ICYMI #TheTribuneOpinion: Dhankhar’s resignation and the political aftershocks

The resignation of Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar on the first day of the monsoon session created quite an uproar, with everyone looking for the reasons behind his sudden exit. A possible trigger was his acceptance of the Opposition’s impeachment motion against Justice Varma. Senior journalist Radhika Ramaseshan writes in her Edit piece The Opposition and the Dhankhar bombshell that the seeds of a controversy have doubtlessly been sown, but the onus is on the Opposition to reap a rich harvest.

With the Opposition demanding a debate on the Pahalgam terror attack, discussions on the gains and losses of Op Sindoor have started again. During Op Sindoor, we saw the use of drones becoming central to modern conflict. Beyond this victory, we need to prepare for the future, writes former Northern Army commander Lt Gen DS Hooda (retd) in his Op-ed piece The real drone war is yet to come.  India must also indigenously develop medium and long-range strike drones and an effective counter-drone system, he wrties. Supporting his arguments are two more articles. In the Op-ed piece Will India’s future wars be contact-less?, Lt Gen Harbhajan Singh (retd) writes that both India and Pakistan cannot sustain contactless warfare because drones of varying capacities are required in huge numbers to sustain the war for long. No wonder, Op Sindoor lasted only 88 hours, he writes. In the Op-ed Questions on Op Sindoor that need answers, Lt Gen Raj Kadyan (retd) asks the government to come clean on the losses of Op Sindoor.

A growing concern for women’s safety has arisen after the suicide of a 20-year-old girl at Balasore in Odisha, where the system failed to act at every step on her complaint of sexual harassment by her professor. Helpless, she burnt herself to death. Now, comes the politically ignominious act of announcing Vikas Barala as Assistant Advocate General of Haryana. The son of Rajya Sabha MP Subhash Barala, Vikas is the same person who is accused of stalking and attempting to abduct a young girl, Varnika Kundu, in Chandigarh eight years ago. Here, as in other cases like that of wrestlers Sakshi Malik and Vinesh Phogat raising the fight against another BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the young women know it’s going to be a long haul and that log kya kahenge is yesterday’s mantra, writes The Tribune Editor-in-Chief Jyoti Malhotra in her Edit piece Smashing the fear-shame barricades.

Giving an interesting turn to PM Modi’s visit to the UK, where eye-catching trade deals were signed, The Tribune’s London Correspondent Shyam Bhatia talks of something different but important in his Op-ed piece, What Modi’s visit reveals and what it quietly ignores. The UK government has made sure he doesn’t visit some important destinations which carry India’s deeper histories—Pentonville prison where Indian revolutionary Shaheed Udham Singh was hanged; Brighton’s Royal Pavilion where Indian soldiers wounded in the first world war were segregated from White patients, Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum which displayed human skulls from India till about as recent as 2020.

A very important issue that was highlighted in the Edit-oped pages was corruption in some medical colleges that is undermining the integrity of the National Medical Commission (NMC), the central body in charge of regulating medical education. In his incisive article The rot in medical education runs deep, science commentator Dinesh C Sharma writes that the quality of medical education and public safety are being jeoparadised. The CBI recently took the lid off a massive scandal where private medical colleges, health ministry officials and the NMC colluded to subvert norms. Such acts make running a medical college an extraordinarily lucrative business where anything from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore is charged at the time of admission.

A witness to most of contemporary India’s political history pre- and post-Independence, communist leader VS Achuthanandan passed away at the age of 101. Where does the Left move from here with its tallest leaders no longer around to guide? The Left must shed its proclivity for class alliances and look for social ones by tying up with progressive forces like feminists, environmentalists, human rights activists, etc, suggests Professor Emeritus, Panjab University Bhupinder Brar in his Op-ed piece How will Left fill Achuthanandan void.

Another stalwart, but in the field of theatre, who left us was the famous playwright and theatre director Ratan Thiyam, a revolutionary force who decolonised Indian theatre and rooted it in indigenous traditions. By bringing the narratives of the Northeast, the region that he belonged to, into the national mainstream, he created a legacy of deep connection to land, culture and community, writes theatre director Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry in the Oped piece Ratan Thiyam, a true alchemist of theatre.

Talking more about the North-east,  Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was on a four-day visit to Meghalaya where she underlined the improvements made in the state’s health sector over the years. But there is a key sector where the government needs to engage robustly, and that is the education sector, especially at the school level, says independent columnist Sanjoy Hazarika in his Edit piece Hope takes root in Meghalaya.

On the list of visits of important dignitaries to India is Nepal PM KP Sharma Oli’s visit, which is being seen in the context of the neighbouring country’s strategic importance in the wake of another of our neighbour Bhutan’s assiduous wooing of China. However, what will be high on the agenda will be the Pancheshwar-Mahakali treaty pending since 1996, writes former founding member, Defence Planning Staff Maj Gen Ashok Mehta (retd) in his Op-ed piece Nepal PM’s India visit & his penchant for the China card.

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