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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 9:59:04 pm

Liberal Hypocrisy

A revealing test of liberalism is whether it can condemn an idea when it comes from someone it considers politically useful. A recent interview given by controversial former student activist Sharjeel Imam to a supposedly progressive portal has put sections of India’s self-proclaimed liberal establishment in a right quandary. In his interview, Imam outrageously questioned the democratic framework as a means of securing Muslim political rights, portrayed secularism as a majoritarian stratagem...

Liberal Hypocrisy

A revealing test of liberalism is whether it can condemn an idea when it comes from someone it considers politically useful. A recent interview given by controversial former student activist Sharjeel Imam to a supposedly progressive portal has put sections of India’s self-proclaimed liberal establishment in a right quandary. In his interview, Imam outrageously questioned the democratic framework as a means of securing Muslim political rights, portrayed secularism as a majoritarian stratagem and challenged the idea of a unified Indian nation while going so far as to label the Constitution a trap and denouncing parliamentary democracy itself The point is not what Imam believes; radical fundamentalism has always worn its extremism on its sleeve. The real issue is why his pronouncements have not provoked the kind of hysterical moral outrage routinely directed at Hindu nationalism. Imam, who became a prominent face of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests of 2019–20, faces serious charges under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in connection with the Delhi riots conspiracy case and remains in judicial custody without conviction. The point is why are the voices, that routinely lecture the country on secularism, pluralism and constitutional morality, so conspicuously silent after Imam’s brazen statements. Figures like Imam have never existed in an ideological vacuum. Sections of the activist, academic and media elite gave the anti-CAA movement considerable moral and political support, and some commentators treated its more radical voices primarily through the prism of resistance to the Modi government, while wilfully sanitizing bigotry as 'dissent' and dressing up open sedition as mere political grievance When Hindu nationalist figures speak, their statements are meticulously dissected, parsed, and condemned for their threat to minority rights and secularism. Yet, when comparable or worse challenges to national cohesion, territorial integrity, and democratic principles emanate from minority or Islamist quarters, the same commentators suddenly discover the virtues of nuance, context and restraint. They retreat into a cowardly fence-sitting, desperate to avoid alienating a vocal constituency in their anti-regime coalition. Anything less than equal scrutiny turns universal principles into mere instruments of partisan convenience. This reveals a deeper, more embarrassing pathology among sections of the liberal establishment to conflate opposition to the government with absolute moral virtue. It exposes an unseemly willingness to forge Faustian bargains with extremist elements, operating on the crude and dangerous logic that the enemy of my enemy must be my ideological ally. An individual does not become a defender of democracy merely by opposing Narendra Modi, just as criticism of Islamist politics does not automatically make someone a Hindu nationalist. Ideological arguments must be judged by consistent standards rather than convenient labels. Liberalism that cannot confront illiberalism among its own ideological fellow-travellers is not principled liberalism. It then devolves into mere partisan hypocrisy and a hollow exercise in selective outrage that ultimately destroys the very democratic values it claims to defend.

When Clean Water Becomes a Luxury

Writer: Rajeev Kejriwal
Rajeev Kejriwal
Oct 9
3 min read

Safe drinking water must never be a luxury. It must be a certainty for every Indian, without the struggle to find it or the fear of running out.

Tonight, two Indians will drink water. One will open a refrigerator, take out a chilled bottle and pay for water that was once freely available in nature. The other will walk some distance, fill a container and carry it home, hoping that what looks clean is actually safe to drink.


Between these two glasses lies one of our most uncomfortable contradictions. We live in a land of rivers and monsoons, lakes and wells, dams and canals. Yet access to safe drinking water remains deeply unequal. For some, water is bottled, branded, filtered and delivered to the doorstep. For millions, securing a safe supply remains a daily struggle, shaped by distance, availability and uncertainty. What should be a basic right is increasingly becoming a commodity.


It was against this reality that the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) emerged with a deceptively simple question: why should people travel to water when water can travel to them? But bringing tap water to every rural home is far more difficult than it sounds. Pipelines must cross mountains and deserts, forests and floodplains, scattered habitations and difficult terrain. They must serve areas where groundwater is abundant as well as those where underground reserves are steadily depleting.


The progress of JJM deserves recognition, and failures deserve detailed study. And yet, somewhere along the way, the scale of what JJM attempted and achieved has been overshadowed by criticism of what remains unfinished. That deserves a closer look.


Before JJM, only about 3.23 crore rural households, roughly 17 per cent, had tap water connections. By March 2026, that number had risen to about 15.82 crore, or nearly 82 per cent of rural households. That is not the story of a small infrastructure programme. It is the story of attempting to change the daily reality of tens of millions of families across one of the world's most geographically and socially diverse countries. Yet JJM is sometimes dismissed because every tap does not yet provide perfect, uninterrupted service.


There is a legitimate point here. A tap without water is merely plumbing. But this is precisely where the assessment can become unfair. Should a transformation of this magnitude be called unsuccessful because the final mile is still being completed? An independent functionality assessment covering nearly 2.38 lakh households found tap connections in 98.1 per cent of households in surveyed Har Ghar Jal villages; 86.5 per cent had working connections, 80.2 per cent received adequate quantity and 83.6 per cent received water regularly according to schedule.


The honest conclusion, therefore, is neither triumphalism nor dismissal. JJM is not the end of India's water story. It is the beginning of a much larger one. But the true learning is that India needs more missions of such scale. What we need now is a generation of water missions, each addressing a different part of the same crisis. One to bring dying ponds, lakes and traditional water bodies back to life. Another to recharge groundwater, the invisible reservoir on which so much of the country depends. Yet another to transform agriculture so that we grow more with every drop, because the greatest water savings may ultimately happen not at the household tap, but in the field. Our cities need their own initiatives to ensure that every drop is used more than once.


The beauty of a mission-based approach is that it turns an overwhelming crisis into achievable national goals. Water demands patience, planning and permanence. And it's never merely about water. Every hour saved from collecting it can become an hour of education or productive work. Every illness prevented saves a family and the economy a cost. Water security is therefore about health, livelihoods, agriculture, cities, ecology, and ultimately, dignity. JJM has demonstrated that India can attempt a water transformation at an extraordinary scale.


The dream is simple: a country where no family buys bottled water because it fears its tap. Where no woman spends hours searching for water. Where no village waits anxiously to discover whether its source will survive another summer.


Only then will clean water stop being a luxury and quietly become what it was always meant to be: an everyday certainty.


(The writer is a bilingual author. Views personal.)

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