Abandoned citizens of cities; Imran Khan wounded; Remote voting
Opinion Watch
Abandoned citizens of cities
For politicians, citizens are fodders to run their machines of greed, while most of them are abundantly incompetent, who administer slipping pills to bureaucracy. People in Delhi have been put to slow death course, with poisoned air, and in other cities there are deaths due to potholes and manholes, and girls walk out of homes with fears if predator stalkers are not lurking in the vicinity.
The Times of India and The Pioneer have sought to weigh city governance in the backdrop of the municipal elections in Delhi and Mumbai. The BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party will bring in a lot of noise in the national capital, and Congress may play a side role. The BJP will be out to wrest the last bastion of the Shiv Sena by taking control of the Mumbai municipal corporation. Both the local bodies are richest in India, reflecting high per capital income of the people.
‘The Winter is coming’ quoted The Pioneer from ‘Game of Thrones’ in its Editorial to capture the gloom in the national capital, while slaying the bankruptcy of the political leaders for their compulsive habits of passing on the blames – Arvind Kejriwal to ‘national problem’ for air pollution, PM Narendra Modi to 70-year rule of Congress for backwardness, and Congress to British rule for poverty – for their abject failures to address challenges faced by the people. Yet, the people who give ‘gyan’ on all subjects in the world happily become fools – happy with a token of benefits — to vote for those who they would not like to invite to homes for tea.
The Times of India in its Editorial has called for reforms in the city administration, while underlining the conflict between the state governments and municipal bodies for creating multiplicity of challenges. The daily rightly stressed that the civic bodies need capacity building and that requires finances. But the municipal bodies already earn bagful of money, and if they can cut down corruption by even 50 per cent they could begin nursing ‘Cities of Joys’.
Imran Khan wounded
Imran Khan had pulled out of retirement to lead Pakistan to win the 1992 cricket World Cup. He has brought that fighting spirit to politics even while he lacked administrative skills. He has taken bullets to fight for another day a complex battle that has web of conspirators who operate from Rawalpindi, Beijing and Islamabad.
The Indian Express in its Editorial opined that the Pakistani military has now been cornered, which was last seen during the times of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, while the daily strays strangely to appeal that the Indian and Pakistani armies should maintain peace on the border in the backdrop of possible civil strife in Pakistan. The daily should know that peace on border is not the gift of the Pakistani army, but for the fact that the cost of disturbing the peace with outweigh their possible gains.
But Bhutto was assassinated, and Khan will have to work closely with his military general friends to deliver killer yorkers to send the likes of Qamar Javed Bajwa to the pavilion. But that is wishful thinking, for Bajwa’s army owns Pakistan, and the people in the Islamic nation may have to wage a freedom struggle movement.
Remote voting
The NRIs for years could not vote even while the Election Commission provides for postal ballot for various categories of voters in the country. The Hindu in its Editorial noted that there are 1.35 crore non-resident Indians across the world.
The EC allows registered NRI voters to vote in person, but the Chennai-based daily stated that in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections ‘25,606 among the miniscule 99,844 voted’. It called for an approval to the ECI plea to the government to permit NRIs to vote via postal ballots, similar to the system already used by service voters, i.e., the Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot System (ETPBS).
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Good coverage on citizen’s helpless conditions where political parties blaming each other insteading of addressing issues.
Remote voting through ETPBS is a good move and would connect with NRIs in a better way.