By Prakash Karat The state of press freedom in India has been accurately captured by the World Press Freedom Index. This year’s index was issued on May 3, which is observed as World Press Freedom Day. The Reporters without Borders (RSF), which has prepared the World Press Freedom Index...
By Sushil Kutty The Supreme Court Thursday refused to rule Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde out of his job because it was snatched from Uddhav Thackeray who should have faced the floor test and not fled the scene. The top court’s refusal was disappointing because everything else the court...
By Binoy Viswam Manipur was like trump card for the BJP. Since their first ascendance to power in 2017, with the calculated plan of a conquest they treated Manipur as their spring board for North East. BJP’s gaining of power in the state itself was through crooked ways. It...
By Arun Srivastava Amidst the conjecture making round the political circle that the next meet of the opposition leaders for taking forward the process of unity, would take place in Patna on May 18, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy Tejashvi Yadav left for Mumbai on May...
By Girish Linganna Twenty-five years ago, as many Indians flew in a year as they do in a month now. That may sound like a measure of economic prosperity. Only two state-owned airlines had held half of the domestic aviation market then. In March this year, 57% of the...
By Ashis Biswas Despite timely steps taken by the Government to avert a Sri Lanka-type of economic meltdown, general concern for the Bangladeshi economy continues. While the International Monetary Fund (IMF) promised a $4.5 billion loan to Bangladesh to help it shore up declining forex reserves, there are worries...
By Marcelo Casals The Chilean far right scored a major victory in Sunday’s elections for the newly reconstituted constitutional assembly, all but extinguishing any remaining hope of a new, progressive constitution in Chile. The results of the election for the rebranded “Constitutional Council” would have been unthinkable only a...
By W. T. Whitney Jr. With long experience of chaos, violence, and dysfunctional governance, Haiti looks now to be on the verge of a new crisis in the form of foreign military intervention. U.S. and United Nations decision-makers have held back, but now they look to be moving, again....
The Supreme Court gave Chief Minister Eknath Shinde a reprieve to stay in office, but flayed the action of the governor to hold a trust vote to enable Shinde to prove his majority. Since the Uddav Thakur government had resigned on its own, the court said it cannot be...
In a major victory for Arvind Kejriwal’s Delhi government, the Supreme Court today held that the Delhi government has control over administrative services in the National Capital, excluding matters relating to public order, police and land. Constitution Bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice MR Shah, Justice Krishna Murari,...
By James M Dorsey America to the rescue. In a twist of irony, that may be Central Asia’s only alternative, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine upsetting the region’s security apple cart. The question is whether the United States, already rejiggering its commitment to security in the Middle East,...
By Sushil Kutty There’s this voter who was born in Mangalore and he has lots of BJP “karyakarta” friends. Good fellows who do the booth management for the world’s largest-richest political party. The commitment of such people wins elections. But, this time in Karnataka, the BJP did not have...
By K Raveendran The decision by the Union government to tie local gas prices to international prices comes at a time when global prices are on a downward trend and this is great news for consumers who have hitherto been at the receiving end of higher prices as well...
By Arun Srivastava Notwithstanding Supreme Court glare on the release of Bilkis Bano convicts, the chances are quite bleak that their release would be declared null and void and they would ever be sent back to the prisons. The entire saffron eco system is out to protect them and...
By Tirthankar Mitra Conversational niceties are adhered to and appropriate body language follows when representatives of nations meet even though adversarial relations exist between them. But the recently concluded Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meet at Goa last week was an exception where foreign minister of India S Jaishankar and...
By Arun Kumar Shrivastav Sudan’s interim leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has promised to protect its Christian minority amid growing violence against them. In a meeting with Christian leaders in Khartoum, Burhan pledged to ensure their safety and the rebuilding of churches that had been destroyed during the country’s civil...
By Dr. Arun Mitra News as reported in the Nav Bharat Times dated 12 April 2023, referring to a post in which the mother of a child had mentioned that her daughter came home today crying asked me ‘are we Muslims so dirty’? This is after her class fellow...
By Dr. Gyan Pathak The booming black marketing of fertilizers in India has been a persistent problem that has worsened in recent years, on account of rising global prices of fertilizers, the supply disruptions during the pandemic, increased demand from the farmers, shortage for fertilizer, and the gap between...