1. Towards the last year there were two essays on those losing hope in India's journey, both worth reading in full.

This one by @andymukherjee70: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-opinion-india-and-modi-are-losing-china-battle/

And this one by @kikumbhar: https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/why-i-m-losing-hope-india

Unlike both, I dare not lose hope in India.

2. India is simply too large - a fifth of humanity - for a fall here to leave the rest of the world unaffected.

To give up hope of India is to give up hope for the world - the consequences in terms of economy, refugee flow, ecology - would be that catastrophic.

3. If we are seeing a redux of the 1930s, where the international community failed to confront the rise of global authoritarianism (also to deal with hideous, entrenched inequality) then the fight is in India, and that fight is already half-lost.

4. To be clear, I don't think either Andy or Kiran is advocating that we give up, but I would urge people who read and reflect on these pieces to understand not just what we have lost, but why we must create hope.

5. It is also worth noting how we got here.

I agree with Andy's concern that the loss of economic growth is grim news, and Kiran's point that this economic growth was unequal - often "jobless growth" for those not connected - there is a part of the 90s story that is overlooked.

6. As a liberal my greatest concern is that power should be held accountable, and while the 90s in India allowed economic growth by removing some economic hurdles, it was also a decade in which impunity became the norm, and accountability was eroded.

7. On Punjab it is worth reading @asmitabee's recent piece: https://lifestyle.livemint.com/news/big-story/in-punjab-families-of-the-disappeared-await-justice-111608471391872.html

On Kashmir, this old piece by @HartoshSinghBal, is illustrative: https://openthemagazine.com/features/india/the-man-who-knows-too-much/

8. Nor was it the "conflict zones" that were the only problem.

Advani's Rath Yatra left India bloody, and the BJP was rewarded for it with power.

Justice Verma's 1995 Hindutva judgment is a masterclass in bullshit, and there is a straight line to last year's Ayodhya judgment.

9. The Bombay killings were - horrifically - stopped because a terrorist organisation bombed the city, not because the police (which was complicit) or the state government, or the Central government did anything.

And the culprits were again rewarded with power.

10. This pattern has continued to repeat itself since then, both in normal crimes, as well as white collar crimes, while the proportion of MLAs and MPs with criminal cases kept rising.

When Devendra Fadnavis became CM at the age of 44, he had 22 cases against him.

11. We tend to continue to tell the story of the 90s as one of economic opening, and it is partially true, but it is also the decade of the slow crumbling of the rule of law.

Liberalism rests on the 3 pillars of the market, rule of law, and human rights. One alone doesn't work.

12. My way of looking at this may seem to suggest that i started losing hope in the India story a lot earlier than Andy or Kiran, but frankly the only hope is what we make of it. I don't think India has a story, I think Indians have, and it is up to write that story.

Good luck.