Why India should be wary of the quad; Sitaram Yechury on demonetisation; The disappearance of Ennore Creek; Fall of the house of Saud; and more

[View this email in your browser]( Top Story [Why India Should Be Wary of the Quad]( Manoj Joshi [The second coming of the Quadrilateral alliance of the US, Australia, Japan and India to confront China in the Asia-Pacific may not be the proverbial farce, but it is close enough. The first time around it collapsed when two of its members found it inconvenient to go ahead. And now, after a decade, in which China has militarily consolidated itself in the very region that the Quad had hoped to challenge, the chimera is once again being chased. Mooted as an alliance of democracies, it seeks to upend everything we know about international relations, where the drivers are national interests, rather than values. Even that titanic struggle against evil in World War II, pitted a partial democracy (the US), an empire (the UK) and the communist Soviet Union against the Nazis and the Japanese militarists. Ordinarily this would not matter much since the Quad would largely be a talking shop with some joint naval exercises thrown in. But parallel to this, US President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have drawn up an overarching vision of the policy they have in mind to replace the now abandoned “pivot.” They are pointedly wooing New Delhi into what could well be a military alliance.]( [Sitaram Yechury: Demonetisation Was a Shattering Blow to the Economy]( Karan Thapar [In an interview with Karan Thapar for The Wire, Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), criticises demonetisation and argues that it failed to achieve all the objectives that were promised by the government.]( [Are Conservation Organisations Complicit in Ethnic Discrimination?]( Trishant Simlai and Raza Kazmi [Answering this question with an example of blatantly racist and coercive imagery endorsed and propagated by two large players in the conservation world, both internationally and in India.]( [The Curious Disappearance of the Ennore Creek]( Bhavani Raman [Along with the fate of the creek and that of the users, keepers and makers of Ennore’s place-words, lies our fate. Our language and our gaze make them invisible to us.]( [The Fall of the House of Saud]( Ramin Jahanbegloo [We can expect the worst in the Middle East in the next few months after the purge in the Saudi royal family.]( [GST Plunges UP’s Saharanpur Wood Carving Craft in New Crisis]( Bharat Dogra [“Apart from the high taxation rate, what is creating a lot of problems is that people in the trade are unable to understand the working of the new system.”]( [Evaluating the Success of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan]( Shah Alam Khan [The success of such cleanliness programmes cannot be measured through factors like waste disposal and no open defecation alone; its role in reducing epidemic outbreak is equally important.]( [Wheels in Motion: In Kolkata, the Cycle Rickshaw Is Being Reinvented]( Subir Roy [Rickshaw wallas who can afford it are moving to the more expensive and less labour-intensive electric rickshaws.]( Copyright © 2017 The Wire, All rights reserved. You're getting this email because you recently subscribed to receive email digests from The Wire via our website. Our mailing address is: The Wire 13, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Marg Gole MarketNew Delhi 110001 India [Add us to your address book](//thewire.us11.list-manage.com/vcard?u=6b988b13445248b1268a308f2&id=4808224841) Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](