A 24×7 blur of headlines, breaking news and shouting matches, notifications and pop-ups — news, views and opinion have become an overwhelming flood that follows us all the time.
Plugged-In from ThePrint is a new feature that sifts through the mountain of content and explains the big headlines and commentary from across media — briefly, intelligently. A one-stop quick-read put together by the best minds in the business for the news junkie on the go. With links to the key pieces in case you want to read more.
So get Plugged-In every morning, Monday to Friday, for your daily capsule of the news and views that matter.
Front Page
Remember when the the I&B ministry tried to muzzle the free press? So that’s not happening now. One day after the Smriti Irani-led information and broadcasting ministry issued a directive that would have cost journalists their government accreditation if they “published or propagated fake news”, “a fuming Prime Minister told his office to direct the I&B ministry to withdraw the directive with immediate effect”, The Indian Express reports an official as saying.
That’s all it took really, and soon after, the I&B ministry withdrew its fake news directive.
Apparently, PM Modi had no idea that a fake-news crackdown was currently underway, as “sources said that the PMO was not consulted” and was unaware of Irani’s directive until it became public. He wasn’t pleased when he found out.
But the Editors Guild still isn’t happy. The Times of India and Hindustan Times, both of which very surprisingly did not feature the news on their front pages in yesterday’s print edition, reported Wednesday that the Editors Guild emphasised in a press release that the intervention did not go far enough to allay all their concerns.
Representative image of journalists protesting | Pixabay
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court isn’t budging on its SC/ST Act ruling. The SC stuck by its controversial decision Tuesday, saying it “was meant to protect innocents from arbitrary arrest and was not an affront to Dalit rights”, The Hindu reports in their lead story today. Justice A.K. Goel, who was part of the bench, called the judgment a “balance” between Dalit rights and the right of an innocent against arrest in a false case.
And India’s best higher education institution is…drum roll…The Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. The HRD ministry has released its National Institutional Ranking Framework, The Hindu reports on its front page. This is the third year the government has published its own rankings for institutes of higher education, and the top 10 are pretty much the same. Four IITs fill out the top five after IISc — Madras, Bombay, Delhi, and Kharagpur, in that order. JNU, despite being at the centre of many controversies, is number six.
There’s finally some good news for school students. The CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) has decided not to conduct a retest for the Class 10 mathematics board exam “after a random evaluation of answer sheets showed that the performance of students had not improved” even though there was proof of a paper leak, Hindustan Times reports.
5 religious leaders are now ministers of state in the BJP’s Madhya Pradesh govt. “On March 31, these five religious leaders were appointed to a committee set up for the conservation of the Narmada,” PTI reported. The Assembly elections are due this year, and the Opposition Congress has called this move a gimmick to score political points.
In Delhi, Swachh funds lying ‘idle’: “Not a single toilet was constructed in the national capital since the inception of the Swachh Bharat Mission two and a half years ago, with funds to the tune of Rs 40.31 crore for this purpose lying ‘idle’,” The Economic Times reports the CAG saying Tuesday. Hindustan Times adds that “the CAG has flagged a slew of irregularities in the financial administration of the national capital”, prompting the Delhi government to say Tuesday that a federal investigation would be sought in at least 50 instances of government resources being swindled.
70% of India’s younger millennials aren’t going to be able to vote next year, and it’s a problem. “With the Lok Sabha elections due next year, more than 2/3rds of the 4.85 crore population in the 18-19 age group are still not enrolled as voters,” The Indian Express reports, adding, “Only 29.49 per cent (1.43 crore) of the projected population of this age group was in the voter list as of 1 January 2018.”
Business Class
Taking the ICICI Bank-Videocon investigation forward, the income tax department is planning to approach taxmen in Mauritius to seek details of a firm that invested Rs 325 crore in NuPower Renewables, run by Deepak Kochhar, husband of ICICI CEO Chanda Kochhar, reports The Economic Times.
With an aim to tap new routes, Jet Airways has finalised an $8.7 billion deal to acquire 75 Boeing 737 MAX planes, taking the total number of 737 MAX planes on order to 150, reports Business Standard.
News it’s just kinda cool to know
Our trains might not be very fast, but at least our track renewal for 2017-18 was! “Indian Railways creates record; carries out highest-ever (annual) track renewal of 4,405 km (in 2017-18),” The Financial Express reports. The report stated that the previous best was 4,175 km of track renewal in the financial year 2004-05.
The income tax department doesn’t like its younger employees’ dressing style. In a circular dated 2 March, the income tax (I-T) department has warned employees against wearing casual outfits to work, saying such clothes “go against the modest atmosphere” of the office. “It added that any employee who failed to obey the order would be asked to leave the premises or change their clothes,” ThePrint reported Tuesday.
Show them the money! “Over 21,000 Air India employees are still awaiting March salary,” The Financial Express reports, but the reason for the delay is unknown. “Sources at the airline told PTI that March salaries remain unpaid till today and that employees have not received any communication from the management as to when the salaries would be disbursed.”
People are growing tired of trying to enter Trump’s America. “Indian IT companies have dramatically reduced their H-1B visa filings”, and foreign nationals are reluctant to join a US company “due to the Trump administration’s hardline anti-immigration stance”, The Economic Times reports a top Silicon Valley newspaper as saying.
Point of View
Prime Minister Modi ordered the I&B ministry Tuesday to “immediately withdraw” the fake-news order. The Indian Express writes in its editorial, “It (the I&B order) betrayed a mindset that seeks control through blacklisting, a primitive strategy presumed to have been left behind in the dilapidated ruins of the Emergency.”
The violence during the Bharat bandh called by Dalit organisations to protest the Supreme Court ruling on the SC/ST Act caused the death of around nine people and massive loss to property. The Times Of India, in its editorial, condemns the violence, writing, “The violence that accompanied the Bharat bandh called by Dalit organisations has no place in a democracy.”
The Supreme Court ruling on the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act has ignited a sharp discussion on the issue. Sudheendra Kulkarni, in his column today in The Indian Express, has defended the Supreme Court ruling, writing, “All that it has done is to ensure that the ‘teeth’ of the law do not bite innocent people and, no less important, the flaws in the law do not ‘perpetuate casteism’ in Indian society.”
Suddenly the fault lines in the banking sector have become too visible. Former NITI Aayog vice-chairperson Arvind Panagariya, in his column in The Times Of India, has argued that bank privatisation must be on the reform agenda of the government.
The growing inequality has become a common talk point these days. In his column in The Hindu, former RBI governor C. Rangarajan, with S Mahendra Dev, director and vice-chancellor, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, writes, “Measuring inequality is not the same as measuring changes in the level of poverty in India.”
Criticising historian Ramachandra Guha for comparing ‘trishul’ with ‘burkha’, the co-editor of SabrangIndia, Javed Anand, writes in his column in The Indian Express, “Liberal democrats owe it to themselves to choose their words and fora responsibly.”