2024

* The climb down of Humpty Dumpty what a relief! | Vijay Kumar
* India bestirred, a political era ends | L K Sharma
* Decoding the Momentous Significance of the Lok Sabha Elections Verdict, 2024 | Gilbert Sebastian
* West Bengal Poll Verdict | Arup Kumar Sen
* Eugen Sandow was the poster boy of physical culture

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, June 8, 2024
Pollsters, media and propagandists were all wrong on the possible outcome of India’s 2024 General election. Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) did not get a parliamentary majority alone but has the required numbers to form a government via a new version of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition. Mr Modi lost much ground and won his seat in Varanasi by a reduced margin. Twenty of his top ministers lost their elections. All (…)

June 5, 2024
The people of India have rejected Narendra Modi’s majoritarian Hindu politics. Even if Modi’s coalition returns him to power, his message has to change.
Despite his reluctance to concede defeat, the results of the Indian general election are a major setback for outgoing Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His party, the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), has failed to secure a majority on its own.
The BJP has heavily lost ground in its traditional stronghold states of Uttar Pradesh, (…)

Modi promised a political earthquake after June 4. What came was not the tremor he had in mind. He had expected an overwhelming electoral mandate to enable him to establish a Hindu Kingdom sanctified by his Godhood and a Congress-mukt Bharat! The voters denied a majority to Modi’s party, though gave victory to his NDA coalition.
June 4 marked the end of a dismal political era. Even the mixed poll results relieved millions who feared a rampaging unbridled horse. They hold Prime Minister (…)

During the just concluded two-and-a-half-month-long election campaign, ending 30 May, the star campaigner of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his second in command Amit Shah kept calling out derisively leading Opposition campaigners Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav and Tejaswi Yadav ‘Shehzadas’ implying that they are there in politics by virtue of their pedigree and not on personal merit as politicians. Modi, of course avoided pejoratively addressing (…)

The failure of the BJP to secure majority on it’s own is an unmistakable pointer that communal and divisive politics of the party, taken to alarmingly toxic level by the venomous speeches of the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, himself, has started giving diminishing return, and politics of vendetta by letting loose the investigating agencies against the opposition leaders is resoundingly rejected by the voters. Equally emphatic is the message from the voters that the authoritarian attempt to (…)

Binoy Viswam Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) 116, North Avenue New Delhi - 110 001
Date: 6th June, 2024
To,
Respected Shri Narendra Modi ji,
Shri Narendra Modi, Prime Minister, Government of India
I write this letter to you to protest another arbitrary and unilateral move made by your government concerning the infrastructure of the Parliament House building. It is being reported that the iconic statues of Gandhiji, Dr. Ambedkar and Chhatrapati Shivaji in the Parliament House (…)

Perhaps, the greatest thing that we can observe about the verdict in the Lok Sabha Elections, 2024 is that the popular mandate has safeguarded the Constitution of India. The campaign of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP – Indian People’s Party) was clearly indicating that it wanted to get 400-plus i.e., a two-third majortiy in the 543-member Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament so that they could change the Constitution of India in the direction of a Hindu Rashtra, possibly in the (…)

The people of India taught Mr. Modi and team that they need better living conditions instead of temples and statues and Modi’s meaningless rhetoric. The most comic part of the entire election campaign was Mr. Modi himself uttering "Modi’s Guaranty" to the people gathered to hear him. He wanted to have 400 seats and the people gave him hardly 300 and showed that Nehruvian secular India is still strong enough to ward off religious/divisive politics.
In his Tryst with Destiny speech delivered (…)

6 June 2024 What a relief! Wah, what a grand fight the secular parties and the masses of the country gave to the right-wing fascist forces! Well done, committed leaders and the hundreds and thousands of men and women and teenagers who worked endlessly in this heat and dust …saving this land from the grasp of those who spoke of hateful divides in those hate-filled speeches!
So much to offload. Foremost, with these election results coming in, it’s been great to realize that our fellow (…)