THE HINDU Editorial Vocabulary-March 8, 2017- Topic 1
State of significance
With the seventh and last phase of voting for the Uttar
Pradesh Assembly, a potentially
transformative election draws to a close. Ever
since voting started in the State on February 11, the three main political
parties in the fray, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and
the Samajwadi Party, threw everything into their respective bids for power,
with the constant campaign of Prime Minister Narendra Modi giving the election a national resonance.
India has
rarely witnessed a campaign blitz of the order witnessed in the last two phases
of the poll, on March 4 and 8. Mr. Modi spent three days in and around Varanasi
alone, seeking to both retain the votes that accrued to him in his Lok Sabha
constituency in 2014, and throw his voice longer in the election’s home
stretch. Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi, with their SP and
Congress in an alliance that has reversed the
history of suspicion between the two parties, also focused on Varanasi, given
its significance in eastern U.P. The BSP’s Mayawati, as always, was the least
splashy, staying away from the battleground and choosing to monitor everything
from her base in Lucknow. The last constituency, in Ambedkar Nagar, will vote
on March 9, in an election deferred on account of the death of a candidate. But
it is anybody’s guess how the results will pan out on counting day on March 11.
It has been a campaign in which the Prime Minister has chosen
to be the face of local aspirations, repeatedly pushing the envelope to take
the battle to regional leaders with provocative statements. The BSP has
demonstrably gone back to its roots, abandoning its grand social coalition of
2012 for a targeted pitch for the Muslim and Dalit vote. The new-look SP, in
alliance with a Congress party jettisoning its longstanding go-it-alone
resolve, has sought to position itself as a softer version of its earlier self,
while defending its record with the slogan kaam bolta hai (work
speaks for itself). For all three, it could be a defining moment: for the BJP
to consolidate itself as the primary pole in national politics, for the BSP to
retain its electoral salience, and for the SP-Congress to demonstrate the power
of an unlikely alliance. Yet, there is an arithmetic that the results will be
analysed against. Will the BJP manage to make 2014 the new baseline, with its
lead then in 328 Assembly segments (with a 40% vote share in more than 250 of
them)? Or will its opponents succeed in pulling back that baseline closer to
the Assembly elections of the past? For instance, 2012, when the BJP won just
47 seats and the SP took 224, eclipsing the BSP which had lost less than 5% of
its vote share from its victorious 2007 sweep. Either way, it would reset the
equations not just in the State but also at the Centre.
Vocabulary
Fray: unravel or become worn at the edge, typically
through constant rubbing.
Example: Cheap fabric soon
frays
Synonyms: unravel, wear, wear
thin, wear out/through
Threw: propel something with force through the air by a
movement of the arm and hand.
Example: I threw a brick
through the window
Synonyms: hurl, toss, fling, pitch, cast, lob, launch, catapult, project
Resonance: the quality in a sound of being deep, full, and
reverberating.
Example: The resonance of
his voice
Blitz: an intensive or sudden military attack.
Example: I talk myself out
of imagining world war-styled bombing blitzes or trench warfare, and replaced
them with images of land mines and machine guns.
Synonyms: bombardment, bombing, onslaught, barrage, attack
Accrued: be received by someone in regular or increasing
amounts over time.
Example: Financial benefits
will accrue from restructuring
Synonyms: result
from, arise from, follow from, ensue from, be caused
by, attend
Provocative: causing annoyance, anger, or another strong
reaction, especially deliberately.
Example: A provocative
article
Synonyms: annoying, irritating, exasperating, infuriating, maddening, vexing
Jettison: throw or drop (something) from an aircraft or ship.
Example: Six aircraft
jettisoned their loads in the sea
Demonstrate: clearly show the existence or truth of (something)
by giving proof or evidence.
Example: Their shameful
silence demonstrates their ineptitude
Synonyms: reveal, bespeak, indicate, signify, signal, denote
Victorious: having won a victory; triumphant.
Example: A victorious army
Synonyms: triumphant, conquering, vanquishing, winning, champion