What the hell is Vir Sanghvi arguing?
There is a blogging elite on the prowl these days, argues Vir Sanghvi on, well, his blog. They criticize the media and television news channels for running after eyeballs at the cost of serious news.
The answer is obvious. Some of the more opinionated bloggers and tweeters believe that [...]
So to blame Rao for not being an entirely enthusiastic supporter of liberalization in a party which is officially socialist to this day is laughable considering its leader in 2009 credits a retrograde step like bank nationalization carried on in 1969 at the height of the socialist mania for saving the Indian financial sector in 2009! Or is it Sanghvi’s argument that Sonia Gandhi is an extremely enthusiastic supporter of economic reforms?
But does that mean that partition and the role of principal players–and Jinnah definitely was one–should not be critically examined? After all, why did India fail to prevent partition? Even if we assume that intentions of Nehru and rest of the Congress leadership was completely overboard, they failed at certain level otherwise India would never have been divided. How is it possible that Pakistan–a concept which was ill-defined as late as 1940–suddenly became such an unstoppable force that the Congress was forced to agree to a division which its top leadership deeply disagreed with? These are important questions which must be dispassionately explored in detail. Why the reluctance to do so?
Now, realpolitik is important and BJP should not be expected to sacrifice its electoral fortunes for moral grandstanding. But a party which claims to be ”nationalist” must be held to some basic standard of decorum and propriety. It must be prepared to make at least minimal sacrifices if it hurts the national interest. Only in the last year, BJP did not do so in the case of Amarnath issue where it attempted to emerge as the Hindu Huriyat. It did not do so on the nuclear issue where it broke bread with the Left merely to snipe at Manmohan Singh. And it did not do so when it attempted to defend those accused of killing innocent Indians in Malegaon. And now this.
Towards a better polity
By Harsh Gupta
The BJP is the only party which can be both truly nationalist and truly liberal – and while it has many defects it is much closer to those ideals, compared to other parties. The other parties are pseudo-secular and throwback leftists- these communal socialists believe in vote banks and socially [...]
Second, BJP must decide if the Hinduvata agenda has any support outside its committed base. In Orissa, for example, the extended Sangh parivar made Patnaik’s life difficult after a Hindu religious figure was assassinated. Riots continued for months and apart from damaging Patnaik’s reputation, they again exposed BJP to the charges of being a communal party. Indeed, it appears that after its break-up with BJD, the party has activated its loony fringe: the VHP is threatening to launch agitations against the Patnaik government.
Ideas for an ideas industry
In our op-ed in Livemint, Sushant K. Singh and I argue that India must develop a culture of independent think tanks in order to improve the level of policy discourse,
The abysmal state of policy debate in India is a direct result of the limited number of independent think tanks. A thriving [...]
The Indian government knows it. But it can hardly afford to tell the Indian people, especially in an election year, that it is essentially powerless to punish the perpetrators of an attack ofMumbai’s scale. Therefore, its entire outraged is designed to serve one and only purpose: Extract any concession from Pakistan so that it can claim before the people of India that it did better than the previously equally incompetent government
Random
a) The elite reacts when access to its favored destinations is challenged–whether it is Taj in Mumbai or a pub in Mangalore.
b) It has neither any interest in governance or in policies or politics–all politicians are bad is its most popular slogan–that helps avoid a debate and presents a monolithic face.
c) Equivalence is its way [...]
Mehta advocates an open conversation about ”what new social values signify and how they can be properly embedded in society without repression and conflict.” Useful as it may sound and true as it is, that essentially is the problem with Mehta’s argument: the notion of individual freedom militates against conversations originating within existing societal norms. Understanding the angst against freedom does not automatically translate into an ability to address them without compromising freedom
