Weekend reads

  1. Malik Siraj Akbar writes in the Indian Express that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day statement on Balochistan is a game-changer for the Baloch, who have always wanted to be treated as an entity separate from Pakistan.
  2. In the Hindu BLInk, Sukumar Muralidharan on how Modi's sound and fury about human rights in Balochistan masks a deeper silence on human rights in Kashmir, and blows the cover on India's covert action in the region.
  3. In Mint, Ira Dugal suggests that the new Reserve Bank of India governor, Urjit Patel, will take forward Raghuram Rajan's inflation fighting agenda and crusade against bad loans.
  4. In the Telegraph, Ruchir Joshi parses the many meanings of "anti-national", the "linguistic ajinomoto" of our times.
  5. In the Hindu, Varghese K. George on how the next United States president will have to untangle the question of dealing with Russia, and why the White House's moves will be of interest to India.
  6. In the Guardian, David Nott, a British surgeon who has spent months working in Aleppo, says the picture of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, pulled out of the rubble of a bombsite, must be a turning point in Syria's war.
  7. Also in the Indian Express, Arun Janardhanan investigates the death of a 17-year-old, whose body was found in the residence of a priest in Kerala and whose mother took on the Catholic church, leading to the arrest of five senior priests a week ago.
  8. In the New York Times, John Eligon and Robert Gebeloff find that segregation still haunts America, with more affluent black families living in poorer neighbourhoods than white families with similar or lower incomes.
  9. Eliot Weinberger watched the Reublican Convention for the London Review of Books, and found the theme of the party was "evil is afoot in the land".
  10. Jia Tolentino writes on the death of the Gawker in the New Yorker.