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.

Trump Is in Danger of Repeating Bush’s Middle East Mistakes

In 2024, much like in 2016, Donald Trump — the current President of the United States of America — won the election by vehemently opposing wars. His decision to join Israel in their war against Iran, hence, is in direct contradiction to his pledge of avoiding a possible World War III, contend foreign policy expert Matthew Duss and columnist Sohrab Ahmari in their co-authored piece for The Washington Post.

Even if the Trump administration could satisfy itself that a “one-and-done” operation had achieved all that was necessary, as the saying goes, the enemy gets a vote. A cornered, vengeful Iranian leadership enjoying a rally-around-the-flag effect may feel the need to escalate. Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil supply traverses, and target vulnerable U.S. bases across the Middle East with an arsenal of sophisticated short- and medium-range missiles that have yet to be impacted by Israeli airstrikes.

Matthew Duss and Sohrab Ahmari, for The Washington Post

Though Trump has projected strength in the wake of strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear sites, caution must be exercised against triumphalism, as America might be staring at another iteration of the delusional ‘cakewalk’ myth that preceded the 2003 Iraq invasion. A one-and-done bombing is unlikely to destroy a nation’s nuclear capabilities, but it might ignite a cascade of destabilising geopolitical consequences.

Sunset Hour

In his piece for The Telegraph, incidentally published an hour after US President Donald Trump announced the dropping of a “full payload of bombs” on Iran’s three nuclear facilities, political researcher Asim Ali casts a critical eye on the West’s self-appointed moral guardianship in the universal battle of democracy and autocracy, especially in light of its support for Israel.

Over the last half-decade, Western leaders have repeatedly intoned the idea that the world is engaged in an epochal ‘battle between democracy and autocracy’. In this defining battle, the former camp (mainly the United States of America and Europe) is meant to stand for the principles of popular sovereignty, democratic freedoms, and a rules-based global order, whereas the latter camp (mainly Russia and China) is perceived to be the bastion of elite rule, state coercion, and external aggression. The West-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and now the pre-emptive war with Iran have thoroughly drained this simplistic framing of legitimacy.

Asim Ali, for The Telegraph

Ali highlights how today’s democracies, like that of the USA, are along the lines of philosopher Sheldon Wolin’s idea of ‘inverted totalitarianism’ — featuring media manipulation, corporate control and public disengagement.

Local Connection

Musician T. M. Krishna explores the dissonance between witnessing global violence — be it in Gaza, Donetsk or Kashmir — and seamlessly returning to daily life, enabled by geographic privileges and emotional distance. Writing for The Telegraph, Krishna contends that modern society now normalizes human tragedies under the guise of abstract geopolitics.

How are these wars and other events happening across the planet connected to you and me? This seems like a far-fetched rumination. But it is not. For one moment, if we remove the political, social, cultural, linguistic and historical demarcations that keep us all apart, we will be able to see quite clearly that nothing really differentiates all of us. The human species is predictable and has been behaving in exactly the same manner from time immemorial. No religion or rationality has changed who we are beneath these scaffoldings. There is one immediate crisis that reveals this universality, and that is the climate crisis. Political positions, border disputes and constructed walls do not stop its pervasiveness.

TM Krishna, for The Telegraph

Krishna calls for building and promulgating empathy, solidarity and peaceful coexistence as antidotes to global indifference. To care about the world, he believes we must first engage with our immediate realities beyond the societal silos.

Eleven Years: A Data-Based Critique

In a follow-up to his previous column in The Indian Express reflecting on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 11-year tenure, former finance minister P Chidambaram argues that the well-being of citizens can be best gauged through a closer inspection of consumption data. According to the New Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) data from 2023–24, India’s bottom 10% survive on a daily expenditure range of merely ₹50–100.

Expenditure is a proxy for income and borrowing. The persons in the bottom 10 per cent have an expenditure of ₹50–100 per day. Ask yourself, with ₹50–100 a day, what kind of food can a person consume? What kind of dwelling can a person have? What kind of medical care or medicines can the person afford?

P Chidambaram, for The Indian Express

With data as his lens, Chidambaram sketches a sobering portrait of India’s economic landscape, extending his critique to farming distress, food insecurity and a failing manufacturing sector. Over 55% of Indian farmers, he notes, remain trapped in debt.

On the 50th Anniversary of Emergency, Need To Think What Should Be Done To Protect Our Democracy

Drawing unsettling parallels between present-day India and the Emergency era of 1975, Tavleen Singh, in her piece for The Indian Express, contends that democracy is still fragile in the world’s largest democracy. While the nation has not witnessed a formal announcement of Emergency, Singh observes how the erosion of freedom occurs in more subtle and insidious ways in the modern day — not through arrests, but via law tweaks to stifle dissident voices through judicial harassment.

The important question is whether that brutal repression of democratic rights can happen again, and the answer is that it can, but in a more dangerously subtle way. There are those who say that since Narendra Modi became prime minister, an ‘undeclared emergency’ has come into force. I hesitate to make sweeping judgments of that kind, but what has happened is that some freedoms we took for granted have become endangered. This has been done not by throwing opposition leaders, journalists and dissidents into jail, but by tweaking the laws to make curbs on freedom legally possible.

