Sunday View: The Best Weekend Opinion Reads, Curated Just for You

We sifted through the papers to find the best opinion reads so you wouldn't have to.

A curation of essential opinion pieces of the weekend from across newspapers, made just for you.  

(Photo: iStock)

The Real and the Surreal

The NSO’s First Advance Estimates (FAE) of National Income underlined that the estimated GDP growth for 2021-22 is 9.2 per cent, which means the country will record a growth of approximately 1.9 per cent over 2019-20. P Chidambaram in a column in The Indian Express points out that the boast that India is the fastest growing economy is not real. He stated that the issues of rising prices of gas, diesel and petrol, unemployment, education, hate speech, digital abuse, trolls and crime, is causing more concern while new variants of coronavirus continue to affect people.

There is no merit in the boast that India is, or will be, the fastest growing economy in the world. The GDP fell steeply, therefore the climb looks spectacular. If the GDP had fallen more steeply, the climb would have looked more spectacular! In the two years that India’s economy will record (-)7.3 per cent and (+)9.2 per cent, leaving the GDP flat, China is estimated to have recorded rates of +2.3 per cent and +8.5 per cent. So, which country’s economy has grown and which country is indulging in vain boasts?

P Chidambaram in The Indian Express

Sycophancy on Social Media

The best critics of politicians today is people online, whose opinions range from being vicious, abusive and ugly, to idiotic, ignorant and insane, writes Tavleen Singh. In a column in The Indian Express, she writes about how Prime Minister Narendra Modi has changed the political discourse and made religion more important than anything else.

From the political chatter I pick up daily in the public square of social media, I gather that Hindutva is extremely popular. Expressing hatred of Muslims is now absolutely acceptable. And religiosity is celebrated. Every time Modi allows TV cameras to follow him into the sanctum sanctorum of temples to record every moment of the ceremonies he performs, there are ecstatic tweets about how he has made us ‘proud to be Hindus for the first time’.

World’s Conscience

Remembering Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the last of the great stalwarts of the anti-apartheid struggle, Ramachandra Guha pens a heartfelt note on how he was the conscience of South Africa, who directly confronted the racial brutality of the apartheid regime and openly criticized the corruption and cronyism of the post-apartheid State run by the African National Congress. In a column in The Telegraph, he writes about how how India should learn lessons of inter-religious harmony from Tutu who spoke out against injustice all over the world, including taking to task his own Anglican Church for its homophobia.

On this trip to the US, Tutu came across as a man of charm as well as courage, with an engaging, witty presence that belied the steely spine that lay beneath. Apart from meeting the wealthy and the powerful, Tutu also interacted with those who had taken part in the American civil rights struggle of the 1960s. There were frequent comparisons with Martin Luther King, which the South African rejected, telling reporters that, among other things, MLK was far more handsome than he, pointing as he spoke to his short, rotund, figure and unkempt hair.

Ramachandra Guha in The Telegraph

The Virus Is a Non-Believer

Coronavirus is a non-believer, be it Alpha, Delta or Omicron, as it will infect persons at a Tablighi Jamaat conference or Christmas celebrations or even a Gangasagar, writes Upala Sen in The Telegraph. She questions the idiocy of the government for not halting the Gangasagar celebrations and the irrational attitude that Maa Ganga will take care of the safety of all.

God will do what he or she needs to. The virus is anyway doing much and it is also learning while doing --- how to mutate this way and that, how to dodge a vaccine or two, how to show less teeth once in a while. That leaves us, humans --- stubborn, passing the buck from God to virus, unwilling to do and loath to learn. Truly pathetic.

Upala Sen in The Telegraph

Sonar Bangla@50: Indira as ‘Ma Durga’, but Now an Undercurrent of Scepticism

Mani Shankar Aiyar dwells on the question of why did India take away all the arms and munition surrendered by Pakistan when Bangladesh was just building their armed forces. In a column in The Telegraph, he tries to address Bangladesh's point of view on how India could have saved millions of Bangla lives had they intervened on 26 March 1971, when the crackdown started.

