Jackboot laws and a predatory state prepared to stomp all over you

Citizens don't often realise how easily they can be crushed under both; only if awareness grows, and we get some homegrown Thomas Paines, can there be hope of some reverse swing, writes T N Ninan

Back in 2014, a noted author and commentator had put forward the position that he was willing to make a trade-off between society and the economy, and support Narendra Modi because he would do good things for the economy, even if his party might provoke or preside over negative trends in society. In the event, it has not proved much of a trade-off because the promised economic pay-off (remember the talk of double-digit growth) has not materialised, while shockwaves reverberate across the country following the arrests of people who look more like middle-class sympathisers of the marginalised than violent revolutionaries