Best of BS Opinion: Towards a new compact, a warning to India, and more

Here are the top BS Opinion articles of the day.

Here are the best of Business Standard's opinion pieces for Wednesday.
 

The Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just been released, and it makes for grim reading for the world in general and for India in particular. Since the fifth report, the consensus has firmed up, and the IPCC reports that the evidence is now “unequivocal” that anthropogenic — human-caused — warming is in effect, and that temperatures have already risen by 1.1 degrees Celsius since the industrial revolution. The report has specific warnings, however, for South Asia and India. The Indian Ocean is warming faster than the global average, and snow cover in the Himalayas is decreasing. 

Thus, policy responses in India must not be limited to collecting better data about the effects of climate change on lives and livelihoods, notes our editorial 

Without a collaborative arrangement between the Centre and the states, fresh reforms in many areas would become more contentious, writes A K Bhattacharya

I have noticed that an excessively long tenure leads to absolute authority, usually in the later phase of the leader’s time, argues R Gopalakrishnan
 

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“The ECI [Election Commission of India] is directed to create a dedicated mobile application containing information published by candidates regarding their criminal antecedents, so that at one stroke, each voter gets such information on his/her mobile phone”

 

Supreme Court of India