2015

Till February 10, most of the print media published stories with headlines declaring a neck-and-neck fight in Delhi. The elite English TV channels also echoed that line, forecasting a “photo finish” or predicting that the BJP would score between 38 and 41 of a possible 70 seats.
Even the bookies (safe to assume these were Gujarati satta operators) said a day before results were counted that after “carefully studying” the opinion polls, they believed the BJP had “recovered immensely”. (…)

by Denzil Fernandes
The Delhi Assembly election 2015 has thrown up a historic result with the AAP’s broom sweeping off the BJP and wiping out the Congress. Figuratively, the broom has become symbolic of the sweeping victory of the AAP in Delhi. For the first time ever a non-Congress and non-BJP government has been elected. The vote-share of the winning party has been the highest ever—54.3 per cent—and the winning margin 21.5 per cent. With 67 seats out of 70, the Aam Aadmi Party has won (…)

The AAP victory has slowed down the BJP juggernaut not only in Delhi but all over the country. The BJP had been taking the people too much for granted. It has been riding roughshod over people’s opinion, totally ignoring sane and sober and progressive opinion, has been continuously hurting religious feelings not only of the Muslims but increasingly of the Christians, Sikhs, and even of certain sections among the Hindus in the name of authorised or ‘unauthorised’ saints and gods. It had been (…)

by M.R. Biju
The Aam Admi Party (Common Man’s Party) was launched on November 26, 2012 and is currently the ruling party of Delhi. It came into existence following differences between the activists Arvind Kejriwal and Anna Hazare regarding whether or not to politicise the popular India Against Corruption movement that had been demanding a Jan Lokpal Bill since 2011. Hazare preferred that the movement should remain politically unaligned while Kejriwal felt the failure of the agitation route (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
By the time these lines reach the reader, the final picture of electoral contests and poll alliances will be clear. After six weeks of hectic parleys and secret confabulations, political parties have at last taken their positions for the most crucial electoral battle in the history of Indian democracy.
The contours of political alignment have never been in doubt. On the one side could be seen the forces of reaction making desperate attempts to come to an (…)

Suppose India had lost the World Cup cricket match against Pakistan at Adelaide, the reaction among its people would have been that of disappointment and remorse. But I do not think that they would have initiated scuffles with the Pakistani spectators. The Indians would not have destroyed television sets as some did in Karachi and elsewhere in Pakistan. Of course, there would have been a sense of humiliation, but it would not have poured on to the streets in the shape of fracas or (…)

The Russian-American history is replete with instances where Washington walked away triumphalist at the end of a standoff while Moscow retired hanging its head low. Let us dip into the past for a minute. Remember the incident at Pristina airport in June 1999 when Russian forces took over the area ahead of a NATO deployment, leading to a tense stand-off and had to vacate eventually?
Or, remember the hushed-up incident in Afghanistan when Moscow landed 12 huge Ilyushin-76 aircraft with (…)

COMMUNICATION
On the 65th anniversary of our Republic Day, I remembered my father and recalled our family’s debt to the Constitution of India and the Supreme Court of India. To elaborate, my father, Vombatkere Gurunandan Row [better known as V.G. Row, Barrister-at-Law (04.04.1907 to 05.04.1980)], was the General Secretary of the “People’s Education Society” registered in November 1947, which had, for its objects, (a) to encourage, promote, diffuse and popularise useful knowledge in all (…)

by Vikash Sharma and Ananya Pathak
The debate on the secularisation of education has been one that has being going on for a long time, the need to free education from the clutches of religious dogma or fundamentalist tendencies is not a new one. In fact, it can be stretched back to the enlightenment era in the Western world, where the need to free education from the domination of the church and a movement towards the rational, scientific temper as opposed to a dogmatic, orthodox (…)

Before ascending the throne of Delhi, to lure the young voters, Modi had propagated the virtues of FDI (foreign direct investment). He claimed that once he comes to power, there would be a long queue of the foreigners ready to invest in India. Till then the policies of the Nehru-Indira era were preventing them from entering India. Once they start investing in India, new job opportunities would arise and there would be no young unemployed people and they would get enough money to buy flats (…)