A year of hope and change

It is hard not to feel a sense of optimism and change about what is going on around us. I am not being facetious. For some of us, this has been one of the worst periods in history. It has been said, by people as diverse as Arun Shourie, H D Deve Gowda and Sitaram Yechury, that the authoritarian state today is worse than it was during the Emergency.

In many ways, this is true. The powers of the state which qualify our fundamental rights are being used to full effect by the Union government and also by many states. Article 19’s freedoms have more or less ended fully. We have no …