THE HINDU Editorial Vocabulary - July 6, 2018 - Topic 1
Passing the buck: on
governments' response to lynchings
The Central government has finally moved to react to the lynchings reported
from across the length and breadth of the country, but its line of action is
bafflingly weak. Over the past couple of months, mobs have materialised to beat
to kill people they suspect — almost always without basis — of plotting to
kidnap children to harvest their organs. Warnings to beware of child
kidnappers, sometimes with the rider that they are likely to hail from other
parts of India, are mostly circulated on WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned encrypted
messaging platform.
Since a cluster of such killings in Tamil Nadu in May,
deaths have been reported from States as far apart as Assam, Karnataka and
Maharashtra. In one recent attack, five people were
clobbered to death in Maharashtra’s Dhule’s district on
child-lifting rumours; the mob numbering hundreds overpowered the few policemen
present. And ironically, among three people lynched in Tripura on a single day,
June 28, was a man hired by the State government to spread awareness against
precisely such rumours.
Now, the Ministry of Electronics and Information
Technology has told WhatsApp to take
“remedial measures… to prevent proliferation of these fake and at times
motivated/sensational messages”. WhatsApp is the communication platform of
choice in the age of cheap smartphones. One of the USPs of the platform is that
the messages are encrypted in a manner that makes it impossible for them to be
read. Given this, it is not clear how such a platform can take measures to
limit the spread of motivated or sensational messages. Also, whether such
checks would amount to legitimising surveillance and a loss of privacy — a rare
commodity in this digital age. Even if it can do so without compromising
privacy, the problem is not the medium. Rumour has historically found its way
around communication walls, and it can only be effectively blocked through
old-fashioned information campaigns and administrative alertness. Rumour’s
potency predates mobile phones, even if there is no denying that smartphones,
with their ability to instantly transmit text and images, have a tendency, in
this era of fake news, to rapidly spread panic and anger. This happens in
different ways across the world, but in India the problem has assumed truly
distressing proportions. It is well-known that an unrelated video of an act of
violence that went viral was responsible for fuelling communal hatred in
Muzaffarnagar in 2013. It is puzzling that district administrations and gram
panchayats have not been asked to reach out to locals to persuade them against
falling for rumours, and to come to the authorities if they have any fears. The
messaging needs to be amplified — merely appealing to WhatsApp is hardly the
solution.
Vocabulary
Baffle: totally
bewilder or perplex.
Example: An
unexplained occurrence that baffled everyone
Synonyms: puzzling, bewildering, perplexing, mystifying, bemusing, confusing
Suspect: not
to be relied on or trusted; possibly dangerous or false.
Example: A
suspect package was found on the platform
Synonyms: suspicious, dubious, doubtful, untrustworthy, odd, queer
Encrypted: convert
information or data into a cipher or code, especially to prevent unauthorized
access.
Example: The
microprocessor encrypts information and provides an encrypted output which is
related to the alternator electrical output.
Mob: a large
crowd of people, especially one that is disorderly and intent on causing
trouble or violence.
Example: A
mob of protesters
Synonyms: crowd, horde, multitude, rabble, mass, throng, group, gang, gathering
Precisely: in
exact terms; without vagueness
Example: The
guidelines are precisely defined
Synonyms: accurately, exactly, clearly, distinctly, strictly
Remedial: giving
or intended as a remedy or cure.
Example: Remedial
surgery
Surveillance: close
observation, especially of a suspected spy or criminal.
Example: He
found himself put under surveillance by military intelligence
Synonyms: observation, scrutiny, watch, view, inspection, supervision, spying
Alertness: the
quality of being alert.
Example: Nothing
could escape the steel trap of my alertness
Tendency: an
inclination toward a particular characteristic or type of behavior.
Example: For
students, there is a tendency to socialize in the evenings
Synonyms: propensity, proclivity, proneness, aptness, likelihood, inclination
Merely: just;
only.
Example: She
seemed to him not merely an intelligent woman, but a kind of soul mate
Synonyms: only, purely, solely, simply, just, but
