Political Pot; Unticking Usury; Investing IITs
Opinion Watch
Political Pot
The Asian Age has said that Union Minister for Home Affairs Amit Shah has stirred the proverbial political pot by asserting that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government if elected in Telangana would abolish the existing Muslim reservation of four per cent.
The daily has shied away from taking any stand on the issue and in place has given an account of Shah’s poll pitch that there’s no Constitutional validity for Muslim quota, as reservation is meant only for historical backwardness for SCs, STs, and OBCs. It noted Shah’s assertion that OBC reservation was partly handed over to Muslims in Karnataka and Telangana (2004 by Congress government).
Muslims also enjoy reservation benefits under OBCs, and time has come for an objective performance audit of the quota system, which is simply a fraud committed by the politicians on the people to cover up their bankruptcies. Economic growth and certainly not reservation, which is milked by affluent, collectively lifts all.
Unticking Usury
The Hindu has welcomed the draft note of the Reserve Bank of India on loan accounts, particularly of individual borrowers. The daily has castigated usury practices of financial institutions by extracting pound of flesh from individual borrowers in the event of default by charging excessive interests and adding the penal amount in the principal amount.
Noting the banks are profiteering from imposing penal charges, the Chennai-based daily said that individual loan book has swelled to 30 per cent from 19 per cent in eight years, while corporate account has shrunk from 40 per cent to 24 per cent in the same period.
Ironically, the RBI had all along been sleeping while the banks were looting the individuals even while the businessmen ran away with taxpayers’ money. This regulatory lethargy to safeguard the interests of the common men is sinful.
Investing IITs
The Economic Times in its Editorial has lauded the move of the IIT Council to look into the issue of high drop outs, allegations of discrimination and harassment, and also cases of suicides in IITs. The daily said that there were 63 per cent dropouts in 2021 from reserved category in IITs.
The business daily has said that investing in IITs is akin to investing in future. It also argued that anomalies seen in IITs may also be attributable to the shortcomings in the schooling system, while also lending its weight to allow students to dropout and return back later.
It goes without saying that IITs and medical education are prisoners of coaching institutes, and the government is a mute spectator. By paying lip service to school education, the government, Centre and states, is creating a class divide, cutting across caste and community lines to turn students into commodities. Time is running out to stem the rot.
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