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.

Gujarat: A Model Not to Follow

In his weekly column for The Indian Express, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram writes a scathing review of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Gujarat Model of development, one of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s top campaign pillars before the state goes to polls in December.

The former finance minister claims that the state’s “double engine government,” declining growth rate and principle of ‘no apology, no resignation,’ as seen during the Morbi bridge collapse, makes the model an apt example of what not to do. 

"According to the PM, Gujarat is the model for India. He is one step away from claiming that India is the model for the world. The people of Gujarat will vote on the PM’s claim in early December. Unfortunately, the people of the world will not have an opportunity to vote on the other claim. I suppose it is their misfortune. The BJP government has been in power but, since 2016, there have been three chief ministers... ‘Revolving door chief ministers’ is the preferred model for modern, resurgent Gujarat (precedents: Karnataka, Uttarakhand). Another feature that India will adopt is the principle of ‘No apology, no resignation’. The Morbi bridge’s collapse killed 135 people including 53 children. The scale of the tragedy did not call for the PM to address the media and take questions. The High Court pointed out that there was a one and one-quarter page agreement; no Expression of Interest; no tender; no pre-qualifications; no competitive bids; no conditions; no fitness certificate after the bridge got a fresh coat of paint (so-called repair); and yet the bridge was opened to the public. As a principle, Gujarat believes in ‘no apologies and no resignations’. In the future, India too will follow this principled principle of no accountability."

P Chidambaram, for The Indian Express.

The Colonial Legacy of Subordination Culture

In his column for Hindustan Times, Pavan K Varma nostalgically opines on growing subordinate culture, a few days after Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud spoke on the matter during an address to the Supreme Court Bar Association.

A former Rajya Sabha member, Varma narrates incidents that he witnessed during his time as a bureaucrat and a politician, while asserting that the presence of dominant and subordinate groups fosters yes-man culture, both within the bureaucracy and in the lives of regular citizens.

"A bureaucrat will consider it blasphemy to call his senior anything but sir; most times, a sentence will begin and end with “sir”; if the minister is seen approaching, he will move to one side with alacrity; in conversation he will try to avoid direct eye contact; when the boss speaks, he will he will keep his head deferentially bowed...In ordinary life, when two Indians meet as strangers, the encounter is often a duel to ascertain the auqat (real worth) of the other person. In the superior-subordinate mentality, to meet someone without knowing the coordinates of his status is like entering a pool without knowing its depth. Where hierarchical pre-eminence is not obvious, such as earlier with caste, Indians have mastered the fine art of ferreting out details by uninhibitedly asking a series of increasingly intrusive questions…"

Pavan K Varma, for Hindustan Times

Diplomatic Gifts Have No Ideology, but Watch for the Hidden Pun

Prabhu Chawla, in his piece for The New Indian Express, takes a look at how Prime Minister Narendra Modi uses gifts and tokens of appreciation to “promote India’s Hindu heritage and Gujarati culture" abroad.

Chawla says that the gifts presented to world leaders at the G20 Summit in Bali point to the presence of “domestic compulsions, geographic and even electoral moxie,” and are a stark contrast of “secular histories” that were imbibed by diplomatic tokens presented in the past. 

"Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi came bearing gifts to the G20 pow-wow in Bali. Modi has a rep for thinking out of the box. Though there were 19 heavy hitters at the three-day summit, only Modi’s gifts expectedly made headlines in the Indian media. Prezzies of Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, Rishi Sunak were just editorial spam. Everything Modi does is pregnant with meaning, and Indian babus ensured that their master’s voice reached the domestic audience loud and clear because his viswaguru trope is South Block’s mandate—vocal for local. Did the maestro of metaphors take his election campaign in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh to Bali, once an ancient Hindu kingdom where Hindu temples still abound? In June, Modi’s gifts to G7 luminaries in Germany were handicrafts from Uttar Pradesh, where he had rowed the party to the shore of a massive victory. The Gulabi Meenakari brooch and cufflinks Biden received came from Varanasi, Modi’s constituency. Varanasi was also the subtext of the lacquerware “Ram Durbar” the PM gave his Indonesian counterpart. Modi’s presents smack of nationalism that butts the colonial narrative."

