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

In his weekly column for The Indian Express, former Finance Minister P Chidambaram argues that the government’s move to repeal the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and replace it with a new, renamed scheme undermines the original act’s rights-based guarantees and symbolically erases Gandhi’s legacy. The 100-days-a-year wage employment guarantee scheme was the lifeline for 12 crore families to ensure that the household did not go to bed hungry and dejected. It was a boon for the poor, especially women and the elderly without regular employment. It put money in the hands of the women in the household giving them a degree of independence that their foremothers had not experienced. It created a safety net for the poor. The Bill snatches these benefits away, cruelly.P Chidambaram, The Indian ExpressIn his piece for Deccan Herald, Gurucharan Gollerkeri examines the United States’ National Security Strategy (NSS) 2025, released earlier this month. While it claims to outline how the world’s most powerful nation views its security challenges and responsibilities, he says that a closer reading reveals a curious mix of grand ambition, ideological nostalgia, and selective attention, making it more a geopolitical incantation than a clear-eyed strategy."For India, a nation buffeted by climate, commerce, and conflict, there is no refuge in magical thinking," writes Gollerkeri.Perhaps the most striking re-orientation in the 2025 NSS is the prioritisation of the Western Hemisphere. The US now claims the Americas – not Eurasia, not Indo-Pacific – as the locus of its primary security interests. In doing so, Washington revives a 19th-century doctrine – a new Monroe Doctrine with a Trump Corollary – as the backbone of its global posture. This is not just a reallocation of resources; it is a mental re-mapping of global stakes. By turning to its ‘backyard,’ the US implicitly downgrades every other region, including South Asia and the Indian Ocean, to secondary or tertiary importance unless they serve narrow transactional purposes. From New Delhi’s vantage point, this shift feels like a re-definition of geography: a subtle but powerful message that India, and the broader Indo-Pacific, will count only so long as they help Washington manage its economic competition or keep China in check, but not as part of any vision for global public goods, climate, development, or multilateral cooperation.Gurucharan Gollerkeri, Deccan HeraldIn The Indian Express, Tavleen Singh criticises the Vishva Hindu Parishad’s recent directive discouraging Hindus from celebrating Christmas, calling it a form of “culture policing.” She argues that such actions undermine constitutional freedoms and attempt to control private and public expressions of festivity.The Vishva Hindu Parishad has ordained that Hindus will be going against their ‘culture’ if they celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, as they usually do, because Indians love any excuse for a party. At least that is how it was in old India, when we did not know it was against our ‘culture’ to have a good time. The ban on Christmas came from a Delhi VHP official. The VHP is one of the uglier offspring of the RSS. Asked if this was not a restriction on the right that our constitution gives us to worship as we wish, he made it clear that this was not about religion but about conversion. It is not just private festivities that the VHP seeks to ban, but in shops and malls as well.Tavleen Singh, The Indian ExpressWriting for the Hindustan Times, Gopalkrishna Gandhi describes Delhi’s toxic air as a “global scandal” that citizens can no longer ignore. He argues that any meaningful change will require drastic measures, such as relocating certain institutions, rotating major events out of the capital, and enforcing stricter year-round controls on vehicles and construction.The Supreme Court was right in saying there is no magic wand to solve the air quality slump in Delhi. A long-term strategy has to be adopted. And that strategy has to be comprehensive, completely out of the box. Delhi must relocate many of its institutions. It must remain the nation’s capital — no question about that. But it has to become a leaner, cleaner city — not the present flabby and fouled-up tangle of vehicles and buildings, all making life miserable for its residents.Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Hindustan TimesIn the Tribune, retired IAS officer Avay Shukla uses humour and personal anecdotes to unravel the supposed prestige of official banquets, arguing that being excluded from, or refusing to attend, events like the recent dinner hosted for Vladimir Putin is not an insult, and may actually be the right moral decision.Drawing on his own experience, Shukla mocks the pomp of diplomatic dining and asks why such occasions are treated as symbols of honour.I have attended many during my days in the MEA, and have even organised a few in that Mecca of gastronomic diplomacy, Hyderabad House in New Delhi. I can vouch for the fact that these repasts are like a Death Watch, where everyone fervently wishes for the proceedings to end quickly. Nobody knows anyone, the seating arrangement always ensures that the person you dislike most in the world is seated next to