Mission Shakti: Winners & losers

It is no more relevant to the basic needs of Indians languishing below the poverty line than the annexation of Sikkim was all those years ago

The surgical strike may have been in space but its obvious targets were opposition parties on earth. But for me Narendra Modi’s excruciatingly prolonged drama recalled George Verghese’s editorial “Kanchenjunga, Here We Come” in the Hindustan Times when Indira Gandhi’s government was about to gobble up the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim. “Perhaps there is no need for the common man to ask for bread”, the article concluded with exquisite irony. “He’s getting Sikkim.”

Mission Shakti is probably a tremendous technological achievement and the scientists responsible for it deserve full praise. But it is no more relevant to the basic needs of