Prabhu Chawla, for The New Indian Express

Controversy Over Pakistani Film Joyland: A Land With No Joy

In his column for The Indian Express, Arshad Khan says that those calling for boycott of Joyland, a Pakistani film about the love story of a transgender dancer and a married man, “do not care about the lives of LGBTQIA folk.” 

The film director says that Joyland, which has faced severe backlash from religious clerics in Pakistan, is a story of family dynamics with a sensitive subject matter, somewhat of a rare occurrence in the country's cinematic history. 

"In any civilised nation of the world, this film would be celebrated; not in Pakistan. There the release has been derailed and the conversation has been diverted from the success and Oscar buzz of the film, into homophobic hysteria channeled against the perceived LGBTQIA agenda of the film. Comedian Shehzad Ghias Shaikh summed it up by saying that “a western fashion designer, an alleged wife beater and a failing provincial Government are leading the calls to ban a film. This cultural war is being fought for attention and cheap populism. You cannot put their hate down to anything but pure transphobia"… In many ways, Joyland is the opposite of a “gay agenda” film. It is very traditional in its treatment of the LGBTQIA characters and if those opposing it actually did end up watching the film, they may find the conclusions in their favour in the sense that only a life of punishment awaits those who may dare to step outside of accepted cultural norms."

Arshad Khan, for The Indian Express

Qatar World Cup: Why Fans Don’t Need To Join the Virtue Signalling

Rohan Banerjee, in The Times of India, poses a rather simple question related to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022: Given the reports regarding gross ill-treatment and exploitation of migrant workers during Qatar's preparations to host the World Cup, what is a conscientious football fan supposed to do? 

He argues that while fans of the sport may walk the "cancel culture" path and boycott the tournament altogether, the projected 1.2 million World Cup visitors and estimated 5 billion viewers across the world may very well lead to disappointment for those hoping for a widespread boycott of the tournament.

"The instinctive reaction — shaped by the cancel culture that pervades society today — would be to boycott the whole thing. Indeed, calls from activist groups to players and fans to abstain from participating in the tournament have only become louder. Professional footballers, of course, can hardly be expected to pay heed to such calls...However, when it comes to fans, the considerations are quite different. For starters, they have no personal or professional imperative to be part of the tournament. But their involvement is vital to ensure its success. It is their patronage, after all, which fuels the million-dollar juggernaut that is the World Cup. So, if we — the fans — opted not to travel to Qatar or refused to watch the matches, wouldn’t that be the strongest indictment of this much-maligned World Cup? Anyone hoping for a widescale boycott of the tournament is, however, likely to be disappointed. Qatar is gearing up to receive 1.2 million World Cup visitors and the tournament is expected to be viewed by a record-breaking 5 billion people across the globe."

Rohan Banerjee, in The Times of India

Two Kinds of Developed Countries

In her column for The Indian Express, Tavleen Singh reflects on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s addresses to the Indian diaspora abroad, most recently during his visit to Bali for the G20 Summit.

Singh, who was present in Madison Square Garden during Modi’s first speech abroad as India’s prime minister, believes that while the prime minister boasts of India’s countless achievements since the BJP came to power, “not that much has changed. And the fact that rich Indians continue to flee in droves to better countries speaks for itself," she

"In the summer of 2014, when Modi first became prime minister, he used to promise when he addressed NRI gatherings that he would build an India from which nobody needed to flee as an economic refugee...Modi’s ‘new India’ remains a welfare state in which government largesse serves mostly to ‘alleviate’ poverty. Not eradicate it. But there is no question that India has changed since 2014 in ways that most NRIs remain blissfully unaware of. In Modi’s ‘new India’ the scale and speed with which dissidence is crushed is so remarkable that a political journalist said to me ominously the other day ‘political journalism is dead’. We in the media know this but saying this outright is a risky business... This leads to a troubling question. What kind of ‘developed’ country does Modi hope India will one day become? Is he inspired by the model that has been created in China? Or is he inspired by democratic, western countries in which dissidence is applauded and not called treason? The ‘scale and speed’ of certain changes that have happened in India since 2014 are slightly scary."

