ICYMI #TheTribuneOpinion: From Tahawwur Rana to Trump & Waqf Act 

As the week came to a close, TV news channels were abuzz with the visuals of US President Donald Trump after US’s aggressive trade policy and the landing at Delhi airport of 26/11 Mumbai attacks conspirator Tahawwur Rana. What else was significant? Probably, the Waqf Amendment Act row and a couple of other stories. To understand the how and why behind these headlines and other significant events that unfolded this past week, the editorial pages of The Tribune offer deeper insights and analysis.

The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, perhaps, has kicked off a political storm in the country, highlighting the BJP's strategic move and the Opposition being caught on the defensive. Despite initial reservations, the BJP’s key allies ultimately backed the Waqf Bill. On their home turf, they could face backlash from Muslim constituents, but for the shrewd BJP, it has achieved its objective and has now distanced itself from the political fallout. If you want to know more on this, read our April 9 Opinion piece ‘Waqf row lays bare political churn’ by senior journalist Radhika Seshan. If Waqf is heating up our domestic politics, Trump’s trade policy is sending the entire globe into a tizzy.

The US’s aggressive trade policy — imposing heavy tariffs on much smaller economies like Bangladesh and Cambodia — has ushered in a new era of economic nationalism under the "Make America Great Again" banner.

Also in Trump’s crosshairs is India, but we should desist an eye-for-an-eye approach that China seems to have taken. And in case you missed it, that’s precisely what our OP-ED page article on April 8, ‘India’s strategy to win the trade war’ by former Planning Commission member Arun Maira. discusses.  It says that our approach has to be the one with strategic reforms as the key to strengthening our economy from within.

As far as trade relationships with both the US and China are concerned, India could find itself walking a tightrope. The US wants India to open its markets more for American agricultural produce that could harm the interests of India's farmers. At the same time, India must show obstinacy to avoid becoming a dumping ground for Chinese exports, redirected due to US tariffs on China.

Our next article, which caught many eyeballs, is ‘The sounds of silence from Pakistan’ by The Tribune Editor-in-Chief Jyoti Malhotra. As the extradition of Tahawwur Rana, one of the key accused in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, made headlines in the Indian media, the Pakistani press remained mum. Not a word. The writer quotes a 2015 article from The Dawn newspaper in which Tariq Khosa, a former chief of Pakistan’s Federal Investigative Agency, has categorically revealed his agency’s findings that one of the perpetrators, Ajmal Kasab, was a Pakistani national, that training camps where he was trained had been identified and all the other details of that terrible act of violence.

Giving versatility to the reader, The Tribune’s Assistant Editor Harvinder Khetal’s article talks about reverse extinction. Bioengineered dire wolves, Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi, will walk the Earth again 12,000 years after their extinction. She raises a valid point—are we correcting the past wrongs or rewriting nature’s scripts for our own narrative satisfaction? Read more of it in the op-ed article ‘Romulus, Remus, Khaleesi & Ethics of Resurrection’.

If you thought you were relatively safer with bottled water than tap water, give it a second thought. In another eye-opener, ‘Plastic in every sip; the toxic truth about bottled water’, Guru Nanak Dev University’s ex-professor SS Sekhon writes about how bottled water presents hidden dangers to both human health and the environment and that tap water is still a better choice. He quotes recent studies that reveal that bottled water contains 2.40 lakh detectable nanoplastic particles per litre, which can harm our body in more ways than one.

Politics never seems to stop making headlines in the Indian media. The Supreme Court rapped the Tamil Nadu Governor for not signing no less than 10 Bills, given assent to by the Assembly, over a period of two years. Who will question him? In the article titled ‘SC exposes TN Governor’s ‘chokehold’ tactics’, Manisha Priyam opines that although the Governor holds the discretionary power to not sign Bills, it cannot be blatantly used in a federal setup.