The unanimous judgement of the Supreme Court in the Ram Janmabhoomi Case (RJC) delivered by the apex court on November 9, brings a religious dispute followed by formal litigation in courts of law which began over a century ago, to closure. This historic judgement should be welcomed by all — as mandated by post-independence India’s […]
The money withdrawal restrictions imposed upon the 1.6 million customers of the Mumbai-based Punjab-Maharashtra Cooperative Bank (PMCB) following discovery that the bank’s management has advanced Rs.6,500 crore of its total deposits of Rs.8,880 crore to one borrower, is yet another scam which has shaken the faith of the public in the country’s […]
For all the triumphalist speechifying about steady progress towards transforming the country into a $5 trillion economy by 2025 and putting a man on the moon in the near future, the latest evidence that contradicts prime minister Narendra Modi’s statement repeated in eight languages in Houston, Texas, before a cheering audience of diaspora Indians that […]
Publication of the Assam-specific National Register of Citizens on September 14 by the State Coordinator of National Registration, Assam, has dissatisfied everybody.
In 1971 following a brief but all-out Indo-Pak war, East Pakistan — with India’s aid and assistance — emerged as the new nation of Bangladesh. But even though Bangladesh became an independent nation, because […]
The swingeing corporate income tax cuts announced by Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on September 20 were long overdue. They should have been announced in the first Union budget of the BJP-led NDA government 2.0 which swept General Election 2019 with a massive majority in May. Instead the BJP which effectively calls the shots in […]
Although the bjp/nda 2.0 government’s swift and decisive August 5 initiative of abrogating Articles 370 and 35 (a) of the Constitution which had accorded the Muslim-majority state of Jammu & Kashmir special status among the 29 states of the Indian Union, and simultaneous bifurcation of J&K and its Ladakh district into separate Union territories, is […]
Even as an ever-rising number of women are entering public life and spaces once the exclusive preserves of men, in the hinterlands of our under-policed and under-governed republic, their physical safety and socio-economic advancement is under increasing threat. Surprisingly, there is almost total public apathy and shame deficit that a Thomson Reuters Foundation June […]
The misfortune of the indian electorate which is ready to experiment with new leaders, is that the latter lose little time in exposing their feet of clay, especially if their sole claim and qualification for office is heredity. Take the case of Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy whose YSR Congress party, promoted by him after the […]
The first full-fledged union budget of the BJP/NDA government 2.0 presented to Parliament and the nation on July 5, is a huge disappointment. The general expectation was that after it was returned to power at the Centre in General Election 2019 with an unexpected larger majority in the Lok Sabha, the Modi government would begin […]
The lonely death due to heat-stroke in the Arizona desert on the US-Mexico border of seven-year-old Gurpreet Kaur in early June, which attracted banner headlines in the US media, seems to be business as usual for India’s politicians and callous establishment. The little girl was in a group of migrants from India and several South […]
The full-fledged union budget of 2019-20 to be presented to Parliament and the public on July 5 by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, offers the new BJP/NDA government, which was returned to power at the Centre with an overwhelming majority in May, a great opportunity to inject new momentum into the stop-start liberalisation and deregulation initiative […]
With the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) dominated by the Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) returned to power at the Centre with an overwhelming majority, the next five years are likely to prove a testing time for the country’s religious minorities, especially the 185 million-strong Muslim community. It’s hardly a secret that a prime objective […]
When a new government is duly elected through transparent, democratic procedure, the constitutional obligation of all four estates — parliament, the executive, judiciary and the press/media — is to accept the verdict of the electorate and provide constructive good governance advice. Therefore in the discharge of our constitutional obligation, we offer a priorities list for […]
The sinister conspiracy of the neta-babu brotherhood to destroy private education — and primary-secondary private schools in particular — is becoming painfully obvious.
