Chips, trees and governors.

"India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) scored a landslide election win in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat" as "The BJP took 156 of 182 total seats in the Gujarat state assembly following voting earlier this month, marking the party's best-ever performance in the state, a longtime BJP stronghold." CNN. "Maharashtra played a crucial role in BJP's historic win in Gujarat as development projects originally planned to be in Maharashtra eventually went to Gujarat ahead of the election, former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray said." HT. This was in reference to the Vedanta-Foxconn project to build a semi-conductor factory in Maharashtra which was shifted to Gujarat just before the election. ET. A bullet train between Ahmedabad in Gujarat and Mumbai in Maharashtra is apparently essential. So, "The Bombay High Court...permitted the National High Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRCL) to cut around 20,000 mangrove trees in the city and neighboring districts of Palghar and Thane for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project." ET. In June, the ruling Shiv Sena Party split up in Maharashtra and the BJP swiftly formed a coalition government with the rebels, TOI, which fits in nicely with the adjoining state of Gujarat. Now the trees can be murdered. And elections won. North of Gujarat is the state of Rajasthan which is home to about 1.5 million members of the Bishnoi community. "Spread mostly in hamlets across Rajasthan, the community draws inspiration from Amrita Devi, a Bishnoi woman killed in 1730 while trying to protect a khejari - now a state tree." DH. "In all, 363 Bishnoi men, women and children were killed," trying to protect their trees which were cut to build the king's palace. A vanity project then, and another one now. Nothing changes. "The misuse of the office of the governor for partisan politics is as old as the Indian Constitution itself." The Wire. "Since Narendra Modi established his control over the administrative and political system in 2014, the whole dictionary and grammar of gubernatorial etiquette has reversed." "They began using every opportunity to publicly assail their state government's decisions and portray them as anti-people." Then there is blatant propaganda. "Bollywood director Vivek Agnihotri's The Kashmir Files is a 'vulgar, propaganda' movie which is inappropriate for an artistic competitive section of the International Film Festival of India, IFFI's jury head for the international competition section Nadav Lapid said." DH. This drew a storm of protest. "In countries that are increasingly losing the ability to speak your mind or speak the truth, someone needs to speak up," responded Lapid. And then, "Let's put it this way: I'm happy to be on my way to the airport now." Sadly, trees can't move.