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Irrespective of the outcome of a vote in Lok Sabha on the most controversial reform the Congress-led UPA-II has brazenly advanced, FDI with majority holding in multi-brand retail, in a growingly volatile political India, the countdown has begun for the national poll, which could come off even by the summer of 2013.

By secretly hanging Ajmal Kasab for the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, the government committed a gross Constitutional impropriety and almost wrecked the chances of the attacks’ masterminds being brought to justice with Kasab as an invaluable witness. Kasab’s execution in Operation X exposes the crassness of “the hangman’s justice” and should trigger a demand for the abolition of the death penalty.

From the scenario of the sixties, let me recall an episode in October 1960, of contemporary relevance. Then Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, on his last visit to India, addresses a press conference comprising some 300 Indian and foreign journalists on the roof-top of Rashtrapati Bhavan. The theme: India-China boundary dispute and its solution.

The assertion by a Shiv Sena apparatchik that the place in Mumbai’s Shivaji Park where Bal Thackeray’s body was cremated is not a memorial but a mandir, and that the organisation will not listen to any diktat for its removal by the government or the judiciary, recalls similar statements about the Ram temple in Ayodhya. At that time, too, the BJP and other saffron outfits had claimed that the belief about the birthplace of Lord Ram was a matter of faith and, therefore, beyond judicial arbitration.

New Delhi: India is a sellers' market and consumers are at receiving end. Investors are also facing great difficulties because of middle men are ruling the roost. Consumers seldom get the value they pay for in terms of quality, quantity and services. Moreover, they are being charged exorbitantly, and are at the mercy of the sellers. Consumers are being exploited even when the providers of goods and services are government controlled agencies.In this scenario, they need protection from all corners of the society, including the Media, along with a stronger and effective legislation and legal mechanism.