THE HINDU Editorial Vocabulary- September 13, 2016- Topic 1
Congress vice-president
Rahul Gandhi’s “kisan yatra” continues to roll through Uttar Pradesh. In
advance of the Assembly elections due early in 2017, Mr. Gandhi is on a Deoria-to-Delhi TREK,
and in its early days he has managed to keep the spotlight on his presence in
various ways. His “khaat sabhas” created a FLUTTER as some rural folk, invited
to sit around informally, took off
with the STRINGED cots. The subsequent WISECRACKS by political opponents about Congress workers struggling to stop the
flight of the khaats were, wisely, DOVETAILED into the message of acute
rural distress that the party is seeking to amplify. A poor farmer making off
with a freebie as basic as a charpoy was being called a thief, said Mr. Gandhi,
taking aim at the BJP government at the Centre, while FLAMBOYANT businessmen who dupe banks were being politely referred to as defaulters.
So far, Mr. Gandhi has taken pot
shots at all his opponents: he said the elephant (the election symbol of the
Bahujan Samaj Party) has eaten away everything, the cycle (symbol of the ruling
Samajwadi government) is punctured, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi takes
selfies with the powerful, not with ordinary farmers. If this gives the
appearance of indiscriminate attacks on all FOES,
the strategy may in fact be rather more carefully CALIBRATED. The Congress must know it has no chance of succeeding in its AVOWED aim of winning the election alone — but to count as a political force in
U.P. and at the national level, the party needs to be seen to be backing itself,
and being the primary spokesperson of the electorate’s aspirations.
That these roadshows are not
about U.P. alone is OBVIOUS from the absence from the frame of the
Congress’s chief ministerial candidate, Sheila Dikshit. Whether the roadshows
will meet with the level of success that Sonia Gandhi’s 2004 campaign through
U.P. or Mr. Gandhi’s own 2009 mobilisation did is still uncertain. Each of
those journeys through U.P. gave the Congress the ability to throw its voice
farther on the national stage. Those were, however, Lok Sabha campaigns, in
which the Congress has TENDED to fare better than in State elections.
For instance, it got 21 (out of 80) Lok Sabha seats in 2009, but three years
later managed just 28 (out of 404) Assembly seats. Since then, in the singular
summer of 2014 the BJP’s campaign left the Congress and the two regional GIANTS WITLESS. So the Congress campaign is being WAGED as much against the
incumbent government in Lucknow as that in New Delhi. Mr. Gandhi’s media
managers have succeeded in moderating the surround sound of the yatra — with no
sectional vote base anymore, the Congress now has the opportunity to unveil a COHESIVE, inclusive manifesto.
::::::::::::::::::::::Meanings
with example and Synonyms::::::::::::::::::::::
1. Trek: a long arduous journey, especially one made on foot.
Example: A trek to the South Pole
Synonyms: journey, trip, expedition, safari, odyssey, voyage
2. Flutter: an act of fluttering.
Example: There was a flutter of wings at the window
Synonyms: beating, flapping, quivering, agitation, vibrating
3. Wisecracks: a clever and pithy spoken witticism.
Example: His warmth, boisterousness, and constant wisecracking
Synonyms: joke, witticism, quip, jest, sally, pun, bon mot, crack, gag, funny
4. Dovetailed: join together by means of a dovetail.
Example: He explained his enthusiasm for bees, from a small child of eight years
old and his stories of his family especially of his father, who made bee hives
which were dovetailed and not nailed together.
Synonyms: joint, join, fit together, splice, mortise, tenon
5. Flamboyant: (of a person or their behavior) tending to attract attention because of
their exuberance, confidence, and stylishness.
Example: A flamboyant display of aerobatics
Synonyms: exuberant, confident, lively, animated, vibrant, vivacious
6. Foes: an enemy or opponent.
Example: Join forces against the common foe
Synonyms: enemy, adversary, opponent, rival, antagonist, combatant
7. Calibrated: mark (a gauge or instrument) with a standard scale of readings.
Example: The model was calibrated on the basis of the similar experimental results.
8. Avowed: assert or confess openly.
Example: He avowed that he had voted Republican in every election
Synonyms: self-confessed, self-declared, acknowledged, admitted, open
9. Obvious: easily perceived or understood; clear, self-evident, or apparent.
Example: Unemployment has been the most obvious cost of the recession
Synonyms: clear, crystal clear, plain, plain to see, evident, apparent, manifest
10. Tended: regularly or frequently behave in a particular way or have a certain
characteristic.
Example: Written language tends to be formal
Synonyms: be inclined, be apt, be disposed, be prone, be
liable
11. Giants: of very great size or force; gigantic.
Example: Giant multinational corporations
Synonyms: huge, colossal, massive, enormous, gigantic, very
big, mammoth
12. Witless: foolish; stupid.
Example: A witless retort
13. Waged: carry on (a war or campaign).
Example: It is necessary to destroy their capacity to wage war
Synonyms: engage in, carry on, conduct, execute, pursue, prosecute
14. Cohesive: characterized by or causing cohesion.
Example: Today I got a real sense that we were beginning to become a cohesive unit,
looking out for each other.
