2015

Rahul Gandhi is in the news for one reason or the other. Yesterday, the debate was on his 57-day leave of absence from the country. In fact, Rahul himself should have told about his passion for chanting if that is what he was doing in Myanmar. That the party leaders, except her mother Sonia Gandhi and Congress President, have preferred to make his absence as his private affair does not help.
Public leaders have no private life once they are in the people’s domain. People like their leaders (…)

by Mohan K. Tikku
The locality in Srinagar where Masarat Alam Bhat—who has been much in the news these past few weeks— comes from is where I once used to have my home: Zaindar Mohalla. It used to be a place where the two communities had lived cheek by jowl for generations. In those halcyon days, the mutual sharing and caring was something that happened even without anybody noticing it. The marriages of the daughters of some of our Muslim neighbours, for example, were performed in our house (…)

All newspapers on April 15, 2015 were full of all parties in the country, though normally at each other’s throat, vying with each other in their full-throated praise for Dr Ambedkar as one of the greatest Indian leaders of the country. The tribute to Dr Ambedkar is fully deserved, but one is sceptical of the genuineness and sincerity of this by most of these parties. Though the average person in the country unhesitatingly and rightly accepts him as the leader in framing our Constitution, all (…)

Pakistan’s ties with its Saudi Arabia ally have come under great strain. The Saudis, who have been bombing the Houthi people in Yemen in the south for over a month, have failed to subdue or make peace with them. In spite of its enormous defence budget, the Saudi Army considers itself inadequate to launch a ground offensive in neighbouring Yemen. It had therefore asked for troops from Pakistan to battle the Houthis, a large Yemeni Shi’a tribe, which not only captured its capital, Sanaa, but (…)

The already serious agro-ecological crisis in Bundelkhand region has aggravated recently by untimely excessive rain and hailstorms. With crop damage (wheat, paddy and oilseeds) in many villages ranging between 50 to almost 100 per cent, many families are migrating. Villagers face prospects of hunger and denial of basic needs. Suicides and trauma deaths among farmers are being widely reported almost every day. In a single district, Banda, for example, about 40 such deaths were reported in (…)

by Aurobindo Ghose
Fourteenth of April, 2015 was Ambedkar Jayanti, when I as a social activist from Delhi attended the Swaraj Samvad (a Dialogue on Present and Future Alternative Politics) held at Gurgaon, Haryana from 10:45 am to 6:45 pm. The participants to this Dialogue consisted of about 3000-3500 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) volunteers, mostly (2000-2500) drawn from all parts of the country, outside Delhi, organised and invited by 49 leaders of the AAP and spearheaded by four members of the (…)

MUSINGS
Murders, killings, rioting over rotis have always taken place but going by the present condition of affected hectares there are more than indications of an extremely difficult period ahead.
It is estimated that 94 lakh hectares of crop area across 14 States over the past three months have been affected. In Uttar Pradesh 29.64 lakh hectares of crop area was affected. In Haryana, 22.24 lakh hectares of crop area was affected. In Rajasthan 16.89 lakh hectares. In Maharashtra 9.89 (…)

by Arun Srivastava
This article arrived late. We are still using it as its contents retain their validity.
Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi’s month long “leave of absence” will expire on April 19. He would resume his duties by addressing a rally of farmers organised by the party to protest against the Land Acquisition Bill of the Narendra Modi Government. His participation at the rally has acquired much bigger dimension only for the reason that his mother, Congress President Sonia (…)

POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
Rahul Gandhi’s return to active politics after an extended sabbatical and Sitaram Yechury’s elevation the post of the CPI-M General Secretary have been the most significant and encouraging developments of the last few days.
What impressed one was Rahul’s unusually com-bative role against the Narendra Modi Government both in and outside Parliament. It was a different Rahul with all the facts and figures on his finger-tips; and the speeches were marked by pun, punch and (…)

Yet another encounter has taken place in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. I have lost the count. What is distressing is that even the human rights activists are practically quiet. Hardly anyone of them goes to the State to find out what happened on the ground, as was the practice till recently.
This indicates not only the lessening of interest but also a tacit approval of the excesses commi-tted by the security forces. The Mufti Mohammad Sayeed Government, which announced to provide an (…)