The Anti-National Newspaper!
In his column in The Indian Express, P Chidambaram clarifies that Modi’s claim of the NDA Rafale deal being cheaper than the UPA deal is false. He says that the CAG had failed the nation by not probing several mysterious aspects of the report and bringing out the truth. Questions which still remained unanswered are why the Prime Minister’s Office held parallel negotiations undermining the efforts of the INT, why the three anti-corruption clauses were deleted, why the payment security system was jettisoned.
The guarantee charges remained hidden from the public and a meaningful comparison could not be made about the prices of the two deals. The Hindu story has ferreted out the information from the report of the Indian Negotiating Team (INT). The charges were € 574 million. If this amount is taken out of the UPA deal and the two deals are compared, the NDA deal is more expensive by € 246.11 million. At the current exchange rate of Rs 80, the NDA deal is more expensive by Rs 1,968 crore. On this count alone, each of the 36 aircraft will be more expensive by Rs 54.66 crore.
A Suicidal Opposition?
The media is entitled to express different points of view. But senior political leaders cannot be sowing doubts about the character of the Prime Minister, his patriotism or intentions. In her column in The Indian Express, Tavleen Singh questions the opposition parties for “singing praises” of Imran Khan and denouncing Modi and his ministers for “lying about the number of dead jihadists” in the Balakot camp. In the pathological hatred of Modi, the opposition has spoken without due thought, which reflects poorly on their judgement.
By the end of last week our opposition leaders had done so much damage to India’s image that a Pakistani friend asked me if it was possible that the Pulwama suicide bomber had done what he did at the behest of Modi. “After all he has an election coming…won’t this really help him?” I tried to explain that in a real democracy like India it is simply not possible for a political leader to kill 40 of his own soldiers and expect this to remain a secret. But, despite my attempts to convince him otherwise, he said more than once that our own political leaders and journalists were saying that this is what happened.
All Socialists Now
With elections around the corner, all political parties, will soon declare that they adhere to the principles of socialism, as deemed necessary by the Constitution. But it is a well-known truth that almost all parties don’t really work along those principles. So, why should a citizen not assert that she does not believe in socialism and wants to start a party which explicitly says so and why has no one challenged this untruth so far, asks Meghnad Desai in his column in The Indian Express.
The fact remains that the electoral procedure is built on a tissue of false assertions by all but a small number of Leftist political parties. Hypocrisy is a common coin of politics but there ought to be a limit. In a country where people rush to file a PIL for the most trivial of causes, no one has as yet challenged this set of untruths. It is like a collective conspiracy. We all know that no one means it when they say they adhere to socialism and no one cares that they are lying. Satyameva Jayate may be the national mantra but not in election procedures.
Studying Kanwariyas and the Politics of Religion
What inspired millions of Kanwariyas to undergo such hardship, was it genuine piety, was it exhibitionism, or was it just following a fashion which has spread far and wide since the 1980s? Mark Tully, in his column in The Hindustan Times, tries to understand if the Kanwar Yatra is a result of political and religious fervour coming together, with a dash of nationalism.
Explaining why so many people find that meaning in walking along the Kanwar road, he says it is because “they live in a society with desire propelled by the cantankerous bombardment of images of consumption from across the world but with very limited opportunities of gainful employment to satisfy any of their cravings.” So, professor Vikash Singh sees the Kanwar pilgrimage as a religious answer to the frustrations of modern India’s consumerist society, frustrations inevitably felt by many in any society where the market is God.
Democracy Endangered by Government and Media
If the government and the fourth estate are on the same page, democracy is truly in danger. Kapil Sibal in his column in The Telegraph, talks about how in today’s times, questions raised by the Opposition are perceived to be anti-national, most of the press has become cheerleaders of the government, almost every statement made by Opposition leaders is distorted and every act of the government is eulogised as an act of patriotism.
