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Newspaper Vocabulary Analysis: article#17

Hello aspirants!

As you all are appearing in various competitive exams such as Banking, SSC, railways etc., it is very important for all of you to have good General Knowledge and strong command over English language. Nowadays vocabulary is asked in different forms in Banking and other exams. There can be direct vocabulary questions or questions can be asked in indirect forms as in cloze test, fill in the blanks, synonyms, antonyms and many more. We can not deny the fact that vocabulary is inevitable aspect, so here in this section we will discuss an article from some renowned newspaper and highlight some useful words and phrases with their meanings.




Article#17

source: TOI Editorial


Stop the sadism: EPCA must scrap the idea of grounding NCR’s non-CNG vehicles

sadism: extreme cruelty

scrap: get rid of, abandon

North Indian cities are struggling with a bad air problem since late October and the Supreme Court appointed environment watchdog EPCA has offered a drastic solution that throws the baby out with the bathwater. EPCA’s proposal to take all non-CNG vehicles off the road in the National Capital Region to bring air pollution down from “severe” levels will warrant bringing a large metropolitan area spanning several cities in three states to a complete halt. Without offering alternative facilities for lakhs of people dependent on personal transportation, whether cars or two-wheelers, such a drastic proposal is a sure recipe for chaos and creates conditions that force citizens into violation of irrational rules.

watchdog: one who serves as a guardian or protector against waste, loss, or illegal practices

Idiom-- "throws the baby out with the bathwater"--- it is an idiomatic expression for an avoidable error in which something good is eliminated when trying to get rid of something bad, or in other words, rejecting the favourable along with the unfavourable.

Such draconian moves will hardly encourage citizens to make adjustments to their lives that reduce their carbon footprint. It will be counterproductive at a time when sensible measures are reaching for wider consensus – such as subsidising happy seeder machines to perform paddy straw management and weaning farmers away from stubble burning, banning the sale of polluting firecrackers, adopting clean coal technologies, phasing out outdated thermal power plants, introducing greener fuels, containing construction dust, and incentivising public transportation.

draconianexceedingly harsh, very severe

weaning: to detach from that to which one is strongly habituated or devoted

stubble: the short, stiff stalks of grain or hay remaining on a field after harvesting

 incentivising: to promote (something) with a particular incentive.


Unfortunately, stubble burning incidents have not come down this year despite generous central government incentives to Punjab and Haryana governments and threats of penal measures. The Diwali firecracker ban came into force too late for effective action on the ground. With citizens already paying a big price for these twin regulatory failures of the state, now ordering them off the roads will be a triple whammy for the city economy. The failure of the odd-even scheme should have served as a warning against such misadventures. Two years later, Delhi’s bus fleet remains woefully short.

triple whammy: something which has great, often negative impact; an evil spell or curse

whammy is used in expressions such as double whammy and triple whammy to indicate that two or three unpleasant or difficult situations occur at the same time, or occur one after the other.

woefully: in an unfortunate or deplorable error.

Penalising motorists for flouting restrictive norms because of poor last mile connectivity is akin to the state shifting blame for its own failures. It would be instructive to recall how orders like demonetisation that sucked out 86% of cash in the economy under the misconceived notion that it would quickly eliminate black money or the ban on liquor vends along highways to prevent drunk driving failed to achieve their aims. Kneejerk draconian measures harassing the middle class cannot solve problems that have accumulated over time, mostly because of weak political will to implement systemic changes like ensuring compliance of construction norms and stopping stubble burning.

flouting: to ignore or disregard( a rule or convention, for example) in an open or defiant way

akin: having a similar quality or character; analogous

Kneejerkreacting in an automatic, habitual manner; unthinking

Hope this will help ! 😊😊

For any queries or suggestions, please do comment and let me know in the comment section below.

image source: google

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