English । ইংরেজি

In the last three years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has introduced and carried through, with lightning speed and his brute majority in parliament, a series of legislations that choke or restrict our freedom of expression, information, data and their transmission. We have reasons to believe that the apparatus of a surveillance state has been grafted, stealthily but surely,

Just a couple of days after the sad death of the one and only Ameen Sayani, I stumbled upon a photo with him, taken by his son at the NCPA, Mumbai. ‘August 2019’ was scrawled on it and I had gone there to deliver the Jamshed Bhaba Memorial Talk on Indian Culture. I was his great admirer and came to know him well from the time I headed All India Radio and Doordarshan, as CEO, Prasar Bharati.

Just a couple of days after the sad death of the one and only Ameen Sayani, I stumbled upon a photo with him, taken by his son at the NCPA, Mumbai. ‘August 2019’ was scrawled on it and I had gone there to deliver the Jamshed Bhabha Memorial Talk on Indian Culture. I was his great admirer. And came to know him well from the time I headed All India Radio and Doordarshan, as CEO, Prasar Bharati.

The roots of the celebrations on the 26th of January as our Republic Day actually go back to a very significant development in our Independence struggle. Till 1929, Gandhiji and the mainstream of the Indian National Congress could not decide whether to demand complete independence from the British Empire.

As a normal human being who prefers not to jog or climb unless compelled to, it was rather foolhardy to agree to my wife’s persuasion to visit Amaranth. Once trapped, I did a bit of reading and panicked when I learnt that it is one of the most strenuous treks, with unnecessary exertions.

When PM Narendra Modi sent out his closest bureaucrat, Nripendra Misra, from the PMO to Ayodhya to head the Shri Ram Mandir Construction Committee in February 2020, he was clearly signalling that Ram Mandir was his highest priority.

The unseemly haste and rough manner in which Prime Minister Modi and his Communications Ministry rushed through the Telecommunications Bill in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha not only reveals their muscular, majoritarian psyche but also the regime’s apathy towards (or fear of) debate.

As we head to the last day of Navratri it may be good to observe how Hinduism brought together dissimilar customs and rituals in harmony and mutual respect — with no single theme thrusting itself on any. All Hindus agree on the same nine days and ten nights in autumn, but after that, the observances in different regions contrast quite a lot — as the ‘local’ adjusts itself within the ‘universal’.

Durga in her present form incorporates different streams, like Simha Vahini (the goddess who rides the lion), the Mahishasura Mardini (one who slays the Buffalo-Demon) and the Dashabhuja or ten-armed goddess. They evolved in different stages and ages.

It took everyone by surprise when Narendra Modi, who never spares a trick to ‘elevate’ his standing, decided to deliberately ‘downgrade’ his social status and assert forcefully and unambiguously that he belongs to a socioeconomically backward caste. After years of studied silence on his caste status, Modi decided to claim the OBC mantle and attacked the Congress mercilessly for “hating” him for it.

Some MPs say that a bulletin must have been issued but most of us seem to have missed it, if at all one was sent. Thus, till the afternoon before, no one knew for sure whether the entire apparatus of the parliament of India would shift, lock, stock and barrel, to the reportedly-swank new building next door on September 19.

There is no doubt that the increasing politicisation of the bureaucracy has been corroding, for quite some time, the pillars on which fair and efficient administration rest. The pains taken by the founding fathers of our constitution to protect and insulate the civil service from political interference had ensured a large degree of neutrality, for several decades — except perhaps during the Emergency. What is more important is that it created a culture of looking down at any suspiciously close liaison between politicians and bureaucrats (for mutual personal gain) to be illicit and adulterous.

As the Modi government’s much-hyped ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ ( immortal celebration of our independence) gathers momentum, one is likely to fall prey to two impressions that are sought to be conveyed. The first is that the present regime is more firmly wedded to the principles of nationalism than others and the second is the utter devotion with which it remembers the nation’s struggle for independence.

The suspension of Professor KS James, Director of the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) appears unwarranted, mischievous, and quite untenable. By shooting the messenger, the Narendra Modi government has also sent a message – the Centre does not want to face any reality.

Few can deny that India is seared right through, over several vexing issues, among which is whether the two sacred epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, are actually history or just myths. There is hardly any middle ground, as rationalists and left- liberals are absolutely certain that the epics are only myths, while a large section of Hindus refuse to believe they are not historical.

Five months ago, on January 16, 2023, The Wire published an article on How in First Eight Years of Modi Government, Nearly Rs 12 Lakh Crore ‘Disappeared'. The humongous amount of Rs 12 lakh crore was calculated partly on the basis of actual numbers revealed by the government in parliament for five of the ‘eight-year period’ and on extrapolations and estimates where actual figures were not available.

Narendra Modi is in a hurry to tattoo his signature right across the chest of Delhi even after his costly gambit of redoing an already splendid Central Vista (Rajpath) flopped at the box-office. He had blocked the central artery of Delhi for almost three years, dug all around, pumped tonnes of pollutants into the city’s notoriously noxious air, sent traffic haywire, and blown up some 700 crore rupees. But when the new ‘Kartavya Path’ was inaugurated with orchestrated flourish, even the moles of the area yawned and went back to their burrows around the Boat Club.

The BBC’s telecast in January immediately triggered highly inflammable memories of communal riots in Gujarat in 2002, when Narendra Modi was the chief minister. These wounds were just too raw to be touched, even after Modi’s professionals had adroitly managed to cover them up, with the assistance of several legal eagles and the indulgence of judicial officials and those even higher up. Modi has been pronounced “not guilty” on certain specific narrow charges, for the present and to the extent possible, but many other questions continue to fly, all around, thick and fiery. This riot, in which over a thousand people – mainly Muslims – were slaughtered simply refuses to behave and lie still in its grave.

Having watched Narendra Modi for nine years, of which more than two were spent “in his government” – as head of a national organisation – I can state with certainty that every action of his has an ulterior motive of helping someone make huge profits. I guess these crony capitalists, in turn, look after Modi’s needs. But what is more important is how the state machinery is calibrated to suit the requirements of these beneficiaries

May Day was not born in the Soviet Union — but in Capitalist America, to become a universal symbol of the rights and might of the working class. On the 1st of May 1886, the American Federations of Labour organised large assemblies of workers in Chicago and other parts of the USA.