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

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

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Military Boldness, Political Timidity

In his column for The Indian Express, P Chidambaram highlights the glaring contrast in the portrayal of Operation Sindoor by India’s military and political leadership. Following initial advances, the military encountered setbacks as Pakistan launched a counteroffensive aided by Chinese and Turkish technology, before eventually recalibrating to mitigate losses. On the contrary, the political leadership has portrayed the operation as an apodictic triumph.

Contrast the political leadership. It will not admit the mistakes or the losses. Like an ostrich whose head is buried in the sand, it maintains that India scored a ‘decisive victory’ in Operation Sindoor. If there was a decisive victory, why did India not press its advantage, secure more military gains, and demand and obtain from Pakistan political concessions? Why was the first outreach by the DGMO, Pakistan accepted immediately and without conditions? There were no answers from the government.

P Chidambaram, for The Indian Express

Chidambaram contends that India’s political leadership must confront uncomfortable truths, as despite its projection of being a global leader, Pakistan’s military alliance with China, and the military coalition with the United States of America, have once again been laid bare.

UK Deal Shows How Much India Will — Or Won’t — Bend on Tariffs

Donald Trump’s imposition of a 25% tariff on Indian goods poses a significant challenge to India’s aspiration of becoming a global manufacturing hub and competing with China. Consequently, the nation must now carefully navigate negotiations to lower the tariff, writes economist Trinh Nguyen in her piece for The Times of India.

Negotiators will no doubt be headed back to the table in pursuit of that elusive breakthrough, and India could manage to settle on a lower number. Trump made a similar threat against Japan and gave it a reprieve later. So far, the lowest rate secured is the UK’s 10% and even allies such as the EU and Japan have only managed 15%. In the emerging markets of Asia, the Philippines and Indonesia got 19% versus Vietnam’s 20%, and that includes conditional details and extra levy on Chinese transshipment. Beyond the headline reciprocal tariff rate, India is also trying to gain concessions on sectoral tariffs, from auto parts to pharma, as well as limiting the fallout to its participation in BRICS and secondary Russian oil sanctions.

Trinh Nguyen, for The Times of India

While the nation is unlikely to make sweeping compromises in the farm sector, considering it is guarded for political reasons, with 40% of India’s labour being in agriculture, a compromise can be reached in sectors like energy, defence and aircraft to appease the US. The aim should be a 6-7% cut from the 25% — comparable to India’s Southeast Asian peers.

Noise and Signal From Trump’s Tariff Tantrums

Donald Trump’s criticism of India for purchasing Russian oil rings hollow when the USA itself continues to import Russian energy, observes author Shankkar Aiyar in his piece for The New Indian Express. The deeper concern lies in the American expectation of India accepting their regulatory standards and opening its markets to genetically modified crops and dairy, which will risk India’s sovereignty.

Trump cited the purchase of Russian oil by India as a cause for further penalties. This view impacts India’s right to energy security. The expectation also reeks of hypocrisy. The Energy Information Agency reveals the US imported uranium from Russia till recently and its companies can seek waivers till 2028. The EU parliament reveals that Russian gas imports will continue till the end of 2027. Recently, Nato chief Mark Rutte warned India of sanctions. Ironically, his country, the Netherlands, has imported Russian uranium. Indeed, it is reported that Russian company Rosatom channels uranium profits through the Netherlands.

Shankkar Aiyar, for The New Indian Express

In this context, Aiyar feels India’s response must now go beyond the realm of rhetoric to actual structural reforms, which have been long overdue since the 1991 liberalisation. Only by generating genuine economic leverage, akin to China, can India safeguard its autonomy.

Trump and His Trumpeter

Rahul Gandhi’s bizarre endorsement of Donald Trump’s ‘dead economy’ jibe on India is both perplexing and ill-informed, argues columnist Tavleen Singh in her piece for The Indian Express. The author recalls India’s true period of economic stagnation — under the leadership of Indira Gandhi, wherein License Raj reigned supreme, smugglers operated with impunity, while the genuine investors were punished.

To come back, though, to the ‘dead Indian economy’, may I say that Rahul Gandhi appears not to have any memories of those years when Granny was prime minister and the Indian economy was dead, dead, dead. Ask anyone who lived through those times, and they will tell you what shopping for groceries used to be like. There were shortages of the kind that countries experience only when there has been a war or a massive natural disaster. We queued and queued and queued. Daily necessities like bread, milk and sugar were always in short supply. And, when it came to ‘luxuries’ like cars, you could remain in the queue for ten years.

Tavleen Singh, for The Indian Express

Singh’s critique, however, is not reserved for Rahul Gandhi alone. She argues that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been ineffective in realising what he had once promised — dismantling India’s bureaucratic overreach. Hence, while Rahul Gandhi’s statement might be flawed, Modi has also stifled the nation’s growth trajectory by failing to implement meaningful reforms.

Musk and Melons: A Moment To Rethink Wealth Taxes

Drawing on personal anecdotes in his The Times of India column, Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee illustrates the extreme disparity in wealth across the globe, wherein the top 1% holds 42% of the world’s wealth, while the top 0.1% in the USA owns more than twice the wealth of the bottom 50%.

