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

We sifted through the papers and curated the best weekend opinion reads so you won’t have to.

Nothing like your morning cuppa and the weekend’s best reads on a Sunday.

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Most Severely Mauled Enterprises

Former Union Minister P Chidambaram, in his column for The Indian Express, shares findings of an extensive telephone survey conducted on his behest, which confirm that the small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and micro enterprises have been most impacted by the pandemic.

“It is evident that the government has done practically nothing to keep the MSMEs on their feet,” Chidambaram further alleges.

As per the survey, Chidambaram shares, 91 percent of respondents incurred a loss in 2020-21, and in 90 percent of the cases the loss was upto Rs 10 lakh. Besides, in the same period, 26 percent of the respondents had cut wages/salaries, 33 per cent had laid off employees, 23 per cent had retrenched employees and 18 per cent had done all of the above.

“The pandemic has killed the spirit of entrepreneurship among low-capital, under-20 employment, low-turnover, low-profit-seeking businesspersons. The government watched as their businesses collapsed.”

Dictatorial Mindset Led to Emergency: But Democracy’s Roots Have Deepened

Home Minister Amit Shah, in an article for The Times of India (TOI), unleashes a slew of attacks at the Congress Party, ranging from criticism of Indira Gandhi-led Emergency to claims of the party having made false allegations pertaining to Mahatama Gandhi’s assassination to ban RSS and its Panchajanya weekly.

Shah further insists that the Congress party has a history of subjecting media houses to “shocking levels of censorship”, while claiming that BJP, under Modi, has “deepened democracy’s roots”.

“Today, all the units of democracy are working with cooperation, coordination and balance. The judiciary, unlike in the days when Congress tried to turn it into an accessory of the executive, enjoys complete independence and has, whenever it has felt the need to do so, guided the government. The media has complete freedom to carry out its work.”

Shah also says that his party is the “only party that practices the principles of fairness” and goes on to count the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and abrogation of Article 370 as “proof of support and goodwill for PM Modi”.

Politics is Competitive But Do We Have to Demonise Each Other?

Quoting Oscar Wilde’s exhortation of fundamental freedoms (of even an unintelligent adversary), Rajya Sabha member Swapan Dasgupta, in his piece for The Times of India, bemoans the demonisation of politicians by independent commentators on social media.

“Social media is a platform where such hate is plentiful. Modi and Shah have been favourite targets of this intellectual condescension. The bhakts, in turn, have responded by painting Rahul Gandhi as a blithering idiot, incapable of any thought beyond scripted lines.”

Dasgupta further claims that behind the statutory guarantee of periodic election “is also the right to be wrong and even heretical, be in a minority and even indulge in what might best be called political promiscuity — changing the political preferences at periodic intervals”.

We Need an Opposition Party

Pointing out that at no point in his political history has Prime Minister Modi “looked as bad as he does today”, Tavleen Singh, in her column for The Indian Express, stresses on the urgent need for a strong opposition party in India.

“One reason why the Prime Minister has got away with criminal mismanagement of the pandemic is because he has not been held to account by the only political party powerful enough at the national level to do this,” Singh writes and then goes on to highlight that the Congress party has been “dormant and invisible for months”.

Thus, as per Singh, even though PM Modi’s personal image has been sullied before the world, his ratings remain high because “our only other national party remains in doldrums”.

“In the past two years there has been a great deal of opposition to Modi’s ‘visionary leadership’. But, it has come from ordinary citizens. It is they who took to the streets to protest against an amendment to the citizenship law that was clearly discriminatory. It was ordinary farmers who took to the streets to protest against the farm laws. They have been camping on the borders of Delhi for over six months. In all this time if the Congress party has had anything to say they have said it so quietly that it has made no difference.”

The Unfair Burden That Women Test Cricketers Carry

Karunya Keshav, in her piece for The Times of India, recounts some stellar performances by Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma and Sneha Rana in Bristol Test, and laments the discrimination faced by women Test cricketers.

Pointing out how rare it is for a woman cricketer to find an opportunity to play a Test match, Keshav writes:

“…it’s jarring that even as the Indian women played a rare Test in Bristol, the Indian men were in Southampton for the culmination of the World Test Championship (WTC), which was marketed as “the ultimate test”. Test cricket, more than ever, is seen as the pinnacle for a cricketer, the Test cap and whites an honour afforded to the best. But only for men, not women.”

Further, Keshav argues that it is the administrators’ job, and not of these women, “to find non-discriminatory solutions that balance equality and the romance of sport with commerce”, so that the sportswomen receive more opportunities to hone their craft and shine.

Two-Child Cap and Other Disincentives Should Go. We Need More Babies, Not Less

SA Aiyar, in his column for the Times of India (TOI) argues that the two-child cap is unnecessary and that “India and the world face not excessive but insufficient births.”

Aiyer points out that India’s fertility is plummeting and that we are heading towards a future with fewer people of working age (15 to 65 years old) and skyrocketing aged dependents. Further, he opines that many BJP and RSS leaders worry about excess population mainly because of their paranoid belief that Muslims avoid birth control so the Muslim share of the population will rise and create Muslim-majority regions, threatening Hindu supremacy.

“But Muslim fertility is falling fast with rising incomes. It was just 1.4 in Jammu and Kashmir in 2016. India’s Muslim population share will rise slowly for some decades before stabilising, probably well below 20%. This carries no threat to Hindu dominance.”

India, Aiyar states, must breed more workers and ensure work for them.

Even in Pandemic, Pressure to be Happy

Filmmaker Leher Kala, in her piece for The Indian Express, reflects on how “self-improvement as a coping strategy” and an emphasis on positive thoughts while we combat pandemic-induced losses and pain “can help only to a point and only those who are blissfully superficial.”.

Kala also talks about how any form or cause of grief, however small, deserves acknowledgement, and bemoans how “we are wired to conveniently forget about the terrible and expect only the beautiful.”

“In reality, we would all benefit more with the sobering reminder that, no matter how hard we work at ourselves, we will suffer, because uninterrupted contentment is not a birthright. A culture that overdoes joy and slots anger, sadness and fear as emotions to run from, is disregarding the complexities of being alive.”

When a Journalist Should Draw the Line

In his piece for the Hindustan Times, journalist Karan Thapar gives his reason for not attending the Sharad Pawar and Yashwant Sinha led Rashtra Manch and lays emphasis on the need for scribes to draw the line when it comes to actively participating in events with a clear political motivation.

“Now, why do I believe it would be wrong for a journalist to participate? Because it’s tantamount to taking sides. In my case, it would damage the neutrality required of someone who conducts political interviews. Consider this example.”

He further illustrates the treacherous business of being friends with politicians, by pointing out how tricky it became for him to be friends with Benazir Bhutto while retaining his journalist integrity.

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