What to Read in The Hindu Editorial( Topic and Syllabus wise)

Editorial 1: An opportunity to settle Sri Lanka’s ethnic problem 

Context

The JVP’s leaders must stop viewing the Provincial Councils as a ‘creation of India’; the people of Sri Lanka deserve better.

 

Introduction

India’s move to name the Jaffna Cultural Centre after the Tamil poet-philosopher, Thiruvalluvar, is a symbolic gesture by New Delhi to reinforce the unbreakable bond with Sri Lanka. When sections of Sri Lankan Tamils were agitated originally over the omission of ‘Jaffna’ in the Centre’s nomenclature, the Indian authorities were swift in their course correction. It is now called the “Jaffna Thiruvalluvar Cultural Centre”, a recent landmark, built by the Indian government. No one needs to emphasise the significance of bilateral ties between the two south Asian neighbours, which have a shared history and culture.

• Changes in political relations: In the last 40-odd years, the nature of political relations has undergone significant changes.
• 1983 Anti-Tamil pogrom: Ever since the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom in Sri Lanka drew India in to play the role of a mediator, initially, and that of an active player, later, in the attempt to resolve the vexatious ethnic problem.
• Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987: It was such a complex relationship that led to the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accordof 1987 and the consequent 13th Amendment (13A) to Sri Lanka’s Constitution, creating a new layer of government — Provincial Councils — and granting it limited autonomy.
• Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP): At that time, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) — the party to which Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake belongs — was among those which opposed the Accord and the Amendment.
• Criticism: According to critics, the two were considered to be impositions of India on Sri Lanka.
• LTTE's opposition: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was another critic and then the most important Tamil force, was not happy with the settlement formula.
• LTTE's demand: The LTTE was for the division of Sri Lanka and the creation of a Tamil Eelam (encompassing the Tamil-majority Northern and Eastern provinces), an idea that India can never agree with.

 

India’s nudges on 13A

• Over 35 Years of the 13A: Despite the passage of over 35 years, the crucial Amendment has not yet been given a fair trial, especially in the Tamil-speaking areas of Sri Lanka, even though the Provincial Councils, there in most parts of the country, functioned between 1988 and 2019.
• India's Urging for Implementation: Successive Indian leaders have been urging their Sri Lankan counterpartsfor the “early, full or effective implementation” of 13A. In fact, when India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar met Mr. Dissanayake in Colombo in early October 2024 to invite him formally to visit India, he too referred to this much-used phrase.
• Modi’s Silence on 13A: The absence of any explicit reference to the Amendment in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s public remarks during Mr. Dissanayake’s state visit to New Delhi in December 2024 has raised the question whether India has begun distancing itself from the issue of the implementation of 13A.
  • Even though it is too early to arrive at any conclusion, as Mr. Modi did call for “fully implementing the Constitution of Sri Lanka and conducting the Provincial Council elections,” one is tempted to recall the suggestion made by Mr. Jaishankar, in his capacity as Foreign Secretary, in February 2017, to the now-defunct Tamil National Alliance to move beyond the merger issue.
  • The Northern and Eastern provinces had remained together nearly for 20 years till the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka annulled such an arrangement in October 2006.
• JVP’s Position on 13A: Mr. Modi’s silence is to be viewed against the backdrop of the JVP’s traditional position on the Amendment. It is not yet clear whether Sri Lanka’s ruling coalition of the JVP-led National People’s Power (NPP) still favours the repeal of the Amendment.
• NPP’s View on 13A:
  • While Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya told The Island in February 2023 that “we [NPP] believe that it [13A] should be implemented but we have a debate whether it could be a tenable solution for the national problem,”
  • Mr. Dissanayake, in his campaign in Jaffna a few months ago for the parliamentary polls, did not touch upon the issues of greater power devolution and a political settlement to the ethnic question.
  • The only reference to devolution was found in the NPP manifesto during the September 2024 presidential poll, wherein the coalition had assured people that there would be a new constitution “that strengthens democracy and ensures equality of all citizens.”

 

Local bodies are no substitute

• Incomplete constitutional reform process: While pointing out that the incomplete constitutional reform process, which began in 2015, would be built upon, the manifesto talked of a “devolution of political and administrative power to every local government, district and province” and holding elections “within a year” to provincial councils and local bodies “which are currently postponed indefinitely”.
• Elections to Local Authorities: If the political discourse in Sri Lanka is any indication, elections to the local authorities may take place sooner rather than later.
• Local Bodies vs. Provincial Councils: There is nothing wrong in holding the elections to the local bodies, which have a much longer history in Sri Lanka than the provincial councils.
  • However, the rulers should be under no illusion that however efficient they may be, local bodies are no substitutes for the provincial councils.
  • As in many other countries, the local self-governments in Sri Lanka too are hardly equipped to solve all the problems being thrown up by growing urbanisation on the one hand and other issues such as limited sources of own revenue and high dependence on fiscal transfers on the other.
  • This is why the layer of provincial councils becomes essential to address many of the issues.
• Consensus for provincial devolution: It was not without reason that the interim report of the Steering Committee of the Constitutional Assembly, in September 2017, pointed to the wide consensus among Chief Ministers, Provincial Councils, and various panels of the Assembly, that provinces be recognised as the primary unit of devolution.

