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Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Pratap Bhanu Mehta is Contributing Editor at the Indian Express. He has been vice-chancellor of Ashoka University and president, Centre Policy Research. Before he started engaging with contemporary affairs, he taught political theory at Harvard, and briefly at JNU. He has written on intellectual history, political theory, law, India's social transformation and world affairs. He is the recipient of the Infosys Prize, the Adisheshiah Prize and the Amartya Sen Prize. Follow @pbmehta
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More From Pratap Bhanu Mehta - Page 9
Text of education policy artfully navigates several thickets. Fears about document come from contextSubscriber Only
August 01, 2020 05:00 IST
This government’s record on regulation is not inspiring. So the critical question will, less, be: Does one agree with the document?
Sat, Aug 01, 2020
PB Mehta writes: Padmanabhaswamy case turns on specific facts, but there are wider political ramificationsSubscriber Only
July 21, 2020 04:05 IST
It is actually the state, whom the temple rescue brigade reviles, that created a national Hindu legal identity, and perhaps unwittingly abetted Hindutva in its political form.
Tue, Jul 21, 2020
Loneliness of Varavara Rao, Anand Teltumbde, Sudha Bharadwaj tells a disquieting tale about state and usSubscriber Only
July 18, 2020 04:00 IST
PB Mehta writes: Teltumbde was insightful in thinking that once you had been labelled Left in India, it was easy to secure a diminution in your legal and cultural standing. Even the Courts will turn off their thinking cap. It is in this that the genuine intellectual enterprise is a lonely one, whose disastrous political consequences Teltumbde is facing.
Sat, Jul 18, 2020
Thoki Raj: Creating order by trampling on law is one of the elements of Adityanath’s ideological successSubscriber Only
July 11, 2020 04:05 IST
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Unleashing strong arm tactics by state stands in for creating law and order. No one wants police reform.
Sat, Jul 11, 2020
How did India manage to lose its neighbourhood? Answers lie at homeSubscriber Only
June 26, 2020 03:30 IST
P B Mehta writes: Don’t count on the fact that the world will support an Indian escalation beyond a point. The efforts of the international community, in the final analysis, will be to try and throw cold water on the conflict; no one has a serious stake in the fate of the terrain India and China are disputing.
Fri, Jun 26, 2020
PB Mehta writes: India is heading into uncharted waters with no leadership at the helm, just the simulacra of oneSubscriber Only
June 16, 2020 04:30 IST
The prime minister evokes a deep adulation in his supporters. But it should be clear by now that whatever that adulation is, it is not on account of his leadership. His leadership has been totally missing. Covid to China, economy to society, there’s a politics of illusion and evasive silence
Tue, Jun 16, 2020
An American Tragedy: In days, the narrative has shifted from police brutality to fear of violenceSubscriber Only
June 02, 2020 04:06 IST
The explosion of protest, violence, rioting, curfews and brutal police crackdowns in the wake of George Floyd’s suffocation by police in Minneapolis is another chapter in the long history of a democracy whose self-image often cloaks its more sordid realities.
Tue, Jun 02, 2020
Trains on their mind: Death of a mother at a railway station, a conversation in HeavenSubscriber Only
May 29, 2020 03:00 IST
PB Mehta writes: Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Hansa Mehta, Rabindranath Tagore, Bhim Rao Ambedkar, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Sri Aurobindo, Sarojini Naidu, Jayaprakash Narayan, Deendayal Upadhyaya are milling around. Narada shows up to needle them.
Fri, May 29, 2020
Covid lockdown is seen as a cover for Jammu and KashmirSubscriber Only
May 16, 2020 00:32 IST
It is also imprisoned in intellectual, political, constitutional, strategic and moral lockdowns.
Sat, May 16, 2020
Ordinances by states to change labour laws are a travestySubscriber Only
May 12, 2020 00:30 IST
Indian labour laws had the unique distinction of representing the state’s war on both capital and labour.
Tue, May 12, 2020
We need to question our addiction to cultural and political economy of alcoholSubscriber Only
May 07, 2020 05:00 IST
PB Mehta writes: There is very little worry about the forms of dependence on alcohol that, in crucial moments, take away our ability to exercise or recognise consent, exercise good choice or act like an agent. The liberal case for encouraging moderation is actually stronger than the conservative case.
Thu, May 07, 2020
Loss of great artiste helps in understanding the loss any death representsSubscriber Only
May 01, 2020 04:15 IST
But what is the loss we mourn, especially in the case of a brilliant genius like Irrfan, who attained the pinnacle of what art could achieve? He leaves a void in this world. In part, the sense of loss that accompanies every artiste is the sense of their irreplaceability.
