Dear Express reader, Let’s rewind just a bit, to the Indian Express front page on Saturday. The lead story talks of the Centre making a political move in Kashmir, calling for an all-party meet on delimitation or redrawing of constituencies. This could be a first step towards an assembly election in a place where politics has been mostly frozen since the August 5 2019 abrogation of Article 370, which revoked its special status and demoted J&K to a Union territory. Story 2 was about the Supreme Court, in response to the Delhi Police appeal against a Delhi High Court order granting bail to student-activists Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Iqbal Tanha. The SC said that the high court’s reading of UAPA will need to be examined. This is one of the most significant cases in recent times, in terms of its implications for civil liberties, political protest and terror law. Story 3 spoke of the Centre’s plan to bring in legislation which would give it the power to order the censors to re-examine a cleared film. Another story was on a judge, who has shared the BJP stage in the past, being assigned the Nandigram case and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee alleging a “likelihood of bias” — the court would be re-evaluating the Nandigram poll results on a petition by Banerjee, who lost that election to friend turned foe Suvendu Adhikari even as she led her party to a big win against the BJP in West Bengal. There was a story on the continuing face-off between Twitter and the Centre, Big Tech vs State. A report on an interview with the Speaker of Lok Sabha Om Birla, in which he ruled out virtual House panel meetings for now, ostensibly because of lack of “consensus” on tweaking the rules to enable Parliament to function amid pandemic. This was the newspaper front page for one day in the life of a nation. We live in interesting times, when the nation seems roiled everyday by fundamental clashes and negotiations between citizens and the state that we thought we had settled long ago. New arenas are opening up for the staging of the battles for civil liberties, and for redefining the state’s power and checks on it. Institutions that were supposed to give stability amid turbulence, and anchor the change, are not playing their part enough. On days like Saturday, when so much jostles for attention, it is exciting but also intimidating to be a writer of editorials or the editor of an opinion page. What subjects do you pick, which ones can wait or be ignored (we write three editorials everyday, two for Mondays, none for Sundays)? Who are the writers best placed, with the more interesting views, the more irrefutable locus standi? How do we include the newer/younger/authoritative/irreverent/representative voices on the subject? Are we getting enough points of view in, to qualify as pages of debate? Is there a gender skew? We try to ensure that the decisions are not taken arbitrarily, or whimsically. They are discussed at a morning edit-oped meeting, five days a week. After the lineup is finalised, there is a back-and-forth, editorials are honed and nuanced, arguments tweaked, through the day. At day’s end, there’s a question, or questions: Were the opinion pages able to keep up with the news, do justice to its significance, diversity, breadth? Is the public conversation a little larger, just a bit more informed and thought provoking, because of what we were able to pack in? Did we do our bit to open up more spaces for debate, and draw a red line, or a couple of them, on transgressions against equality and freedom? Those are the questions. The answers are lost and found every day. Vandita | 
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