2017

MUSINGS
Don’t tell me there is no nexus between the self- proclaimed godmen and the politicians! How can abusive fraud babas flourish for long years without the rulers and the administration not being part and parcel of the long list of the horrifying happenings...well, so horrifying that it gets difficult to believe that ‘developed’ we stand or sit or survive.
Tell me who can believe that we are marching ahead (don’t ask me where to!), when there exist well-constructed ‘gufaas’/caves (…)

It is sixty years since the State of Kerala was formed and one year since the present Left Democratic Front Government came to power. People were fed up by the never-ending stories of corruption and nepotism of the previous Congress-led government. The first election to the new State, which brought a Communist Government to power in 1957, created big news within and outside the country. It was the first time that a non-Congress government came to power anywhere in free India.
The first (…)

An appointment to the post of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) is to be made very shortly as the present incumbent, Shri Sharma, is retiring in the last week of September. In the past the government has been following an opaque and arbitrary method of appointing the CAG. The Indian Audit and Accounts Service (IA&AS) Retired Officers Forum is concerned about the matter and met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on August 25 to emphasise the need for transparency and (…)

by Jajati K. Pattnaik
The Kaladan multimodal corridor, as an important component of the Act East policy,1 is poised to link India’s North-East with the ASEAN2 through a multimodal transit system based on road, river and seaways.The corridor, initiated during the UPA regime under the canopy of ‘North-Eastern Region Vision 2020’,3
is being prioritised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reinforce the region’s development through cross-country economic corridors. Moreover, the timely (…)

Baba Ramdev is one of the most well-known and colourful personalities of contemporary India—a celebrity of a different kind—and so when word spread that a well-researched book about him had just been released, many people were looking forward to reading this book. Just then, however, a district court’s injunction deprived them of their right to buy and read this book. This has raised serious questions about the freedom of expression as well as the right to information.
The reference here (…)

The following article is being published on the occasion of Teacher’s Day which fell on September 5.
The founder-manager of the City Montessori School in Lucknow, Jagdish Gandhi, has recently published full-page advertisements in the local editions of all national dailies claiming that even though he would like to admit children under section 12(1)(c) of the Right to Education Act, 2009, the children, whose admissions were ordered by the District Magistrate and the Basic Shiksha Adhikari (…)

by Basubrata Roy
The small hilly State of Tripura, unlike other North-Eastern States, is a Left citadel since 1977; except for a brief period in the 1990s.
That’s why the BJP has made it a prestige issue to defeat the CPI-M-led Left Front in the coming Assembly poll, slated for February 2018.
With the elections being informally declared at least three months in advance, the local party, Indigeneous Peoples‘ Front of Tripura (IPFT), is organising rallies and meetings with the open (…)

The world seems to be riding a Time Machine. Almost every day, people come across surprises and horrors never heard of before. The world has always led to a series of path-breaking events and epochs leading to lapidary social changes. But many of the recent changes are simply unbelievable and no socio-psychological explanation can prove to be worthy to find a plausible answer. The recent spate of incidence of the Blue Whale Game by a large number of students and adolescents repeatedly (…)

EDITORIAL
The long arm of the law has finally caught up with him. After being convicted on August 25, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the self-styled godman and chief of the Dera Sacha Sauda, was sentenced to 20 years rigorous imprisonment—10 years each for the rape of two of his disciples—by the CBI court judge in Rohtak’s Sunaria jail three days later (on August 28).
While pronouncing the sentence the judge ruled that the Dera chief did not deserve “sympathy of the court” since his followers (…)

The following is a press release issued by Dr Prem Singh, President, Socialist Party (India), on August 27, 2017.
The Socialist Party considers the Haryana and Central governments responsible for the violent incidents that broke out on Friday (August 25) in Panchkula and Sirsa of Haryana and parts of its border States. In view of the decision of a Special CBI Court in the case of the Dera Sacha Sauda chief, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, accused of rape, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had (…)