Across the Aisle: Good Aadhaar, Bad Aadhaar
Applauding the Supreme Court for its landmark judgment, P Chidambaram writes in The Indian Express about how the ‘good’ in Aadhaar has been saved and all that was ‘bad’ has been burnt to ashes.
He takes a dig at the present BJP government which had stoutly opposed the Aadhaar project when it was proposed by the UPA only to realise its potential later in setting up a surveillance state.
While the majority judgment is the product of plodding workmanship, the dissenting judgment of Mr Justice Chandrachud will rank among the celebrated dissents of the Court. It is, to borrow the words of Justice Hughes, “an appeal to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of a future day”. The dissent sets the direction of the Court in the future and holds out hope for those who argued that the current design of Aadhaar was unconstitutional. Every judgment of the Constitution Benches of the Supreme Court delivered in 2018 has chipped away at tyranny, enlarged the freedom of the people and advanced the cause of Constitutional morality. Project Aadhaar as envisaged by the UPA has been retrieved.
Supreme Court Has Almost Made Believers of Us
With the 45th Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra, exiting office next week, the column by Chanakya looks back at how the top court arrived at landmark decisions, thus, standing up for the common man in the last two months.
In his column in the Hindustan Times, Chanakya writes about how recent judgment on Aadhaar, Section 377, Adultery, Triple Talaq and Sabarimala respectively were welcomed unanimously even as others criticised them. This is a clear indication that the court has not taken sides or played favourites; these very quibbles stand testimony to the performance of the court.
In at least two instances – the case involving criminalisation of politics and mob lynchings – the Supreme Court had an opportunity to lay down the law, but did not. In the first case, where it was requested to bar politicians with criminal charges against them from contesting in elections, it put the onus on Parliament to make the law, instead choosing to lay down guidelines on labelling and adequate disclosure. In the second, while dealing with instances of horrific mob lynchings, and against a backdrop in which more such were happening, it again laid down procedures and guidelines, but refrained from making a law. Parliament is making one, but the court, perhaps like many of us, believes that existing laws, if implemented and adhered to, are adequate. Yet, where the rights of individuals are concerned, the Supreme Court has not hesitated to amend, read down, or scrap the law.
Why Were the Indo-Pak Talks Called Off?
Why did the government agree to a meeting between the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers during a time of unrest? The reasons the government gave for the cancellation of talks, subsequently, were not so convincing.
While newspapers and television channels have raised the right questions, the government has retreated behind a wall of silence – a strange behaviour in a democracy. Karan Thapar decodes in his column in Hindustan Times.
Finally, the statement calling off the talks seems to deliberately break with the careful tone and moderate language India has used in the past. Instead, it spoke of Pakistan’s “evil agenda” and the “true face of the new Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan”. No doubt Mr Khan was equally intemperate and personal in his response, but India’s former high commissioners to Pakistan have not withheld their criticism of the Indian statement. So what exactly happened? Indeed, will we ever be told?
Rajasthani Reality
Tavleen Singh calls for urgent solutions to address the water emergency in Rajasthan in her column in The Indian Express. She blames the bad policies, following which hefty water subsidies were given to urban Indians while their rural counterparts bought the same resources at exorbitant rates, and thus, were forced to drink water, the colour of mud, from village ponds.
Other problems include having to spend money and time to travel to a bank to avail welfare schemes , despite the Digital India initiative. Primary jobs like animal husbandry are under threat because of vigilantes. But what is surprising is how Modi’s popularity is still intact.
On the way to these villages I drove past fields and fields of ravaged crops. The bajra (millet) crop that is yellowing in the thirsty, khaki land is now fit only for fodder. Sadly, water sources in these villages are drying up so rapidly that animals could start dying in weeks. What makes people more despondent than usual is that they know that once the election campaign begins for the Rajasthan Assembly, nobody will be interested in their plight. Why has this situation been allowed to exist for so long? Why have we not learned from countries like Israel how to find water in states that are as arid as Rajasthan? I do not know.
Why Do We Believe in This Mumbo Jumbo?
Sujata Anandan takes a dig at godmen who have proposed ridiculous theories like vegetarian and non-vegetarian brains and eating a particular mango to conceive a son. She asks in her column in The New Indian Express, why are we allowing such pseudoscience to be a part of our lives and falling for this unscientific gibberish.