Tavleen Singh, for The Indian Express

Singh calls for a spirited defence of democratic rights — one that mirrors the public pushback in the United States of America, wherein individuals not only express performative patriotism, but also have the courage to confront power when it strays from constitutional bounds.

Six Dangers Democracies Must Be Cautious About

Further on the topic of democracy, former diplomat Pavan K Varma mounts a defence of democratic ideals in his piece for Deccan Chronicle, but also highlights six looming challenges, namely — concealed authoritarianism, erosion of federalism, betrayal of public mandate, electoral opportunism, dynastic rule and legislative bullying.

Elections in Bihar and Jharkhand are due later this year, and Assam, West Bengal, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and Kerala will go to polls by May 2026. Critics argue that we have an election surfeit, but I believe that democracy is one of our greatest strengths. China and Pakistan don’t have it. Nor did the former Soviet Union. Inelastically brittle totalitarian regimes are too unstable. As a diplomat posted in Moscow, I personally witnessed the disintegration of the Soviet Union. China too, I believe, is sitting on a time-bomb.

Pavan K Varma, for Deccan Chronicle

Turning to Bihar as a telling case study, Varma points out how despite three decades of politics driven by supposed ‘social justice,’ the state remains India’s poorest, hungriest and most malnourished. Accordingly, Varma asserts the importance of a responsible electorate for democracy to transcend rhetoric.

If Cost of Death Escalates, Will the State Invest in Keeping Its Citizens Alive?

In his piece for The New Indian Express, novelist Anand Neelakantan underscores a haunting truth — even in the great equaliser called death, India’s class bias remains intact. Whilst the unfortunate victims of tragic plane crashes receive crores, those who die in overcrowded trains — at least seven do every day in Mumbai, and over 3,000 in a year — are handed paltry sums.

A few days before the tragic air accident, some passengers of Mumbai’s infamous local trains fell off the overcrowded compartments and died. These were daily commuters struggling to make a living in one of the world’s most prosperous cities. The Maharashtra government promptly announced a compensation of ₹5 lakhs. Railways have remained silent so far, but as per the Railways Act of 1989, the Railways are bound to give a compensation of ₹8 lakhs. For this, the kin of the victim will have to file a claim with the Railway Claims Tribunal, and the compensation may take many years to be fruitful, if at all. On average, the passengers in international flights are wealthier than an average commuter in a Mumbai local. The disparity in compensation between the two sets of victims is glaring. All lives are equal, but some lives are more equal in our society.

Anand Neelakantan, for The New Indian Express

The real tragedy, however, contends the author, is when accidents spark investigative reforms in the aviation sector, while civic bodies shrug off infrastructure-related fatalities without any consequences. If only payouts were financially painful and civic bodies were forced to pay crores per casualty, Neelakantan believes safety upgrades would have arrived at an expedited pace, and the common Indian would not have been treated as expendable.

Air India: Descent Into Despair

Lamenting the catastrophic post-privatisation decline of Air India, Ravi Shankar, in his piece for The New Indian Express, highlights how what was once emblematic of the Indian pride has now devolved into a byword for dysfunction. Slated for a grand revival under the Tatas, Air India is now likened to a flying disaster, resulting in fatalities, rodent infestations, cockroaches in omelettes and clogged lavatories.

What’s it like to fly Air India? Imagine your toddler peeling back an omelette mid-meal in Business Class to find a dead cockroach; the kid got food poisoning. Air India’s response — it acknowledged the incident and said it was investigating the matter with its catering service provider. Previously, a flight to London was grounded after a passenger saw a rat on the plane and rat traps had to be laid. Another Air India flight was delayed for 12 hours after a mouse was spotted in the cabin just as the plane was about to take off. Meanwhile, passengers post viral videos of filthy trays, ripped furnishings, dirty seats and broken in-flight entertainment systems — that too in a First Class seat that cost $6,300.

Ravi Shankar, for The New Indian Express

Shankar calls for radical reforms — including, but not limited to — grounding all faulty aircraft, restoring passenger safety, protecting whistleblowers and making maintenance data public. Until then, he believes, flying Air India will remain perilous.

Tourists Welcome, Not Their Cars! It’s Time To Rethink Hill Tourism

Away from the wars, battlefields and bereavements, former IAS officer Avay Sharma turns the spotlight on a quieter crisis unfolding at North India’s hill stations, arguing that overtourism is asphyxiating the nation’s prized mountain retreats, in the likes of Shimla, Manali and Mussoorie. Writing for The Times of India, Sharma attributes the crisis to a glaring failure of foresight by state governments, who underestimated the scale of tourism.

The tourists, of course, suffer, stuck in jams for hours, sometimes for nights, without food, water or toilet facilities. Half their vacation time is spent on the roads. The real and continuing price, however, is paid by the permanent residents of these once quiet, idyllic, British-era towns, who are practically imprisoned in their houses with no space left on the roads even for walking. I live near Mashobra, about 12 km from Shimla for six months every year, and have decided to never, but NEVER, drive into Shimla during my stay here. There’s no telling if I’ll ever be able to make it back to my house!

Avay Sharma, for The Times of India

Suggesting potential mitigating measures, Sharma proposes the expansion of ropeway, railway links and air connectivity, so as to reduce vehicular load. Himachal Pradesh is praised in this regard for sanctioning ropeway projects, whilst Uttarakhand is running the risk of repeating mistakes by failing to do so.

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