Front Page
The front pages of newspapers today welcome the farmer protests, which the Centre battled to keep from Delhi before caving in late Tuesday night.
Four major English dailies carry the report with the same image of water cannons being fired across barricades: On one side stand farmers, united despite the crackdown, and on the other are police blocking their march across the UP-Delhi border.
Hindustan Times, the only one to have made the Kisan Kranti Padyatra a frontpage report Tuesday, dedicated a three-page spread to the confrontation, with headlines such as, “Expect more chaos as farmers stay put” and “Battleground Delhi border”. The Times of India decided to go with “KISAN JAM: DELHI BORDERS ON CHAOS”, perhaps in poor taste.
The standoff ended late Tuesday night after the farmers, who started the march from Haridwar, got the go-ahead to enter Delhi.
On a related note, The Indian Express published an op-ed titled “Get smarter on the farm” that suggests government expenditure on agricultural research and development will yield better results for farmers than input subsidies.
Ashok Gulati, Infosys chair professor for agriculture, and Prerna Terway, a research associate at Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, write, “Can India make similar moves (as China, among other countries) to give its farmers access to the best technologies in the world, which in turn can augment their productivity and incomes and give the nation long-term food security? Only time will tell whether India follows smart or dumb policies in its agri-space.”
Meanwhile the Swachh Bharat Convention received surprisingly little attention from the press, though PM Narendra Modi’s statements at the event have managed to gain some traction.
The Indian Express headlined its report on the comments thus, “Swachh Bharat is world’s biggest social movement, will help India meet UN goals: PM”. The Hindu reports, “More than 94% of rural households across the country have now been declared open defecation free in comparison to just 39% when the mission was launched four years ago.”
Hindustan Times carries on its editorial page a piece by banker Naina Lal Kidwai, who says “a programme like this cannot become a success with merely a push from the top, critical though it is”.
“With a multi-stakeholder approach, a specific thrust has been made to promote the entire value chain of sanitation based on our BUMT (build, use, maintain, and treat) model that addresses not just the building and usage of toilets, but also the treatment of the waste generated,” she adds.
Prime Time
Sexual harassment in Bollywood
Republic TV held a debate on whether sexual harassment was a part of Bollywood, in light of actor Tanushree Dutta’s recent allegations against Nana Patekar about his conduct on the sets of a film in 2008.
Film critic Mayank Shekhar said, “There has been a conspiracy of silence for sexual harassment in Bollywood as a workplace for years.”
“Women empowerment was not at this level 10 years back, today we can think of going to a police station easily,” said actor Sanjjana Galrani.
On his part, film producer Akshay Bardapukar offered an argument that has already been widely disproved: “What happened for 10 years? How can you malign someone like Nana Patekar?”
Dutta had gone public with the claims right after the episode as well.
Farmer protests to hurt Modi?
India Today asked if farmers’ anger will hurt Narendra Modi in 2019. Around 70,000 farmers participating in the Kisan Kranti Padyatra, organised by the Bhartiya Kisan Union, were lathi-charged at the Delhi-UP border by police who also deployed teargas shells and water cannons. While BJP spokesperson Gopal Agarwal tried to play down the issue, Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha commented that BJP is treating farmers as their step-child.
BJP spokesperson Gopal Agarwal, opposing the motion, said, “We have resolved the majority of the problems faced by farmers.”
His Congress counterpart Sanjay Jha retorted, “If the BJP is going to live in denial and treat farmers like their step-child, there are going to be serious consequences.”
News it’s just kinda cool to know
The African bush elephant’s vast network of deep wrinkles is intricately designed to help the animals keep their cool, fight off parasites and defend against sun damage, a Swiss study has found. Reuters reports.