The Latest: Top stories of the day
1. In Maharashtra, MLA Waris Pathan, of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, was suspended from the state assembly for refusing to chant "Bharat Mata Ki Jai".
2. Madame Tussaud's is to add a wax figure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to its museum collections around the world.
3. A Delhi High Court judge has sent a plea to the chief justice, seeking the cancellation of JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar's bail.
The Big Story: Outrage session
The first half of the budget session ended on Wednesday, after the Aadhaar Bill to provide residents a biometrics-based Unique Identity Number was rushed through Lok Sabha minus the amendments suggested by the Upper House. But nobody seems to have noticed, amid the howls of outrage over an AIMIM MLA's refusal to chant "Bharat Mata Ki Jai" in the Maharashtra Assembly. If public attention has been deflected from substantive policy issues lately, it is largely because legislators, both at the Centre and in the states, have served up a steady diet of shrill. Key debates on policy have been drowned out in the din of slogans.
The Budget session started soon after students of Jawaharlal Nehru University were arrested on charges of sedition. But an important conversation on freedom of speech and the idea of a modern republic soon turned into a new national sport: crying "anti-national". This draining of substance began in Parliament. All of February, we were treated to absurd posturing by legislators, from Human Resources Development Minister Smriti Irani's histrionics on the death of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula to Congress MP Ghulam Nabi Azad's alleged comparison between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Islamic State. The Ishrat Jahan encounter case was dredged up, while senior leaders of the government, including the prime minister himself, took time off to wax eloquent on Indian culture and soft power at the Art of Living event on the banks of the Yamuna.
The smoke and fury in Parliament obscured the fact that several important bills were passed, from the annual Budget to the real estate Bill. Even the budget evinced little interested, apart from a backlash against the government's proposed tax on provident fund withdrawals. Most troubling was the haste in which the Aadhaar Bill was passed. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley pushed it through Lok Sabha as a Money Bill, on a day when the House was thinly populated. The Opposition in the Rajya Sabha raised concerns on how biometric data collected for the programme affected privacy and suggested amendments. But the Lok Sabha made short work of them when the Bill was sent back. Debates on important issues of spending, taxing and regulation have seemed cursory this session.
The pattern of clamour and silence in Parliament raises a disturbing thought. Did the posturing on patriotism and the anti-national become a convenient ruse to deflect difficult questions on more tangible issues?
The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's big storyAnumeha Yadav looks at the passing of the Aadhaar bill in the Lok Sabha and explains why Parliament should have debated the bill instead of passing it in a rush.
Politicking and policying
1. Contrary to Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu's expectations, Princeton University president Chirstopher L Eisgruber says he wouldn't act against students holding an event to commemorate Osama Bin Laden.
2. The Central Board of Secondary Education has offered "remedial measures" against its "unexpectedly tough" Mathematics paper.
3. The Centre may tighten laws on loan defaulters, making wilful default an offence under the Indian Penal Code.
Punditry
1. In the Telegraph, Mukul Kesavan on the rise of Donald Trump and how it signals the "global equalization of awfulness".
2. In the Indian Express, Kalpana Sharma on why riots are often accompanied by heightened levels of violence against women.
3. In the Hindu, Happymon Jacob on the Modi government's failures in managing national security.
Don't Miss...
Haroon Khalid's tale of two Qadris in Pakistan:
Where once, the ruling family of Kasur ridiculed Bulleh Shah calling him a blasphemer, he is now seen as a patron saint of their city. Tradition has it that at the time of Bulleh Shah’s death the religious and political establishment of the city refused to offer his namaz-e-janaza or funeral prayers because they regarded him to be a blasphemer. The task was taken up by his devotees. Over the years as the poetry of Bulleh Shah captured the imagination of the people, and the city slowly grew to gather around his shrine, the ruling classes too started appropriating him as the saint of Kasur. Generations of family members from Kasur’s ruling family are now buried within Bulleh Shah’s tomb’s courtyard.
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