Sunday Column - Select articles of the week

Team OpEd is introducing another new feature starting this Sunday, where we share the most interesting and piquant articles that were published in the past one week. These articles may or may not have much relevance to the current affairs, but thought provoking never the less. Hope you will find them interesting to read!

Here are the 'select few' articles of the week:

• "In the promiscuous world of international relations, elements of a strategic partnership"   - this article explores India's top 6 strategic allies and tries to compare them on par by rating them on a different parameters.
• "Anniversary of shame" - this article exposes truth about Guantánamo Bay and actual conviction rate of the people held at this detention centre.
• " 'Breaking the Silence' on a massacre" - this article throws light on Indonesia's biggest yet suppressed genocide that took 0.5 million lives during 1965 time line
• "Because Andaman's forests are Jarawa infested ..." - This article focuses on the supreme court order violation in the island state for close to a decade while also factoring in the ethical issue at stake.
• "It's boom time for people smugglers" - this article provides us with an account of the emerging Afghan emigration problem and the reason behind it.

• "Brick In The Wall" - India has performed abysmally in the recent examinations and reports prepared nationally and internationally.  Its horrific and pathetic condition can be rectified - but only by introducing quality into the primary and secondary education system.
• "Mitigate Climate Change" - The Economic Survey will now include a chapter on financing measures to mitigate climate change. The article gives the relationship between the two.

• "India misses its sputnik moment" - In this article, a small fact is shown in the right strategic sense. The sputnik success by USSR ushered in an era of education reform and strategic investment in research in the US. How did India lose its sputnik moment?
• Women clothes: A victim or victimised? - this article tries to reason out to the readers whether or not women clothes can be held guilty.

Sunday column - The week that was

Team OpEd is introducing a new feature starting this Sunday, that aims to put forth the news, analysis and opinions that were essential, and will continue to do so, in the hope that you, the reader, will have an overview, or sum-up if you like, of all essential news that transpired in the past one week. We, as a team, are committed towards keeping readers, and ourselves, abreast with the current-affairs in our country and elsewhere, and hope the Sunday Weekly column will further our cause. 

In the past week,

General V. K.Singh challenged the government by dragging it to the Supreme Court. While it was interesting to note if the government, as it does more often than not, would adopt the method of appeasement to settle the issue, it sprung up a surprise by toughening its stand, and refusing to deal in niceties. The 'age row' can most certainly pave a way ahead by ensuring a more robust framework in the future towards military-civil relationships.

The basis for collecting political brownie points for the upcoming U. P. Elections was stunning. On the one hand, the Congress government dealt in severe obscurantism and obfuscation. They never for once took a stand on the matter and, much to everyone's expectation, succumbed to the small group of fanatics who, can easily be said, held hostage an entire nation that likes to boast of a liberal tradition. However, the more interesting development came through from S. P. which, apparently without a knowledge of the Indian constitution, declared a provision of 19% reservation. The aspect of that kinds of reservation they didn't expect was that an amendment will have to be passed in order to provide 19% reservation! To add to all the absurd political drama, BJP minister Yashwant Sinha claims "BJP is 70% pure." The basis for the number is as muddled as his belief that purity is the only answer to winning elections.

After having put FDI-in-retail under hibernation, the move to liberalise FDI in domestic airlines is welcome. While most argue that it stems from the pathetic fiscal status of many an airlines in our country, it is still to be seen whether investors will garner sufficient confidence to invest in the domestic airline market.

China's Supreme Councillor and special representative Dai Bingguo made a recent visit to India in order to pursue the 15th round of border talks. The most heartening aspect to see during the talks was a probable shift in China's attitude towards creating peace and stability along the borders separating the Asian neighbours. With fears looming large over the weakening dollar, which China thinks might be a deliberate action by the U.S. to prevent China's rise, it thinks a more fruitful option would be to mend relations with India and find common ground.

The Gujarat High Court upheld the Governor's appointment of a Lokayukta; a position that has remained headless since 2003. Justice V. M. Sahai ruled in favour of the governor because, according to her, the chief minister and the council of ministers have put democracy at stake by obstructing the appointment of the Lokayukta. The Gujarat government has moved the Supreme Court against the judgement.

The two draft laws, SOPA and PIPA, emerged a tremendous outcry against their acceptance from major global Internet companies like Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, Google, so on and so forth. The laws were looked upon as a means to gag the free and open Internet, and to jeopardise on the freedom to innovate and use Internet as a way of business and commerce, in effect throttling the freedom of speech.

The U. S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, made a pitch for an international code of conduct for all space-related activities. The move will be welcomed by many since there are copious dangers that threaten to harm satellite-based communication which forms the basis of satellite imagery, navigation, media, weather forecasting, remote-sensing, space observation, and many such activities of national and international importance. It comes at a juncture where we don't yet have any legal mechanism to address issues like space-debris and the use of Earth-based weapons, which it hopes to arrest through international obligation.

The finance ministry decided to include an entire chapter on financing measures to mitigate climate change in the next annual Economic Survey. Although filled with challenges, the move, if implemented, can work wonders for mitigating climate change as there exists a direct relationship between the economy and climate change. It holds true more so for India, where such activities like Agriculture are highly dependent on the climate.