Mr. Kotha Prabhakar Reddy, Member Parliament, on 8 January 2019, sought a reply from Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India, to the question (No. 4475) on ‘Reservation for Poor’. Mr. Reddy’s question was : (a) whether the Government is exploring the scope of providing reservation for poor candidates from forward communities for…
Allegations of interference in major institutions have been the big news of late. The ongoing fracas in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has got out of hand, with the two top officials in the chain of command accusing each other of corruption. The recent pronouncements in the Supreme Court do not promise an early…
Some Implications of Verdict on Aadhaar Act Introduction While the verdict of the 5-Judge Constitution Bench of Supreme Court on Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY)’s Unique Identification (UID)/Aadhaar number database project being implemented by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), Aadhaar Act 2016 and indiscriminate metadata collection of Indian residents is 1448…
Mexico: President AMLO’s Inaugural Speech Offers ‘New Hope’ After receiving the presidential sash in the Mexican National Congress on December 1, President Lopez Obrador gave a speech outlining an ambitious and encouraging government plan, based on bids to slash corruption, overturn neoliberalism and make important public investments. AMLO started his speech by thanking outgoing…
For an International Progressive Front There is a global struggle taking place of enormous consequence. Nothing less than the future of the planet—economically, socially and environmentally—is at stake. At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the world’s top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 99%, we are seeing the…
The Reason for Renaming Places We fail to see in the excitement generated by the incessant renaming of towns and railway stations in India that the past, which these new old names allude to, is an imagined land that we are being invited to inhabit. We are not exactly recovering lost ground, because as the…
Narendra Modi’s Paradoxical Claim on the Legacy of Gandhi India has established a committee to commemorate next year’s 150th anniversary of the birth of the “father of the nation”, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the members include politicians across party lines as well as some foreign representatives, among them the Nobel…
Instead of Defending India, the Raksha Mantri is Instigating Violence Within I have been thinking about the statement defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman made this week lamenting the presence of “anti-national elements” within the student community of her alma mater, Jawaharlal Nehru University. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced her…
The invitation by the High Priest of Dawoodi Bohras, a Shia Muslim sub-sect, to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address their religious congregation on 14 September 2018 on the occasion of Muharram, and the PM accepting the invite, can only be described as the theatre of absurd. Prime Minister Modi is the leader of a…
FCRA Amended to Condone Illegal Foreign Funding to BJP, Congress; Challenged in Supreme Court The Modi government used Budget 2018 to once again give the BJP and Congress a get-out-of-jail card for having illegally accepted funding from foreign companies. The parties got a free pass for violations of the law going back 40 years. In…
दिल्लीत सुरु असलेल्या शेतकरी आंदोलनाच्या पार्श्वभूमीवर या लहान पुस्तिकेचे प्रकाशन लोकायत मार्फत करण्यात आले आहे. शेतकरी आंदोलन आणि त्यातल्या मागण्या या केवळ शेतकऱ्यांपुरत्याच नसून विविध अंगांनी सर्व सामान्य जनतेच्या हिताच्या आहेत, याबाबत मांडणी करणारी ही पुस्तिका!