Aakar Patel is a writer and columnist. You can e-mail the author at aakar.patel@gmail.com
'We expect mobs on the subcontinent to hand out punishment without trial.' 'To have ministers doing it and then being proud about it says something about how the law is treated in India and how seriously ministers take their oath of office,' says Aakar Patel.
'It will be a fine day when we can claim to have institutions in civil society as influential and as popular as ACLU, which is a strong body only because millions of Americans support its values.' 'When Indians take offence at how other Indians are treated, when we take injustice to others personally, we will begin to make India great,' says Aakar Patel.
'The BJP has the opportunity to undo a lot of the damage that we have suffered as a society which looks away from mass violence.'
'The real problem of joblessness and democratic politics is happening here in India. And it is happening now, right before us.'
The end of newspaper reporting will produce a landscape so barren that it will be terrifying, says Aakar Patel.
'If Amazon's officials had secured their visas through proper paperwork, under what rule or law was Swaraj threatening to cancel them?' 'If she felt a crime had been committed, as a law abiding citizen she should have registered a first information report or a complaint.' 'Instead she fired off a twitter fatwa, acting like a despot.'
The UK spends about Rs 1.5 lakh per citizen. India spends Rs 260 per citizen. Of course we are a poor nation, but we are a poor nation that last year spent Rs 59,000 crore buying 36 fighter planes and this year is spending Rs 99,000 crore on a bullet train, says Aakar Patel.
'Even if we expect that the economy will be hit and GDP is lowered for a few quarters by the reckless demonetisation, this will itself not be sufficient to dislodge Modi's popularity,' says Aakar Patel.
'If one is looking for evidence of his talents as a mass leader, it has been on display since he announced demonetisation on November 8.' 'Let us look at it and appreciate it, because we are in the presence of a true master,' says Aakar Patel.
'We are in the middle of the biggest self created crisis of this government.' 'A crisis which involves and includes citizens and affects the way we go about our lives.' 'It is a crisis that is being managed poorly by the government and, it is absolutely clear, even more shoddily by the Opposition,' says Aakar Patel.
'Singh has written that he fears demonetisation will end up a mammoth tragedy.' 'Modi has told us we will enter a better world in January.' 'Both men can't be right and we will know which one of them is wrong soon,' says Aakar Patel.
What is required is boring leadership that ensures that the basics are right and not genius leadership that dreams of bullet trains, says Aakar Patel.
'I have no doubt that the government means well.' 'I am merely curious to know whether my suspicions of it being enthusiastic about shooting first and aiming later are unfounded,' says Aakar Patel.
'With the country is a crisis that directly affects hundreds of millions, we will know if Modi has grip,' says Aakar Patel.
'In a future where newspapers are gone, the public will have a severe lack of material to be properly informed.' 'We will be left in a world of journalism that is entirely populated by Arnab and anchors like him, competing on the basis of passion and anger, and by people who pull out their phone and tweet a comment without first hand information,' says Aakar Patel.
'Middle-level managers account for 10 per cent -- or 450,000 people -- in the IT industry in India.' 'And of these 225,000 would lose jobs over the next one decade as their work would get automated.' 'This is grim news for many reasons,' says Aakar Patel.
'Triple talaq and polygamy are likely to be the next ground on which Hindutva will assert itself.' 'And, as with other issues where this has happened, we must anticipate trouble.'
'Will this surgical strike of ours put an end to Pakistani terror?' 'And if not, what will we do when the next terror strike happens?' 'Will there be another surgical strike or will we have to do something bigger?' 'How big does it have to be to get Pakistan to totally stop?'
Very few people have access to the granular detail of what options are available to India and what their costs, consequences and benefits are. While Modi considers all of this, he would do well to do one thing. And that is to ignore the media.
'Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan now act in only about one film each year, and made money through advertisements and television.' 'This meant that many people, even if they had the money to spend on a movie and wanted to go, often had nothing available for them to watch.'
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