In that, the failing health and education sectors in India are a symptom of a larger disease, of an imagined growth story and a fantasised giant economy that sees numbers but not the purpose, that has ignored those at the lower rungs of the ladder in the quest to shine in its fancy airports and bullet trains
The larger picture that emerges is of a failing administration that is rapidly sliding down a very slippery slope in the absence of robust internal and external scrutiny, blind support in the name of fighting terrorism while the real terrorists go scot-free and a refusal to accept and correct mistakes.
While it is true that “socialist” and “secular” were inserted in the preamble by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act during the Emergency, which remains a dark chapter in the history of free India, it is not true that the values go against the grain or the spirit of the constitution. These are effectively the only parts of the amendment that…
Trump equated India and Pakistan when he spoke on the ceasefire, erasing the genuinely-earned and the increasingly well-accepted de-hyphenation of two neighbours that were born at the same time but have walked very different paths – India as a secular nation that is an economic powerhouse while Pakistan as a failing democracy that faces…
This is not the new world order that was envisaged when the WTO was formed, or indeed when the series of multilateral institutions took shape in the aftermath of the chaos of the World Wars, or indeed the world in which countries like India agreed to go with frameworks like the new intellectual property rights regime
The first is that India can no longer hope to build or become a manufacturing hub by copying the Chinese model, getting companies like Foxconn to bring their factories to Indian sites and manufacture for American giants. The game of building that kind of a manufacturing base is past its expiry date.
It is good to be ever wary of a nation and a leadership that is and has historically been all about itself at the cost of others, driving others to misery as it gobbles up resources and pushes the idea of American exceptionalism.
The planned deportation of 20,000 Indians from the US will require an endless stream of flights, if all of them are to be sent back, not to speak of more who are being caught as raids by US immigration continue. None of them should be allowed to be detained without access to lawyers, medical aid and humane conditions in the facilities they are…
The manner and time span in which the 18,000 Indians are deported can serve to embarrass the Narendra Modi government and hurt Indo-US ties. It will bring new questions for an image-sensitive government that projects India as a growth engine while an increasing number of Indians, as alleged by the US, look to settle in a foreign land. For now,…
Communal divides are bad, Economic divides being created can be equally so, with increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer people so that we have a nation split, literally and metaphorically, between the few within gated communities and the majority who cannot step in.
