IIn the first of a year-end series of observations on 2020, Dominic Xavier is still shocked by the nightmare that the lockdown wrought on India.
Inability to take everyone along during his nearly four-year term led to Trivendra Singh Rawat's undoing. He tried to take control of all major departments by holding on to more than 40 of them, but still could not deliver.
Uttam Ghosh offers his take on the Delhi police's brutal assault on students at the Jamia Millia university library on Sunday, December 15, a shameful act that will not be forgotten for a long, long, time.
Clearly, Modi -- one of the most stylish leaders on the planet -- hasn't had his barber call at 7, Lok Kalyan Marg.
The PM's visit would signal a strong intent towards making sure India becomes a beneficiary as vaccines become a massively traded commodity in the coming years.
'The Modi Model we see now is still the old Gujarat Model.' 'But with an acknowledgement that governing India is more challenging than governing Gujarat,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
'Modi's first foreign trip at the very outset of his second term as PM reinforces a growing impression that this regional tour underscores a shift in emphasis in India's foreign policy that was traditionally focused on the northern tier of countries to the Indian Ocean rim,' explains Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Even if the government does not implement an all-India NRC before 2024, it will be part of the party's long-term project.'
'Modi, with his sharply honed political savvy and undoubted grasp of international affairs, is a past master at taking the measure of world leaders.' 'He would be the last person to think of the unpredictable and not too well-regarded Trump as the mediator,' says B S Raghavan.
That's a deficit the NDA will have to make up with the help of 'friendly' alliance partners, the very groupings the PM has said are 'family-run'.
Modi will have limited choice other than stressing upon a request for more time to decide on tariff rates, especially with elections in 2019.
'He was always opposed to a form of nationalism that was narrow, selfish and arrogant.' 'He will always remain a beacon of inspiration for freedom-loving people across the world and for movements of resistance against oppressive State power.'
Four decades of federal evolution made India more secure, but coronavirus is reversing that. Modi's central government has tasted power again and is unlikely to give it up, notes Shekhar Gupta.
Nitish Kumar has to make an existential choice: Between governance and politics, argues Aditi Phadnis.
'The Bills (Bharatiya Saksha, Bharatiya Nagarik Sanhita and Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita) are arbitrary, opaque and ambiguous and structurally quite violent.'
In a nation of 1.4 billion people, where a potential new creator is born every second, we pick 25 influencers who have ruled social media this year.
Dominic Xavier wonders what will happen to the poorest who have been ravaged by the strict lockdown imposed by the Narendra Modi govt in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic and the unemployment rates spiralling out of control every passing month.
The beleaguered UPA government may provide Narendra Modi all the ammunition he wants. Still, without the politics of persuasion, the BJP's crowned prince has a daunting task before him, argues Akash Bisht.
'Only then will we withdraw the agitation.'
The concept of 'fairness by rulers' is deeply ingrained in Indians and any weakening of this dents the legitimacy of the ruler, warns military historian Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
The PM's choice of ministers is interesting, to say the least, says Jyoti Punwani.
'Modi has shown political courage by instituting several economic reforms which include demonetisation, ushering in GST, eradication of benami transactions...'
Despite receiving so much love from Gujarat, Modi didn't bother to visit the bereaved parents of those 22 children who lost their lives in Surat, points out Jyoti Punwani.
'Rahul Gandhi has personally paid a heavy price for this character assassination and remorseless ridiculing and the Congress, of course, has been demolished politically.'
'In this country, if any government acquires one of these images -- anti-farmer, or anti-poor or corrupt -- the government doesn't survive.' 'The Modi government is fast acquiring that anti-farmer image, that is why it is nervous.'
'The US will not want to tangle with China landwards.' 'Nor will the US confront the Chinese navy seawards on India's account.'
Perhaps the calculation is that economic recovery will have been achieved before the next general election comes around, but such assumptions can come unstuck if current directions are not reversed quickly, cautions T N Ninan.
'The significance and timing of the PM's start of the campaign journey from Silchar is a clear message that the Barak valley is a priority in his scheme of things,' notes Subimal Bhattacharjee.
'This was Indian land the PLA advanced on and occupied.' 'The Chinese then 'negotiated' a pullback of their troops a small distance on Indian territory even as Indian jawans draw back further into India from the forward position.' 'An apparently satisfied Indian government says this is a great move for peace! How great is that for China!'
What were our political leaders up to on the weekend?
India shifted gears in rejuvenating strategic ties with its major partners like the US and Russia and focused on drumming up global support for its distinct strategy in the Indo-Pacific to check Beijing's increasing muscle-flexing in the region.
'The government has given up its focus on economic growth because it it not something Modi has been able to fully understand.' 'This explains the extraordinary focus on divisive politics by the BJP even at a time when the world's most important man in visiting India,' notes Aakar Patel.
'The BJP is scared it may lose the Delhi municipal elections where they have been in power for the last 15 years.'
'The anti-India biases of the Western elite can be attributed to the unease these privileged nations feel at the rise of Asian nations like India and China.' 'But what ought to shock all right-thinking Indians is that many of our own countrymen/women have joined this chorus,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
The party is less forthcoming about who the chief minister will be if it stays in power.
'The central government is putting conditions on farmers organisations, that they have to allow passenger trains to ply, only then will they allow goods trains to ply.'
Apparently, Mithunda has shared with BJP leaders that becoming West Bengal's chief minister is his only motive for the political jump from the Trinamool Congress, which sent him to the Rajya Sabha, to the BJP.
'If you want to really grow, it has to be geometric progression like it happened at the Centre or Haryana or Tripura, where you made a quantum jump.' 'This is possible in Kerala provided we present a better alternative with a great leadership, but the current leadership is busy fixing each other.'
'Outside investors don't want to get tangled up in a religious war.'
