Quotes from Barkha Dutt

An idea you disagree with has to be fought with a better idea.

Much of India's Hindu-Muslim divisions can also be located in the context of history, fomented further by the politics of divide and rule.

Most of us will agree that my former medium, television news, has been reduced to tawdry entertainment.

I don't watch television news and, so, whatever I know is from online snippets released by various channels.

For the BJP, the conversion of Bengal's cultural Hindu into a political Hindu is a long-standing project.

In countries like the U.S., the courts have upheld the right to burn the national flag as a mark of protest or expression. In India, by contrast, we routinely get hysterical if the flag is ever taken out of the boundaries of officialdom.

Even those of us who do not understand the nuances of economics have come to accept that reform cannot be bloodless. We are often impatient with the predictable, do-gooder campaigns against development. We argue passionately against the humbug protests of those who never want the poor to get rich.

Politicians know that as public opinion learns to assert itself more aggressively, a government that goes against a presidential opinion can find itself on the defensive.

In many ways, Ahmed Patel was the mind of Sonia Gandhi. Nearly everything we know about her publicly was constructed or revealed with his enabling.

Our ideas of consent have evolved and changed because feminism has pushed the boundaries.

The freedom of expression cannot be defined selectively.

There is an undeniable need to stop candy-flossing the impact of fundamentalism.

We must first be able to look honestly at fundamentalism in our own backyard, if we are to have any hope of weeding it out.

Wherever I go, people complain about what they see on television. Yet, if you are lapping this up because it's random entertainment or from morbid fascination, you are enablers.

Much like the death sentence, I believe, hidden cameras should be used in the 'rarest of rare' cases.

Politics, by definition, is risk averse. Perhaps that's why America was so awestruck when Barack Obama ended the Black vs White debate by painting his political canvas in shades of grey.

In many professional spaces, women are fighting twice as hard as men to get to the same place and get the same opportunities. If you then speak out about your experience of sexual harassment, there is every chance you will not be sent on certain assignments.

I am not a pundit or a psephologist and thus not in the business of calling elections.

Grief, like Covid-19, mutates and escapes the inoculation of both time and the reassurance of loving friends. It is less sledgehammer and more screwdriver, drilling little holes in your head and heart, leaving you haunted by the ifs and buts of your decisions.

In a country like ours where the poor barely have the right to live, a legally recognised right to die would push them to the very margins of healthcare services.

There comes a time in the life of every government when the media decide that it has blundered so fatally that a complete recovery is now impossible. In such phases - and every single political party has encountered them - editorials become political obituaries that declare the end.

Flight attendants need to think on their feet and walk on their toes. An emergency landing can't be steered by a pot-bellied cabin crew that crawls or belly-walks.

For the Modi government, the calls for a 'Naya Kashmir' has paradoxically led them right back to old established political parties after a failed experiment at propping up an 'alternative' regime in the form of the Apni Party and other such flirtations.

If there is a bulwark against the BJP juggernaut, it can only be India's regional parties. But they too falter in the face of the Modi factor and their own lack of commitment to a full time, 365 days a year, 24-hour-a-day political life.