I found this piece at AlJazeera, an interview by Oliver Jarvis of Arundhati Roy, thought-provoking. Here’s a snippet:
What has happened in India and it’s so dangerous, so blatant, is that the country, the nation, the government and its institutions have all been conflated with the ruling party – a political party. And that ruling party has been conflated with Modi, the individual. In fact, there is hardly any ruling party now, there’s just a ruler. So it’s as if Modi is hosting the G20. All of us are locked in. We can’t go out. The poor have been purged from the city. The slums have been screened off. The roads are barricaded, the traffic is shut down. It’s as quiet as death. It is as if he’s so ashamed of all of us, of what the city is really like. It’s been purged and locked down for this event.
I think we need to be very, very careful about India. If it isn’t already, India is verging on becoming a fascist state.
But the trains are running on time! More seriously, there have been some economic improvements. That seems to be what gets covered in the Western press. Most other stuff seems to get ignored. Since we are interested in their markets all the bad stuff will largely be ignored.
Steve
Speaking of the Government of India. Yikes.
Althrough diasporas advocating succession or regime change in another country is one of the strongest irritants that exists in bilateral relations.