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The anniversary of the 2016 surgical strikes has brought with it a renewed wave of hostility towards Pakistan, and all the newspapers are talking about it.
India is all for peace, but “not at the cost of compromising our self-respect and sovereignty of our nation”, PM Narendra Modi was quoted as saying in this month’s Mann ki Baat.
Modi was delighted that the strikes were “celebrated” by “125 crore” Indians, never mind that this was done at the behest of the University Grants Commission and the information and broadcasting ministry.
A report in The Times of India refers to the Indian assessment that there has been an uptick in violence in Kashmir since Pakistan PM Imran Khan assumed office, adding, “PM Modi’s comments can be read as a signal to the Pakistani government not to misread the likely response to cross-LoC violence.”
Bitterness over the cancelled meeting between foreign minister Sushma Swaraj and her Pakistani counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi played out at the United Nations, about which Hindustan Times writes, “Qureshi, who spoke at UNGA after external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, accused India of sponsoring “terrorism and aggression against all its neighbours”. Indian diplomat Eenam Gambhir saying visions of New Pakistan were “cast in the mould of the old”.
The reference, of course, was to Imran Khan’s campaign slogan of ushering in a “naya Pakistan”.
Meanwhile, reports of a Pakistani civilian helicopter, carrying the leader of Pakistan occupied Kashmir, breaching the Indian airspace set the stage for some more heated exchanges. The helicopter reportedly turned back after the Indian Army deployed small arms to challenge it.
A headline by The Hindu reads, “India chases away Pakistan copter breaching airspace”, while The Times of India went with “Troops fired at copter carrying PoK PM Haidar?”
The POK leader in question, Farooq Haider Khan, subsequently claimed that the helicopter was “within its airspace” when the firing took place.
Gandhi Jayanti 2018, tomorrow, marks the fourth anniversary of Modi’s flagship Swachh Bharat Mission. The official itinerary for the event includes a convention with sanitation ministers from over 60 nations who want to ‘learn’ from the mission.
The mission finds little mention in the papers on its eve, but The Times of India carries an op-ed by Melinda Gates titled “Swachh Bharat is succeeding because it combines toilets and waste treatment with community mobilisation”.
“For countries currently lacking sanitation infrastructure, Indian innovation holds the promise of billions of dollars and millions of lives saved. For countries still relying on inefficient sewer systems, solutions developed in India have the potential to become the new gold standard,” she writes.
The Indian Express too carries an op-ed on the subject, penned by the secretary of the drinking water and sanitation ministry, Parameswaran Iyer.
“If Gandhi visited India today, he would undoubtedly be happy with what India has managed to achieve on the sanitation front in the last four years,” he writes.
And on the deaths of sanitation workers across the nation? Neither Gates nor Iyer offers comment.
In an interview with Hindustan Times, Election Commission chief O.P. Rawat expressed concern that voting behaviour is being manipulated by parties – but not with money or booze.
“Instead of direct bribing of voters, it is now moving to technology and big data firms and services like targeted communication on social media and analysis on where to focus so as to tilt the voting behaviour in a party’s favour… All these sophisticated techniques, which may cost a bomb, are being resorted to,” he adds.
News it’s just kinda cool to know
A letter Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, wrote to the Easter Bunny as a child is among the over 3,000 belongings that will be up for auction over the coming months, The New York Times reports. The collection, which is being auctioned by his sons, also includes memorabilia that made the trip to the moon and back in July 1969. The next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the historic mission.