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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: There is no getting away from the grim reality. Covid positive cases in the State have, for the first time, crossed the 6000- mark. And the number is all set to scale new heights in the days to come.

It’s getting to be tricky talking, writing, discussing Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB). The subject is so interwoven with not only Pakistan’s claim to sovereignty over the geographical spreads vis a vis India’s integral part theory, which will remain a theory unless India gathers its invisible courage and wrests control of the two territories, which brings the interloper into the picture – the Han-Chinese People’s Republic of China – which has been teaching the Islamic Republic of Pakistan a thing or two on how to deal with ‘Islam’ in a manner Pakistan can do nothing about it.

New Delhi: Ace goalkeeper Gurpreet Sandhu, and mid-fielder Sanju have been named the AIFF man and woman players of the year (2019-20) respectively.

On the day the Time magazine listed Dadi of Shaheen Bagh' 82-year-old Bilkis, a regular at the anti-CAA protest venue, as one of the top 100 influential people in the world, the Delhi police, “the most imaginative and efficient force in the world, even more intelligent than the Scotland Yard,” has come out with the revealing information that the women protesters were paid ‘daily wages’, used by the accused for ‘gender cover’, for secular cover and media cover.

The crucial hiatus between the ruling Pakistan-Tehreek-e-Insaaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice) , and its satellites on the one hand and the Opposition whose main constituents in terms of parliamentary strength are Pakistan People’s Party, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and Jamiar Ulema-e-Islam (Fazl-ur-Rehman) widens with the formation of the Pakistan Democratic movement at an All Parties Conference last Sunday (20 September) and adoption of a 26-point resolution –aiming at an end of the rule of PTI whose subservience to the army biggies are increasingly open.

The two bills rammed through parliament last week were objectionable in every conceivable sense. The very fact of their being rammed through the Rajya Sabha, without being put to vote despite demands for a division, was grossly anti-democratic. The fact of the centre making unilateral and fundamental changes in agricultural marketing arrangements which fall within the state list of the seventh schedule of the constitution was a blow against federalism. To resurrect the pre-independence arrangement under which the peasantry was exposed to the capitalist market without any support of the State, and which crushed it during the Great depression of the 1930s, was a betrayal of the promise of independence. To pit millions of small peasants against the might of a handful of private buyers, as the bills propose to do, was to open them up to monopsonistic exploitation.

On August 5, 2020, an unprecedented incident took place in post- independence India. For the first time, a prime minister of the country had laid the foundation stone of a religious temple. It was Ram Mandir in Ayodhya amidst Corona scare. It was to raise Hindutva hype for a political purpose. It is not unusual for the prime minister or the present government itself, though they have managed to forget many other things, and among those is the celebration of bi-centenary of Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar. The title Vidyasagar means an ocean of learning and it was the honour he was awarded in his lifetime itself.

Bihar elections are barely a month away but everything isn’t fine within the ruling NDA camp. If there is an internal tussle between the chief minister Nitish Kumar led JD(U) and the BJP over seat-sharing, there is an open rift that can be easily witnessed between the JD(U) and Chirag Paswan led LJP. Importantly, LJP and JD(U) never contested any assembly polls in the state under the same alliance in the past.

The truncated monsoon session of parliament has been, in every sense, the worst session of parliament ever held, except probably the one during the emergency in 1976 that adopted the 42nd constitutional amendment meant to facilitate an authoritarian regime.

The legal fraternity is largely seen as a male bastion with little space for women. Of course, things have changed phenomenally over the years since 1923 when Regina Das’s application for enrolment was rejected by two High Courts of India on grounds of gender.