Economists and philosophers have long struggled with the question of how to justify the vast inequalities we see in the world and the implied scope for action — would the world be better off if we took the extra $499 spent on that melon and give it to a group of villagers in Bihar or Benin? The current context makes this extremely salient. In the World Inequality Database (WID), in 2023, 42% of the wealth of the world was with the top 1% wealthiest. In India, that number was 40%, in the US 35%, in China 30% and in France 27%.

Abhijit Banerjee, for The Times of India

As the ultra-rich continue to accumulate and shield wealth, be it through political influence or monopolistic power, Banerjee contends robust taxation is imperative to foster equitable growth. Without effective taxation strategies that target the ultra-rich, the chasm of inequality is bound to widen.

SIR A Massive Fraud By EC Against India’s Poor

India remains a nation where the privileged section considers elections to be an inconvenience and abstains from voting, whilst the poor and marginalised view it as their solitary tool for empowerment. Hence, the Election Commission of India (ECI) is running the grave risk of disenfranchising millions by implementing Special Intensive Revision (SIR), contends Pavan K Varma in his piece for Deccan Chronicle.

To deprive the poor and vulnerable of their rights as a voter is to take away from them the only link to participate in a system where otherwise they are marginalised. It is to cut the umbilical cord to their political relevance. For those on the lowest rung of the ladder, the right to vote is why they retain hope above the waterline of despair. In a country like India, where the gap between the haves and have nots is both blatant and growing, and socio-economic inequity is near institutionalised, electoral disenfranchisement can ignite that despair into anarchy and rebellion.

Pavan K Varma, for Deccan Chronicle

The underprivileged might be faced with a documentation crisis as low literacy will impede their ability to navigate paperwork, while migrant workers might face logistical hurdles in returning home to complete documentation. The author consequently calls for the ECI to transparently publish the list of names added and removed, with due justification.

Guilty Silence

A letter condemning Israel’s actions against the Palestinians was recently signed by over 300 writers from the United Kingdom and Ireland, but they are a day late and a dollar short, for almost 50,000 Palestinians have already been killed, contends Mukul Kesavan. In his piece for The Telegraph, the historian argues Western writers and intellectuals have been shamefully slow and performative in their condemnation of Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Why have Western writers and public intellectuals been so feeble and belated in their response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza? The general public can be forgiven for needing photos of children visibly starving to death to sympathise with the plight of Palestinians but writers should be better than that. The tens of thousands of women and children killed by Israeli bombardment, the systematic destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and universities, the killing of medical personnel, the targeted killing of journalists, the children singled out and shot by snipers should have shocked writers in London and New York into a performative fury.

Mukul Kesavan, for The Telegraph

Kesavan believes Palestinian voices now carry the moral weight that Western writers have abdicated. If they are to reclaim their moral credibility, the author encourages Western liberals to join the campaign against Israeli apartheid with conviction.

Youth Vote Reform: Should India Let 16-Year-Olds Cast Their Ballot?

Should India rethink its approach to voting rights and political participation among the youth? Ashwin Mahesh feels so, as writing for Deccan Herald, he highlights the inconsistency in age thresholds wherein an 18-year-old is allowed to vote in national elections, but a 17-year-old remains disenfranchised even in local elections.

What about voting? It seems odd that an 18-year-old can vote to indirectly select the Prime Minister of the country, but someone who is a few days short of that cutoff can’t even elect their local corporator. At the other end of the spectrum, it seems odd that a 90-year-old can vote for a future that she may not live in, and even bequeath that future to a 17-year-old who isn’t given that choice. Would Brexit have passed in Britain if fewer older people had voted and more younger ones had?

Ashwin Mahesh, for Deccan Herald

Mahesh argues that empowering and encouraging youth participation is essential for a more inclusive democracy. At a time when voter registration practices are increasingly susceptible to political interference, expanding the electorate is a crucial step towards strengthening India’s democratic foundation.

Historians Today Serve the Prophet in the Pursuit of Liberty

As history comes under siege from both state-backed authoritarianism and ideological activism, mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik, writing for The New Indian Express, contends that historians, in their attempt to appear secular and scientific, are now disregarding the foundational myths that form collective identities and values.

Historians who refer to myth as ‘fiction’ do a great disservice to humanity. It reveals their inability to separate faith from different types of fiction: parables, propaganda, and fantasy. Some historians go to the extent of viewing mythological explanations as whitewashing by court poets. A few historians, in recent times, do acknowledge the role of myth in history, and use words like ‘imaginary’ and ‘ideology’. They avoid using the word ‘myth’ as it offends many people.

Devdutt Pattanaik, for The New Indian Express

Pattanaik argues that historians wield power courtesy of their position as truth-seekers, despite their work being rooted in subjective interpretation and not scientific objectification. By invalidating contrarian perspectives, historians risk becoming the very gatekeepers of dogmatism they once challenged.

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