On March 30, the education ministry of the Karnataka state government issued a notification directing all 20,581 private schools statewide to pay government prescribed minimum wages to their teachers and administrative staff. According […]
The refusal of the uk government, even 100 years after the event, to unconditionally apologise for the official mass murder of an estimated 400-1,000 Indians, mainly Sikhs, who had peacefully assembled at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar (Punjab) on April 13, 1919, requires thorough reappraisal of almost two centuries of British rule over India.
The back […]
In contemporary 21st century india, which prides itself on being the world’s most populous democracy governed by the rule of law, a dangerous new epidemic of police torture and custodial deaths is running riot. On March 21, Rizwan Asad, a young principal of a government school in Awantipora near Srinagar, was reportedly tortured to death […]
India’s citizenry, especially its grievously short-changed children and youth population of 550 million —the contemporary world’s largest cohort under 24 years of age — need to make common cause with Greta Thunberg. Last September this 15-year-old Swedish schoolgirl boycotted classes every Friday to picket Sweden’s parliament calling upon the country’s — and the world’s — […]
The dastardly attack on one of the buses of a convoy of 78 vehicles deploying 2,500 CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) personnel at Pulwama on the Srinagar-Jammu highway on February 14, which has resulted in the murder of 44 jawans by a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) suicide bomber — the Pakistan-based JeM has acknowledged responsibility — confirms […]
The air of mystery, confusion, corruption and malfeasance surrounding the purchase of 36 MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) Rafale fighter jets by the Indian Air Force (IAF) for a humongous €7.8 billion (Rs.59,000 crore), is an indicator of the extent to which pernicious corruption and abuse of power has seeped into the arteries of post-independence […]
The latest initiative of the ruling BJP/NDA government legislating the Constitution (124th Amendment) Bill 2019 which amends Articles 15 and 16 of the Constitution by insertion of an additional 10 percent reserved quota — i.e, in addition to the 22.5 percent reserved for the historically oppressed scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, and 27 percent for […]
The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2018 released in Delhi on January 15, confirms the worst fears of your editors that under the indifferent watch of the neta-babu brotherhood at the Centre and in the states, the country’s vitally important primary/elementary (classes I-VIII) education system is going from bad to worse. Although the credentials […]
It’s hardly a secret that the abrupt mid-term resignation on December 10 of Urjit Patel from the governorship of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was because of a dispute about whether the ‘excess reserves’ of the apex bank should be placed at the disposal of the Central government. The complaint of government spokespersons is […]
The defeat of three incumbent BJP governments in state legislative assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, signals growing disenchantment with the BJP that less than 20 months ago, swept the country’s most populous Hindi heartland state of Uttar Pradesh (pop.220 million) after winning General Election 2014 hands down.
Although political pundits and commentators who […]
The official claim of the bjp-led NDA coalition government at the Centre is that the 7 percent-plus annual GDP growth of the Indian economy is the highest worldwide. This claim is confirmed by the prestigious London-based weekly, The Economist, although it’s not clear whether this confirmation is based on its own independent assessment, or the […]
Completion of construction of the 182 metre (597 ft)-high Statue of Unity — the world’s tallest and twice the height of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour — in Gujarat in commemoration of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (1875-1950) at a massive cost of Rs.3,000 crore is a belated, even if not fitting, tribute to […]
The sesquicentennial (150th) birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on October 2 was half-heartedly celebrated in New Delhi and with even less enthusiasm in the rest of the country. With the passage of time and post-independence India’s academy dominated by communist, socialist and left-liberal intellectuals, the epochal contribution of Gandhi to the freedom movement and the […]
When the bharatiya janata Party (BJP) was elected to power at the Centre following a sweeping victory in General Election 2014, and subsequently triumphed in several state legislative assembly elections, notably in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Goa and Tripura, the popular expectation was that the party would provide robust governance and rule of law after […]
