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By:

Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Street Circus

The NEET-UG paper leak was a genuine grievance. Millions of students who spent years preparing for one of India’s toughest examinations deserved answers, accountability and justice. But what unfolded at Jantar Mantar was no movement for educational reform. It was a spectacle of rage, abuse and performative rebellion that often appeared more interested in viral clips than viable solutions. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which claimed to represent the anger of students, ended up exposing...

Street Circus

The NEET-UG paper leak was a genuine grievance. Millions of students who spent years preparing for one of India’s toughest examinations deserved answers, accountability and justice. But what unfolded at Jantar Mantar was no movement for educational reform. It was a spectacle of rage, abuse and performative rebellion that often appeared more interested in viral clips than viable solutions. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which claimed to represent the anger of students, ended up exposing itself, revealing itself to promote a culture of outrage without responsibility and more troubling, have aspersions cast on its funding sources. Besides the fact that just how many of those gathered were afflicted NEET students, the ugliest part of the protest was the language. Videos from Jantar Mantar showed protesters hurling the most obscene and personal abuses at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. One can dislike the PM or oppose his policies, reducing political disagreement to filthy personal abuse against an elected Prime Minister is gross cowardice and at the basic level, a sheer failure of basic civic etiquette. No entity cannot claim to be fighting for the dignity of students while abandoning all standards of dignity in public discourse. The irony was impossible to miss. A section of this self-proclaimed progressive generation speaks constantly about equality, feminism, tolerance and justice. Yet the very same voices displayed extraordinary intolerance towards anyone they decided was an enemy. Journalists were targeted, political opponents were dehumanised and anyone carrying a different opinion was casually branded with labels designed to silence rather than debate. Social media has created a dangerous illusion among many young activists that a viral video is a victory, and that shouting louder is the same as achieving something. A few Instagram reels, borrowed revolutionary imagery and slogans can create the appearance of rebellion. But governing a country and reforming institutions and fixing broken systems require far more than theatrical anger. The government, however, cannot escape responsibility either. The crisis was allowed to grow because of delayed communication and inadequate political management. A prompt response, transparent investigation and early intervention could have prevented a limited controversy from becoming a national embarrassment. Instead, the government was forced into damage control, and Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, a capable minister, became the political casualty. For the citizens, it was a colossal waste of time. After weeks of noise, confrontation and disruption, the students gained little. The examination system remains under scrutiny and larger problems remain unresolved. The only visible outcome is the removal of a minister. A protest that begins with a genuine grievance but ends as a contest of abuse and attention-seeking has not strengthened democracy. It has weakened the very standards it claims to defend.

Trading Lines

India’s trade engagement with America has long been shaped by asymmetry. The United States, while remaining India’s largest export destination, has increasingly become its most erratic negotiating partner. Under Donald Trump, trade has been reduced to a crude calculus of deficits and punishments. Tariffs have been wielded as instruments of political theatre to be imposed and withdrawn at whim.


It is amid this backdrop that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat, in his latest speech, cautioned again that India’s trade agreements must be concluded on its own terms and conditions and not in thrall to tariff threats.


Bhagwat’s warning, not his first, comes after both countries issued a joint statement announcing they had reached a framework for an Interim Agreement, and would continue working together towards a more comprehensive Bilateral Trade Agreement. The agreement comes after a season of sustained hostility marked by President Trump’s transactional bullying.


Indian policymakers routinely invoke ‘strategic autonomy’ and ‘Atmanirbharta’ even as they pursue market access abroad. Bhagwat’s remarks sharpen this contradiction. By insisting that India will not sign deals under pressure, he implicitly rejects the logic that coercion can be normalised as negotiation.


Nor is the source of the message incidental. The RSS is not a trade negotiator, but it remains the ideological axis of India’s ruling ecosystem. When its chief speaks in front of industrialists, celebrities and political heavyweights, his words function as a constraint as much as a commentary. Foreign capitals would be mistaken to treat them as decorative nationalism.


Bhagwat’s invocation of India as a vishwaguru rather than an intimidating superpower was more than rhetorical flourish. It was a contrast drawn deliberately against the strident American model of economic statecraft perfected under Trump, which is indifferent to institutional norms. Tariffs, once dismissed by economists as self-harm, have been turned by the US President into instruments of domestic posturing while allies have been treated little better than adversaries. India, Bhagwat suggested, has no intention of mimicking such behaviour or submitting to it.


Modern trade negotiations are rarely conducted among equals. Power differentials are real, and leverage is always exercised. To pretend otherwise is to moralise a process that is fundamentally political. Yet Bhagwat’s formulation leaves little room for concessions that can be portrayed as externally imposed, however economically rational they may be.


His insistence that the RSS does not hold the remote control of the Bharatiya Janata Party serves a dual purpose. Formally, it preserves the fiction of organisational separation. Substantively, it signals that certain ideological red lines on sovereignty, coercion and national dignity exist beyond which the government’s room for manoeuvre shrinks.


The real test lies ahead. If the final Bilateral Trade Agreement reflects mutual accommodation rather than asymmetric pressure, it will vindicate India’s claim to strategic autonomy. If not, the interim deal may stand as the outer limit of what Trump-era trade diplomacy can extract from a country increasingly determined to draw its own trading lines. 


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