Ramachandra Guha's Blog, page 5

Why Modi has Failed India, NDTV.com

Last week, the respected US rating agency Moody’s downgraded India’s sovereign rating to Baa3, the lowest grade. It thereby joined Standard and Poor and Fitch, which had already relegated India to the bottom rung in this regard. Explaining their decision, Moody’s said: ‘While today’s action is taken in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, it was not driven by the impact of the pandemic. Rather, the pandemic amplifies vulnerabilities in India’s credit profile that were present and building pr...

Why our Classical Music may be the Best Antidote to our Chauvinism, The Telegraph

Most evenings, I knock off from work and listen to Indian classical music for an hour or so before dinner. In the past, I would play CDs or cassettes I had collected over the years; now, I forage through the capacious repository that is YouTube. Sometimes I select an artist or a particular raga; at other times, I go with the algorithm that is given to me (based I presume on my past record). A few weeks ago, YouTube threw up, at the top of its list, a rendering of the raga Hamsadhvani by Ustad Ba...

The Folly and Vanity of The Project to Redesign New Delhi, The Wire

Six years ago, the then editor of the Hindustan Times invited me to write a fortnightly column. I agreed, on condition that there would be no censorship. While occasionally some changes to my text were made without my consent, there was no attempt to get me to rewrite my column or change its arguments. Until this week, when the Hindustan Times declined to print the column I had sent, which was scheduled to appear on Sunday 19th April. I am grateful to The Wire for carrying this column in its...

Get The Best Minds on Board, Hindustan Times

Years ago, working in the archives in New Delhi, I came across a brief, handwritten, letter from Jawaharlal Nehru to C. Rajagopalachari. It was dated 30th July 1947, and it read:
My dear Rajaji,
This is to remind you that you have to approach Shanmukham Chettythis must be done soon.
I have seen Ambedkar and he has agreed.
Yours
Jawaharlal

The letter requires some explanation for the reader of today. On 30th July 1947, India was just two weeks away from independence. Prime Minister Jawaharlal...

Two Exemplary Twentieth Century Lives, The Telegraph

The 19th century Italian writer Emilio Salgari once remarked that ‘reading is travelling without the bother of baggage’. That is great advice, particularly in the time of COVID-19. Now that one is forcibly home-bound, works of literature and of scholarship can help transport one to different countries, different times. They can stimulate the mind, and uplift the heart.

Shortly before the World Health Organization announced that humanity was facing a new pandemic, I had begun reading the autobio...

Standing With Gandhi in Ahmedabad, Hindustan Times

On 30th January I was in Ahmedabad, a city that was central to Mahatma Gandhis life and work. It was here that he established the most celebrated of his ashrams, on the banks of the Sabarmati River; here that he revised and refined his moral and political philosophy; here that he conceived and planned the Rowlatt Satyagraha, the Non Co-Operation Movement, and the Salt March.

Ahmedabad was once Gandhis city; yet in recent decades Ahmedabad has wilfully, deliberately, turned its back on the...

The Fourth Crisis of The Republic, Hindustan Times

As I have written before, if India had been a start-up in August 1947 not even the most venturesome of venture capitalists would have invested in it. No new nation was born in more inhospitable circumstances. The Partition of the country had been awful enough, in the scale of its violence and the mass displacement of people from their homes. Two months after Independence, Pakistan sent raiders into Kashmir, sparking a full fledged war. Then, in January 1948, the Father of the Nation was...

Why There is No Team Modi – Because There Can Only Be a Brand Modi, The Telegraph

In December 2018, I was having lunch with an entrepreneur-friend who works closely with the Central Government. The BJP had just lost state elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh, putting three Chief Ministers out of office and out of work. I suggested to the entrepreneur that when the Prime Minister won re-election the following May (as he was already very likely to do), he should induct these now jobless politicians of his party into the Union Government. These politicians...

Why Authoritarianism is Bad for Science, But Bigotry is Even Worse

There have been many protests against the Citizenship Amendment Bill (now Act), and there will be many more. This piece of legislation strikes at the heart of the Constitution, seeking to make India another country altogether. It is thus that so many people from so many different walks of life have raised their voices against it.

Among these dissenting voices are Indian scientists, a normally apolitical community not known to organize collective campaigns of protest on matters of public...

From Indo-Pak to Chindia and Back Again to Indo-Pak, Hindustan Times

On 26th January 2006, the New York Times ran a story headlined ‘India Everywhere in the Alps’. The story began: ‘Delhi swept into Davos on Wednesday, with an extravagant public relations campaign by India intended to promote the country as the world’s next economic superstar, and as a democratic alternative to China for the affections of foreign investors.

There were few places one could go, on this first day of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting here, without seeing, hearing,...