Weekend reads

  1. The reaction against Kashmiris following the Pulwama attack in mainland India showed that people from other parts of the country do not like Kashmiris. Over the last 70 years, India has failed to make Kashmir love it nor has it learned to love Kashmir, says Meghnad Desai in Indian Express. 
  2. Direct income support to the poor will deliver benefits mentioned only if it comes on top of public services such as primary health and education, argues Ram Singh in The Hindu. 
  3. The new GDP series continues to pose a problem because of the constant revisions within its period of coverage, argues Indira Rajaram in Mint. 
  4. Facebook has targeted politicians around the world promising investments and incentives while seeking to pressure them into lobbying on behalf of the company against data privacy legislation, an investigation by The Observer finds.  
  5. The Comintern led by the Soviet was founded on this day in 1919 to carry revolution around the world. We are only now recovering from the legacy of its failure, writes Loren Balhorn in Jacobin. 
  6. How does one come to terms with the infidelity of people as close as our parents and grandparents? In this personal essay in The New York Review of Books, author Molly-Jong Fast describes how she was affected.  
  7. What makes an antihero show work?In this original Longreads series, It’s Not Easy Being Mean, Sara Fredman explores the fine-tuning that goes into writing a bad guy we can root for, and asks whether the same rules apply to women.
  8. A celebrated book and a major museum exhibition revealed the harrowing tale behind the legendary image of a wounded Marine in the Vietnam war. Their version was wrong, discovers Michael Shaw in New York Times. 
  9.   The ancient relics found at the Bujang Valley site in Kedah, northern Malaysia, are Indian in origin, but there are more questions than answers. SK Devi writes in Fountain Ink on a unique chapter of ancient Indian migration.   
  10. Refusing to vaccinate is a political act, an individual decision that affects others and the very ability of people to inhabit common spaces, writes Masha Geseen in New Yorker on the growing instances of people resisting vaccination.