| The week began with Manish Sisodia’s arrest and resignation in Delhi. And it ended with the BJP’s victory in Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland. Between the two, there was a lot of talk about corruption and the need for opposition unity.
A former founder-member of AAP, Yogendra Yadav wrote that the Delhi’s liquor policy is a serious business and it stinks. Still, all this does not justify the actions of the central government, he wrote, and questioned the timing of this arrest – does it serve some other sinister political purpose? AAP cries wolf against the central government all the time. But we must remain alert when the wolf actually arrives.
Akshay Marathe, a member of AAP, wrote that Sisodia enjoyed a reputation of being someone who lies beyond politics. And good politics would have made the BJP taking a leaf out of Sisodia’s book, replicating his work, and bettering his record. Instead, it has chosen a path of dirty politics. Why go after India’s favourite education minister?
But there is a larger question. Vir Sanghvi asked if corruption has ceased to be a political issue. It could be that people have worked out that nothing comes of the big corruption scandals. Another reason for the lack of any considerable public outrage is that there is now a one-sided predictability to corruption investigations. Never before in India’s history has the ruling party been so consistent in leveling corruption charges against opponents while giving itself and its members a free pass.
CM M. K. Stalin’s grand birthday celebrations in Tamil Nadu brought all the opposition party leaders together. But, not really. Seshadri Chari wrote that the gathering has really nixed the idea of a third front. A faceless opposition with no common minimum programme, no all-India presence and no attractive people-friendly alternative agenda will hit the headlines for a few days and be forgotten even before the electoral race for 2024 begins.
As the G20 foreign ministers event in New Delhi threw open the big elephant-in-the-room question, Russia, Renuka Sane wrote that it is time India detaches from Moscow. Firms are as important as governments in making material decisions — they run the global production system. Our equation and policies vis-a-vis Russia may shape the attitude of these global corporate players. Foreign policy is a balancing act. But India’s economic interests lie with the West.
Religious leaders throughout history have sought to care for their followers in various ways, and Buddhists were no exception. Anirudh Kanisetti wrote that recent excavation projects in Sri Lanka have come up with the ruins of medieval monastic hospitals of a scale that hasn’t yet been seen anywhere in South Asia—even in India, with its long-standing Ayurvedic tradition.
Haryana’s decades-long skewed sex ratio sent its desperate bachelors on a shopping spree for brides from other states. But the tables have now turned on them. Some of these bought-brides are turning into loot-and-scoot brides, or looteri dulhans, wrote Sagrika Kissu in this feature article.
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