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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way”

- A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens (1859)

Arvind Kejriwal’s Delhi government has given sanction for the prosecution of former JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar and nine others in the infamous 2016 JNU sedition case. Congress leader and senior Supreme Court lawyer Manu Abhishek Singhvi has challenged the government to charge him with sedition for criticising the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Fifty-five Rajya Sabha seats will be up for grabs next month in the biggest biennial polls since Prime Minister Narendra Modi won his second term.

BERLIN — In Germany, much as in the U.S., political poles are getting more sharply defined than ever. Will the results be good or bad?

Uruguayan ecologist Silvia Ribeiro, reporting on the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos (where one item on the agenda was “better capitalism”), notes that the “transnationals, the main causes of climate change, finally are recognizing the gravity of the situation … What they are doing is settling into a new wave of business opportunities, new ways of taking over land and eco-systems and developing geoengineering capabilities.”

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in office for 71 months with sixty months of his first term without trouble of communal tensions in any part of India. Even attempts to ferment trouble in 2015 end in three western districts of Uttar Pradesh in the name or on pretext of cow protection issue did not become a major issue but the last three months are infested with troubles on communal front. The NaMo government is facing gales of protests over changes in the citizenship criterion.

By fourth day of riots in parts of northeast Delhi, 27 people have lost their lives and over 200 have been grievously injured. Armed mobs continued to rampage through roads and streets until the third night when shoot and sight orders were issued and large number of police deployed. People’s confidence on police administration has greatly eroded either due to their absence from the scene of rioting, in some cases upto 48 hours, or their lapses even during their presence. All of these seem to be politically orchestrated, but the most alarming is participation of younger boys from 15 to 25 years of age in large numbers.

Prime Minister’s reiteration that “Peace and harmony are central to our ethos” does not appear to hold ground as his government and particularly his handpicked home minister, Amit Shah behaved like Nero while Delhi burnt for three days and around 27 persons were brutally murdered by the mercenaries.

The use rather abuse of massive amount of people’s money by Modi Government to welcome President Donald Trump in a mammoth gathering in a stadium in Gujarat spoke volumes for exhibitionism and utter servility of powers that be in India to please the President of the USA. The slum dwellers of Ahmedabad were hidden behind a long wall specially erected on the road on which Trump’s carcade moved. It is indeed painful that Modi regime instead of wiping out poverty is hiding poverty stricken people out of sight for the sake of making a false impression on the mind of visiting dignitary that there is no poverty in India.

This is a moment when every Indian should open his/her eyes and look around with utmost commitment to the nation's future. Everything possible should be done to safeguard religious harmony and understanding between people. The happenings in national capital since last Sunday are a big shock for India and a black mark on her face. Those incidents have stolen so many precious human lives and caused serious injuries to hundreds. Houses, shops and vehicles were burned and properties worth crores of rupees were destroyed. Fanatic criminals intoxicated with communal madness and taking law into their hands were ruling Delhi. For four days, the country saw nothing in the Capital that could be called as a ‘government’! That apparatus was undertaking a deep sleep which was a conscious and shameless sleep!