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The judiciary is the last resort of the distressed, the deprived and the despondent. Naturally, they expect a humanitarian and empathic response from it. But it isn’t always so.

It’s another Saturday and if we thought it will be weekend as usual, we were wrong. Tension continues to brew. Both at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between wannabe superpower China and regional bulwark India and in Mumbai and Bengaluru, where the fair and lovely of Bollywood and Kollywood are being hauled and forced to trudge over the coals for alleged drug abuse and drug peddling.

Police and intelligence agencies acting in a reckless manner driven with sense of vengeance and self-promotion has been an old machination, but the difference between the old and the latest tactics is its ruthlessness and resorting to brutality to finish the accused and his or her family if not completely eliminating the person concerned. We have heard of police jargon “case connection”, but now in the case of the case of violence that had taken place in Bhima Koregaon of Pune in 2018, we witness use of this stratagem to silence the voice of protest.

Long before Prime Minister Narendra Modi, there was PM Atal Behari Vajpayee, whose primary identity was that of an outstanding parliamentarian. Elected to Lok Sabha a remarkable 10 times, hurling speech after thundering speech, taking opposition attacks on the chin, when Vajpayee was PM it was sometimes so difficult to get him out of the House, that government files had to be taken to his Parliament office.

New Delhi: Sports apparel giant adidas has launched a new product 'the Adizero Adios Pro’ which is all set to define the next standard of professional running footwear.

New Delhi: Former World number 1 Kidambi Srikanth and World champion PV Sindhu will spearhead the 20-member strong Indian challenge in the Thomas and Uber Cup scheduled to be played in Denmark next month.

To build our present it is imperative to have a rich sense of history, which means hindsight with objectivity, without bias, without any inclination to stigmatise it. But what is happening is simply the reverse. A concerted effort has been unleashed to dim the glory of the heroic deeds and sacrifices made by our people coming from various streams of our society.

Healthcare has always been a concern in our country, but lately the people are more sensitised towards it. This is because of the spread of COVID which is taking toll on the lives of many people from all socio economic strata. In addition the repeated lockdowns have affected the day to day life and economy. Crores of people have lost their jobs/livelihood. As a result they are unable to meet their healthcare requirements. People have started questioning the healthcare system in our country. It appears that it is in this background the Prime Minister announced National Digital Health Mission in his independence day address to the nation on August 15 this year.

The GDP growth in the first quarter (April-June) of 2020 over the first quarter of the previous year has been minus 24 per cent according to preliminary official estimates. But most knowledgeable people believe that even this is an underestimate of the actual contraction brought about by the lockdown. In fact, a former chief statistician of India, Pronab Sen, believes that the actual contraction would have been about 32 per cent. Others put the figure even higher.

A pall of gloom is hanging about India’s economic future ever since the GDP estimates about the first quarter of the current fiscal were laid bare a week back. There is a virtual competition among forecasters about the extent of estimated contraction of the Indian economy. Some banks say is it a 7 per cent, some say no over 10 per cent and yet others even better. Does it really warrant such downbeat mood?