Editorial analysis: Women rights pushed 50-year back in US; ‘Today’s victors writing history’
In the daily editorial analysis, except for Sundays, The Raisina Hills critically reviews the comments of the top five English newspapers of India.
Roe v. Wade defined the individual liberty in the US for 50 years. In those many years, the US also rose to lord over the world in the political, strategic and economic spheres while also stepping to monitor liberties in developing countries.
On Friday, the Supreme Court of the US took the country half a century behind, as the conservative hegemony in the judgeship overturned the Roe v. Wade judgment, which had given the abortion rights. Half the states in the US will immediately ban the abortions.
The Times of India (ToI) in its lead Edit ‘American tragedy’ has sought to capture the pain and agonies of the progressive people who were joined by the US President Joe Biden, his predecessor Barack Obama in condemning the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade judgment.
The ToI expressed dismay that “women’s rights can disappear suddenly…overnight”, noting that the judgment is also a setback for Biden and endorsement for his predecessor Donald Trump whose judicial appointments are attributed to the overturning of the abortion rights.
The ToI brought perspective to the impact of the Roe v. Wade judgment, noting that in the 25-34 age group only 20 per cent were without a child 50 years ago as compared to 52 per cent today, only 11 per cent had a college degree against 41 per cent now, and only 17 per cent managerial jobs were in 16-44 age group then against 45 per cent today. The Edit rightly linked reproductive freedoms to economic empowerment.
Deccan Herald in its Edit ‘History, altered to regime’s tastes’ takes a critical views on the revision in the NCERT text books for classes 6-12, arguing that the chopped parts concerning the episodes of the Sultanate and the Mughal era were not to the taste of the ‘Sangh (RSS) Parivar’.
Mentioning changes in references to the 1975-77 Emergency, the 2002 Gujarat riots, DH claimed in its comments that the government doesn’t want the students to learn the ways the authoritarians work.
History has no mandate to please people, for it’s a chronicle of the past events for the posterity to be wiser in their conducts and set better example for the future generations.
The ongoing Shiv Sena rebellion saga still has a few chapters left. The Pioneer in its lead Edit ‘Down, but now out’, argued that it would be too early to say that the political career of the Thackeray family has ended, while sharply asking “…are the Shiv Sena legislators calves or cubs that could be forcibly taken away to a state hundreds of miles away”.
The Indian Express (IE) in its lead Edit ‘Let there be data’ has touched a pertinent issue that India lacks reliable data on most of the speheres to help formulate policy responses.
The IE, while stating that it’s welcome step that the Narendra Modi government would be launching a new household consumer expenditure survey from July that will cover 1.2 lakh rural and 84,000 urban households, reminded that the outcome of the last such exercise done in 2017-18 were not released due to unfavourable results.
The IE very rightly points out that there exists data vacuum in the country in contrast to 2011-12 when there were satisfactory amount of available numbers to collate the impact of the schemes. The data collection aversion indeed goes against the prudent policy formulations, for we don’t yet reliably known how many poor in the country have come above the poverty line, or why there should be a free foodgrains scheme for 80 crore population at the cost of the tax-payers’ money, which could have been directed for asset creation activities to help also create employments in place of running an uneconomical Food Corporation of India and subsidizing the rich farmers of Punjab and Haryana.
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