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By Surajit Mahalanobis UAE foreign minister Dr Anwar Mohammad Gargash declared at the recent 4th Abu Dhabi Strategic Debate that the country cannot live under the shadow of “Iran’s threat”. India needs to be equally concerned about the violent developments in the backdoor of the GCC. As...
By Sushil Kutty There is an uneasy calm in Kasganj. It was not a coincidence that this town in Uttar Pradesh witnessed an unprecedented communal riot on January 26, Republic Day. Since then its bustling markets have gone silent, remained shut. The largely Hindu-dominated trade lies crippled....
By Aditya Aamir The word ‘compulsory’ doesn’t walk the JNU campus, where a diktat to make attendance compulsory is being fought tooth and nail by students and teachers, both like disciplined soldiers. Yeah, the only thing compulsory about JNU scholars and researchers is ‘compulsive-impulsive’. The irony is Indian Army...
By Arun Srivastava If the by-poll results from Rajasthan have been a warning for the BJP, the message of it replacing the CPI(M) as the main opposition party in West Bengal sounded the death knell for the Marxists. This certainly is a bad omen particularly for Prakash Karat...
By Amulya Ganguli It is rather late in the day for the septuagenarian Sharad Pawar to try and emerge as a major player on the national stage. Even if the NCP leader succeeded in assembling a number of parties for his “save the Constitution” rally in Mumbai on...
Sushil Kutty Youth Ki Awaaz (YKA) is a website that posts stories on issues that engage, bother and interest the youth. And India is a country where over 60% of the population is young. People often refer to India as ‘Youngistan’. On February 4, YKA highlighted two posts —...
By Surojit Mahalanobis The anxiety of the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister about periodically raising salaries and perks of the government employees is well understood, because they cannot afford to keep a very large segment of working force in the government unhappy for long when the governance...
By Aditya Aamir The “TOP” news is Rahul Gandhi’s top-aide Divya Spandana asked the un-askable question: “Is this what happens when you’re on POT?”, referencing her tweet to Prime Minister Narendra Modi telling a rally in Karnataka that farmers are his “TOP” priority as “tomato, onion and potato”...
By Kalyani Shankar In his political career, Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu has exhibited the same showmanship, like Prime Minister Narednra Modi. It was Naidu who declared himself in the mid nineties as the CEO of the state. It was he who had started using laptop, video-...
By S. Sethuraman An elaborate exercise in “friendliness” to the farmer in distress for long, to the small business, devastated by demonetisation, and “healthcare” for poorer sections, crafted by Prime Minister Modi, was faithfully projected by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Union Budget for 2018/19. That...
By Barun Das Gupta An unexpected political development in Nagaland has made the holding of state Assembly elections on February 27 uncertain. On January 29, eleven political parties of the state decided to boycott the elections, demanding an early solution to the Naga political problem. The BJP, which...
By Sushil Kutty If we all have a point of view, are we all not biased? So, forget the rhetoric. Disregard feigned outrage – from the Congress and the Samajwadi Party; TDP and TMC, Shiv Sena and the Akali Dal; Left parties and the ‘superstar’ Tamil politician who...
K Raveendran Indians gave the zero to the world. Indian sages understood zero to mean absolute nothingness as well as its potential for infinite power. For them, the zero was not just an entity in the place value system, it had a philosophical connotation. The quintessential Indian spirituality saw...
By Nantoo Banerjee Is the government really serious about the newly proposed insurance-backed national health protection scheme (NHPS) in the budget? Probably not. It may protect insurance firms and private healthcare outfits, but not the common man’s health. Only public hospitals, well-equipped public medical centres, dedicated physicians and...
By G. Srinivasan The interminable debate over the final full-fledged General Budget of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) headed by Narendra Modi apart, the 2018-19 budget belied the credo of the Modi government as market-friendly and growth-focused. This is palpably obvious as the feisty Finance Minister Arun Jaitley,...
In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court has upheld the right of daughters to be entitled to equal shares in the ancestral property as the sons, including those daughters who were born before 17th June, 1956 when the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 came into force. The case pertained to...
By Nitya Chakraborty The stage is set for the next Lok Sabha elections in India within 2018. The way the country’s economic and political situation is developing, Prime Minister Narendra Modi cannot take the risk of waiting till the scheduled period of April/May 2019 for holding the Lok...
By Nantoo Banerjee Is the government really serious about the newly proposed insurance-backed national health protection scheme (NHPS) in the budget? Probably not. It may protect insurance firms and private healthcare outfits, but not the common man’s health. Only public hospitals, well-equipped public medical centres, dedicated physicians and...