Some time ago the union cabinet decided to issue an ordinance, which would, among other things, authorize itself the power to implement the delimitation of seats state-wise either in one go or in stages.

What does itself in the above passage refer to? The intended referent is of course the union cabinet.  It is the cabinet which has acquired the power of delimiting seats.  But with the sentence as it stands itself can only refer to ordinance.  Has the ordinance acquired this power? 

Correction:  Replace itself by the union cabinet.

2. Each one of them told their own names (DH Jan 4, 20008, p.8).

Why their names? Is it because we have the plural pronoun them, and their is supposed to refer to this? But their cannot refer to them. It can only refer to each one (the head of the subject phrase).. More likely the group referred to by them contained both boys and girls (or men and women) and the writer thought ‘told his/ her name’ would be awkward.

Correction:  If the desire was to avoid sexist language the writer could have said— All of them told their names. This is both politically correct and grammatical.

3. ‘providing their children with every material desire” -India Today and Tomorrow, Feb. 2008
Desire (or want) is what you have within you. This may be satisfied by giving the person what he wants. (I am not a male chauvinist. I stick to grammar.)

Want (noun) is what one wants (verb). And as for providing you don’t provide wants.  You provide for somebody’s wants.

Correction. Providing for every material want of their children.

3. Unfortunately this solemn issue is being degenerated into the morass political gimmickry.

Degenerate is often confused with degrade. Something degenerates. It is an internal process. Over a course of time a society may come to lose its moral and spiritual values; the people may lose their integrity, love of honest work, and other social values.  It will be a degenerate society. It has degenerated.

Applied to organic substances, they deteriorate.

Degenerate is an intransitive verb.  You can’t degenerate something. It degenerates on its own.

The word needed in our present context is degrade. This suggests (and requires) an agent that brings about the degradation. The solemn issue is being degraded into…

In a chemical sense substances may degrade under certain conditions (= reduce to a simpler molecular structure). But in other cases, degradation is brought about by some agent. (One may bring about one’s own degradation, too.)

5. Money exchanges hands (Times Now)

No doubt money is transacted in exchanges.  But money changes hands.

This stupid mistake is typical of the shoddy English one constantly hears on the TV channels. Just a few days ago an announcer said something like both the players as well as the public...

Both as well as?

On the same channel I heard a very senior person (a very articulate man with an impressive TV personality) use the phrase from times immemorial. The phrase is from time immemorial.

Obviously these persons have no time or patience to look up any usage manual. They all speak English, but how!
Here is a Station  Director of a popular radio channel speaking.’ Our research indicates that even amongst our core target audience, there were those listeners who we had not managed to form enough of a contact with.’
Core target audience may be their jargon.  But who we had not managed to form enough of a contact with? Is this some technical English? Or just so much wind and pretentiousness? What would have been lost if the  Director had said: Even among our target audience we hadn’t established enough contact?

Still in the world of media entertainment, recall the stunning performance of the two kids Aishwarya and Anvesha (Star Plus). They sang and danced in a way that left every one in the audience (and the viewers, too) stunned and gasping. Even Big B, the special invitee, watched with his mouth agape.

It was really difficult to decide who was number One. One of the persons who compered the show said: ‘Not one should win.’ 

What he meant was that just one of the two should not be declared the winner.   Both should be declared as having won the trophy. But the way he put it gave quite the opposite meaning. Cf. Not one was found good enough.

Here as in some of the examples discussed in recent weeks, the problem lies in the use of quantifiers with negative operators. One is quite different from not just one. In our own languages, too, the distinction between one and not just one is clearly brought out.  In Kannnada, for example, we have, obbane/obbale gellakoodadu.

I’m sure, Hindi, too, makes this distinction. And then yaroo gellabaradu/gellakoodadu (=None should win).The function of these particles and how they translate into English is, in many cases, not understood.

The writer can be contacted at ksyadurajan@yahoo.com