2020

There was public alarm following enactment of the CAA-2019. The 2003 Rules [Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003] may not have been examined in detail had the CAA-2019 not been enacted with the intention of the countrywide NPR-NRC. Now the 2003 Rules stand exposed as providing definite possibilities for malafide/ targeted use in the NPR-NRC process. [Ref. 1]
The Assam Experience
The NPR-NRC was conducted in Assam to identify illegal (…)

by Ram Puniyani
In the wake of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the UN High Commissioner, Michele Bachelet, has filed an intervention in the Supreme Court petition challenging the constitutionality of the Citizenship Amendment Act, as she is critical of the CAA. Responding to her, India’s Foreign Minister S. Jai Shanker strongly rebutted her criticism, saying that the body (UNHCR) has been wrong and is blind to the problem of cross-border terrorism. The issue on hand is the possibility (…)

The distinctly low-key rhetoric in America in the run-up to US President Donald J. Trump’s visit to India stands in sharp contrast to the traditional approach to such high-level events in recent times.
The American think-tanks and mainstream media were largely indifferent, and as it turned out, the media turned its eyes more on Delhi burning and writhing in paroxysms of mindless communal violence than on the Modi-Trump bromance.
The American strategic community appears to have pre-judged (…)

BOOK REVIEW
by Mohammad Chingiz Khan
Lynch Files: The Forgotten Saga of Victims of Hate Crime by Ziya Us Salam; pp. i to xxvi, 193; New Delhi: SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd.; 2019; Rs 450.
The comprehensive treatise of eminent journalist and social commentator Ziya Us Salam’s Lynch Files: The Forgotten Saga of Victims of Hate Crime is one of such critiques that deals with the horrendous incidents of mob-lynching happening in different States of India against the minorities, (…)

by Harish Chandola
The US appears keen keen to reduce its military presence and forces in Afghanistan, if the government there manages to arrive at some understanding with the Taliban, fighting to establish an Islamic state in that country.
The prospect of peace in Afghanistan has become complex after the Taliban reprsen-tatives signed an agreement in Doha two months ago with President Ashraf Ghani’s government in the prsence of the US envoy, Mr. Zalmay Khalilzad, involved in the Afghan (…)

The Yes Bank scam comes to public notice at a time when the Nirav Modi fraud is still fresh in our memory. Nirav Modi misappropriated big public money of several public sector banks and fled the country. Rana Kapoor, the founder of the private sector bank, Yes Bank, gave bad loans to big corporate houses and allegedly personally misappropriated big kickback money from the big corporate deals of the bank.
Yes Bank started its journey as a private bank in 2004 and successfully raised Rs 355 (…)

by Diptendra Raychaudhuri
Politics in India has of late become an art of making simple things complex, and at times even incomprehensible. It has all happened thanks to overdose of politics. In other words, India has become an example of how too much politicisation of simple narratives contributes to anarchy.
Take, for example, the question of updating the National Register of Citizens, or the NRC issue. It has failed in Assam after making the people face an unimaginable degree of (…)

EDITORIAL
The outbreak of novel coronavirus (Covid 2019) has lately been described as a pandemic, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Thus all visas, barring those in select categories, have been suspended till April 15, 2020.
The Centre has also advised all States and Union Territories to invoke the provisions of the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, thereby enabling them to enforce advisories whenever necessary.
On the political plane the situation appears dismal for the (…)

Jyotiraditya Scindia, the scion of the royal family of Gwalior, who grew up in the Congress for eighteen years and one of those whom the people believed the mantle of the Congress will eventually devolve on, has deserted the party and found a new pasture in the BJP. In defence of his defection to the saffron party, Scindia has alleged that the Congress has ceased to be the party that it once was.
Granted that the Congress has ceased to be what it was, granted that the Congress has become (…)

by M.A. Sofi
Barring a miniscule fraction of their entire population in the world, there is precious little to show for the highest level of scientific/mathematical competence in the contemporary Muslim world. This despite the surprising appearance on the scene of such great figures as the Physicist Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam from Pakistan or the Fields Medalist Maryam Mirzakhwani and Faridoon Shahidi from Iran, even as all of them achieved their scientific glory while carrying out their (…)