In the free-for-all that drives sub-continental politics, there’s little or no empathy for their traumatised childhoods, the tragedies they suffered in their growing years. Their rivals deride and deconstruct them on a daily basis, knowing well that they’re the sheet anchors without whom their parties would splinter and sink.

• India’s internet shutdown rules are encouraging online censorship

Sai Vinod writes in his column for Scroll.in that the internet blackout in parts of Tamil Nadu following the death of 13 people in police firing in Thoothukudi in May is a perfect illustration of the inadequacy of India’s Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services (Public Emergency or Public Safety) Rules, 2017, to prevent online censorship.

After the May 22 police firing and deaths, in a two-page order marked “Top Secret”, the state government compelled telecom service providers to cut off the internet for five days in Thoothukudi and adjoining districts to prevent what it termed “proactive messages” and “rumours with half-truth” from spreading through social media. But the timing, design and execution of the order indicate that rather than addressing a public emergency, it was a concerted attempt to prevent the free flow of information.

The extent of the suspension, however, was problematic. Internet was also suspended in the neighbouring districts of Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari, which is puzzling as these areas had no connection to the agitations in Thoothukudi. It is also unclear what the government sought to achieve by suspending the internet when Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure had already been imposed in the area. This bans the assembly of more than five people in an area, ostensibly to maintain law and order.
In cases of internet shutdowns, the collateral damage to the economy and essential services is quite substantial. A recent report by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations estimated an “hourly loss for India over the various shutdowns during 2012-2017 is $186,332.” But one cannot put a figure on personal distress and opportunity cost to many.

• MSP hike is an election bonanza. It shows that Modi & BJP are nervous for 2019

Critically analysing Modi government’s decision to increase MSP, Kumar Ketkar writes in his column for The Print that soon after the incumbent NDA lost to the Sonia Gandhi-led UPA in 2004, BJP leader Pramod Mahajan was expressing his anguish to me. He said: “Even our party has this misconception that the electorate can be persuaded to vote for the ruling party if it showers money and material bonanzas on people a few months before the elections.”

The late Mahajan’s words came back to me a few days ago when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a jumbo hike in the minimum support price for the paddy crop, and assured the farmers again that their income would be doubled by 2022. Most economists and commentators, including the redoubtable Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar, have questioned not only the implementability of such programmes, but also their economics. Some have even said that he is following the ‘socialistic’ approach, even while talking the language of neo-liberals.

BJP strategists are divided on whether to highlight palliative issues like MSP, insurance, cash transfer, or the communal divide, which has been quite a successful electoral strategy in northern India. That is what has made 2019 such an uncertain election, sending waves of panic through the BJP, while also confusing the opposition parties.

• Su-raj (good governance) and Ms Swaraj

In his column for The Indian Express, P Chidambaram writes that there are two kinds of mobs — one, on the ground, and the other, in the virtual world. Both share the same characteristics. The members of the crowd take cover under anonymity. They pretend to be offended or injured. They singularly lack the courage to own their actions or words. They believe they are citizens of the Republic of Impunity.

In the virtual world, the mob is not very different. They have a name: trolls. They are intolerant, rude, coarse, vulgar and violent. Their weapons are hate speech and fake news. They may not kill, but I suspect that many of them, if he or she was part of a violent mob in the real world, would not hesitate to do so.

One such mob launched into Ms Sushma Swaraj, the Minister of External Affairs, recently. Ms Swaraj decided to play victim. She ‘liked’ some tweets, re-tweeted them, and asked for a vote on how many people supported the trolls. To her shock, I suppose, though 57 per cent sympathised with her, 43 per cent supported the trolls! The point of the story is that, during the entire unsavoury controversy, not one fellow minister or party functionary made a statement condemning the trolls!

Trolls and the abuse of social media mark a new low in the breakdown of civil society, law and order, and the justice-delivery system. Action, not words, is required to put down this verbal violence, especially death or rape threats. Unfortunately, there is no action; there are not even words, said promptly and sincerely, by those holding high constitutional offices.