Karnataka’s Yogi Model; Nature’s fury unravels; Arab Spring fades
Opinion Watch
The Yogi Model is Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s iron-fisted enforcement of law and order, with no strings attached.
If there is a snake threatening to bite the men, the serpentine threat will be eliminated.
The people in UP have richly rewarded Adityanath for his Yogi model, helping him trounce caste-based socialists convincingly in the recent Assembly elections in the State.
Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai now wants to ride the Yogi Model following the killing of a party worker allegedly by a religious fanatic.
His Minister CN Ashhwathnarayan has said that the State government will go beyond the Yogi Model, and would be ready for encounters too.
However, the Indian Express warns “this rash offer of adopting the Yogi model of government is fraught – politically, legally and economically – for Karnataka”.
The daily further adds that the “Yogi Model is an assertive majoritarianism and the weaponsisation of the law to target minority”.
IE admits Karnataka’s challenge from the “rising radicalization of the youth; organisations like the Popular Front of India, which wish to impose a militant and puritanical agenda among Muslims”.
The daily fails to analyse why Yogi Model is popular with people in Uttar Pradesh.
The people in Ghazipur and Varanasi are least bothered what legal niceties are done to by the Yogi Model, which has ended the terror of the likes of Mukhtar Ansari, and his copycats elsewhere.
Such criminal thugs ran their reigns in UP and Bihar for over three decades, because the judiciary and the police were found wanting by the people when they faced day-light dance of terror on the streets.
In this context, IE editorial is written by someone who hasn’t seen the reality of Ghazipur in UP and Siwan in Bihar.
Laws on papers are decorative and ornamental. They get life only when they are enforced.
Nature’s fury unravels
Social media viral videos have people in awe over furious floods ravaging the streets of the United Arab Emirates.
The progress of Monsoon has shown parched Central India, while flood like situations in Northeast and western parts of the country.
The Times of India in its Edit has called for the Central government to step in amid reports of the Delhi government reaching out to Punjab administration to support cash incentive to farmers for not burning stubbles that causes havoc of smog in the national capital region during October-December.
The daily takes note of the man-made threat to the northern plains, which are leading to the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas, while noting waste management problem in the Char Dham Yatra in Uttarakhand.
Deccan Herald has also in its Edit referred to the reports that the Centre has promised to look into the concerns of the Karnataka government over its draft notification issued early this month which set apart 59,940 sq km of the Western Ghats as eco-sensitive area. The ecological lifeline has its 20,668 sq km in Karnataka.
The spate of illegal mining and construction is stated to be playing havoc with the fragile ecology of the Western Ghat.
Neither the government nor the people are learning any lessons.
Arab Spring fades
In 2011, Tunisia in North Africa was a ray of hope, with peaceful transition to democracy.
In about a decade, that romance with democracy has faded, as an authoritarian ruler Kais Saied brings his ruthless power lord over the tiny nation.
The Hindu in its Edit takes a grim view of Tunisia’s brief experiment with post-revolutionary parliamentary democracy.
The daily commented “President Kais Saied, who sacked the elected government of Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and suspended Parliament last year, has been pushing for constitutional changes that would institutionalise his one-man rule”.
Tunisia appears to be another victim of the melting of the national economies in several countries after the Covid-19 pandemic.
“When Tunisia fell into political instability amid a worsening economic and COVID-triggered healthcare crisis, Mr. Saied found an opportunity to expand his authority,” noted TH.
Tunisia reminds people of the little girl who stood with a flower against a military tank in 2011, and its lapse into an authoritarian rule is most disappointing.
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