Every Monday to Saturday, The Dispatch brings to you a selection of Editorials from leading newspapers across the country.
Tall claims
“Ramdev’s so-called cure for COVID flouts medical and business due process, while discrediting Ayurveda,” read the editorial of The Indian Express. It further reads, “With the country’s COVID graph surging past the 4.5 lakh mark and nearly 15,000 people succumbing to the disease, any claim of a “100 per cent cure” is bound to generate hope. But in such difficult times, it’s also important to regulate and guard against the propagation of a false sense of security. The Ministry of AYUSH has, therefore, done well to ask Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved to stop advertising that it has found a cure for the contagion, until it examines the matter. As a report in this paper has brought to light, the company did not follow due processes before launching the “Corona Kit”, which it advertised as a panacea for COVID-19. The Uttarakhand government has said its licensing authority did not grant approval to the Haridwar-based Divya Pharmacy, Patanjali’s medicine unit, to manufacture the “Corona Kit”. And, the Rajasthan government has disclaimed any knowledge of clinical trials of the drug at the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Research in Jaipur. The litany of Patanjali’s unethical practices doesn’t end here. When mildly symptomatic patients developed fever during the trials, they were administered allopathic medicines,” read the full editorial here.
Djokovic and Covid
“Sport and its prima donnas are having an especially hard time resting it out in the shadows,” read the editorial of The Indian Express. It further reads,” World No 1 tennis player Novak Djokovic will have a fortnight of isolation to mull over the havoc that can be wreaked on the human body should a virus latch onto its respiratory airways. It was Djokovic’s casualness that saw him make light of a global pandemic, resulting in four top players, his wife Jelena and some others, test positive for the virus. But this isn’t just about Djokovic inviting top tennis players for an exhibition tournament and thumbing his nose at social-distancing protocols. Sport and its prima donnas have been finding it difficult to rest it out in the shadows. All across the world, the calls for sport to resume, from business interests, grows because a bunch of supremely fit superstars cannot fathom that the human body can cave under an infection, at a mere sneeze or a cough. Sequestered in their bubbles where millions adore them for feats their bodies can perform, sportspersons refuse to acknowledge that something that’s not painted in glory, like war, can halt their athletic exuberance. So, golf goes on in America before a bunch is felled by COVID-19. And football is pulling out all stops across Europe to complete their big dollar leagues,” read the full editorial here.
Fortify MSP regime
“Centre should dispel fears about tried-and-tested system,” read the editorial of The Tribune. It further reads,” One of the few bright spots amid the pandemic and the prolonged lockdown has been the performance of the agricultural sector. Despite the restrictions imposed in mandis to contain the spread of Covid-19, wheat procurement has reached an all-time record of over 385 lakh tonnes in the ongoing marketing year. The Finance Ministry is hopeful that agriculture, for long the bedrock of Indian economy, would help in expediting a turnaround. With the avowed aim of reforming the farm sector, the Centre recently passed the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Ordinance; the Farmers’ (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance; and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Ordinance. These ordinances have received the thumbs down from the Congress and other Opposition parties, which fear that the move is a step towards doing away with the MSP (minimum support price) regime. Even the Shiromani Akali Dal, a BJP ally, has stopped short of wholeheartedly backing the proposed changes,” read the full editorial here.
Go Fair and Unlovely Go
“Not only has the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the US found support in several other countries including India, it has also sparked conversations about racism in several other contexts,” read the editorial of The Times of India. It further reads, ” How racism in India compares to racism in the US is of course a matter of endless debate. But certain behaviors here have certainly come into international limelight as quite questionable.One of these is the obsession with complexion and the social hierarchies coded therein. Megastar Shah Rukh Khan’s more than a decade old endorsement of men’s skin-lightening cream Fair and Handsome has come into focus, as an example of influential campaigns that entrench discrimination base on skin colour. Against this backdrop it is both notable and welcome that Hindustan Unilever (HUL) has decided to drop the word ‘fair’ from its four decade old skincare brand ‘Fair and Lovely’, whose sales comprise 40% of the sales in the face care category in India,” read the full editorial here
Bridged: Merit and reservation
“Debates around positive discrimination in India haven’t been simple,” read the editorial of The Telegraph. It further reads, “positive discrimination on the basis of historical injustice cannot be simple. In India, the system of reservations is a thorny issue, subject not just to legal scrutiny, but also — and always — to political interests. The dust it raises often obscures its spirit — a drive towards educational and social equality — while its technical aspects are magnified into immovable barriers. A recent example was the ruling of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. The state government had appointed a woman from other backward classes as assistant professor in the general, unreserved category because she had topped the list of all candidates who had applied under and outside of the quota system in the women teachers’ segment. Responding to a petition against this, the high court had quashed the list of selected candidates, ruling that no migration of reserved category to unreserved could be permitted in a situation of ‘compartmentalized’ reservations even if a candidate had not used the benefits of quota to gain eligibility — lower cut-off marks or higher age limit, or whatever was applicable in this case — and her selection was based purely on merit,” read the full editorial here.
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