Modi Wants Bureaucrats to Front Campaign on His Government's 'Achievements'; Bishen Singh Bedi Is No More

‘Dharmic’ US caucus raises concerns, Army’s Udbhav project channels Arthashastra, Kashmir’s apple growers say Modi should think of Kashmir before Washington, ‘Jane Bond 008: Operation Karachi’

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK | Editor: Pratik Kanjilal

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Snapshot of the day

October 23, 2023

Pratik Kanjilal

In 1975, the Allahabad High Court disqualified Indira Gandhi for ising a government servant as her election agent in 1971. How the political and judicial terrain has shifted since then! The Modi government is today playing fast and loose with election laws and Central Civil Service Rules with its latest order that senior bureaucrats help “showcase/celebrate [the] achievements of the NDA government during the last nine years through 'Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra' from 20th November 2023 to 25th January 2024.” The Congress party has objected, as have a number of former bureaucrats. This official ‘yatra’ will come bang in the middle of assembly elections to five states and also help the BJP spread its party political propaganda around the country for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

The Indian Army’s Project Udbhav will have strategists sifting through the classics and historical accounts in search of generalship which might be of value in modern conflicts. The sources are varied, ranging from the Arthashastra and the Thirukural to the Mahabharata, and Lieutenant General Tarun Kumar Aich, Deputy Chief of Army Staff (Strategy), who is leading the initiative, has also alluded to the success of the Ahoms in holding off the Mughals, and instances of warcraft from the Mauryan and Chola empires. Army Training Command has already published a compendium of 75 strategies.  The limitations of the project are obvious. “Ancient wisdom should not be sought to tackle modern-day contingencies,” Major general (retd) BS Dhanoa writes in