Hang them all
   Date :15-Oct-2020

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BANGLADESH Government has made a bold move by granting capital punishment in rape cases. President Md. Abdul Hamid signed an ordinance awarding maximum punishment in rape cases to death of the convicts. This move came after a nationwide protest against a series of recent sexual assaults in the country. In India also, a social mood is building up in favour of death sentence to convicts in all rape cases without exception. The people’s angst was expressed very well in the Nirbhaya and other cases. Despite this, incidents of rape -- and even murder -- are continuing to bog the modern human societies down. There could be multiple reasons why incidents of rape are on an increase, and all those reasons need to be probed in depth so that suitable response could be designed to counter the crime. Mere legislation that may grant death sentence to rapists may not act as a complete deterrent. What is needed perhaps is a blanket law that would ensure death sentence to all convicts in rape cases. It is not fathomable at this stage if such a change can be adopted in the first place. But if that is done, the larger societies would support the move fully.
 
GOOD SIGN
 
THAT India’s domestic air travel is registering a steady increase over time and nearly two lakh persons are using air travel as a means of transport on a daily basis, is a good sign. Union Minister of Civil Aviation Mr. Hardeep Singh Puri has said that the number of daily air travellers may rise to three lakh by the end of this year. This means that the domestic aviation is promising to bounce back to normal conditions in the near future. This will spell well for a major sector of the Indian economy. Similar signs are also visible in railways and road transport where numbers of people using those modes of travel are on a healthy increase. True, this progress is still not up to the mark from normal standards. But given the severity of the pandemic condition, the numbers now do indicate a progress in the right direction. This development offers reasons to believe that in the next one year or so, every major sector of the economy will start operating at its full potential, thus bringing better days for the sagging activity. Of course, this will happen with certain risk factors about spread of infection. But then, that will be a reasonable risk that must be accepted.