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The digital divide was there always in India but now it has widened further. India has entered into a new era of online education in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, but it creating a wedge between the haves and have nots. The growing digital divide is also being witnessed among rich and poor states of the country.

The Pandemics bring with them misery in the form of morbidities and mortalities. Bubonic plagues are an example. The Great Plague of 1665 was one of the worst during which 100,000 residents of London died just in a span of seven months. The Spanish flu in 1918 was even worse. During this period the pandemic is believed to have killed up to 14 -17 million people in our country, the most among all countries which is about 5-6% of total population.

By calling the COVID 19 an act of God, the finance minister Smt Nirmala Sitharaman has not only tried to evade responsibility but also sent misleading information to the people and perpetuated myths already prevalent in the society. She said this in the meeting of the GST council on 27th August. Several states have demanded that the GST due to them should be given which the central government is evading.

United States President Donald Trump is using Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s name in wooing the Indian Americans in the coming elections on November 3 this year. There are about 1.8 million voters of Indian origin and they are divided between the Democrats and Republicans, though the majority supports the Democratic Party. Trump has initiated a big campaign to bring some traditional Democratic supporters to his side this time making use of his relationship with the Indian PM.

There can be no question that the launch of an inland water cargo service between India and Bangladesh on September 2, has been long overdue. The good news is that the Indian vessel MV Premier is all set to sail with a cargo of 50 tonnes of cement from Daudkandi in Comila, Bangladesh to Sonamura, Tripura, along the river Gomti. Along the route the ship will use the facilities of the Bibirbazar port in Bangladesh. The ceremonial launch of anew connectivity project acquires significance in that it follows the recent visit to Dhaka by India’s Foreign Secretary, Mr. Harshvardhan Shringla, who has served in Bangladesh before.

A day after the Kerala assembly passed a resolution against leasing Thiruvananthapuram international airport to a firm promoted by industrialist Gautam Adani, as many as 12 trade unions came out in support of the Kerala government and lashed out at Modi government for leasing out profit-making airports to a private firm. Significantly, the RSS affiliated Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) also supported the resolution of the CTUs critical of the NDA government’s policies.

The draft environmental impact assessment (EIA) notification 2020 proposed by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change dilutes further the EIA Notification 2006 that is being currently followed. The proposed changes in the name of easing of doing business relax further and totally overhaul the environmental clearance system to benefit large corporations and MNCs. Many of the proposed clauses in the present draft on environmental clearances are anti-democratic as that are sans public consultation and also seriously affect the livelihoods of people, especially tribal communities dependent on eco system.

Are we pushed back to Macaulay days? Thomas Babington Macaulay was the person who wrote the script for British education policy, a legislative act, passed in 1835, by the British Parliament to educate the Indian masses. The ruling East India Company wanted to promote a slave culture, deprived of right to express, and assert against the injustices. Objective was to promote office assistants to look after their business for which was imperative some knowledge about European culture and language. There was also little knowledge of science, basically Newtonian, history was simply a chronology, divided on communal lines, thus a step to destroy our composite culture and also to deprive us of our past, present and thus, future.

The conviction of senior lawyer, Prashant Bhushan, of criminal contempt of court by a three-member bench of the Supreme Court has lowered the image of the institution. It shows the highest court of the land in a bad light as being intolerant of criticism and using the contempt law to punish dissent.

The Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was targeted for severe criticism as his chosen unique model that delivered a less of economic development but accelerated growth of corruption. He did not adopt the capitalism to provide all opportunities to few in the top class and also communism to put the state chain on life of all. He gave a dominant role to the public sector in real terms to his government. He did not abolish the existing units in private sector but put restriction of the mandatory license to expand or innovate or enter in new fields. The growth of corruption was also a clear indication of growth of economy as there cannot be corruption in stagnant economy. The Nehruvian economic model brought in growth of twenty monopoly units encompassing eighty per cent of Indian economy.