Dear reader, There are some weeks when individual news stories seem to inexorably draw together to frame a bigger picture. Droupadi Murmu became the President-elect this week, and her elevation spoke of heartening things about a democracy in which a Santhal woman from one of the most marginalised groups in one of the poorest regions of the country can cover the distance to the highest constitutional office of the land. It also spoke of something else - the BJP's unflagging drive to claim, as columnist Pratap Bhanu Mehta put it on our pages this week, the "narrative of inclusion, mobility and newness". But if "President Murmu" symbolises the BJP's ability to keep seizing the powerful idea and changing the subject to its own advantage, the selection of Jagdeep Dhankhar as vice-presidential candidate - news of his nomination came in just before the week in which Murmu was elected began - is a cautionary note about the limits, even the shallowness, of the BJP's endeavour. Dhankhar has had a long political career, but he is best known for his stint as West Bengal governor who incessantly and crudely politicised his high constitutional office, by picking fights with the chief minister, Mamata Banerjee. An Opposition clearly overtaken by the irrefutability of the Murmu candidature, hasn't been able to recover enough to call out the narrow and ruthless political calculus that lies behind Dhankhar's nomination. For both these predicaments, Opposition parties have only themselves to blame. In the first instance, they were done in by their own lack of imagination in fielding Yashwant Sinha who suffered conspicuously in comparison with Murmu's arduous and inspiring journey of struggle and rise. In the second instance, Mamata Banerjee's party, which could have made the most trenchant critique of the BJP's choice for V-P, nipped in the bud any attempt at joint-ness of the Opposition position. This week, her Trinamool Congress announced its decision to abstain from the vice presidential vote - because it cannot bring itself to vote for Dhankhar, of course, but also because it feels insulted by the Congress not consulting it before announcing Margaret Alva's candidature. That second reason shows why the Opposition continues to play catch-up with a BJP that has not allowed power to dull its political drive or instinct. Mamata Banerjee's walkout from the vice-presidential poll stakes drew attention to her churlish refusal to put the bigger political imperative of a coordinated Opposition response before a perceived slight by the Congress, in the same week as the Enforcement Directorate moved against a prominent West Bengal minister who is also secretary general of the TMC. Partha's Chatterjee's involvement, or not, in the alleged school jobs scam, can only be ascertained by the due process of law. But his arrest by the ED seemed to point to yet another syndrome, apart from its dis-jointedness, that involves the Opposition - its special vulnerability in times of a BJP government that does not hesitate to weaponise central agencies to put down political rivals. Here, too, the Opposition's inability to push back together is on show, every party left to its own devices. The Congress protests against the ED summons to Sonia Gandhi this week only underlined that it does not stir when any other Opposition party is targeted, and that other parties, in turn, show it the same lack of solidarity. In Uttar Pradesh this week, the Samajwadi Party's virtual marching orders in letters to two allies, Shivpal Singh Yadav and Om Prakash Rajbhar, apparently because both supported the BJP's presidential candidate Murmu, pointed to yet another trap the Opposition seems unable to climb out of. The SP has lost two successive state elections to the BJP and, in large part, this is because it has been unable to send out a message to voters that its top leadership does not remain debilitatingly bogged down by Family or a Yadav dominance that is reinforced, not leavened, by an opportunistic Social Engineering. Now, the public rebuke and split with Akhilesh's uncle and with the leader of a smaller backward caste party is only likely to act as a reminder of the SP's failure to put those familiar spectres to rest. At week's end, came news of speeches made by the Chief Justice of India and the outgoing President. Delivering a lecture in Ranchi, CJI NV Ramana said that "media running kangaroo courts", "ill-informed and agenda-driven debates", and "biased views" were taking a toll on justice and democracy. And bidding farewell to members of both Houses in Parliament, President Ram Nath Kovind, who demits office tomorrow, Monday, said that "citizens have a right to protest and to press for their demands, but it should always be in the peaceful Gandhian mould". The CJI's expression of concern at the way the media, particularly electronic and social media, conducts itself, and the President's anguish at protests that do not meet the Gandhian standard, have merit - but given the context, they draw attention, more, to what they don't say. The CJI, with due respect, needs to look at how the justice process, even democracy itself, is slowed down and thwarted by a higher judiciary that either kicks the can down on the road on important cases involving individual rights and freedoms, or gives the government the benefit of the doubt. And the president's comments on protests not being Gandhian seem to ill fit times when the main problem is the shrinking space for citizens and political parties to protest, and targeting of protesters by a vindictive state. All these - the BJP taking the clear lead with Murmu, the Opposition unable to match it in political imagination or to push back through coordinated action, its remaining haunted by what Pratap Bhanu Mehta calls its "littleness", and the inability of non-elected institutions to call the moment by its full name - are parts of the bigger picture that stares at us today. Till next week, Vandita | 
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