Narendra Modi, the WTO Impasse, Twitter’s new Tweetstorm Feature, India’s response on Jerusalem, and more in today’s recommended reads
When i was growing up, the foreign hand was everywhere. Planning strikes, terror attacks, destabilisation, population explosion, you name it – the foreign hand did it. And, Mr Modi seems to have found the foreign hand again. The Mint has an uncharacteristically strong piece on Mr Modi needing to lift the political discourse.
The Gujarat election campaign has been ugly, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has escalated the bitterness in his speeches. Sharp verbal sparring has long been a feature of Indian politics, but Modi has crossed a red line by insinuating that his political rivals are working against India’s national interest. His remarks do not do justice to the constitutional position he holds.
What is India’s response to the USA recognising Jerusalem as the Israeli capital? . Vague to say the least.
In the Trump era, the chances of a WTO agreement is looking more and more improbable. Post a veiled attack on India and China for being ‘rich’, the US has reneged on it’s agreement on food subsidies and food procurement. In brief, the earlier agreement was to exempt the PDS systems from the agreement on food subsidies, that no longer may hold.
The other major dispute centres on finding a so-called permanent solution to the large subsidies that underpin public stock-holding programmes to bolster food security in the developing world. The G-33 coalition — which includes Indonesia, China and India — seeks a complete exemption from commitments to reduce subsidies, such as minimum support prices, from this poverty-alleviation programme. New Delhi has declined to negotiate any more trade-offs on this proposal at Buenos Aires, or accept calls for stringent transparency requirements to monitor these schemes.
If you thought 280 characters are too much for twitter, hold on. It is going to get more wordy. Twitter is playing with features that will make creating tweetstorms a lot easier. People who publish 20 tweet tweetstorms on a daily basis would be ecstatic.
Now users can write multiple tweets and Twitter will automatically thread them together and publish them in unison. It means that people can essentially post longer thoughts than Twitter’s already-expanded 280-character limit allows.
Twitter will also label threads with a “show this thread” icon so people know there is more to read
A good read from the Mint on Sunday, which asks “Who, in India, wears a Sari”
And, finally, some great nayansukh. A set of beautiful photographs from the National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year 2017, contest
source here