THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 01 January 2020 (Happy New Year (Indian Express))

Happy New Year (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2: National
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Challenges ahead for India in 2020 to protect the idea of Indianness

Context:

• A year which began with the people electing a government with an overwhelming mandate to rule ended with some of them talking back to it that’s a reason to hope.
• The government may look like an implacable monolith, the people are not one.
• How large are the protests against the new law that seeks to recast citizenship in majoritarian terms?
• How many of those turning out on the streets are students from select urban milieux?
• How many non-Muslims are speaking out to oppose a law that, alongside the NRC, discriminates against Muslims?
• These are some of the important questions that will be carried over into 2020.

But whatever the answers may be, this much is certain:

• The pushback against the majoritarian impulse that began in 2019 is a reminder of democracy’s capacity to spring surprises even after a verdict as decisive as the one that returned the Narendra Modi government to power.
• The opposition to the citizenship law, mostly peacefully, and mostly by students and the young, will have forced an arrogant government, quick to label any and all protest as anti-national, to backtrack on an imminent nationwide NRC.
• The dissent of the states, with several chief ministers speaking out against the CAA-NRC, will have reinstated some of the waning faith in the checks and balances of a layered polity.
• The stirrings in the Opposition space, still timid and hypocritical, still lacking the moral clarity and energy of, say, the young women and men of Jamia Millia Islamia, will have restored a bit of the imperilled sense of a vibrant democracy.
• There is immense reassurance to be drawn, too, from the fact that in the 70th year of the Republic, the Constitution, and its Preamble, with its promise of liberty, equality and fraternity for all, became the emblem of the protests, their centrepiece.

Way ahead:

• Precious lives have been lost in Uttar Pradesh, where the government has sought to outlaw and criminalise democratic protest.
• In Kashmir, the partial restoration of telecom services on the last day of the passing year only served to draw attention to a people still isolated, their political leaders still under lockdown after the abrogation of special status in August.
• The solidarities forged in 2019, and the broadening of circles of empathy, are a work in progress.

Conclusion:

• Resistance to the shrinking of the idea of Indianness will have to be accompanied by political and institutional efforts towards making it wider and more inclusive in the year to come. Happy New Year.

  Online Coaching for UPSC PRE Exam

  General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

Prelims Questions:

Q.1) With reference to the Core Catcher, consider the following statements:
1. It is designed to localise and cool the molten core material in case of a meltdown accident.
2. It is filled with a ceramic mixture also including ferric oxide and aluminium oxide, called ‘sacrificial material’.

Which of the statements given above are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) None

Ans: C
Mains Questions:
Q.1) To what extent the union government can protect the Indianness. Critically examine.