View from the right: EDUCATION FOR WOMEN

The Organiser argues that Indianising education is the only way to improve the gender quotient in education. Claiming that the best measure of progress for a nation is its treatment of women, the Organiser says that it’s ironic that in India — a country where all kinds of power, knowledge, wealth or physical prowess, are worshipped in the feminine form — the government has to launch the “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” scheme to ensure gender equality in education. “The national call to end the double standards of differentiating between boys and girls should be welcomed. Still, the questions remain whether we have been treating women as inferiors and unfit… or it has encrypted in our social psyche through degradation caused with aggression. The solution to the problems like female foeticide lies in the answer to this critical question,” says the editorial.

It adds that the roots of this mental poverty, which leads to female foeticide, don’t lie in Indian civilisational thinking because women were considered much higher in the Vedic age. There are references to gender equality through social and educational rights, including religious sanskars: “It is the psychology of war and aggression that changed the social dynamic. With the fear of facing the brunt of invaders, women were restricted to [the] domestic front. Even the ‘jauhar’, original form of sati, was more a self-defence exercise against the aggressors after the death of husband rather than self- or forceful immolation… The strengthening of the caste institution further restricted many social and religious rights of women…” So Indianising education is the only way out: “Power of Saraswati… can only empower women in the true sense…”

POLITICAL FOG

Delhi has been experiencing the fog of instability and anarchy since December 2013 and the February 7 election is a chance to get rid of the “political fog” in the national capital, according to an article in the Organiser. It says the BJP’s move to field Kiran Bedi as its chief ministerial candidate was a “real surprise that was partially hovering in the sky” and it has given a jolt to the prospects of the AAP: “…iron sharpens iron. And now the social media posts compare ‘Cop vs Cough’…” However, the article points out that local issues, with the promises of low power tariffs, free wi-fi, corruption-free local administration and so on, may give sustenance to the AAP. It advises the BJP to prove itself more in the slum areas and among lower income groups, where the AAP had defeated the Congress. It warns the BJP: “The appeal of AAP and Kejriwal has faded among the lower middle class but is still intact in the lower-income class…” But the BJP’s advantages are the people’s disappointment with the AAP: “It is because of the fact that in the last one year, the formula, promises and slogans have come into oblivion.”

DELHI POLLS

Citing Shanti Bhushan’s remarks on Arvind Kejriwal and Janardhan Dwivedi’s comment on Narendra Modi, the Panchjanya editorial argues that while society needs truth, politics is bent upon dishing out lies. While Dwivedi and Bhushan were right, both have been left to fend for themselves by their respective parties. It also takes a swipe at Arvind Kejriwal for throwing out “challenges” to Kiran Bedi. It asks whether Kejriwal has the courage to take on former AAP member Vinod Binny for a debate, which Binny has been asking for a year now.

Compiled by Liz Mathew