Editorial analysis: BJP eyes Telangana; Uneven spread of Monsoon; Direct US-Iran talks needed

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In ‘Editorial analysis’, The Raisina Hills critically reviews comments of India’s top five English newspapers – The Indian Express (IE), The Hindu (TH), The Times of India (ToI), The Pioneer (TP) and Deccan Herald (DH).

For three days, the Bharatiya Janata Party held its fort in Hyderabad, Telangana for its national executive meeting, a first in true sense since the 2017 Bhubaneswar meet, as part of party’s southern electoral push.

Incumbent governments in Telangana and Tamil Nadu are most hostile to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the BJP hopes to wrest power in Hyderabad next year.

IE and its southern sibling TNIE, ToI and TP have commented on the BJP’s Telangana meet.

While IE’s Edit is just a news summary, lacking in substance, ToI claims that the BJP will have its match in Telangana as the party had seen in West Bengal. TP noted that the BJP while helmed by Modi and Amit Shah has excised complacency from its ranks, reminding that the saffron outfit would still toil hard when it had just two Lok Sabha MPs in 1980s.

For our immediate concern, ToI Edit is worth mentioning here, as the daily lists out strength of K Chandrashekhar Rao, Chief Minister of Telangana. He is strong on delivery of welfare schemes, rallying anger in the state against the BJP, with alleged non-procurement of parboiled rice being an instance.

For the BJP, the daily argues that like West Bengal the party has space of Opposition vacuum to fill, while the party can work on its OBC politics and make dynastic pitch.

Both IE and ToI failed to go beyond the obvious, not digging deep in the state politics, besides missing out on small size significance of the Telangana Assembly. They failed to mention that while the BJP has some strength in the districts adjoining Maharashtra and Secunderabad to bat in the next year’s polls, the saffron outfit has miles to cover in the southern parts of the state. Also, the BJP’s claims of a pro-poor governance of the Modi government has an equal match in KCR, as he’s equally populist with similar programmes.

TP WHILE mapping the progress of the Monsoon has quoted a scientific study of a multi-university collaboration to lament that there is a lack of data in the public domain from the low and middle income countries, including India and South Africa, to help researchers study the linkages between the climate change and the human actions.

The daily argued that while the Monsoon has progressed well a large part of the country, including Bihar, Jharkhand, North-western states, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are without sufficient rains.

IE has also commented on the progress of Monsoon, while noting that the good aspect is that the water levels in major reservoirs are 18.2 per cent higher than their last 10 years’ average. That’s true, but the daily fails to explain why women in a number of districts in Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh had to walk long to fetch drinking waters if reservoirs have any significance for the people.

THE US President Joe Biden had promised to initiate talks with Iran during his election campaign, and TH has reminded that there’s no breakthrough yet. The sticking point, argued TH, is the refusal of the US to lift the terrorist designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a key player in Iran power game.

The 2015 agreement between the two countries, the daily noted was the result of the painstaking efforts of the Barack Obama and Rouhnai administrations, cut off Iran’s bid to acquire nuclear capabilities, with Donald Trump later playing the spoiler.

Biden will be visiting West Asia later this month, and indeed he will have to rise above the Israeli lobbyists, who are on the overdrive to sabotage mainstreaming of Iran, which is so crucial when the ongoing Russia-Ukraine ware has taken the world into the arms of inflation.