| I am an Indian woman who is tired. I am tired of being angry, I am tired of outraging, and I am tired of my outrage not counting for a damn thing, wrote Karanjeet Kaur after the news of the gangrape of a Brazilian tourist in Jharkhand. Indian women are in a constant state of PTSD. We’ve learnt that it doesn’t matter whether you’re a woman in Manipur, Muzaffarnagar, or Sandeshkhali, your fate will remain the same. And I am tired of putting my fate upon a dime.
Foreign minister S Jaishankar recently used the term “not unsentimentally transactional”, in the context of the enduring ties between India and Russia. Chelsea Ngoc Minh Nguyen wrote a wonderful essay saying that the role of “affectionate politics” remains underestimated in Western calculations of Russia’s lingering global clout. Affectionate feelings toward any country held by leaders, civil servants, and citizens do matter, even as they are surely overshadowed by serious realpolitik during decision-making processes. Affections are harder to alter and change than policy, but they’re deeply related.
For decades now, Indian governments have been squeamish about citizens serving in foreign wars. The time might be coming, though, to stop pretending the problem doesn’t exist, and provide a legal framework to protect contract soldiers recruited from the country, wrote Praveen Swami. The experience of being colonised with the aid of locally recruited mercenaries has made Indians deeply hostile to private military contractors—but across the world, the corporations’ influence continues to grow.
In West Bengal, the call for Paribartan or change has resurfaced, but in a new avatar. This time, it is the BJP that is raising it, by sticking the word ‘ashol’ (real) to it, wrote Monideepa Banerjie. Today, most of Mamata Banerjee’s best-known Paribartan brigade are conspicuous by their absence and silence.
In our Ground Reports section, Sagrika Kissu travelled to Tamil Nadu to unearth a curious new trend. North Indian migrant workers from Bihar, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh are turning into entrepreneurs in the export hub of Tiruppur. They are the new business bosses. Some even hire local Tamil people as workers.
Our team also did a deeply researched and reported story on how air pollution and lack of women’s safety are affecting Brand India. Foreign tourist arrivals are falling sharply, expats are leaving their India posting sooner and negative travel advisories are on the rise.
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