The note sent by dr. raghuram Rajan, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India (2013-2016) and currently professor of finance at the Booth School of Business, Chicago University, to the estimates committee of the finance ministry on September 11 is a wake-up call to the Central government and public. If root and branch reforms […]
The daylight kidnap and brutal gang-rape of a 19-year-old girl on her way to a coaching class in Rewari, Haryana has outraged the nation. That she had topped the CBSE class XII school-leaving exam earlier this year and had been felicitated by the President of India, didn’t galvanise the lethargic and leaden-footed Haryana state police […]
On july 25, three children, all below age ten, were found dead of starvation in a one-room shanty in the heart of Delhi. Autopsies revealed they hadn’t eaten for three days. A few days earlier the media was awash with reports of sexual abuse of orphaned and abandoned children in government shelters in Bihar and […]
The outpour of national sorrow on the demise of former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee (1924-2018) on August 16 is reflective of a widespread subliminal awareness within the country that a statesman — rather than a mere politician — an individual who understood the real aspirations and priorities of the people, has passed away. With […]
Since the dawn of independence, the issue of the status of Kashmir has been a toxic thorn in the side of free India which has poisoned the body politic and stymied the national development effort. And even today shoot-outs, stone-pelting youth and violent deaths and destruction in the Kashmir valley are recurring headlines of daily […]
Mixed reactions ranging from shock, amazement, incredulity and scorn greeted the verdict of a Thomson Reuters Foundation report released on June 28 that ranks India as the worlds most dangerous country for women, more dangerous than Afghanistan, Syria and Saudi Arabia. According to the report, Indias 600 million women are more at risk of sexual […]
With the onset of winter, one of the great talking points of the nation is the high levels of air pollution in the cities of urban India, in particular Delhi, the national capital. A thick cover of smog — defined by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as “a fog made heavier and darker by smoke and chemical fumes, […]
On November 8, the country observed the first anniversary of the shock demonetisation (invalidation) of Rs.500 and Rs.1,000 currency notes of the Mahatma Gandhi series announced by prime minister Narendra Modi last year in an unscheduled nationally televised broadcast. Overnight, this announcement in effect invalidated 86 percent of all the cash (Rs.14.2 lakh crore) in […]
In 2014 when the BJP-led NDA government was swept to power in New Delhi, one of its major campaign promises which struck a chord with the electorate was ‘minimum government, maximum governance’. Right-thinking people interpreted this promise as reduction of red tape and intrusion by government into the lives of citizens and sharp focus on […]
According to chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, the two-day Haryana Global Investors Summit 2016, which concluded on March 8, was a great success. Over 2,300 delegates from 12 countries attended, and foreign and domestic memoranda of understanding valued at Rs.5.84 lakh crore were signed.
Such unbridled optimism and unique inability of politicians to make realistic assessments […]
The continuous disruption of the legislative business of Parliament in the winter session for 16 days consecutively by opposition parties led by the 130-year-old Congress, has cast a pall of gloom over the future of India’s democratic polity. It is pertinent to note that the winter session was a near deadlock without the conduct of […]
Undoubtedly the sweeping victory of the three-party mahagathbandhan Grand Alliance (JDU, RJD and Congress) in the Bihar legislative assembly election whose result was announced on November 8, has come as a relief to the long-suffering people of Bihar (pop.104 million). Its ancient glories notwithstanding, by common consensus Bihar is the most backward — per capita […]
The vyapam scandal involving politicians, senior officials and businessmen of Madhya Pradesh (MP, pop.77 million) and covering admission of students into institutions of professional education and of graduates into the civil service, the teaching profession and police, has received widespread coverage in the media. But there’s insufficient awareness of the damage it has caused to […]
- Reshma Ravishanker The central government’s recent announcement on scrapping ‘no-detention policy’ for classes V and VIII in schools under its jurisdiction has yet again .....Read More
The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday rejected the bail petitions of former West Bengal education minister Partha Chatterjee and four other ex-public servants in a .....Read More
