View Articles

Vaccine net expansion in India’s arsenal in fighting the COVID-19 battle is certainly a wise decision of the Modi government, though taken only after a great loss of lives and livelihoods, and tremendous pressure from the people, experts, and the opposition. However, it may not prove to be a magic wand, especially at a time when taming of the second COVID-19 wave has just got tougher than ever before, with unprecedented spike in infection, positivity, and mortality rates. The decision, therefore, needs to be followed by better strategy, faster than the spread of the infection.

The current assembly elections in West Bengal are showing some similarities in tenor of campaigning and the participation of the Prime Minister as was evident in the 1987 assembly elections. But the actors are different. In 1987, Rajiv Gandhi as the Congress Prime Minister took it as a personal challenge in the 1987 poll to dethrone the Left Front Government led by the chief minister Jyoti Basu while in the current assembly elections, the Left Front is having a small side role.

Indian Railways (IR) continues to live far beyond its means veering round eventual sickness. Caught in a low incremental growth path trap, it continues to ignore ominous signs of ending up downhill to financial misery. Its Operating Ratio (OR), indicator of its earnings vis-à-vis expenditure has reached the maximum leaving little or nil gap between revenue and growing expenditure that makes the behemoth financially and for that matter commercially unviable. Aided by growing demoralization and demotivation of its work force over privatization of its assets and operations with unprecedented reduction in employment opportunity under the present NDA Union Government, IR is on the brink of bankruptcy. If one looks at 0.29 per cent rate of return on capital in 2019-20, the future of IR is worrisome.

New Delhi: Hockey India on Tuesday condoled the death of Balbir Singh Junior who was part of the Team that won Silver at the Asian Games held in Tokyo, Japan in 1958.

New Delhi: PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal will spearhead 48-member (27 women and 21 men) Indian challenge while Malaysia has fielded the second largest squad with 26 shuttlers (10 women and 16 men) in the Yonex-Sunrise India Open to be conducted behind the closed doors at the KD Jadhav Indoor Hall in New Delhi from May 11-16.

As the Biden administration orchestrates a massive effort to open vaccination against COVID to every adult by April 19, a “shocking imbalance” in vaccination is occurring globally.

In the contemporary liberal-democratic era, where the right to personal liberty is near-universally recognised as of utmost importance and courts around the world readily interfere in cases concerning its infringement, preventive detention laws need to be examined with skepticism. They are a tool for detaining individuals and curtailing their right to liberty, not because by reason of being convicted or under-trial for an offence, but for the sole reason of an apprehension of them committing an act prejudicial to law and order.

The Left politics in the country presently is in a never-ending crisis. The leadership of the Left tries to talk more about development, providing jobs to the youth and improving the social conditions of the poor. However, when it comes to votes, the Left fails to get votes. The latest Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) poll results, where the CPI(M) led Left Front even failed to open its account, once again validate that the Left is in serious trouble.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala High Court’s order that elections to the three Rajya Sabha seats, which will fall vacant in the State on April 21, be held before the current Assembly’s term expires, has come as a big relief to the Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) Government. The notification has been issued by the Chief Electoral Officer on Tuesday.

Amid all the heat and hype of electioneering in West Bengal, one fact stands out prominently and incontrovertibly. The Election Commission has totally failed to conduct peaceful polls in West Bengal. What happened at Sitalkuchi in North Bengal on April 10 has got nationwide publicity because five persons were killed but incidents of poll-related violence have been taking place from the beginning. It is ostensibly to prevent violence that the EC took the unusual decision of holding Bengal polls in eight phases. It is again to maintain peace that the EC requisitioned 80,000 Central paramilitary forces in West Bengal. It has requisitioned another 71,000 for the next four phases.