View Articles

Although Jayant Sinha has been upbraided by his father, Yashwant Sinha, for garlanding a lynch brigade, the Union minister deserves a mild round of applause for revealing the BJP’s real face.

Naming a place Nala Sopara and, then, asking, “Why has Nala Sopara turned into an overflowing gutter?” defeats the purpose of the moniker. “It’s raining cats and dogs in Chembur,” says the reporter, holding on to an umbrella to keep his head dry as swift-flowing rainwater swirls past his not visible feet. Any moment he could step into a pothole and that will be a ‘stumble’ caught on TV!

Last week, Sri Lanka finally agreed to let India operate the Mattala airport situated about 40 kms north-east of the Hambantota seaport that China has built in the southern tip of the island nation. China has acquired 60 per cent stake in the project as Sri Lanka was unable to repay the debt to the Chinese company that built it.

The last Monsoon session of the current Parliament is scheduled to begin from July 18 and last till August 10. Already there are speculations that this too will be a wash out session as in the past as the Parliament has not been functioning, as it should in the past two decades and more. For instance, this year’s budget session was the least productive since 2000 according to the PRS Legislative research, a Delhi-based think tank. The entire annual budget of over 24 lakh cores was guillotined and even the Finance Bill 2018 was passed without discussion. The Speaker did not allow the opposition sponsored No-Confidence motion against the Modi government citing disruptions in the house. Incidentally, itcosts about Rs. 2.5 lakh per minute to conduct a Parliament session, which makes the loss incurred for every wasted hour Rs 1.5 crore.

Bill Clinton writes in his new book 'The Missing President': “When you find a mountain to expose in one person or party, you have to pick a molehill on the other side and make it into a mountain to avoid being accused of bias. The built-up molehills also have large benefits: increased coverage on the evening news, millions of retweets, and more talk-show fodder. When the mountains and molehills all look the same, campaigns and governments devote too little time and energy debating the issues that matter most to our people. Even when we do that, we’re often drowned out by the passion of the day.”

BJP president Amit Shah’s much-hyped ‘mission Kerala’ has turned out to be a dismal flop. The crisis bedeviling the BJP in the state had been caused by the unilateral decision of the BJP national leadership to remove former state chief Kummanam Rajashekharan and shunt him off to distant Mizoram as Governor.

Here is how it stands. A set of people wants ‘Azaadi from India for Kashmir’. Another set wants ‘Azaadi for Kashmir to join Pakistan’. The second set includes separatists and Pakistan. The first set includes JNU scholar Shehla Rashid and others of her ilk in what Arnab Goswami calls ‘Tukde-Tukde Gang’. How about a third set: Indians who want ‘India’s Azaadi from Kashmir’?

Barely two months ago the farmers of Madhya Pradesh had hit the streets demanding minimum support price (MSP) for their produce. The state government was not too willing to concede to the demands of the farmers. The agitation even turned violent and at least nine farmers lost their lives in the police firing.

On 4th July, 2018, in a huge relief to the AAP Government in Delhi, and in a strong rebuke to the obstructionist behaviour of the Lieutenant Governor (‘LG’) of Delhi, the Constitution Bench of Supreme Court unanimously held that LG is an administrative head in the limited sense, and is not a Governor. He is bound by the aid and advise of NCT Government in areas other than those exempted by the Constitution, i.e., land, police and public order. The judgment was given by the Chief Justice Dipak Mishra, Justice A.K. Sikri, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice Ashok Bhushan. In the majority opinion penned by the Chief Justice Mishra, the Court categorically held that “the status of NCT of Delhi is sui generis, a class apart, and the status of the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi is not that of a Governor of a State, rather he remains the Administrator in a limited sense.

It may be for the first time that the union health ministry has engaged itself in a serious exercise of conducting a census of over two million healthcare professionals and facilities across the country. Health Minister Jagat Prasad Nadda wants to complete the exercise within the next two months. Lakhs of hospitals, doctors, clinics, diagnostic labs, pharmacies and nursing homes will be mapped under this census on over 1,400 variables including infrastructure and performance of the facilities. The census result should help the government not only map the geographical locations of these healthcare facilities, but also measure their performance.