ThePrint Opinion Mailer  | Saturday 17 December 2022 | In My Opinion By Rama Lakshmi, Opinion and Features Editor |  | |
| The video of the Tawang scuffle between Indian and Chinese soldiers came just four weeks after PM Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping shook hands warmly in Bali. Not that anybody in India thought everything was going to be ok with just that. But this only goes to show how intractable the border conflicts are with Beijing. Even though the Indian Army has shown its determination to push back in Tawang, terrain and logistics give the PLA significant advantages. This war gives either State little—and holds out the potential of ruin for both, wrote Praveen Swami.
But the latest conflict doesn’t signal a war. What it does is reveal a repeated pattern of China probing Indian preparedness, provoking a reaction, and then consolidating its position. Beijing knows India’s room for manoeuvre is limited, largely by its own timidity, wrote Manvendra Singh.
To think that this has occurred even as Xi faces unprecedented street protests also tells us that the domestic situation does not affect the strike capabilities of the PLA. Seshadri Chari wrote that India must now engage in psychological warfare and overtly support the Tibetan community in India.
With more and more Western aid and weapons pouring into Ukraine, Swasti Rao offered a timely warning. Ukraine has ranked the highest in corruption index among East European nations. The West must help Ukraine address endemic corruption, but the longer the war lasts, the more the country’s ability to fight it diminishes.
With AAP winning the municipal elections in Delhi, the rhetoric of ‘double-engine’ government has kicked in. But Indranil De wrote a remarkable counter-intuitive article saying that it doesn’t automatically guarantee better basic service delivery for residents. A survey in Kolkata showed that local municipal governments may shift their focus to areas that are the state government’s priorities and neglect important issues in their wards.
A young PhD scholar at Cambridge, Rishi Atul Rajpopat, has just solved a 2500-year-old Sanskrit problem. In his dissertation, Rajpopat argues that Panini’s metarule was historically misunderstood, wrote Sandhya Ramesh.
A new son rises in Tamil Nadu. MK Stalin’s son Udhayanidhi is now a minister as part of a strategy to neutralise the power centres in the DMK, the government and the family, wrote R. Rajagopalan. At the DMK General Council meeting, Stalin admitted that he does not get sleep due to bickering among party leaders.
| | | | To avoid unsustainable confrontation along the LAC, India will have to avoid the missteps made in 1962—carefully judging just what lines to hold and how to defend them. Read more... | | | | | | | After every diplomatic engagement with India, China seems to read the tea leaves far better than New Delhi does. Read more... | | | | | | | India’s strategy to deal with China needs to be reset to accommodate the present geopolitical and geo-economic realities. Read more... | | | | | | | The longer the war stretches, the more Ukraine's ability to fight systemic corruption gets diminished as more money and weapons will flow to sustain the country. Read more... | | | | | | | To understand the link between TMC’s political domination and discharge of duty by KMC councillors, we surveyed 20 Kolkata wards from September 2021-March 2022. Read more... | | | | | | | Ashtadhyayi, which comprises rules to derive or form new words from root words, often has conflicting rules. Scholar finds way to resolve rule conflicts in the text as Panini intended. Read more... | | | | | The youth of Tamil Nadu are drawn to BJP, whose state chief Annamalai attracts huge crowds and media attention. CM Stalin thinks inducting son Udhayanidhi will change that. Read more... | | | | | | | | | Read more of ThePrintOpinion here. You are receiving this because you are a reader of ThePrint and posted a comment or signed up to receive this newsletter. We appreciate your feedback. | | | | |
