“Platitudinous statements such as the need for increased public expenditure on education and health will not help without emphasising the need for better tax mobilisation for higher expenditure and larger borrowings with allowance for higher levels of fiscal deficit.”
Economic & Political Weekly editorial on The Economic Survey II (August 19)
“Somehow, Partition remains an unfinished process of separation, even if it is largely now in people’s heads rather than on the ground.”
Banyan on seventy years after India and Pakistan spilt (The Economist, August 19-25)
“Muslim-bashing is supposed to be the sneaky new freedom of ‘New India’ in which unabashed ‘nationalists’ now feel free to give vent to as much ire against minorities as they want, freed at last from the so-called shackles of secular dominance.“
Sagarika Ghose on why it’s time for New India to give talaq to old, prejudiced Bharat (Times of India, August 27)
“Nearly alone among the nation’s elected leaders, President Trump saw a nobility of purpose in the fiery procession that began a weekend of street fights in Charlottesville, Virginia. White nationalists hoisted tiki torches that recalled the horrifying imagery of the Klu Klux Klan. They revived an old Nazi chant.”
Michael Scherer and Alex Altman in Time (August 28)
“The rulers of India can learn from Aurangzeb that the liberal temper of this country will not put up with the straightjacket of a single religious discipline. That Mr. Girri replaced one Muslim name with another, exposed a saffron politician’s predictable communal blinkers. He didn’t realise he was tampering with national — not just sectarian — history.”
Sunanda K. Datta-Ray on the renaming of Aurangzeb Road to Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Road by Delhi BJP MP Mahesh Girri (Deccan Chronicle, August 29)