 

Conclusion: The people and a deal

It is time that the JVP’s leaders stop viewing the Provincial Councils as a creation of India, as, after all, any constitutional concept, in the contemporary period, is an outcome of palimpsest. This holds good for the Accord and 13A too, which were produced through an evolutionary process that involved the scrutiny of a number of proposals at different levels in the two countries during 1983-87. Also, Sri Lanka’s three Constitutions — the Soulbury Constitution of 1948 and two Republican Constitutions of 1972 and 1978 — were drafted, based on the British, American and French systems of government. The ruling coalition would do well to keep in mind that the people of Sri Lanka, known for their democratic spirit and effecting the transition of power mostly through the ballot box, deserve a deal that is in tune with their character. The NPP, which commands a two-thirds majority in Parliament with an extremely popular President, has the golden opportunity now to find a durable solution to the ethnic problem, which is an offshoot of a combination of economic and political factors.

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Editorial 2: The science is clear, crowd disasters are preventable

Context

Crowd crushes are scientifically well understood, easy to predict, and inexpensive to prevent

 

Introduction

This week, in India, 30 people were killed in a deadly crowd crush that occurred at the Maha Kumbh. This writer’s heart goes out to their families and friends. Tragedies such as this one have become far too common across the world at religious pilgrimages, sporting events, and even music concerts. As someone who studies crowd disasters, what makes them even more terrible is that they are almost entirely preventable.

• Crowd crushes are dangerous, deadly, and immensely scary. They are also scientifically well understood, easy to predict, and inexpensive to prevent.
• Yet, they continue to occur with surprising frequency in highly modern societies. While this writer joins the people of India in mourning the shocking and senseless loss of life,
• It is the hope that governments and event organisers everywhere use this tragedy as an opportunity to commit to making the changes necessary to keep crowds safe.

 

Linked to crowd density

• Crowd crushes and density: Crowd crushes occur when the density of a crowd becomes too high. Scientific studies have repeatedly shown that, at crowd densities of five persons per square metre, there is a risk of crowd injuries, and that at seven people per sq.m or more, the likelihood of death or serious injury is high.
• Influence of physical space: Crowd density is strongly influenced by the physical space around the crowd.
  • If, for example, a crowd must navigate or gather in a space that is too small, crowd density can increase to dangerous levels rapidly and become deadly.
• Incident at Maha Kumbh: Preliminary reporting from the Maha Kumbh suggests that this is precisely what happened there: a large crowd developed behind a barrier, compressing its members into a dangerous density with tragic consequences.
• Global Crowd Disasters:
  • November 2021: 10 people were killed in a crowd disaster at a live music concert in Houston, Texas, U.S..
  • October 2022: A crowd crush in Itaewon, South Korea killed 159 people at a Halloween festival.
  • April 2023: Nearly 90 people were killed in Sanaa, Yemen, at a charity distribution event.
  • December 2024: 35 people were killed at a religious festival in Nigeria.
• Frequency of Crowd Disasters: These examples are just a small sampling of a type of catastrophe that happens more often than people may think.

 

For planners and governments to note

• Why Do These Injuries and Deaths Keep Happening?:
  • If you believe many of the news stories and commentary that often surround such tragedies, these crushes are the fault of crowds that are “out of control”.
  • We are too quick to blame the victims in these scenarios, and too eager to use conventional wisdom, stereotypes, and rules of thumb as substitutes for actual science.
• The Science: But, the science itself is clear: preventing crowd crush requires keeping crowd densities at safe levels, and the only entities who can do so effectively are the local governments, event organisers, and promoters who plan and oversee these large events.
• Challenges for crowd members: Individual members of crowds themselves have a very limited ability to perceive what is happening to the crowd as a whole, and virtually no ability to control it.
  • Once a crowd reaches a dangerous density, moreover, nobody in the crowd can meaningfully influence what is happening around them. In fact, at that point, the crowd members themselves may not even be able to take a full breath.
• Preventative measures for event planners and local governments:
  • Event planners and local governments can take relatively easy steps to nearly eliminate the risk of crowd crush. They can open more entries and exits. They can stagger arrival times for large events.
  • They can make sure passageways travelled by crowds are free from debris and other obstacles that might compress the crowd into bottlenecks.
  • They can also segment the crowd into groups to prevent a sudden crowd surge.
• Example of Times Square: Planners do this each year on New Year’s Eve at Times Square in New York City: placing the crowd into segmented areas of roughly 100 people each to prevent the massive crowd from clustering in ways that might create a dangerous crowd density.
• Effectiveness: It is simple, it is relatively inexpensive, and it works.

 

On organisers and the economic factor

• The problem is that, currently, in most nations, nothing requires promoters, planners, or local governments to do any of this.
• Worse, event organisers themselves have a vested interest in keeping such laws off the books. Instead, they have a strong economic incentive to pack as many people as possible into events to maximise ticket, food, and merchandise sales.

 

Conclusion

The tragedy at the Maha Kumbh, however, should inspire governments everywhere to reconsider their hands-off approach to crowd crush and pass sensible laws and regulations requiring event planners, promoters, and venues to take the basic steps needed to reduce the risk to individuals at large events. Even small amounts of planning and minimal changes to a venue can almost eliminate the risk that crowd members will be injured, trampled, or squeezed to death on their feet while still allowing everyone to have a good time. The cost of waiting to make such changes will continue to be measured in human lives.