Daily Hindu Editorials

💥A wiser, though counter-intuitive, strategy would be to present the BJP with two separate fronts It’s hardly a week since the nation was subjected to a flurry of gleeful obituaries by self-proclaimed liberals eager to perform the last rites for the Left in India. What was that metaphor again — about the sunset being red, and the sunrise being saffron? Well, last weekend, 30,000 farmers in Maharashtra marched from sunrise to sunset for days on end with a singular objective — to brandish their red flags in India’s commercial capital and demand their rights from a ruling elite that has shown scant regard for the people who produce the contents of their refrigerators. So, isn’t the Left about to die? Wasn’t the defeat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), in the recent Tripura polls a body blow to the Left? What if it loses power in Kerala, too, in the next Assembly election? As per the currently popular political wisdom, the Left is on life support and its surviva...

💥Stephen Hawking lost most of his bets, but beat all the odds to take physics forward and to the people  Stephen Hawking had a rich history with bets; particularly losing them. The best known was the one with Caltech (California Institute of Technology) cosmologist Kip Thorne, about the existence of black holes, which was in many ways at the heart of Hawking’s scientific success. Cygnus X1 was a mysterious galactic source of X-rays and appeared to be a black hole. It was the first time that physical evidence for one seemed to be on the horizon. Hawking said this was unlikely and Thorne — later on scientific consultant to Interstellar — was certain it was. Fifteen years down, in 1990, Hawking conceded defeat and gifted Thorne the wager, a year’s worth of Penthouse magazines. He later on bet Gordon Kane of Michigan University that the Large Hadron Collider wouldn’t be able to detect the Higgs boson, the ‘God particle’ that is one of the foundational bricks on which the standard...

💥India’s intervention achieved strategic objectives while maintaining a humanitarian veneer India liberated Bangladesh in 1971. The Bangladesh freedom fighters were no match militarily for the Pakistan army and there was enough residual support for the idea of Pakistan in its eastern wing to preclude a clear-cut separation of the two wings. India’s intervention was altruistic only in small part. It was primarily based on realpolitik. First, the Bengali uprising provided India with the “opportunity of the century”, to quote India’s leading strategic thinker, the late K. Subrahmanyam, to break up Pakistan and thus eliminate the threat of a two-front war in any future confrontation. Although the eastern front remained largely inactive in 1965, it tied down substantial military resources that could have been deployed to greater effect in the western theatre. Second, Indian decision-makers concluded that even if the new country in the east would not be an “eternal ally”, it could ne...

💥The India-Japan economic relationship remains underwhelming in relation to strategic ties In theory, it’s hard to find two nations that make a better economic fit than fast-growing, populous India and rich, demographically challenged Japan. India needs technical expertise and investments to develop its infrastructure, while Japan has capital to spare and know-how to share. They have a common strategic objective in countering Chinese hegemony in Asia, a goal that can be best met in collaboration. And they enjoy a rare historic amity, being geographically and culturally close, but not too close and, therefore, free of contentious issues such as border disputes. 👉Boosting ties Consequently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe have worked hard to upgrade ties. Regular high-profile bilateral visits have brought with them a smorgasbord of memoranda of understanding, some big-ticket projects, notably Japanese investment in India’s first bullet...

🔥 What sparks an India-Pakistan crisis? The “surgical operation” earlier this month killing the mastermind of the Sunjuwan Army camp attack (Jammu) was lauded as a major victory for Indian security forces, but for some observers, it is surprising that such a seemingly provocative episode closed with such a measured response. Details of the February 10 Sunjuwan attack fit a familiar pattern. Indian authorities were quick to attribute to Pakistan a terrorist attack facilitated by security lapses that killed five soldiers and one family civilian as well as injured six women and children. Commenters noted the attack was the deadliest since Uri in September 2016 and closely mirrored the Kaluchak attack in May 2002. The comparison was worrisome. Uri sparked Indian retaliation that could have easily escalated and Kaluchak triggered the second “peak” of the 2001-02 crisis that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of all-out war. Whenever such an audacious attack occurs, analy...