#ICYMITheTribuneOpinion: Bihar poll rolls, India’s diplomatic challenges and the mayhem in Himachal

The political slugfest over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar intensified this week, even as the Supreme Court asked some pointed questions to the Election Commission (EC) about the exercise. Opposition parties have objected to the short notice at which the revision is being conducted, fearing that it will leave out many genuine voters. The EC should not have slapped prohibitive conditions on the updating of electoral rolls, writes The Tribune Editor-in-Chief Jyoti Malhotra in her Edit piece Let no Bihari voter be left behind. Besides, as the apex court has rightly said, all Biharis above the age of 18 must be allowed to vote if India is to continue to be the mother of all democracies.

With opposition to the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls not dying down, in the Op-ed piece An imaginary letter from the 1st CEC to the present one, RJD MP from Bihar Manoj Jha, highlights that the Election Commission is not only an administrator of polls; it is the sentinel of democracy. The disenfranchisement of any citizen, by design or by negligence, is a grave assault on democracy. The SIR in Bihar is deeply flawed and potentially undemocratic, he writes.

Another issue of constitutional impropriety is being raised, not in Bihar but this time in Punjab. An incisive article How Punjab was stripped of its waters & rights by former Secretary GOI, SS Boparai, takes us through the constitutional provisions that give Punjab full right over Ravi-Beas waters and how the Centre’s control on them has denied ‘the land of five rivers’ its due. Punjab’s authority over its waters must be restored and one means of doing it is by dissolving the Bhakra Beas Management Board or restructuring it under Punjab’s control, he writes.

Talking of water and its fury, Punjab’s neighbour Himachal was battered with heavy rains, which again exposed the government’s lackadaisical approach to taking proactive preventive measures. With debris playing havoc, no steps have been taken to stop the construction of houses on hill slopes. The catchment areas with unstable debris and high-risk zones are not identified, which lets nature take its own course, wreaking havoc year after year, writes environmentalist Prakash Bhandari in his Op-ed piece Not just water, it’s debris that is drowning HP.

While nature exposes one form of negligence, politics reveals another. Moving to Maharashtra, with many slapgates being reported from the state, Julio Ribeiro gives us an in-depth analysis in his Edit piece Slapping around in the name of Marathi of how Balasaheb Thackeray had set himself as a ‘Hindu Samrat’ while pandering to the ‘Marathi manoos’ pride. His nephew Raj Thackeray’s goons have now picked up this golden opportunity being presented by the BJP to make Hindi the one and only link language in the country. The language issue is being played up by the political class for its own interests, he writes.

Let’s move from politics to the progress India is making in science and technology. Over 200 space startups are buzzing across the nation to make the most of the opening of the Indian space economy to private players. They will now have access to the same infrastructure that powered Chandrayaan, says US-based physicist Nishant Sahdev in his Op-ed piece The big bet on Indian space tech: Boom or bubble? He has a word of caution, though — every grant, every facility, and every payload opportunity must come with clear expectations, accountability and strict standards.

Not just in science and technology, there is another positive coming India’s way from the BRICS summit, as it gave a chance to PM Modi to have his say and get the Global South to India’s side in the absence of Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. In her Edit piece India veers back to the Global South, independent journalist Nirupama Subramanian writes that India’s isolation after Op Sindoor showed how far Delhi had strayed from the Global South and at this global forum dominated by the less economically developed countries, New Delhi learned a lesson or two on how not to feel isolated.

With Pakistan in the chair of the UNSC for the month of July, it will try every rule in the rulebook to raise the Kashmir issue. But the issue will not be reopened, writes India’s former permanent representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin in his Op-ed piece Pakistan’s stagecraft at the Security Council. Pakistan should use this platform to set the tempo for long-term conversations with India. But that, it will not, he avers.

While others scramble for dominance, India holds its course — anchored not in ideology, but in a civilisational ethic we call dharmaniti — a steady code of national conduct, shaped by memory, guided by proportion, and rooted in restraint, writes former Western Army Commander Lt Gen SS Mehta (retd) in his strongly worded edit piece, India exhibits restraint in a fractured world. As superpowers create polarity, India seeks multipolarity. But the high table rarely seats the consistent and the steady; it rewards the pliable, he writes further.

India has made it clear to Pakistan that it will respond with decisive force and is not willing to absorb terror strikes any more, writes Tilak Devasher in India no longer a soft state to suffer Pakistan in silence.

On a completely different tangent yet very relevant in today’s times is former JNU professor Gurpreet Mahajan’s Op-ed piece, Together, yet apart: Crisis of unsocial sociability. Even though we live in extreme proximity to each other perched in high-rises, the paradox is social existence is increasingly getting marked by unsocial behaviour. Minor issues like parking, bearing others’ pets or the guard taking too long to open the gate provoke extremely hostile reactions, she writes. Ancient wisdom underlines the path of self-restraint, self-discipline and awareness of the limits of oneself. Are we ready to follow that path again or do we want to remain trapped in a world of unsocial sociability?

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