India’s defence procurement battle; compulsory attendance in JNU; poor funding of Swachh Bharat Mission; and more

[View this email in your browser]( Top Story [BJP in 2019 Would Be Down by Minimum 100 Seats From 280 in 2014: Shiv Sena Leader Sanjay Raut]( Sunil Gatade [Shiv Sena, the oldest ally of the ruling BJP, has decided to go it alone in the 2019 elections. “If you try to create trouble for the Sena by misusing power, then such attempts will boomerang… By misusing government agencies, the most you can do is to send us to jail or shoot us. We are ready for it”, an angry Shiv Sena, the oldest ideological ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Maharashtra and the second largest constituent in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in the Centre, declared recently. In an interview with The Wire, Sanjay Raut, 56, who is Sena’s leader in the Rajya Sabha and executive editor of party mouthpiece, Saamana, says that the BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah is different from the one during the days of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who he says practiced the “politics of communication.”]( [Health Insurance Companies Will Definitely Gain, But Can We Say the Same for the Poor?]( Ravi Duggal [It may not really benefit everyone that the insurance takeover of healthcare financing is gripping India.]( [No Pointless ‘Farmaans’ on Compulsory Attendance in JNU, Please!]( Geeta Kumari [Since the beginning of 2018, over 7,000 students of JNU have collectively boycotted compulsory attendance. Teachers too are refusing to mark attendance.]( [Why Poor Funding of Swachh Bharat Mission Since 2014 Has Put its Goals at Risk]( Nihar Gokhale [While budgetary allocation has been hiked in the last two years, it’s still not nearly enough for the government to meet its 2019 goal.]( [Social Isolation Is Not All Doom and Gloom for Some Macaques]( Rashmi Bhat [Macaque societies are female-bonded societies. The larger the maternal group, the more social interactions there are.]( [India Needs a Far More Focused Approach to Dent China’s Influence in Southeast Asia]( Manoj Joshi [We need a foreign policy approach that thinks beyond event management.]( [Why Two Conflicting Measurements of the Universe’s Expansion Have Scientists Excited]( Suhail Dhawan [The Hubble constant describes the current rate of the universe’s expansion. It has been found to have two values based on different calculations. This is weird because constants are supposed to have a single, fixed value.]( [Health Budget Could Have Been About People, But Now It’s About Markets]( Ravi Duggal [The Budget speech pitch of ‘Swastha Bharat’ as ‘Samridha Bharat’ is deception, because the allocation for realising that is missing.]( [Jaitley Has Remastered Digital India, But Policy Reform Must Follow]( Meghna Bal [The government will need to take strides over the next few months to pass the auxiliary reforms necessary to actualise its renewed vision for a truly digital India.]( [If a Two-Front War is to be Fought, India’s Defence Procurement Battle Must First Be Won]( Ashok Kumar Mehta [There is no dearth of ideas on how the defence ministry’s capital account can be fully utilised – only a lack of will.]( Copyright © 2018 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](