THE HINDU Editorial Vocabulary- November 14, 2016- Topic 1
With the Supreme Court responding to the
presidential reference and terming illegal the
Punjab Termination of Agreements Act, 2004, politics in the State has
predictably acquired a defiant edge. Amarinder Singh, who was Chief Minister
when the legislation was passed more than a decade ago in order to deny the
neighbouring States their determined share of river waters, lost no time in
announcing his resignation as a member of the Lok Sabha and that of all Congress
MLAs from the Punjab Assembly. As an act of protest it has an absurd edge, but
with Assembly elections due in early 2017, the party obviously wants to raise
the stakes by identifying itself with the emotive water issue. In fact, it
allows Mr. Singh the ideal launch pad to take on not just the Shiromani Akali
Dal-BJP government, but also the Congress campaign strategist, Prashant Kishor,
with whom he has been at odds. Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had upped the
ante earlier this year by shepherding a law in the Assembly to return to the
original owners land acquired decades ago for the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal
meant to enable sharing of river waters. Even as the State Governor refrained
from giving consent to the legislation, bulldozers were employed to fill part
of the canal with uprooted trees and soil to mark the Punjab government’s
defiance. In response to the Supreme Court’s advisory on the 2004 law, Mr.
Badal has called a session of the presumably Congress-less Assembly.
If there is a case for recalculating
what may be a fair sharing of river waters given the changes in water
availability, then Punjab’s government and politicians are unwilling to even
consider this. It is an all-or-nothing game in an election season in which the
established political coordinates have been scrambled. Over the past couple of
decades, Punjab politics had settled into a two-party/alliance dynamic, the
Congress versus SAD-BJP. The 2014 Lok Sabha election changed that, with the Aam
Aadmi Party taking four of the 13 seats. The implication of the AAP record for
the Assembly elections is not clear, whether it was a one-off that put the
older parties on notice, or whether it signalled a search for a party that
would break the State’s fossilised, often vengeful, politics that has eschewed
attention to grassroots issues of agrarian distress, drug addiction,
corruption, and discrimination. It is unclear whether the SAD’s or the
Congress’s high defiance on water agreements will help them electorally in this
landscape. But it would amount to further undermining the larger national
profile that both Mr. Badal and Mr. Singh have built over the decades if they
rallied passions so irresponsibly.
Vocabulary
Defiant: showing defiance.
Example: She was in a defiant mood
Synonyms: intransigent, resistant, obstinate, uncooperative, noncompliant
Absurd: (of an idea or suggestion) wildly unreasonable, illogical, or
inappropriate.
Example: The allegations are patently absurd
Synonyms: preposterous, ridiculous, ludicrous, farcical, laughable, risible, idiotic
Emotive: arousing or able to arouse intense feeling.
Example: Animal experimentation is an emotive subject
Synonyms: controversial, contentious, inflammatory, sensitive, delicate, difficult
Strategist: a person skilled in planning action or policy, especially in war or
politics.
Example: The concepts in gray are those the military strategist provided in an
ontology of war.
Shepherding: guide or direct in a particular direction.
Example: We were shepherded around with great ceremony
Synonyms: usher, steer, herd, lead, take, escort, guide, conduct, marshal
Refrained: stop oneself from doing something.
Example: She refrained from comment
Synonyms: abstain from, desist from, hold back from, stop
oneself from
Scrambled: make one's way quickly or awkwardly up a steep slope or over rough ground
by using one's hands as well as one's feet.
Example: We scrambled over the wet boulders
Synonyms: clamber, climb, crawl, claw one's
way, scrabble, grope one's way
Fossilised: preserved to become a fossil.
Example: A fossilized bone