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It was the BJP’s national executive meeting in Goa which gave a new lease of life to the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in 2002, when the BJP leader LK Advani and the party backed him to the full after the Godhara riots, while the then Prime Minister Vajpayee was critical of the non-action by the Gujarat government in containing the riots.

The debate around Maoist insurgency in India is stuck within two fundamentally opposite views. One view is that this insurgency is simply a law and order issue and should be dealt by force alone and the other view propounds that it’s more of a social and political problem arising out of decade-long alienation and oppression of tribal people.

BHOPAL: Both the ruling BJP and the main opposition Congress, recently, held marathon meetings to chalk out their respective strategies for the Vidhan Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh, which are due in the month of November this year. While BJP held its meeting in Gwalior, Congress chose Bhopal as the venue of its conclave. While Congress succeeded in sending a positive message, BJP could not do so. Reports of the two meetings, which appeared in the newspapers, summed up the mood prevailing there.

The 17th century Dutch philosopher, Hugo Grotius, whose pioneering work on laws of war and peace laid the foundation of the modern international law, likened diplomacy to a long-distance marathon run and war to a 100-yard dash. Patience is key to good diplomacy which Grotius characterized with the creation of a win-win situation for parties involved. Belligerence is the product of impatience, jealousy, rivalry and quest for supremacy. War starts when diplomacy fails.

Perhaps no other country has as great and complex a maze of laws and rules that give arbitrary or unlimited powers to the state as India. And no other state has abused them as comprehensively as has India to censor free expression, manipulate opinion, curb dissent, criminalise protest, and harshly victimise people—in order to impose manifestly harmful decisions on them. The maze includes scores of new laws (200, according to one estimate), in addition to the Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code and Indian Police Act, inherited from the colonial era.

The euphoria of social activism has evaporated. That it lacked staying power was evident early enough when Anna Hazare’s decision to shift his venue of protest from Delhi to Mumbai in December, 2011, exposed the movement’s fragility. In contrast to the surging crowds, which attended Anna’s meetings in the national capital during the summer of that year, large empty spaces were visible in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla complex ground when Anna held his meeting.

Well-wishers of Punjab must have been shocked by the spate of recent worrisome happenings in the state. To mention a few: the promises of ensuring free and fair elections and zero tolerance to corruption and lawlessness have been violated more than kept: a minister -third one- faces allegations of promoting corruption and nepotism; and, the police which is supposed to maintain law and order has itself become law violators by acting at the behest of ruling Akali leaders and their district minions.

In the midst of India’s current slow down in growth, India is said to be the third largest economy in the world. This is what the OECD has put out in its latest review of the global economy. Third largest, mind you, in purchasing power parity terms only.

KOCHI : There is some good news. The official weather forecasting agency, India Meteorological Department (IMD) has confirmed that South West Monsoon has entered Kerala coast in due time on June 1

New Delhi: Padma Shree Dr Avinash Chander took over as Scientific Advisor to Indian Defence Minister and Secretary Defence Research & Development and Director General of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).