ReutersA magazine stand on a railway platform in Mumbai.In an article in Open magazine,  “The Riot and the Rot,†Dhirendra K. Jha examines the communal violence that broke out on Oct. 24 in Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh, while a Hindu procession was carrying idols of the Goddess Durga for immersion in the Saryu River. The violence, Mr. Jha writes, was not spur-of-the-moment but carefully orchestrated by Hindu rioters against minority Muslims.
According to Mr. Jha's account, the rioters mingled in the procession before proceeding to loot and ransack shops owned by Muslims, as well as vandalizing a mosque. Â He argues that the cause behind the violence re quires no investigation, since the perpetrators wanted to make their message clear; one sign of that, he writes, is the fact that they broke open the locks of a mosque that has traditionally been a symbol of communal harmony in Faizabad.
On 29 October, UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav took note of the eruption. He blamed “some conspirators†for “the clashes†in Faizabad and asserted that he would expose their names. “Everyone knows who are responsible for the clashes,†he declared.
But then, ‘everyone' includes the state administration, surely, and it could not have been unaware of the fumes of bigotry that had hung in the air for such an extended period before the riot. Given the arena in which UP's ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) has honed its instincts, is it plausible it had no inkling of what was to come? Does allowing the execution of such a conspiracy not reek of a conspiracy in itself?
In Tehelka, Baba Umar writes of a “strange affliction†that has become a scourge for a village in the Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir State. The village of Adai, isolated by the mountains of the Pir Panjal range, is situated in one of India's 250 “most backward districts,†bereft of infrastructure, health care, a stable power supply, transportation and safe drinking water.
Adai is known as “a village of the deformed†because of the mysterious disease, unnamed and undiagnosed by local doctors, which strikes some residents at a young age. It causes frailty of the bones and disfigurement of the joints and leaves its victims hunchbacked, Mr. Umar writes.  Though the government offers sufferers a disability grant, it does not meet their needs, and the harsh terrain in the region makes it hard for villagers to collect the relief from the state welfare office several kilometres away, he writes.
In a piece titled “Natural Highways†in Down to Ea rth, Anupam Chakravartty and Arnab Pratim Dutta trace the history of inland navigation in India and decry its slow development. The authors argue that with aviation struggling to survive and new roads and rails representing a massive financial burden for India, transportation by water poses a viable alternative. Though India passed legislation to commercially utilize its 14,000 kilometers, or 9,000 miles, of waterways more than 25 years ago, the sector has not fulfilled its potential, they write. The piece concludes that maintenance would be less capital-intensive than for roads and rails, and that proper development could reduce the cost of moving goods and people.
“The Argumentative Indian,†a profile of  the Congress Party minister Kapil Sibal in Caravan Magazine, traces his life from charismatic university student to the governing party's go-to guy when they need an attack dog.
“Summoning the theatrical and oratorical skills he displayed as an actor in the Shakespeare Society at Delhi's elite St. Stephen's College and honed in hundreds of court appearances, Sibal relishes any opportunity for verbal jousting, confident that he will inevitably have the upper hand,†Praveen Donthi writes. However, he has yet to win the respect of the party's upper echelon, or Delhi's chattering classes, because of this very public willingness to do battle, the article says, which makes him a target of mockery and derision.
The theory is well argued, the reporting comprehensive and specific details about how Mr. Sibal evolved into the “argumentative Indian†of the title are fascinating and hard to forget. Try to shake this image of Mr. Sibal's university days:
Sibal landed all the biggest roles in college theatre productions, Mukerji said, and particularly remembered his part in in Eugène Ionesco's absurdist play Rhinoceros, in which the characters turn into the titular animal. “He was particularly suited for the role, you know, with his strong shoulders and build, as if it was written for him,†Mukerji said.
But it's  the use of Mr. Sibal's own poetry, as book-ends to sections of the seven-part, nine-page article, that prove the most quietly effective. Caravan may refer to the minister's poetic effort as “amateur verse†but they are also illuminating. In one quoted verse, for example, Mr. Sibal wrote:
A successful politician is one who:
makes the unconscionable
sound reasonable
and the reasonable
sound unconscionable.
