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Why Ladakh is angry with the Modi government
47:12|On September 24, shots rang through the otherwise idyllic town of Leh. Four people were killed and many more injured in police firing as protests for statehood turned violent.Sajjad Kargili, one of Ladakh’s most popular leaders and a part of the delegation that is negotiating with the Modi government joins Shoaib Daniyal on Scroll Adda to explain why Ladakhis are so angry with Delhi.Ladakhi demands, he explains, are simple: they want their political and cultural rights secured within India’s federal framework. Ladakh should be ruled by Ladakhis as part of a state in the Union. Jobs should be reserved and migration from other states restricted to protect the rights of tribal people as well as the environment in this mountainous region. Kargili criticises the Modi government for removing safeguards like Article 370 when the state of Jammu and Kashmir was partitioned and demoted to Union territory in 2019.The stakes for Delhi are high. Ladakh is bordered by Pakistan and China with both nuclear states occupying Indian territory in the Union territory. Moreover, Ladakhis, both its Buddhists and Muslims, have always stood shoulder to shoulder with the Indian Army as it defends Ladakh.Producer: Aryan MahttaHost: Shoaib DaniyalHave any thoughts, ideas or criticism? Email us at adda@scroll.inWe welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.
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Does communism have a future in India?
49:22|From the 1950s to the 1990s, left-wing thought played a major role in Indian society. From shaping the nascent Indian state after the British left, with Indians turning to socialist ideas to combat the ravages of colonialism, to the stasis of the big Central government measures like the license permit raj and freight equalisation.Things, however, are quite different now. India’s youth has little experience of the Left. India’s largest left-wing party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), in fact, barely has a presence in Parliament. From 43 seats in 2004, it has only four in the Lok Sabha today.On Scroll Adda, the CPI(M)’s Saira Shah Halim joins Shoaib Daniyal to explain why communism lost its appeal and how she thinks the reds can make a comeback.#communism #socialism #CPIM #Left #westbengal #kerala #Maoists #China
Can an IAS officer have a conscience?
01:30:19|India has, in theory, a cabinet system of government. A group of popularly elected politicians are meant to rule using consensus.In practice, of course, we have a strongman (or strongwoman) model, where one powerful politician rules via a clique of Indian Administrative Service officers.So much do politicians like the IAS that since independence, they have given the cadre more and more power. This when, during the Raj itself, babus were already seen to be all-powerful.What happens, though, when an IAS officer decides to listen to his conscience?In 2019, Kannan Gopinathan resigned from the service in protest against the draconian crackdown in Kashmir following the abrogation of Article 370.On Scroll Adda, Kannan tells me how he became an IAS officer almost by accident, what it felt like having so much power and what it is now after his resignation.Producer: Kritika PantHost: Shoaib DaniyalHave any thoughts, ideas or criticism? Email us at adda@scroll.inWe welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.
Why is the Indian state so corrupt?
01:15:07|The Indian state is an almost mythical animal. Inherited by Indians from the British Raj, the state is responsible for great injustice: Indians are generally more scared of the police than they are of goondas. Nearly every Indian also thinks the state is corrupt: bureaucrats and politicians are out to fleece them.But paradoxically, Indians also look to the state for help and as a beacon to building a better society. Welfare and its contours are a feature of every election cycle. Moreover, backward castes have battled long and hard to control the levers of the state, using elections as well as reservations.To explain these contradictions, we have on Adda, Yamini Aiyar. Till 2024, she headed the Centre for Policy Research, then one of India’s leading think tanks. Currently she is at Brown University in the United States as a senior visiting fellow.Aiyar unpacks why allegations of corruption sometimes lead to undemocratic outcomes, how the centralisation of the Indian state hurts Indians and why we could do welfare much better.Producer: Raghav Kakkar
Why the Congress thinks India’s elections are rigged
01:01:04|India’s largest Opposition party is levelling an explosive charge against the Election Commission: vote rigging to favour the Bharatiya Janata Party.In August, party leader Rahul Gandhi took the example of an Assembly Constituency in Karnataka to illustrate significant errors in the voter rolls. A belligerent Election Commission refused to accept any wrongdoing and instead attacked Gandhi in response.To unpack the Congress’ allegations, Congress leader Amitabh Dubey is on this episode of Scroll Adda with Shoaib Daniyal.We get him to explain what the Congress is accusing the EC of and what led it to such a point of no return. We also grilled Dubey on why the Congress’ workers could not catch these errors before the elections.The implications of the Congress’ allegations are grave. If Indian elections are fixed, why does the Congress take part in them? To this, Dubey says that boycotting elections serves no purpose and only ends up backfiring on the Opposition.Producer: Kritika Pant
How Varun Grover does political comedy in the Modi age
01:35:15|Contribute to Scroll's studio fund: https://pages.razorpay.com/scrollstudiofundVarun Grover describes himself as an anti-establishment artist. And as a writer, filmmaker and comedian, he has carved a distinct voice for himself in these politically charged times.Of course, none of this is easy. Never in its history as an independent country has India seen this level of censorship. The threat of violence always hangs over the head of dissenting artists. Grover describes this as “having a drunk father – one day he might come back and love you but then another he might beat you for no reason”.In Scroll Adda’s first-ever live audience recording, Shoaib Daniyal speaks to Grover to understand how a middle-class Punjabi kid from Lucknow managed to use his engineering degree as a springboard into Bombay.Producer: Kritika PantHave any thoughts, ideas or criticism? Email us at adda@scroll.in
Why this Mughal historian fears coming to India
53:41|While completing her PhD in 2012 in New York, Audrey Truschke did not imagine that her work would one day rile up a section of Indians so much that she would feel physically unsafe. So much so that Truschke tells Shoaib Daniyal in this episode of Scroll Adda that she fears coming to India.Truschke's work on medieval Indian history has severely angered India's ruling Hindutva ideologues. She has written on the significant role Sanskrit played in Indo-Muslim culture, a 5,000-year history of the subcontinent and her most attacked book, a slim biography of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb that showed that his demonisation is a much later phenomenon and during his own time, he was looked at with reverence by both his Hindu and Muslim subjects, as any Mughal emperor would be.Truschke is not shy when it comes to her politics. She compares Hindutva to fascism and her CV has "Hindu nationalist attacks" in the honours section. She sees no contradiction when it comes to being a historian and in fact says that having a moral compass is necessary to study the humanities.Producer: Kritika PantFeedback: Adda@Scroll.in