| A week is most definitely a long time in politics as they say. This is a Kamala Harris moment in American politics. It’s one for the history books. Her victory or defeat will be seen as epic. It is set to unleash a wave of politics at its most savage, pitiless and pragmatic.
With Biden out, Democrats can now focus on Trump. They now have a chance if they turn their campaign into a referendum on Trump, wrote Rajesh Rajagopalan.
By Tuesday, the thrill of seeing a candidate of Indian origin enter the presidential fray took a backseat to Budget 2024.
The truth is that most honest reactions to Budget 2024 have not been fan-like, wrote Vir Sanghvi. The salaried middle class was expecting something special from Budget 2024, perhaps as a reward for a decade of loyal support. In real terms though, it got damn all. Instead, when it comes to handing out allocations, the government is clearly far from all-powerful. It stays in office only because it sends money to its allies Andhra Pradesh and Bihar
Praveen Chakravarty wrote that the Budget 2024 has picked liberally from the Congress’ election manifesto, but more importantly, that it signalled an unstated structural shift – an admission that the trickle-down economics thinking is perhaps not working as well as expected. It has not trickled down to people with jobs and incomes.
The storm over the short-lived Karnataka Reservation Bill brings to focus, once again, the question of belonging and identity. But Bengaluru’s history does not belong to Karnataka alone, wrote Anirudh Kanisetti. It has been shaped by the histories of Telugus, Tamils and a dizzying procession of dynasties. Almost exactly 1,000 years ago, when the Rashtrakuta and Ganga kingdoms collapsed, the Cholas entered the vacuum. Following the Kaveri River east, they brought Tamil merchants and peasant warriors to settle in the Bengaluru region.
In my Ground Reports section this week, I urge you to read three juicy articles.
Vandana Menon travelled to Pune to find out why the Osho family is a divided house. There are ‘rebel’ swamis, a battle over land sale, court cases, and even a Bollywood movie that got stuck in the wrangle. It’s now become a fight for the soul of Osho’s legacy and who gets to ‘control’ it.
In Sikar, ‘700 paar ki bharmar’ is trending., It’s a reference to the unusually large number of medical aspirants who scored more than 700 out of 720 marks in the controversy-ridden NEET-UG 2024 examination. Buoyed by its success, Sikar is gunning to topple Kota as the coaching factory of India, wrote Krishan Murari.
An Ahmedabad laboratory is looking at the past to predict the future, wrote Sandhya Ramesh. In 2018, the Physical Research Laboratory challenged human evolutionary history. Now, its scientists are also using the same cutting-edge techniques in palaeosciences to prepare the country for a violent future brought on by the climate crisis. |
