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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
More From Pratap Bhanu Mehta - Page 9
The mirror crack’d from side to sideSubscriber Only
April 26,2020 08:44:42 AM
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 00:04:59 AM
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 03:07:04 AM
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 00:15:24 AM
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 01:00:59 AM
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 04:50:38 AM
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 04:30:10 AM
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 04:20:24 AM
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 pictureSubscriber Only
March 01,2020 04:45:17 AM
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 04:15:06 AM
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 00:59:12 AM
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 04:30:52 AM
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 04:05:06 AM
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, 2020
JNU violence reflects an apocalyptic politics driven by a constant need to find new enemiesSubscriber Only
January 07,2020 04:00:46 AM
It is apocalyptic in a triple sense. At the level of discourse, the normalisation of the phrase “tukde tukde gang” abetted by the home minister, with the help of a pliant media, laid the background conditions for this kind of violence.
Tue, Jan 07, 2020
Hope, Fear, Anger: Will this be the decade we finally come to terms with our reality?Subscriber Only
January 01,2020 02:47:14 AM
In 2019, it was not just people versus government, but one definition of people jostling against another.
Wed, Jan 01, 2020
The charter of liberationSubscriber Only
December 29,2019 01:00:45 AM
On the brink of the 70th year of the Republic, a reaffirmation of the radical message of the Constitution
Sun, Dec 29, 2019
Discrimination, not justice: Hope this generation does a better job of navigating the struggle than the one that came beforeSubscriber Only
December 19,2019 05:20:55 AM
Violence will not help any cause. But when the state discriminates and calls it justice, when it stokes fear and calls it citizenship, and when it exercises control and calls its freedom, when it confuses prejudice with policy, it sets the seeds for disorder.
Thu, Dec 19, 2019
The morning after CAB: It will be a mistake to rely just on Supreme CourtSubscriber Only
December 12,2019 04:12:28 AM
The political challenge is to make sure that one party’s diabolical version of what is reasonable is not mistaken to be common sense. It will require using the BJP’s tactics.
Thu, Dec 12, 2019
The Burden of MeritocracySubscriber Only
December 09,2019 09:42:43 AM
A stunning catalogue of the ways in which merit takes on the form of an inheritance.
Mon, Dec 09, 2019
What state needs is resetting of priorities and restoring of credibilitySubscriber Only
December 05,2019 03:40:13 AM
The real problem is not the absence of big bang reform. It is the misdiagnosis over what our priorities should be and where scarce governance resources need to be deployed.
Thu, Dec 05, 2019
There was another India, reveals a new database of periodicals published between 1857-1947Subscriber Only
November 30,2019 00:29:13 AM
The database is a reminder that the big contentious debates of Indian spiritual, political, economic and social life are not often accurately reflected in the big, and conventional figures we all study or distilled in books. They surface as powerful undercurrents in a variety of genres and forms.
Sat, Nov 30, 2019
The reconfiguration of Hinduism is now completeSubscriber Only
November 10,2019 04:30:24 AM
Is it just possible that instead of a triumphal monument to Ram’s political glory — for this is all that the temple will be under present circumstances — can we build something genuinely congruent with Ram’s greatness?
Sun, Nov 10, 2019
By not joining RCEP, India sends signal of shrinking possibilities — at home and abroadSubscriber Only
November 08,2019 00:05:57 AM
Don’t convert India’s global weakness into an ideological virtue. The truth is that India’s domestic agenda of reform will, in most respects, need to be the same, RCEP or no RCEP
Fri, Nov 08, 2019
Part of the problem with the Indian economy is that no one knows what to believeSubscriber Only
October 31,2019 00:19:07 AM
On the Indian economy, no one knows what to believe. This makes the uncertainty of our moment more endemic.
Thu, Oct 31, 2019
To See, or Not to SeeSubscriber Only
October 27,2019 00:18:51 AM
An inside job on panoptic state surveillance in the name of national security, and its chilling effect on citizens.
Sun, Oct 27, 2019Journalism of Courage
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