It is controversial godman Swami Nityananda who described Einstein’s brain as crooked, adding, “E equals to not mc2. Cannot be mc2. What is mc2? The difference between intensity and continuity. What is energy? What is matter? Matter is continuity, energy is intensity. What do you call matter? Anything continuous. What do you call energy? Anything intense. The intensity and continuity is separate for a non-veg crooked brain which has seen only ups and downs. Only a vegetarian brain which can retain the experience continuously without losing the intensity can understand ‘m’ and ‘c’ is not ‘em-cee’. It’s emmcee.”Mumbo-jumbo?
Our Political Class Must Pay More Attention to Gender Equality
Applauding the Supreme Court judgment on Sabarimala, Lalita Panicker writes in the Hindustan Times about how the decision will open the doors at other Hindu places of worship, thus, doing away with their exclusionary practices be it for women or certain castes.
In her column, Panicker talks about how Sabarimala is just a reflection of the traditionally inferior role that a woman plays in every religion.
You may recall that the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, the governing body of the iconic temple made a bold decision to employ women as barbers to carry out the famed head shaving that is part of the temple’s rituals. But there was much opposition on the grounds that menstruating women should not enter the premises of Lord Venkateshwara’s abode or, indeed, come into contact with the devotees. This raised a problem: how can anyone tell when a woman is menstruating? So the solution was to restrict women from this job altogether. However, the temple does not restrict the entry of women for worship.
BJP’s Political Misstep: Optics of the Rafale Defence Deal Is Terrible, No Matter What Its Merits
What is puzzling about the Rafale deal is how it was given to a company’s defence subsidiary that was formed two weeks before the deal. But the issues that Chetan Bhagat raises in his column in The Times of India, is how defence deals have always been shady.
He questions why India continues to buy weapons from foreigners to defend ourselves from them and how certain corporates have an unfair advantage by virtue of their closeness to the government.
Perhaps there is something wrong in the Indian value system and culture. We value relationships, family and our own friends a bit too much. For that, we are ready to kill merit, talent, fairness and the greater good. Why don’t we make policies that enable a new breed of entrepreneurs to emerge? Moreover we still don’t have a good system in place to secure the equipment our forces want, and now all such deals will be viewed with scepticism.
When Facts Are Not Facts, and the Truth Is Not ‘Plane’ and Simple
In a tongue-in-cheek way, Twinkle Khanna writes in The Times Of India about the subjectivity of facts in the Rafale deal, the need to know the truth, Swami Nithyananda’s ‘E equals to not mc2’ theory, Rabindranath Tagore’s riveting debate with Einstein about the relativity of universal truth and how her maali and building manager were crooks behind her back.
On my way back, finding no one else to hear my rants, I begin complaining to my driver Mishraji. ‘Can’t believe the maali and the manager are such crooks. They seem to be really inspired by all this talk around the Rafale deal I think! Mishra ji seems familiar with some of the details of the airplane deal and I try filling in the blanks by using an analogy that I read on Chetan Bhagat’s Twitter handle where he stated, ‘Say you order mithai for the neighbourhood, but tell the halwai to take the milk from your bhaiya only. Did someone actually say that? Was milk taken at a fair price? Did halwai choose the milk seller on his own based on quality?’
The Death of a Beloved Cinema Hall
The iconic Jyoti theatre is begging to be resurrected, to be given back some pride and dignity, especially after the 2016 fire. The introduction of malls and multiplexes and TV sets in homes has led to a rotting decline of cinema halls. Asha Gangoli in her column in The Telegraph, calls for attention to this once vibrant, handsome landmark which is now just a rotting corpse.
Once the smartest theatre in town, Jyoti now began to wear a tired, dishevelled look, and was overrun by rodents and roaches. Funds began to dry up. The pay got held up. Old-time ushers left. Good films stopped coming to the Jyoti. Its frontage was now spattered with cheap printed posters.The turn of the century brought in malls and multiplexes. The Jyoti struggled to stay afloat. Then, in 2008, Jyoti Cinema closed down for good. It remained idle and unused for some time. When I visited next, it was being used as a warehouse. The shabby posters were still there. Pimps and prostitutes hung around its portals.
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