ICYMI #TheTribuneOpinion: SC’s stray dog’s directions and Trump’s tariff hit the headlines again

The Supreme Court’s directions on relocation of dogs in Delhi NCR to shelter homes created a stir with animal lovers, and those considering stray dogs a menace, both sides pitted against each other. In the ‘Two Views’ segment of the Op-ed page, retired IAS officer Avay Shukla vouched for showing compassion for the canines in his article A recipe for cruelty, not compassion. The SC order is perhaps influenced by personal opinions, and has been issued without hearing any stakeholder, he writes. However, considering the legal overview, Meghna Uniyal, Director, Humane Foundation for People and Animals, writes that all relevant Acts, statutory provisions, and Supreme Court judgments for public health, safety, and animal and disease control lay down the same principles and laws — the complete and permanent removal of all stray dogs/animals from streets.  Animal Birth Control Rules operate in an ideological narrative of ‘evil humanity’ and ‘innocent dogs’, she writes in her article Why stray dog removal is a must.

As India celebrated its 79^th Independence Day, NCERT former director Krishna Kumar writes that the social fabric feels thinner today and dependence on the state machinery to keep it intact has greatly increased. The platforms available for discussion on social media are owned by a global plutocracy, but the impression persists that they are good for democracy, he writes in his Edit article Struggle for the freedom from fear. Dependent on social media for information, today’s young students perceive the history of India’s freedom struggle as both distant and mundane. Worse still, it is now as vulnerable to distortion as are the older phases of India’s history, he writes.

India is right to decry Trump’s imposition of forbidding tariffs as unfair, unjustified and indeed hypocritical, says senior journalist TN Ninan in his edit piece India must find a way to deal with Trump. But our task is not to win the argument, it is to win the economic war. Our weaknesses have been exposed, in as much as we are not able to stand up to Trump as China has done. If Trump can bully us, it is because we can be bullied, he writes. Russia is a useful partner for defence, but the talk of using BRICS and the Global South as alternatives is plainly delusional, he adds.

Back to the political flavour in the country, even as Rahul Gandhi tried to put the ECI and the BJP on the defensive, AICC member Ashish Dua writes that the ‘responsible’ people in the Congress continue to be ‘irresponsible’ or unaccountable. No one took the blame for the losses in Assam and Punjab. It is business as usual, signifying carelessness or complicity, or both, he writes in his Oped piece Cong’s Haryana story: From pole position to political oblivion. The party has gone in for a replacement policy rather than one of transition, he says.

Trump’s pressure tactics have heightened political sensitivity to the tariff issue writes senior financial journalist Sushma Ramachandran in her Op-ed article India resilient amid US tariff tantrum & shifting global alliances. Had the trade talks been carried out in a low-key manner, it may have been possible to make limited concessions without inviting the charge of giving in to threats, she writes. In fact, the tariffs have snowballed into a wider affair and there is little hope of a low-profile negotiation as long as Trump is President. Amidst all these trade fluctuations, the leading lights of the BRICS bloc are leaning towards each other.

As we commemorated the 80^th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran reminds us that theories of nuclear deterrence have always been of questionable value and are even more questionable today. In his Edit piece Nuclear peace hangs by a thread, he expresses his view that without a civil society movement on a global scale, the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons will remain a chimera. The application of artificial intelligence and the diminishing of human agency in decision-making will make the nuclear danger far greater than it already is, he warns.

All countries have a stake in the success of the Alaska meeting, writes former Ambassador Pankaj Saran in his edit piece India has a stake in the Alaska summit. It is evident for the parties and regions directly concerned but is equally true for a non-party like India. Why? Because India has had to walk a thin line between two opposing sides through painstaking effort. Apart from energy, Russia possesses other resources and raw materials that India needs access to. The first step in ensuring such access is to maintain good political relations with Moscow, he writes, as far as the US is concerned, the US will find India to be much less of a spoiler for President Trump’s peace efforts than many of his European allies. In any case, India’s relations with Russia are not aimed at hurting its ties with other friendly countries.