Government

What started as a protest against a heinous rape and murder of a junior lady doctor in a government hospital in Kolkata attached to the famous RG Kar Medical College has snowballed into an unprecedented movement for justice and the safety of women. 

During the UPA years, 2004 to 2014, Narendra Modi, CM of Gujarat, led the brigade of States on each and every issue that he felt militated against the federal structure of the Constitution. Thus, when he was elected prime minister of India in 2014, we had naturally expected him to strengthen the rights of states and were certain that he would take away several controversially acquired powers of the Centre.

In 1967, when I was just 15 years old, I was attracted to Ram Manohar Lohia’s brand of desi socialism that targeted the nexus between caste and class in India. The Congress had been in power for 20 years and appeared quite invincible. But socialist leaders such as George Fernandes, Madhu Limaye, Rabi Ray and Kishen Pattanayak believed that the mighty Congress could be dislodged.

Narendra Modi has begun his third term in 2024 with the inglorious distinction of leading the “least productive parliament session” – the just-concluded monsoon-cum-budget session. Conversely, his first session after his second innings in 2019 was proudly declared by the Speaker as the “most productive” one since 1952. Along with the Rajya Sabha, it had passed a record 36 bills – demonstrating, in no uncertain terms, the cocky spirit of that phase.

The INDIA front, that Narendra Modi and his acolytes had scornfully dismissed as divided and doomed, had managed to give the Bharatiya Janata Party a real fright, with its 237 seats so perilously close to the BJP’s 240.

History will look back at the 2024 elections to the 18th Lok Sabha as an exciting landmark— somewhat like 1967 or 1977 or even 2014. There is no doubt that it marks the beginning of the end of the Modi era, though one cannot predict how badly he may react to the writing on the wall or how or viciously he may tighten his stranglehold over a battered democracy. It is a major blow to Narendra Modi’s ego and his hold over his flock that he has fallen 32 seats short of the absolute majority figure of 272 seats.

What started as a completely one-sided election has slowly but surely turned into an interesting one, with all sorts of possibilities. Liberals, rationalists, pluralists, democratic, leftists and all others who have not accepted a regime that is openly opposed to these values enshrined in the Indian constitution have suffered repeated defeat, demoralisation and humiliation for 10 long years.

I am sad that while every major city of India has a proper public-sponsored art gallery, Kolkata does not. Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore have great facilities called the National Galleries of Modern Art (NGMAs),

Nothing could sum up better the transactional relationship between big capital and authoritarian rule than these words of William E. Scheuerman, Professor of Political Science at Indiana University in the ‘Boston Review’, under the catchy title Why Do Authoritarians Win?

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,

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.

দেশের ধর্মনিরপেক্ষ মানুষেরা যখন হিন্দুত্বের উগ্র রূপ দেখে খুব বিব্রত হচ্ছিলেন তখন অনেকেই খেয়াল করেননি যে ‘হিন্দিত্ব’ হয়তো তার চেয়েও বেশি ভয়ঙ্কর। ‘হিন্দিত্ব’ সংখ্যাগুরুদের মধ্যেই হিন্দি ভাষাকে গায়ের জোরে চাপিয়ে দিচ্ছে। আমাদের যুক্তরাষ্ট্রীয় কাঠামোয় প্রধান হিন্দুত্বের চেয়েও অধিক ক্ষতিকর এই ‘হিন্দিত্ব’। এর প্রবক্তারা বলেন যে, হিন্দি রাষ্ট্রীয় ভাষা তাই দোষ নেই, কিন্তু তা সত্যি নয়। সংবিধান অনুযায়ী রাষ্ট্রভাষা কিছু নেই।

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.

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.

For a government that constantly measures the ‘productivity’ of parliament in terms of hours or minutes wasted in non legislative business, this Budget session that has just ended ‘sine die’ would normally have been really heart-breaking. Data just released shows that Lok Sabha’s productivity had fallen from 83.8% in the first part of the Budget session that ended in February to just 5.29% in the second part in March-April. Over 96 hours and 13 minutes were lost to disruptions in the Lok Sabha, while they claimed 103 hours and 30 minutes in the Rajya Sabha. Whatever Modi and his captive media may propagate, Houses of parliament are not some sort of industrial assembly lines of production where machines and numbers matter the most. What is not noticed is despite its apparent futility, this latter part of the Budget session has been extremely productive in bringing the Opposition together.

Seventy-three years may not be enough to pronounce a judgement on whether parliamentary democracy has worked in India or not. In a democracy, it is the lowest common denominator that prevails, and hence, it is futile to accept only Pericleses in the rough and tumble of the demos. But it is this same Indian parliament that has managed, without doubt, to bring together under one roof, into some sort of dialogue, the incredibly diverse peoples, ethnicities, and religious denominations. Issues are settled in Sansad through debate – sometimes, a bit too loudly. But let us not forget that some of today’s participants had once favoured the gun rather than talk. In just seven decades, governments and the parliament have, indeed, succeeded in cooling off numerous intractable sectarian and secessionist passions. The first election to the Lower House (Lok Sabha) will go down in history as one of those wonders that only Indians are capable of demonstrating – maybe once or twice in a century.

কেন্দ্রীয় অর্থমন্ত্রক সংসদে প্রশ্নের জবাবে এমন ঘুরিয়ে-ফিরিয়ে কিছু সংখ্যা পরিসংখ্যান প্রদান করছে যে তার থেকে পুরো চিত্রটা অনুধাবন করা সহজ নয়। তাই আমরা ঠিক করেছি দীর্ঘদিন ধরে অনাদায়ী ঋণের দায়ে ব্যাঙ্কগুলো ক্ষতির বিষয়ে কেন্দ্রীয় অর্থমন্ত্রী ও এই দফতরের প্রতিমন্ত্রী যেসব কথা সংসদে বলেছেন, সেগুলো একত্রিত করে পরিবেশন করব। আমরা আবিষ্কার করেছি ১২ লক্ষ কোটি টাকা ব্যাঙ্কগুলো থেকে সরানো হয়েছে এবং এই কম্মটি করেছেন মূলত বড় বড় কর্পোরেট সংস্থাগুলো। এই অপকর্মটি তাঁরা করেছেন নরেন্দ্র মোদির শাসনকালের প্রথম আট বছরেই।

The government’s concern at the circulation of patently false news items is quite understandable as there is a noticeable rise in the visibility of such items circulating on the social media. In fact, 2023 is the tenth year since this new weapon was added to the arsenal of India’s major political parties. These items stir up emotions, for or against the regime, and whip up rage at perceived attacks and insults on one’s religion. There are clear reasons to assume that several hordes of people or teams must be working overtime to disseminate them in order to raise the temperature in people’s minds with these distortions of the truth.