Welcome to The Political Fix by Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, a newsletter on Indian politics and policy. To get it in your inbox every week,...
Welcome to The Political Fix by Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, a newsletter on Indian politics and policy. To get it in your inbox every week, sign up here.
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The Big Story: Optical illusion
Slate’s Joshua Keating used to write a wonderful series called “If It Happened There”, which covered American politics with the tone that the US media reserves for dispatches from far-away countries. It is a conceit that we have managed to occasionally use at Scroll.in, such as when describing Donald Trump’s victory in American elections or the specifics of Mother Teresa being declared a saint.
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was re-elected in 2019, we considered using the same approach – except by treating the past as a foreign country. Although the series never quite materialised, the formula would have been simple: “How would _X_ be covered by the media if there had been another government in charge?”
This week offered three sets of stories that would have fit right into that series:
- India and China step back from the brink of further conflict, with New Delhi claiming victory in “taming Chinese expansionism” – so described in a 15-item talking-point handout sent to journalists – even as reports...
