Dear Express Explained reader,

I don't know if you watched Oppenheimer or Barbie or both or neither this weekend, but you could not have missed the excitement around the two big Hollywood releases. I haven't seen either yet (my young colleagues in The Indian Express newsroom had their preferences well before the films arrived) but we did contribute to the buildup by publishing some informative background — I would especially recommend that you read Amitabh Sinha's wonderful telling of the story of Oppenheimer, the brilliant and tragic American theoretical physicist who led the team that built the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Indian audiences have been especially excited to be reminded of Oppenheimer's deep connection with ancient Indian philosophy and spiritualism, and the Bhagavad Gita in particular, which showed him light and brought him solace in his darkest hours.

The government's clarification in Parliament that despite the Law Commission having "decided to solicit views and ideas" on the Uniform Civil Code, "the question of modalities does not accrue at this stage", has somewhat muted the discussion around the proposed new law. Even so, no one has any doubt that the uniform civil code remains on the core agenda of the BJP, and we will almost certainly hear more on it as the Lok Sabha elections approach. In our series of analyses and explanations on this subject, we published this week Shyamlal Yadav's lucid summary of what the UCC has meant to the RSS, Jana Sangh, and BJP over the decades, and how they have referred to the Code in their official documents, and tax lawyer Deepak Joshi's explanation of the relationship between the UCC and Hindu Undivided Family (HUF), an entity that could find itself under scrutiny if and when the matter is taken up for serious consultation. Do read.            

In his weekly column this week, Harish Damodaran flagged an interesting aspect of the government's food security and welfare strategy. Three years ago, in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, central and state governments had no money for major cash transfers to poor and vulnerable households across the country - but FCI warehouses were overflowing, and the grain could be given away for free. Today, we have almost the reverse situation: economic activities have resumed, so governments have money - but there is very little grain to give away; wheat and rice stocks in the central pool have fallen to a five-year low. This complicates the government's policymaking choices, the first indicators of which are already in evidence.

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Sincerely, 

Monojit 

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