Tavleen Singh, for The Indian Express

How Elon Musk Makes a Hashtag of Twitter

Aditi Mittal’s column for The Economic Times aims to praise, not bury, Twitter and its new owner Elon Musk, “because you simply cannot bury something that is already going down in flames.”

The stand-up comedian believes that a major contributor to Twitter’s sinking ship is Musk’s lack of accountability, who’s spent his time refashioning his own image ever since he bought the company. 

"Since Musk's so rich, no one follow ups on the promises he makes, or fact check what he says. He's a favourite among 14-40-year-old male demographics who somehow love not what's being said, but how it's being said, whether on Twitter or on the 'less reliable' platform of real life. But Twitter has always been a bit of glitch for someone like Musk. In its 'democratic' form, what he liked hearing or reading wasn't getting as much airplay as what he didn't like hearing or reading ... And so, in a comic book villain move, Musk has bought Twitter and is busy refashioning it in his own image. Truth be told, I was impressed. It's like being ticked off by your teacher for not doing your homework, and then, instead of doing your homework, you just buy the school. Right now, Twitter might be sinking, but it's going down in a slew of jokes, hot takes, and 'truth speaking'. Money can buy you many things. But it turns out, it can't buy you a thick skin if you already don't have the fit for it."

Aditi Mittal, for the Economic Times

Gross Valuation

For The Telegraph, Former Governor of West Bengal Gopalkrishna Gandhi writes about the possible fallout of India’s fast-paced population growth, after a planned delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies takes place according to the 16th Indian Census.

He claims that after the delimitation exercise in 2026, residents of South, East and Northeast India will end up having lesser Members of Parliament in the lower house, arguing that adding electoral value to one set of states while depleting another is "valuationally gross."

"More people, the Constitution noted, should mean more MPs. This is sound logic. We ought not to have the same number of MPs — 543 — representing a vastly increased population in the Lok Sabha... Such a population-based marking out or re-arrangement of constituencies will have the effect it is meant to have: giving more MPs to the states and Union territories that have that many people more. But the same exercise will give markedly less MPs to those that have held their numbers in some check... Broadly speaking, the South, the East and Northeast will have lesser MPs in the Lok Sabha as a result of the 2026 delimitation than they have now. So will Maharashtra, Punjab, Delhi, among others, from the West and North. All of them for the reason that their awareness of the importance of family planning and access to methods for it have been good — an achievement of people-policy-partnership, verily a joint venture. A delimitation exercise that adds electoral value to one set of states while depleting representative value to another is, to use a phrase coined by Amartya Sen in another context, ‘valuationally gross’. It cannot but be seen as an unfair punishment where there should be a deserved reward."

Gopalkrishna Gandhi, for The Telegraph

Savour Football, Minus Nationalism

In his column for The Tribune, Rohit Mahajan takes a look at the displaced nature of an Indian viewer’s support during global football events, which tends to rally around other foreign teams due to the Indian team's absence from these competitions. 

Dissecting fan culture surrounding international football, Mahajan delves into the distant and unlikely future where “true lovers of the sport” get to show their support for the Indian team during international events, similar to the upcoming FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. 

"India’s football fans who support international teams or clubs are akin to stateless persons, owned by none and derided and even reviled by many. But they could claim to be true lovers of the sport. They can claim that they love football for the sake of football, not for feelings roused by considerations such as patriotism, ethnicity, language or religion...It’s a mystery why any Indian fan would idolise England’s football team, yet such people exist... This begs the question — will the love of the Indian football fan ever be to the Indian football team? As we’ve seen in the case of boxing, wrestling and shooting, fans will throng to support an Indian team if it does well in international competitions. Alas, the hope of the Indian football team excelling in Asian — let alone global! — football is flimsy."

Rohit Mahajan, for The Tribune

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