Leaving aside the macro picture of the rise of populism, for people to be

healthier and for the health gradient which reflects inequalities in health

to be flatter rather than steeper.

It really helps if there are multiple ways to secure social status.

And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.

When I went to India on a research trip in December 2014,

the writers, intellectuals and political scientists I met there were in the middle of a big debate about just how bad the government of Nore and Ramodi would turn out to be.

Nearly all of them disliked him for his attacks on the country's secularist constitution,

for his Hindu nationalism, but while some of them thought that they might end up in prison, that dissidents might be quashed very quickly,

most thought that the institutions of Indian democracy would be able to fend themselves against Modi.

Now for much of the first term of Modi's rule,

the guarded optimists were proven right.

For all kinds of terrible things were going on in the country,

it did not look as though the worst predictions were coming true. Well that makes it over

more remarkable that since Modi's re-election in May of this year, things have rapidly gotten worse.

A series of complicated citizenship law proposals,

which together have the impact of making the status of Muslims in the country very insecure

are taking a big step towards turning India into a Hindu nation.

And when a big wave of protests against these changes

started to erupt in cities and campuses around this big country, the police

quashed it with remarkable brutality. In some parts of India India the government has switched off the internet entirely.

Now one of the reasons why I've been following this with particular attention is that it fits a

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