Editorial

ACT in haste, repent at leisure! The haste with which the Supreme Court had termed two tweets by Prashant Bhushan guilty of contempt of court now reminds us of this famous English aphorism. Even after two hearings the court has now failed to find the suitable punishment for those two guilty tweets!

After the economy and environment, the Modi government has chosen the lockdown period for making yet another major policy pronouncement: New Education Policy 2020. A draft running into 484 pages was submitted on 31 May 2019 soon after the beginning of Modi 2.0. The 484-page draft has now been compressed into a 60-page policy document which was approved by the Union Cabinet on 29 July, 2020.

August is India’s month of independence. This year as India celebrates the seventy third anniversary of the country’s independence, the celebrations are however bound to be unprecedentedly muted. Not just because of the mandatory restriction on assemblies of people and the physical distance that citizens are expected to maintain as part of the Covid19 preventive protocols, but more because of the dark clouds of gloom and uncertainty on our everyday sky.

THE Vikas Dubey episode marks more than yet another entry in the lengthening list of ‘encounter’ killings in Uttar Pradesh. It illustrates key principles of the dominant model of statecraft in today’s India and explains some important basics of what is popularly called the criminal-police-politician nexus. It points to a new level of criminalization of politics, and crisis and collapse of constitutional governance.

FOLLOWING the July 5 talk between designated Special Representatives (SRs) of both China and India, there are now some early welcome indications of disengagement of troops and de-escalation of tension along the China-India LAC in Ladakh. The SR from the Indian side is National Security Advisor Ajit Doval while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is the SR from China. Statements issued by both sides after the talk stress peace and tranquility in the border areas and improved bilateral relations and talk about phased disengagement and retreat of troops on both sides.

ON the 98th day of lockdown, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressded the nation yet again. This was his sixth ‘Corona special’ address since the outbreak of the pandemic. But like all his five previous addresses he said very little about the Covid19 situation in the country and absolutely nothing as to what his government is doing to tackle the pandemic. While addressing the people of his constituency Varanasi during the first phase of lockdown, he had compared the battle against Covid19 with the epic battle of Mahabharata.