you, you need to be fluent in at least seven languages in order to converse with anyone, all the pretty ladies are arranged next to the chief guest or host like a row of savouries, out of reach of even an Indian Wrestling Federation office-bearer. Everyone is more tight-lipped than the oyster in your soup lest they let a state secret slip, the food tastes like a dog’s breakfast, no liquor is served in India. Everything is so formal and starchy that even the chicken legs on the plate stand at attention. No wonder Rahul Gandhi skipped the Putin-feeding orgy and went to a pizza joint instead.Avay Shukla, The TribuneLast week, Union minister Nitin Gadkari’s friendly meeting and lighthearted exchange with Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra sparked widespread media coverage and public debate. Writing for Deccan Chronicle, Anita Katyal notes that the encounter shouldn't come as a suprise as it aligns with Gadkari’s repeated assertion that the BJP and Congress may be political opponents but are "not enemies".Mr Gadkari recently acknowledged that he had learnt this lesson from his mentor and late Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee who did not allow his differences with political rivals to impact his personal relationship with them. Speaking at the launch of a memoir on Vajpayee, Atal Sansmaran, by his media adviser Ashok Tandon, Mr Gadkari recalled how he was once pulled up by the senior BJP leader when he adopted an aggressive stance in his capacity as Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra. The minister said Vajpayee often told him and others in the party that they campaign as BJP representatives but once elected, “you are everyone’s representative”.Anita Katyal, Deccan ChronicleIn The New Indian Express, Santwana Bhattacharya reflects on recent instances in India where history has been quietly edited to suit contemporary political agendas, essentially watering down icons like Tagore and Gandhi into safer, less demanding versions of themselves, making facts “negotiable” and “contingent on political comfort.”The modern nation-state ideas we continue to quote now feel tired, like slogans repeated long after belief has faded. The words remain, but the faith that once animated them has thinned. Symbols, too, are being quietly reworked to suit a different political temperament. They are no longer sites of shared meaning, but instruments of management. Icons, after all, age badly in impatient times. They demand patience, historical memory and moral engagement—qualities increasingly seen as liabilities rather than virtues.Santwana Bhattacharya, The New Indian ExpressIn his piece for Deccan Herald, Ashwin Mahesh writes that developing backward districts will need greater local empowerment and citizen participation, rather than relying solely on government intervention.He argues that investments, jobs, and infrastructure must be complemented by education, healthcare, and social services to make these regions both attractive and sustainable for growth.Some states have significantly lagged others, and for a very long time now, there have been huge transfers of funds from the richer states to the poorer ones. Despite that, the states that bring up the bottom of development rankings have been there for long. Why? And more importantly, what can we do differently? Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question. Throughout the years, when it has been apparent that a region is lagging, the instinctive response has been to ask – What should the government do? This assumes that the answer to the problem lies within the government, and therefore, we must look for the options available there. But what if we’ve been looking for our lost keys where there is light rather than where we dropped them?Ashwin Mahesh, Deccan HeraldIn Hindustan Times, Namita Bhandare celebrates the Supreme Court’s recent order to reserve 30 percent of the seats for women in the upcoming bar council elections, calling it a historic step toward "breaking the male monopoly in India’s bar councils". "In the six decades since it was set up in 1961, the 20-member executive committee of the Bar Council of India had never elected a woman. Across India, only six of 441 elected representatives in 18 state bar councils are women. And 11 of these bar councils have zero women executive members," she writes.This exclusion is “structural, systemic and constitutionally indefensible,” senior advocate Shobha Gupta, arguing for Yogamaya, said. The judges agreed and have directed one-third of seats, including at least one office-bearer post, to be earmarked for women in the upcoming bar council elections.Namita Bhandare, Hindustan TimesNo FIR, No Case: How the National Herald Prosecution Collapsed in CourtThe New Nuclear Bill: A Leap Into the Future or a Risky Gamble?Two Populisms in a Pod: How Vance and Khanna Differ in Their Populist PoliticsMiddle East Balancers: Why Modi’s Visit to Jordan, Oman is Beyond BilateralismA Sitting CM Pulled a Woman’s Hijab. Why Has There Been No Consequence?India’s Arctic Access Through Russia Is a Strategic Game Changer

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

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The Second Killing of Mahatma Gandhi

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