India can be forced to shine but whether the people of India will shine remains the question, and that remains the ground on which the Congress is making huge strides in its fight against the BJP in this election.

Do note that the BJP because of its sloganeering and expectation-setting has to cross its previous mark of 303 to be seen as victorious; the INDIA alliance has to pull the BJP below 272 to claim victory. Barring the possibility, extremely remote at this time, of the Congress and/or the INDIA alliance faring very poorly at these polls, what we…

This is the inner rottenness of India’s growth story, a self-imposed colonisation of a nation that has lost its standing, never mind the growing GDP.

The national mood was well summed up by a cartoon that showed all others in the race locked up, with just the incumbent in the field, and then the question, half in jest: ‘Who is winning?’.

The postcards from Jamnagar frame some other stories that have emerged as a theme in the 'New India'. These are stories of unrivalled pomp and power, of material riches beyond compare, of an elite space where forces work differently from the way they work elsewhere on the planet.

It is noteworthy that a strong and vociferous point of view against the developments in Ayodhya has come from religious leaders rather than the political opposition, which has struggled to frame its line of argument clearly.

It may serve Infosys to have zombies but it can never serve the nation to valorise this as the route to a national revival. Many in India suffer low wages, zero benefits and long work hours. Murthy’s remarks will be used to legitimise these malpractices. 

The report notes that India has the highest child-wasting rate in the world, at 18.7 per cent, reflecting acute undernutrition. It places India way below a neighbour like Bangladesh, which has a score of 19, a rank of 81 and is categorised on the GHI Severity of Hunger Scale as “moderate” – a class jump over the Indian numbers.

At the root of this fall is the belief among the BJP that assertion means aggression; that hitting out is the best form of defence; that violence is in our grain and must be met with double the violence; that the 'other' must be put down; that the grammar of leadership is masculine in form, shape and action.

The industry prefers a winning formula to creative exploration, particularly in big-budget films populated by rocking stars with fancy fees. Will that change from hereon with the success of ‘Jawan’? We have on offer a new path for Bollywood, a path that can use its huge and unrivalled soft power to drive home some significant messages of the…