View Articles

Over the past nearly three decades, some of India’s Constitutional institutions have been turned into one of the major money-minting sources by those in power or their cronies. The latest case is of the BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh’s Vyapam job scam in which influential people have misused the Constitutional body for getting admissions into technical institutions and for securing jobs for their favourites and for making huge money.

BJP chief Amit Shah’s “Mission Bihar” primarily focused on demolish Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's image of “Shushan Babu”. It was expected of Shah that he would take out some innovative idea from his magical hat to wrest the initiative from Nitish and project the BJP as the savior of Bihar.

Global financial markets turned turbulent in the first week of July with Greece facing a chaotic exit from the Euro-Zone and a more ominous rout in China's stocks, defying authorities' repeated interventions to stabilise market and preserve growth at around 7 per cent. These two new risks spreading panic to markets around the world have already led to a mark-down of global growth to 3.3 per cent in 2015 while IMF hopefully projects stronger recovery to 3.8 per cent in 2016, in its latest Outlook Update.

The Congress Party is in a belligerent mood trying to occupy the political space it lost after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. It never expected to get enough ammunition to attack the Modi government so early in its term. Now there is a bonanza of issues from Lalitgate to Vyapam to Maharashtra scams all in a row to nail the government in the Monsoon session of Parliament. Whether by coincidence or by design, these so called scams are tumbling out one after the other from some BJP ruled states. While the Congress has a short memory of its own scams, the opposition parties are more than happy over the happenings in the BJP expecting further fights within the warring groups.

Hindi in Devanagari script is the official language of the Indian Union government and some state governments. Hindi derives its primacy from numbers. According to the 2001 census, 41.03 per cent of the population was Hindi speakers. However, the census definition of Hindi is extremely wide and people are counted as Hindi speakers even if they don’t call their language “Hindi”. Census Hindi includes Western Hindi (but not Urdu), Eastern Hindi, non-Maithili Bihari languages (including Bhojpuri), Pahari languages and Rajasthani languages – even if the speakers did not report their language as “Hindi”. These numbers don’t do justice to the real diversity of the languages that are counted as “Hindi”. I have often experienced this first-hand. Let me recount an example.

Lalu Prasad might have been swearing by the socialist legacy of Ram Manohar Lohia, but the RJD chief is certainly not averse to practicising the Manuvadi dynastic culture. Only a week back justifying his move Lalu had said, “Since son is the natural heir of father. Obviously there is no harm if I promote my sons.” The urge for promoting the dynastic rule is so acute that he is even ready to drop his sitting party legislators.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chief Minister Oommen Chandy is, understandably, on cloud nine. So is the A group led by him in the Congress following the spectacular victory the Congress candidate scored in the Aruvikkara by-election. But there are others who do not share the feeling of euphoria the CM and the A group are soaking in.

The ensuing monsoon session of the Parliament is very likely to witness the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliate Bharatiya Mazdoor Sang protest against the Labour Code on Industrial Relations Bill 2015 that merges two major acts, namely, Industrial Disputes Act and Trade Unions Act into a code. The largest central trade union in terms of membership strength, recorded by the Registrar of Trade Unions is on the other side of the barricade, hand in hand with not only the Congress-affiliate, Indian National Congress, but also the AITUC and CITU labour fronts of the Communist Party of India and Communist Party of India (Marxist).

BHOPAL: Is Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan on way out? Reports published in local newspapers give clear cut indication to this effect. Even such newspapers who used to indulge in Chief Minister's sycophancy, have also gone against him. Dainik Bhaskar which claims to be largest circulated Hindi daily has carried its editorial on the front page. Front page editorials are rare and they are published when any extra-ordinary event takes place. Clear-cut indication has been given in the daily Free Press.

The Greek people have given their unequivocal verdict in Sunday’s referendum against the imposition of the unsustainable austerity programme imposed by the troika of lenders in their bail-out package for Greece. Despite continuous propaganda by the pro-west media and the anti-Syriza politicians in Athens, 61 per cent of the citizens who participated, gave their full support to their Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s appeal to say “No” to the bail-out package and help the beleaguared coalition government led by Syriza to be empowered to re-negotiate the bailout package terms in favour of the Greek people.