What we see is selective persecution and prosecution of those opposed to the government and the protection of those who are either part of the government or its affiliates. The judiciary must also realise that unless it protects those targeted unjustly, it may also be perceived to be partisan. The highway to prosperity and achchhe din requires peace, tranquillity and institutional integrity. It seems that we are living in an India which is unfair, where those at the bottom of the pyramid live only on hope. Others, barring the chosen few, are losing hope.
A Peace Movement Is Needed
In his column in The Hindu, Shiv Visvanathan proposes that India go beyond the grammar of surgical strikes and reach for its cultures of peace, pilgrimage and understanding. India desperately needs a peace movement to counter the think tanks of war and a middle class which craves the machismo of militarism. Talking about the recent Indian-Pakistan terror attacks, he asks one to imagine how things would have turned out to be if both sides of the border worked in a dialogue of peace. This would help rethink the idea of the border as a threshold of hostilities.
What makes the dyingness of Gandhian ideas even more poignant is that violence and war have become technologically and strategically inventive, creating an acceptable normalcy around genocidal deaths. We read body counts with more indifference than weather reports. It is time peace as goodness challenges the inventiveness of war. As Gandhi pointed out, to be inventive, peace has to be both cognitive and ethical. It has to go beyond moral rhetoric and create experimental possibilities of peace, and it has to transform ethics into a political act that transforms the dullness of current democracy. Second, peace has to be seen as a craft, a lived world of meaning, not as a technocratic exercise. It needs daily rituals of practice where life, livelihood, and lifestyle follow the codes of non-violence.
The Opium-Obsessed Parrots
The farmers of Madhya Pradesh have a new problem to tackle. Every time a farmer enters a poppy field, cautiously slits a pod to help it ripen by exposing the latex inside, a parrot swoops in, diving straight for the opium milk. Writing for The New Indian Express, Sharanya Manivannan talks about this trend of parrots being addicted to opium. Though the thought of junkie parrots might seem hilarious, we need to understand that our views on fauna will always be lacking.
Throw in a frenzy of drug-addled parrots and you can see why the pods are cautiously slit. Not because the flowering plant is delicate, but because it becomes liable to immediate plunder. Nilgais, scorpions and snakes, common pests in poppy fields, are also attracted to the opium. But, the parrots have the advantage of flight. And obsession.These marauding parrots call to mind ones from classic literature who enjoyed trickery and entertained themselves by distressing people.
It’s Good to Have Josh but Know When to Keep Khamosh
The recent India-Pakistan terror attacks saw many social media warriors demanding war as a response. Twinkle Khanna in her column in The Times of India, talks of how people need to first understand the price of war, before war-mongering behind the safety nets of WhatsApp groups and news desks. War is not a simple decision, if you think of all the women who live in fear every time their husbands walk into the line of fire.
The fact is that there are real people involved, not plastic GI Joe figurines deployed in hazardous situations. These are human beings, whose fortunes are not counted in the money they make, but by the most basic of all premises — the good fortune to be alive. These are men like Abhinandan, where the blood is real, the bravery is real and, yes, even that remarkable moustache is real.
Hot Food, a Dry Wine and an Old Brandy
Karan Thapar in his column in The Hindustan Times, talks about the simple pleasures of feeding on trash meals in London much to the envy of the diners at the next table. He adds that what can possibly be just as good or better, would be an old-fashioned meal hosted by someone at their home, which is hot food, old brandy, a moist cigar, and dry wine.
On the night in question, I was fed and watered to distinction — or do I mean extinction? Vichyssoise, roast lamb, cranberry jelly, duchesse potatoes, courgettes, broccoli and an old-fashioned creme brûlée with a hard and difficult-to-crack top. Such cooking is the best foundation for postprandial banter and this was no exception.“What will you have next?” Gauri’s late husband David politely asked. “I can offer you a good cigar and an old brandy”.“What more could I possibly want?” It was meant to be a rhetorical question but it set us thinking.
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