2017

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has said that he would be taking five days off in a month to attend to his duties as the head priest of the Gorakhnath Temple. Television networks ran this part of his speech only once. Either the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) forced the channels to take the story off or the Chief Minister himself felt so embarrassed that he withdrew his statement. That could be the reason why the speech did not see the light of the day in print.
What the Yogi (…)

MUSINGS
We are talking of bullet trains when even our slow moving trains have begun derailing. This year hundreds were killed in train accidents, not to overlook the latest tragedy at Mumbai’s Elphinstone station where dozens were trampled and injured on the connecting foot bridge... Horrifying are the conditions on the railway platforms where stench overtakes the rest of the bandobast, in terms of the strays loitering around. And cutting through crowds when one manages to enter the (…)

For a momentous three years or more, the Republic has been in a swoon of sophistry, a bubble of bombast. Not without effect, since Indians across classes and castes actually came to be taken in by a new style of leadership that made of words, gestures, slogans, and fake assertions an irresistible mix of mesmeric iteration. A leadership that came to draw the same sort of unthinking allegiance from citizens that in India is reserved for godmen and dispensers of magical potion.
In contrast to (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
After forty years of the foundation of our independent republic, the Frankenstein has appeared again—the monster that is out to destroy democracy and plunge this nation into civil war that shall rend asunder thousands of towns and villages of this great country.
The term, communalism, does not convey the gravity of the crisis that confronts us today—let it be bluntly stated that what we face today is the demon of Hindu-Muslim hatred. Over a large part of this land, (…)

impressions
The Congress party published full-page advertisements in New York to announce a Rahul Gandhi meeting there. It made history by including, alongside the pictures of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira, Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, those of Lal Bahadur Shastri and P.V. Narasimha Rao. Shastri was never recognised during the Sonia years while Narasimha Rao was actively ostracised. To give the non-person that was Rao all these years a place now in the galaxy suggests something of an internal (…)

by Vappala Balachandran
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told the Rajya Sabha on August 2, 2017 that “dialogue is the only way out of the Doklam standoff” with China. She ruled out war as an option and added that “China has contributed to our economic strength”. She also advised patience and restraint “and also restraint in statements”.
Swaraj needs to be complimented for making a mature policy statement on the floor of the Upper House. This was indeed necessary in the background (…)

by A. Raghu Kumar
Mahatma Gandhi introduced non-violence as a method of political struggle in India’s anti-colonial struggle. This method was adopted as a considered choice in many later struggles in many parts of the world. Post-Gandhi, the method of evaluation of a political struggle has to undergo a necessary test on this new touchstone. Even the chances of violent struggles, except for a few internal coups, have become almost bleak. Another difficulty in understanding Gandhi has always (…)

by Atanu Sengupta and Sanjoy De
1. Introduction
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is nothing new. It has been in the air since the 2000s or even earlier. The singularity of the present situation is the ruthlessness and speed at which it has been implemented, reflecting an aura of supposed efficiency and alacrity. The implementation was done without addressing and perhaps in spite of a lot of controversies accompanying its execution.
As always, a plethora of views have emerged in this (…)

by A.V.V.S.K. Rao and M. Ramulu
“Farming looks easy when your plough is a pencil” —Dwight, D. Eisenhower, (34th President of the Usa) (1890-1969)
Introduction
Today, there is awareness that the “Green Revolution” model of agricultural development—based on the package of inputs like in the form of high yielding varieties, irrigation and agrochemicals—has over the years resulted in degraded soils, depleted and poisoned water, caused seed/biodiversity erosion and resulted in stagnating (…)

by Sankar Ray
“There was something of the evil atmosphere of war. The town had a gaunt untidy look, roads and buildings were in poor repair, the streets at night were dimly lit for fear of air-raids, the shops were mostly shabby and half-empty. Meat was scarce and milk practically unobtainable, there was a shortage of coal, sugar, and petrol, and a really serious shortage of bread. Even at this period the bread-queues were often hundreds of yards long. Yet so far as one could judge the (…)