Extremely disappointing to see someone like @surjitbhalla ignore facts, history, and experience & give in to the usual cliches in plugging for normalisation of relations with an abnormal country like Pakistan. As someone who studies data for analysis, here is a reality check 1/n People to people: India used to give over 3 lakh visas at one time. How has that worked out in giving paks “a better sense of India”? Has it created a constituency for peace? Has it altered their perceptions of India? Answer is it’s had zero impact 2/n

Pakistan is such an awesome thriller. Even the most bizarre Hindi serial with all its twists and turns can’t match up to the reality show that is Pakistan. Now the Supreme Court has demanded Imran Khan to be produced. This might prove to be the tipping point. 1/n If GOP produces him then SC could do some virtue signalling but send him back to jail. In that case nothing changes. It will be a sign that SC has had a software update and that Pak Army is more powerful than Bandials mom-in-law 2/n

Late 1970s & in 1980s, when Punjab was burning, people were being butchered by Khalistani terrorists, the "civilised, democratic, thekedars" in the West didnt move a small finger. They facilitated the Khalistanis and backed the Pakistanis fueling this terrorism. 1/n UK was the hub of the Khalistani movement. Canada later became the epicentre of Khalistani terrorism. But remember what else was happening back then. The entire West was involved in Afghanistan where the Russians had entered and set up a puppet govt. Jihad was the fashion 2/n

Thank you DMK, K’Hassan etc for raking up #CholasAreHindus issue. It has backfired spectacularly. Today more people know about the Hindu civilisation than ever before. The 70 year commie propaganda history have been dealt a body blow. 1/n A great job done by people like @authoramish & @dushyanthsridar in TV interviews to educate Indians and debunk the trashy pamphlets & propaganda of the left aimed at indoctrinating and deracinating Indians and alienating them from their history, culture, civilisational unity 2/n

I remember in mid 1980s bureaucrats & intelligence officials from Kashmir coming to meet my father and telling him of great tumult building up in the valley, of extremism growing, of restiveness and how babus in Delhi ignored all the warnings. The attitude was that…1/n

https://twitter.com/jsaideepak/status/1502543620804538370

one crack of the whip and it will all be fine. These delhi babus never understood (they were appallingly ignorant) the phenomenon of jihadism that was taking root in Kashmir. They never imagined the resonance of Afghanistan in the Valley. But it was not surprising 2/n

Is Russia facing its "China teaching a lesson to Vietnam" moment? Clearly, the expectation that Ukraine will capitulate the moment Russian forces march in has been proven wrong. The Ukrainian resistance appears too have stalled, even bogged down the Russian advance 1/n The West which was mostly expressing impotent outrage is now enthused enough & encouraged enough to back the Ukrainian resistance which will make it more difficult for the Russians who, as it is becoming clear, havent thought this "military operation" through. 2/n

Nazi is what Nazi does...@ImranKhanPTI has over the last two years exposed his Islamofascist instincts and taken a leaf out of Hitlers playbook. This thread explains how...1/n Book burning and book banning is a fascist and Islamist thing...the burning of libraries destruction of heritage comes naturally to these guys. And all this with legal sanction with laws like Tahaffuz-e-Bunyaad-Islam act under which thought policing has been sanctified 2/n

A few years back, interacting with a Chinese delegation from their foreign office, I asked: India wants good relations with China, but does China? And if it does, what is the evidence of that? This piece by @samirsaran articulates the answer that was always staring us in the face

https://twitter.com/orfonline/status/1286676007865335809

To my mind, the answer on how to tackle China lies in the last point he makes about unpredictability of response, or the unknown unknowns. Second, the point about ‘no way, Huawei’ and about app ban is important and not to be scoffed at. This is of course not the sum & substance

My favourite PIA story. A Pakistani columnist settled in Europe told me this. He was flying back to Lahore. The pilot of the PIA plane turned out to be the brother of his classmate from college. He invited the columnist to the cockpit and started to complain about his columns 1/n

https://twitter.com/sushantsareen/status/1278039735647170560

The columnist was one of those rare Urdu writers who are rational, sensible, even secular. The pilot told him he writes rubbish and said everything in the world happens because Allah wills it. After a long spiel, the pilot said that even the aircraft was flying because Allah 2/n

My very initial takeaways from PMs speech: 1) This is not a stimulus package but a massive structural reforms programme in which there is an element of stimulus. 2nd) the size of the package is bigger than Pakistan’s economy (sorry for adding this but can’t help it) 1/n 3) lockdown will be lifted but there will be guidelines and advisories. Probably be left to states to do the micro management; 4) the PM is taking a leap of faith on the country’s ability to bounce back. This is what Narasimha Rao did 30 years ago;

The basic problem with this govt is that it has no idea about how to run the economy. It depends upon babus to make the most convoluted and complicated policies and ensure the economy tanks. People who haven’t ever done anything productive decide how economy will function Everyone told the GOI that the way GST is being implemented is a disaster. But the politicians preferred to believe the babus who messed up the single most important reform. People who never graduated from a Kirana store mentality were given the keys of the Indian economy.