Dear Express reader, This week saw India arrive at the 100 crore jabs milestone, and there were stories of the fear that has gripped the migrant in the Valley after the recent spate of attacks targeting “outsiders” and minorities. Aryan Khan, son of superstar Shah Rukh Khan, was denied bail, again, in a case that seems to be, going by what has come into the public domain so far, replete with the ingredients of a perfect storm — draconian law, subdued court, headline-hunting agency, whiffs of glamour, drug abuse and celebrity-envy. And a government which, armed with a will to occupy and dominate all spaces, political as well as non-political, has been surely inching its way towards a Bollywood that stars the Khans. Without judging the merits of the Aryan Khan case, it is possible to say this: Here is a young man trapped in a whirlwind not of his making. Also this week, Priyanka Gandhi announced that the Congress would give 40 per cent of its tickets to women in Uttar Pradesh. There are immediate questions, some of which we raised in our editorial in the decision’s aftermath: Is this a precursor to the Congress making a similar reservation in ticket distribution in other states as well, say Punjab and Uttarakhand, which are going to polls alongside UP? Will other parties take the Congress cue? Is the Congress itself in a position, organisationally, to deliver on the promise meaningfully, not just as more tokenism? The Congress move may also be occasion to wonder: Will politics change substantively or substantially, if more women are more visible in it? In other words: Will a more equal politics mean that health finally takes political centrestage and a pandemic is addressed more ably by the government, the Centre is more responsive to Kashmir’s anxieties, and a Muslim superstar’s son is not forced to bear the burdens of a mean-spirited politics and collective neuroses? More women in power may or may not push the world to a better place. But it will certainly help politics to mirror, better, the changes on the ground down below. Whenever I travel outside Delhi, to cover an election, or in between polls, I carry back with me images of women who speak up and stand apart, seek a larger space and role. Like Baldeep Kaur, UPSC aspirant from Jalandhar whom I met outside the Partition Museum in Amritsar, during my recent trip to the city, who said that even though her parents were trying to convince her to go abroad — in a state weighed down by stories of decline, told by people who have a growing sense of pessimism about the future — she would sit for the civil services examination and stay, because how else would her state and her country change. Or, many Octobers ago, like Pooja Devi, 44, in 2010, Larkhaur village in Uttar Pradesh. Larkhaur is about five km down the dusty road to Jaswant Nagar from Mulayam Singh Yadav’s pampered home turf of Saifai. Pooja was elected sarpanch on a seat reserved for women, villagers addressed her husband Avadh Kishore Agnihotri as “pradhanji" and called her "pradhanin", or the woman of the pradhan's family. But Pooja was unfazed, and quietly confident. Sure, egos had to be tiptoed around and appearances kept up, because she must balance her duties as wife, mother of four and bahu in a joint family of 15 relatives and 12 animals, with her responsibilities as pradhan. But, she told me, being sarpanch had sparked her desire for more. She shared something she had kept secret from her family back then — there was no going back to being homemaker for her, next she wanted to be elected MLA. Yes, the Congress may have started something that it may trip upon, or may not be able to take to a conclusion. But it is something that has a happy ending -- regardless of whether or not it will deliver to us a healthier nation, a Kashmir more at ease, a politics less driven to find a fault in our stars. Take care, Vandita | 
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