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Can the Ram Mandir agitation of the 1990s be revived in 2018? Politics of Ram Mandir may just be a spent force. Even Indira Gandhi could not revive “garabi hatao” slogan twice. Come election and the “Build Ram Mandir in Ayodhya”, or Mandir Wohin Banayenge slogan — comes to fore like a seasonal crop and then peters off. This Diwali, the last before the general election in 2019, Lord Ram returned to Ayodhya, and the city dressed up to welcome the victorious king. We are seeing the philosophical luminosity of the festival of lights dimmed by political disharmony and empty ritual of politics. Once again the political class is attempting to imprison Lord Ram in the ballot box.

You will have to be in a Faraday Cage to get out of earshot of toxic journalism. Better still stop breathing. Let the lifeline flatten out on the box next to the hospital bed. Part of it is because the journalist is becoming the story. The reporter is a witness. He doesn’t spiel opinions. Ask Jim Acosta. His surname is an aptronym or aptonym, which explains his attitude, his style: aggression, accosting!

WASHINGTON: Led by Minnesota’s Tim Walz, some 743 unionists—and counting—won public office nationwide, from Congress down to county commissioner, the AFL-CIO calculates.

The pace of events was amazing. On 25 October 2018, the New York Times carried an exposé on how Google top management handled sexual harassment complaints against their top executives. When sexual harassment charges surfaced against Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android mobile software, Google not only hushed up the matter but stealthily struck a deal for his resignation giving him a $90 million exit package, and gave him a hero’s farewell. The New York Times story also exposed that two other senior executives were given similar compromise payouts. Google employees were highly incensed at their own management rewarding the culprits instead of punishing them. Legally they could well have been dismissed without any “compensation” but still Google chose to hush up the matter after paying them hefty amounts.

BHOPAL: BJP always accuses Congress of “Parivarvad” but now it is the love of sons by several stalwarts of BJP that is the main hurdle causing delay in finalising tickets in some crucial constituencies. Incidentally they include people who have spent their whole lives in being loyal to the RSS. Topping the list is Babulal Gaur, who joined the RSS after refusing to join the business of his father about six decades ago. Gaur, a former chief minister, is seeking ticket for himself or for his daughter-in-law from Govindpura constituency from where he won consecutive ten times.

After destroying the national economy by shamelessly pursuing the pro-Corporate economic policies, the Narendra Modi government in last year of its power is bent upon conducting loot and loot of the remaining national wealth to save its skin as well as spend the looted national wealth in a manner that the people are hoodwinked.

It was two years ago, on that fateful night of November 8, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his “historic” decision of demonetization promising that it would act as a game changer in the Indian economy by driving out black money, weed out fake notes and check terror funds but the Reserve Bank of India’s figures show nothing has been achieved in the last 24 months, whereas the informal economy still remains shattered leading to high joblessness and under employment.

“With public sentiment, all is possible; without it, nothing is,” said Abraham Lincoln. So, is public sentiment with the Hindutva call for a Ram temple in Ayodhya, as it is in Kerala for keeping women of 10-50 age at arm’s length from celibate Swami Ayyappa? Lincoln, if he was of Hindutva ilk, will say ‘yes’, and he was a conservative with a love for theatre, which was where he got shot, in a theatre.

Naeem Ahmed Qazi, a development consultant for national and foreign institutions and primarily an educationist, has reminded Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan Niazi of his past when he played cricket with a straight bat. In an acid-tongue opinion piece indicting the new government for surrender to the religious extremists - Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan- in Roznama Pakistan, a leading Urdu daily, Qazi wrote in an agonised tone indicting the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led federal government for soft stance towards TLP despite the three-day violent protests against the verdict of the Supreme Court of Pakistan on 31 October acquitting Pakistani Christian Aasiya Noreen – Asia Bibi – in a blasphemy case that kept her in death row for eight years. For nearly three days the main cities had screeched to a halt. The nation helplessly witnessed inhumane, brutal and shocking scenes during the lockdown – a murky mobocracy “looting the poorest while in others the rich had to witness their vehicles destroyed by a mob apparently chanting the slogans of Islam”.

A substantial majority of Americans went to the polls on November 6 and pulled the lever for candidates who opposed President Trump and his policies. Even in the elections for the U.S. Senate, where the GOP gained at least three seats, 10 million more people voted Democratic than voted Republican.