The Latest: Top stories of the day
- President's rule lifted from Uttarakhand, the Congress's Harish Rawat is to be chief minister again, says he will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and seek the Centre's cooperation.
- The standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife has given the go-ahead for Phase-I of the Ken-Betwa river-linking project, even though the expert committee set up by the board is yet to submit its report.
- The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority has slashed the prices of 54 drugs, including those used for cancer and heart disorders, by up to 55%.
- Triple bombings by the Islamic State kill at least 94 in Baghdad.
The Big Story: When in drought
The Supreme Court has cleared up a few doubts. In the times of drought, the court ruled on Wednesday, the "buck will eventually stop with the government of India". It ticked off the Centre for not planning in advance to deal with drought, even 10 years after the Disaster Management Act came into force. It remarked that Delhi could not shirk responsibility by claiming it was up to the states to declare drought and it asserted the need to strike balance between federalism and constitutional duty. The court's words are timely because the droughtlands are littered with traces of a system that is broken.
Bundelkhand bears testimony to the failure of state governments to plan for and deal with water scarcity and crop failure. A report by Swaraj Abhiyan shows that 75% of drought-hit villages in the region have seen no state action for three months, though marginalised sections face famine-like conditions and cattle die in large numbers. State governments continue to be caught unawares by a natural disaster that seems to have become an annual phenomenon; long-term projects to deal with scarcity are thin on the ground and people who cannot produce ration cards slip through the cracks of Uttar Pradesh's food distribution scheme. And this is in states that have been forced to declare drought. In places like Gujarat, Bihar and Haryana, governments wished away the problem by simply declining to do so. After being issued a notice by the Supreme Court, Gujarat acknowledged "semi-scarcity" in 994 villages.
The Centre has, by all accounts, been reluctant to intervene in such a situation, unless it is for a spot of political point scoring – last week, we were treated to the appalling spectacle of the Centre and Uttar Prades squabbling over a water train that Delhi apparently wanted to send into Bundelkhand. The court's order should force both sides to focus less on the optics and more on the job at hand: the Centre will have to step in because it has now been spelt out as a duty and the state will accept help now that it is no longer a matter of political largesse. Too bad it took a court order to implement common sense.
The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's big story
Supriya Sharma and Nayantara Narayanan point out how, behind heroic tales of people digging their own wells, lies the story of government failure. Supriya Sharma also travels to Bundelkhand to find how in Uttar Pradesh, ration stocks pile up while the poor go hungry, cattle die silently in the fields, access to water is unequal in villages divided by caste, and children ferry water to thirst homes.
Anumeha Yadav on how Haryana, Gujarat and Bihar did not declare drought despite seeing a rainfall deficit.
Politicking and policying
1. With Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam patriarch M Karunanidhi having made it clear that his younger son, MK Stalin, will become chief minister if the party wins, MK Alagiri, the elder son, declares he will not vote in these elections.
2. Extending the National Eligibility and Entrance Test to Jammu and Kashmir violates the state's special status, says former chief minister Omar Abdullah.
3. Since the British government has refused to deport businessman Vijay Mallya, India will have to go in for a long and tortuous extradition process.
Punditry
1. In the Indian Express, Samantak Das on the violence that occurred under the radar during the West Bengal polls.
2. In the Hindu, Amit Baruah on what nuclear deterrence means 18 years after Pokhran.
3. In the Telegraph, Mukul Kesavan on whether the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, is liberal enough to be an effective answer to the Republican Party's Donald Trump.
Don't Miss...
Bhavya Dore on the travails of Mr X, who was sent to an adult prison at the age of 17 and then to a juvenile home, for the same crime, at the age of 32:
For more than a decade, X had led an adult life, reintegrated as an adult member of society. Now, suddenly, the vagaries of the justice system had wrenched him and tossed him back into another world, a world in which he was technically treated as a child. This is also why, according to the law, his identity cannot be revealed.
“Suddenly one day,” said X, when I met him in court, “the call came. I was completely jolted, what else do you expect?”
