Some things to Reconsider

The job of a Prime Minister is never an easy one. Some inherit a storm; others inherit calm seas with a steady wind. Jawaharlal Nehru got the raw end of the deal: a traumatised, partitioned land, millions uprooted, and the Cold War beginning to freeze the world in two hostile blocs. Lal Bahadur Shastri died a war time Prime Minister, and Indira Gandhi presided over a war-ravaged economy, staring across hostile borders at Pakistan and China while the superpowers treated India as a pawn. Morarji Desai stumbled into South Block after the Emergency, the West reeling from stagflation and his own coalition too weak to command authority. Rajiv Gandhi, with a brute majority in Parliament, was besieged by multiple insurgencies at home and a belligerent Zia-ul-Haq across the border. P.V. Narasimha Rao had to deal with the mother of all crises—the 1991 balance of payments collapse —just as the Soviet Union, India’s security blanket, disintegrated into history. Even Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who loo...

    Indian Subcontinent has a remarkable feature, our memories are short and consequences are lasting. When one casts a weary, knowing eye back at India’s relentless tryst with terrorism over the past three decades, the narrative that emerges is as much about the thunderous clamor of firepower as it is about the quiet, often overlooked, virtue of foresight. A cursory internet search – a tool of convenience for those who prefer quick answers to deep dives – might point to a multitude of major terrorist incidents. But let's unpick the numbers, and read the postscript. Between 2014 and 2025, the years Narendra Modi presided as Prime Minister, India indeed faced a series of devastating attacks. We saw the audacious assault on Pathankot (2016) , the chilling Uri attack (2016) , and the gut-wrenching Pulwama suicide bombing (2019) , all largely attributed to Jaish-e-Mohammed. Then came the worrying resurgence in Jammu & Kashmir, with incidents like Poonch-Rajouri (multiple i...