View Articles

BHOPAL: A visit by chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to the RSS headquarters in Bhopal past midnight gave rise to the speculation that alarm signals are coming about the critical position of party candidates. Before the chief minister’s visit party president Amit Shah too held mid-night consultations with the local boss of the Sangh. Chouhan probably did not expect his visit to catch media’s attention, but one enterprising photo-journalist photographed the CM entering “Samidha”, as the RSS headquarters is known. The picture was published on the front page of a newspaper.

Time was when approval of public issues or initial public offerings (IPOs) by the market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), were taken seriously by both equity share issuers and investors. More so when they came with big premium tag. Companies were required to operate profitably for three consecutive years before its IPO to fix premium on the offer price of shares. That’s history, now. SEBI does not seem to be any longer concerned with IPO pricing, prospectus disclosures and risk factors. The ball is now almost entirely on the court of share issuers and investors. This explains why few are questioning SEBI for the poor performance of shares post their recent IPOs. Shares of 35 of the 60 companies that launched their IPOs since 2017 are currently trading below their IPO allotment price with over 20 of them losing more than 20 percent. Investors and the market lost billions of rupees, in the process.

Two NSSO (National Sample Survey Organisation) surveys, 68th round and 71st round of the Union Government, on economic and educational indicators for various religious groups of India reveal that Muslims continue to face vicious circle of poverty with no light beyond the tunnel. NSSO (68th round) survey provides estimates of education levels and job market indicators across major religious communities. NSSO survey (71st round) takes note of levels of education in all religious groups in the country.

The Hindu caste system and its tyranny is the talk of the town globally after Jack Dorsey sat down with a bunch of women journalists and unknowingly or knowingly placarded ‘Brahminical Patriarchy’ and got smashed for holding a view not voiced in India . Post that faux pas, a debate has been let loose on the semantics behind inserting ‘i’ and ‘a’ – you don’t spell ‘Brahmin’ with an ‘i’ if you’re talking of ‘Brahmanical Patriarchy’ because the ‘Brahmin’ is a ‘caste’ and if you attack the ‘Brahmin’, it’s attacking Hinduism, gotcha?

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The BJP-RSS combine is in an angry mood. Understandably so. The reason for their irritation is clear: Both the Left Democratic Front Government (LDF) and the Kerala High Court have called their Sabarimla bluff.

Israel’s next general election isn’t due until November 2019, but an early poll is virtually certain given the outbreak of now traditional mutually antagonistic willy-waving engaged in by would-be prime ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition. No election is complete without party leaders accusing each other of supposed “weakness” in dealings with the Palestinians and stressing their own uniquely tough qualities for the task.

Tony Maxwell, a retired African-American naval officer, was trying — without much success — to get his Jacksonville, Fla., neighbor to go with him to the mid-term election polls and vote. The young neighbor, a high-school dropout, had no interest in taking the ride. “Voting,” the young man declared, “doesn’t change anything.”

It defies all logic that in a country where burning an effigy of a political leader or official does not constitute a criminal offence, a simple protest by waving black flags leads to arrest and incarceration. Waving black flags is probably the most innocuous of all ways to express dissent in a democracy, but our police and the administrations seem to be in no mood to accept it as permissible behaviour. Hundreds of people are put behind bars almost daily for staging such protests and the security personnel often deal ruthlessly with the ‘offenders’ dragging them by their collar and assaulting before hauling them up in their fortified vehicles. The offenders are booked under various sections such as 143, 145, 147, 149, 151, 341, 504, 506, some of which are even non-bailable, although apparently none of them makes any reference to black flags.

2280 workers of Moser Baer in Noida were left in the lurch in October after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) initiated liquidation procedure against the company. Though the company has not declared official closure, the workers are jobless as the company is not running due to sheer mismanagement. Thanks to the moratorium on any claims on the company under the overriding Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) during the liquidation process, the hapless workers cannot take recourse to normal legal channels to claim their wages even under Payment of Wages Act. Even seasoned labour law experts in Delhi are clueless about the fate of their jobs or how much of their dues they can recover.

What does about 72 per cent polling in Chhattisgarh indicate? This includes Maoist-infested areas. High percentage of voting is generally considered anti-establishment. Of other two Hindi speaking states—Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh—BJP’s chances seem to be better in Chhattisgarh. But at the end of polling, it doesn’t appear so. Raman Singh is a three-term chief minister and there is powerful anti-incumbency against him, besides charges of corruption. His hope that Ajit Jogi-Mayawati combine will divide Congress votes did not fructify. Reports say that Ajit Jogi-Mayawai combine has damaged both the BJP and the Congress.