There appear to be three principal sources of incipient hostility to India; the communal forces; right-wing political parties; and the projection of an “Indian bogey” for partisan domestic reasons. The Hasina government is opposed to all three forces – but while that might give comfort to sections of official India, there is little we can do (or should do) in Bangladesh to curb these hostile forces. However, there is a great deal we can do within India to blunt these forces: above all, rein in communalism in India instead of aggravating it as seems to be our government’s agenda; discreetly entertain relations with the principal opposition parties, acknowledging implicitly that they represent 40% of Bangladesh’s electorate; and solve, rather than argue about, petty problems of implementation that lend credibility to the anti-India bogey.

Mani Shankar Aiyar in The Telegraph

Love, Loss and a Few Precious Grains of Happiness

Twinkle Khanna writes a few words of reassurance during these uncertain times in a column in The Times of India. Recalling Jane Hirshfied's quote -- ‘So few grains of happiness measured against all the dark and still the scales balance’ -- she writes that evolution has programmed us to be afraid of the dark, strangers, changes and even love but we constantly push ourselves to open up.

We open doors to our hearts because we are compelled. But not completely. We hold it ajar. Unable to step out. Letting the light dapple on our arm and the side of our cheek, while we stand in the shadowy doorway. Hinges crusted with past scabs, the door needs a firm push. We wait. The sun sets without us revelling in its light. Push the door, ignore the screeching hinges, love with all your heart, love generously, fearlessly, in dollops and not dribs.

Twinkle Khanna in The Times of India

Wishlist for the Budget: Fin Min Should Think Bold – From Simpler Tax Rules to Creating Dubai-Like Cities

In anticipation of the budget on 1 February, Chetan Bhagat writes in The Times of India that the sign of a truly liberalised, predictable, and business-friendly economy is one where the debate on economic growths isn't limited to only the budget day.

Broad capital expenditure, privatisation and welfare programmes should run as usual. Budgets need not have mic-drop moments, grand announcements, or a Santa’s bag of gifts. One could argue that the best budgets are the ones that are a little boring. Business as usual, let’s keep going, keep growing, done. No breaking news. No fiery debates. No controversy. Yawn. Gosh, what would our TV channels do?

Chetan Bhagat in The Times of India

New Angles

The farmers’ historic struggle and victory has upset not merely political arrogance but has shown how to organise peaceful democratic protests in the midst of a pandemic. Amit Bhaduri writes in The Telegraph about why this bill made dissent spread across all classes in the entire agricultural sector and created for a movement based on an unprecedented solidarity. What we need is focus on making 85 per cent of farmers with small holdings economically viable, minor irrigation, innovation in organic fertilisers, water-management and climatically-suited cropping pattern supported by MSP to be stored and sold in local markets as far as possible.

If income support to farmers, especially to small farmers, materialises, it would have a tremendous positive impact on the external economy, raising demand for industry, especially small and medium scale industries, in the unorganised sector. The non-agricultural population stands to gain from it. Through a legal guarantee for MSP, steps need to be taken to make small farms viable and take the wider non-agricultural public along with it. A higher support price to raise farmers’ income might appear incompatible with the national food security policy implemented through an extended public distribution system. It had originated in measures for stabilising prices of essential commodities against speculation in 1955 and for creating adequate storing facilities. The government now spends, on an average, about 3 lakh crore annually mostly for price stabilisation through public distribution without an income support policy for farmers. An MSP can link price stabilisation with income support.

Amit Bhaduri in The Telegraph

He’s Afraid, I’m Afraid

Sankarshan Thakur has got us thinking about whether the people who project themselves of being fearless are not the ones who are the most brave. In a column in The Telegraph, he writes on how the bravest leaders are afraid as they are constantly looking out for danger and staying vigilant to take care of themselves and the people.

They hear a mouse scuttling about nocturnal spaces looking to steal a desperately needed bite and they begin to imagine enemy cavalries huffing and hoofing towards the fortress, about to pull down the walls and breach the gates and sunder everything sooner than the mouse would find a bite. Their fortress, their bedchambers, their sentries all about, demanding of every sliver of breeze to produce papers before seeking entry, their very own mice, and when the mice play and in the act of playing put the fright into the bones of the big and the brave, they sit up and demand an enquiry: how dare they? And why? And at whose instance? And to what end?

Sankarshan Thakur in The Telegraph

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