2022

by Arun Srivastava
For Rahul Gandhi, the Nav Sankalp Chintan Shivir at Gwalior was a big success. While it provided the right forum to establish his leadership in the backdrop of his severe criticism by the senior party leaders, no one questioned his failure to lead the party from the front or why he failed to rejuvenate the party at grass root level. Though some of the senior leaders praised the outcome of the shivir they also observed that it would enthuse the party to face the future (…)

by P. S. Jayaramu
May, 16, 2022
The much hyped about ‘Chintan Shivir’ of the Congress Party is over. The deliberations largely reflected the chintan ( thinking ) among the Party leaders, some of which were indeed good, but the more serious question is will all that chintan lead to manthan?
First things first. About 400 plus national and state level eaders of the Party were invited. But, care was taken not to invite seniors like Mr. Kapil Sibal, a member of the G-23, probably fearing (…)

Sunderlal Bahuguna, the person most closely associated with the movements and campaigns to protect Himalayan forests, died one year back in Rishikesh at the age of 94.
His first death anniversary is being observed on May 21, Saturday.
The veteran environmentalist and Chipko (hug the trees) was also a freedom fighter and regarded Mahatma Gandhi as his most prominent teacher and mentor. He devoted his life to applying principles of non-violent struggles in the context of increasingly (…)

Open letter from the sanitation workers of ‘Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board’ to the residents of Chennai (16.05.2022):
Dear Chennai residents,
Be it summer or drought, cyclone or flood, festive time or disaster time – if it were not for us, Chennai would not be inhabitable. We contribute immensely in giving form to our rulers’ sky high fantasies such as ‘Singara Chennai’, ‘Clean India’, ‘Smart City’ etc. Even when everyone else was confined to their homes during the (…)

by Manoj Harjani
India is planning to launch a nationally-developed 6G network, despite falling behind in its 5G network rollout. But don’t count it out just yet.
India’s road to 5G has been a bumpy one. In 2018, the country’s Department of Communications laid out a roadmap in its National Digital Communications Policy for a 5G rollout by 2022. Following delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Commercial 5G services are now expected later this year or in early 2023.
Despite the delay, the (…)

by Tarun Kumar Basu
The energy crisis appears to be intensifying. Several states across the country are suffering protracted blackouts as scorching heat waves boost energy demand. The country’s electricity demand touched a record high in April as nearly three in four of country’s 1.35 billion people tolerated the hottest pre-summer months in decades. After the lockdowns were lifted, the reopening of the manufacturing units increased the demand for power to a great extent. It is not new (…)

Some stereotyped images of Muslims and Muslim politics have been built in the public discourse by ideologues of Hindutva and the mainstream media in India. A recent book, Siyasi Muslims: A Story of Political Islams in India (Penguin Viking, 2019), by Hilal Ahmed deconstructs such popular images of the Muslim community.
While answering some imaginary questions in his book, Hilal Ahmed enlightened us about the Muslim community and their politics. How do we make sense of the Muslims of India? (…)

Uttar Pradesh’s Director General of Police Mukul Goel has been removed from his post for disregarding government work and not taking interest in departmental duties. Quite obviously not everything has been alright with UP Police department.
On 1 May police raided the house of Kanhaiya Yadav in Manrajpur village of Chandauli district and when they left the house a 22 years old girl Nisha was found hanging from a ceiling fan. The younger sister Gunja described how brutally both girls were (…)

MUSINGS - 18 May 2022
Last week news reports focused on Right-Wing brigades holding arms training camp in Karnataka. This is not the first time there’s been such a blatant display of arms and training of the young. Almost five years back, news-reports had detailed that VHP and Bajrang Dal were holding arms training camps in Uttar Pradesh’s Greater Noida, Varanasi, and in several other locales, where the young were getting trained to attack the ‘enemy’- dummies of skull capped men! Yet no (…)

by Pranjit Agarwala *
2022 began on an ominous note for Sino-Indian relations. On 1st January China again renamed 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh claiming it as “Zangnan, the southern part of Tibet”. China has been routinely intimidating India with such false claims despite India’s strong protests. India and China share a 3488 km long border. The border is demarcated by the Line of Actual Control (LAC) which is divided into three sectors: the Eastern sector covering (…)