Fri, May 01, 2020
The mirror crack’d from side to sideSubscriber Only
April 26, 2020 08:44 IST
In the incandescent conclusion to her Tudor trilogy, The Mirror and The Light, Hilary Mantel charts the peak and fall of Thomas Cromwell and the struggle of man against the opacity of others
Sun, Apr 26, 2020
Both US and China face internal credibility crisis. It could work to detriment of international systemSubscriber Only
April 25, 2020 00:04 IST
The challenges of dealing with the pandemic or existing interdependencies may yet impose a degree of sobriety on both superpowers. But the demands on internal legitimation are increasingly pointing in a direction where both countries will not find it easy to dial back from ratcheting up tensions, in ways that might make delicate diplomacy more difficult.
Sat, Apr 25, 2020
Beyond solidarity: The migrant labour and the unemployed will be demanding their rights, not our mercySubscriber Only
April 18, 2020 03:07 IST
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: There is something deeply morally odd in using the language of compassion in relation to the state. What we need from the state is not compassion, it is a minimum sense of justice.
Sat, Apr 18, 2020
A lockdown requires a command, an opening will require confidenceSubscriber Only
April 09, 2020 00:15 IST
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: It is the quality of governance that will mediate the path to opening up, not just the economics versus life debate. The government will have to inspire total confidence in the robustness of the information it is putting out, whether on testing or supplies.
Thu, Apr 09, 2020
Lockdown announcement has not been matched by national strategy — on containing fallout for poorSubscriber Only
March 28, 2020 01:00 IST
PB Mehta writes: India has never understood that health expenditure is not expenditure; it is investment. The success of the lockdown strategy is premised on an unprecedentedly vigorous building up of health infrastructure to fight the pandemic.
Sat, Mar 28, 2020
The Gogoi betrayal: Judges will not empower you, they are diminished menSubscriber Only
March 19, 2020 04:50 IST
Justice Gogoi’s actions are not simply a case of one bad apple. His actions will now cast doubt on the Court as a whole; every judgment will now be attributed to political motives.
Fri, Mar 20, 2020
Pandemic and politics: Coronavirus crisis calls for solidarity but it also begets deeper conflictsSubscriber Only
March 18, 2020 04:30 IST
The coronavirus pandemic has confronted us with the contingency of so much of what we take for granted. It refocuses us on fighting something very elemental, in ways that will require a new politics. But two aspects of politics as usual continue.
Wed, Mar 18, 2020
Anti-CAA protests gave us poetry to resist, but hard plumbing of alternative politics yet to be worked outSubscriber Only
March 10, 2020 04:20 IST
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: There are reasons why the foisting of the communal narrative around the anti-CAA protests has gained the upper hand. Communal propaganda now so seamlessly works within democratic institutions, mass media and social media. It has become so second nature and ubiquitous...
Tue, Mar 10, 2020
Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s memoir of the reform years presents a complicated picture
March 01, 2020 04:45 IST
It is too easy to dismiss reformers like Montek as elitist. They may make errors of judgment, but they often had more faith in Indians than many of those who yelped loudly in the name of the poor.
Sun, Apr 26, 2020
The Delhi darkness: Our rulers want an India that thrives on cruelty, fear, division, violenceSubscriber Only
February 27, 2020 04:15 IST
India is descending into a night of dread and despair. The ongoing riots in Delhi are not a tactical aberration, some absent-minded lapse of attention. They have been in the making for a while, and represent the future that our ruling classes have imagined for us.
Sat, Feb 29, 2020
Contest in US and elsewhere is between democracy and capitalism, and where the balance should lieSubscriber Only
February 18, 2020 00:59 IST
In some ways, a potential contest between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump will turn out to be a more interesting contest because it is the one contest that makes these stakes totally clear.
Tue, Feb 18, 2020
Budget 2020 reads like a five-year plan with lots of targets but no road mapSubscriber Only
February 03, 2020 04:30 IST
The things that it will take to fix the economy cannot be done in the Budget. The Budget can be criticised for its lack of boldness. But in a way, that is the most honest thing about it. It is an admission of defeat
Mon, Feb 03, 2020
Incitements by BJP leaders aim to polarise society, create violent identities — not just win electionsSubscriber Only
February 01, 2020 04:05 IST
We had always assumed that politics is deeply decentralised in India: Caste, community, language, and region, provide natural breaks on any national agendas. These are still important. But they no longer provide the deep social bulwarks against the consolidation of national agendas. So violence can acquire a different logic.
Sat, Feb 01, 2020Journalism of Courage
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