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.

Keep the chai, forget the paper. Read the best opinion and editorial articles from across the print media on Sunday View.

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India applauds resolve, and waits

In his weekly column for The Indian Express, former finance minister P Chidambaram critiques Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s post-Pahalgam attack address — acknowledging his call for unity but challenging his overtly optimistic portrayal of the situation in Kashmir before the terror attack. Chidambaram cited data on terrorism, education, unemployment, and democratic backsliding to further his argument.

Peace is a distant goal in Kashmir. At the all-party meeting on April 24, 2025, the presentation made by the Ministry of Home Affairs said that, in the decade between June 2014 and May 2024, there were 1,643 terrorist-initiated incidents, 1,925 infiltration attempts, 726 successful infiltrations and 576 security personnel were killed.

Let there be no room for confusion or cynicism

In his column for Deccan Herald, Jagdeep Chhokar asserts that the Prime Minister should provide more details about the proposed caste census and that it does not mean anything in practical terms, particularly in terms of giving a time frame for conducting the exercise. It could very well be yet another promise by the current dispensation, where its date of fulfilment is not in the foreseeable future.

The caste census has indeed become a hot-button election issue over the last couple of years, with some opposition political parties campaigning for it and the ruling party opposing it. The question, however, is whether it was so urgent that it had to be announced while the nation is trying to figure out myriad issues arising from the Pahalgam tragedy...A lot of questions surrounding the terror attack need answers. Yes, the assailants were terrorists, but how did they get to where they did undetected? That too, in a region which has had heavy deployment of security forces for years.

Two years since Manipur violence began, a call for collective healing and a connected future

In a column for The Indian Express, Ram Wangkheirakpam urges for a decisive break from the cycle of hatred and corruption that brought Manipur to a crisis and led to the violence on 3 May 2023. He asserted that the conflict must be understood not in isolation but as part of a deeper, long-standing fragmentation of communities. He argues that the path forward lies in restoring education and livelihoods, as well as sustainable development.

In Manipur, forests have been a contentious issue and one of the key triggers of this conflict. Many villages in the hills suffer from lack of water as their springs and streams have dried; in the Valley, rivers, too, have run dry. Reviving forests and springs must be in the interest of all. This is the ecological connectedness that binds people together. Water must once again flow in our villages.

America will have a price to pay for targeting campuses

In his column for Hindustan Times, Frank F Islam argues that the Trump administration’s increasingly hardline immigration policies and crackdown on foreign students for allegedly violating the law or taking pro-Hamas positions has sent a chill through the Indian student community. However, the move will have cost the US both intellectually and economically.

To grasp the gravity of the current crackdown, one needs to look no further than the US tech industry. Two of the most influential and consequential companies in the world — Microsoft and Google — are led by former F-1 visa holders: Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai...International students contribute substantially to the US economy. According to research by NAFSA: Association of International Educators, these students added $43.8 billion to the US economy in the 2023–2024 academic year and supported 378,175 jobs across the country. Indian students alone might be contributing more than $10 billion annually to the US economy through tuition, housing, and living expenses.

Terror crosses borders, so must consequences

In his column for Hindustan Times, Abhishek Singhvi and Akash Kumar Singh underline the need to consolidate an economic, strategic, and geopolitical offensive against Pakistan and break the back of its sponsorship of terror. The authors list nine measures to do so including hitting Pakistan at its most vulnerable nerve — its economic underbelly — as well as launching a digital strike against the neighbour using our technical intelligence.

We must not only play defence but also script an audacious offensive across land, seas, airwaves, and public minds. For too long, Pakistan has mistaken our patience for passivity. It is time to break the illusion, hit hard wherever and whenever necessary, and exhibit the might of India. The process of these nine initiatives must be a continuous, ongoing process, not a reactive move against another Uri or Pahalgam. History is unkind to those who stand at the water’s edge, watching the tides of change pass by them. It rewards those who ride the storm and reshape the shoreline.

Global trade stagnates in climate of distrust

In his column for Deccan Herald, Mohamed Zeeshan writes that the one defining characteristic of US President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, it is that he doesn’t trust the world. But trade and global business had quietly become the leading casualties of this deepening distrust long before Trump became president.

After the 2008 recession hollowed out the Western middle class, fear of economic competition with foreigners has come to dominate politics. Imports have increasingly become taboo in countries both rich and poor. Yet, if you are afraid of importing goods from abroad, you can never sign a trade deal. In recent years, such fears have kept the US out of a major trans-Pacific trade deal and India out of the world’s largest trade bloc in Asia – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

Caste census casts questions on job creation

In his column for The New Indian Express, Shankkar Aiyar writes that the inclusion of caste in the census underlines the omnipotence of caste in India’s political matrix. He asserted that the caste census will at best be a template for inclusion, not expansion in job creation. The momentum of public opinion backing the move clearly casts questions on job creation.

Take the IT services sector, which is one of the largest white collar employers. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, in its March 2025 report, cited data to note that “there is an unusual decline in placements in IITs and IIITs between 2021-22 and 2023-24”. A TeamLease peport in October estimated that only 10 percent of engineering graduates would secure jobs this year. Indeed, another survey, published in March 2025, revealed that 83 percent of engineering graduates have no jobs.

The High Price of Please: Civility in the Age of AI

In his column for The New Indian Express, Ravi Shankar Etteth writes on the bizarre economics of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) age, where kindness is expensive. Recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted that his company is “losing millions” because users are too polite to AI bots.

When you say “thank you” to a bot, you’re not flattering the algorithm; you’re reaffirming your own humanity. It’s like leaving a tip at a self-service counter. Irrational? Maybe. Civilising? Definitely. Of course, the tech bros might scoff. “Just get to the point,” they’ll say. “Prompt faster, think sharper, be brief.” But that’s like telling poets to stop using adjectives. Sure, the line moves faster but the soul drags behind. The idea that we’ll bankrupt AI firms with kindness is deliciously ironic. The same companies that unleashed world-altering technology are now fretting over too many “good mornings.” What’s next?

We plan our life amid its infinite danger

In her weekly column for The Indian Express, Leher Kala reflects on the randomness and fragility of life, using the recent Pahalgam terrorist attack—which narrowly missed a group of 17 sales executives from Bengaluru—as a starting point to explore how chance and chaos often override human planning. In a world where we seek control through routine and decision-making, tragedies like this expose the unsettling truth that even the most careful lives can be upended by events far beyond our influence.

What does a 30-something, privately employed techie living in Karnataka have to do with the turbulent history of Kashmir thousands of kilometers away, that he should randomly die for it? Almost nothing. A heinous crime has occurred, 26 families’ lives have changed forever and the hardest part is coming to grips with the fact that it wasn’t even personal. It brings to mind the “butterfly effect”, the theory that states that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in Africa can cause a tornado in some other far-flung corner of the world.

Opinions from The Quint

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Echoes of 3 May 2023: The Day That Tore Open the Land in Manipur, Divided People

Donald Trump and the 'Exorbitant' Fairy Tale of the American Dollar

Terrorists Don’t Lose When We Ban Pakistani Artists. We Do