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The catchy slogan, Naya Pakistan, riding on which the meteoric advent of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf took place eight years ago now confronts its supremo and the Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan Niazi in the 75th anniversary year of the birth of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s dream nation. Two years ago, the PM, flanked by' Foreign Minister Shah Mahmud Qureshi, adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, adviser to Prime Minister on commerce Abdul Razak Dawood, and minister of state for overseas Pakistanis Zulfi Bukhari, conceitedly told a packed house, mostly comprising non-resident Pakistanis in Washington,” People ask where is Naya Pakistan?’…It is being created in front of your eyes. "Democracy is successful when the leadership is answerable."

Independence Day is something special this year, not only because we are celebrating the 75th Independence Day, or beginning a yearlong celebration during the 75th year of Independence, but also because it reminds us about the threat of modern day slavery of the working class and their struggle to protect their rights to decent work and social security.

At long last, the opposition parties are showing signs of unprecedented unity in taking a common position against the BJP government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The abrupt ending of the Parliament session by the ruling regime on August 11 instead of the scheduled August13, was a deliberate decision to avoid any discussion on the allegation of snooping by Pegasus software. The Government knew what it had done in 2017.Already French, Israel and US government agencies have initiated investigations. It was a compulsion for the Modi Government to avoid any such move.

Much has been and will be written about Justice Rohinton F. Nariman, who retires from the Supreme Court on August 12.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is striving hard to exploit the issue of Pegasus to unite the opposition parties and also use it to revive the Congress which has virtually turned into a moribund organisation during the last five years.

Schools look deserted, barring a few that have been reopened. Liveliness and laughter of the innocent souls, the children, our future, are locked in their homes, while the country will be celebrating 75th Independence Day, on August 15, 2021, and then the whole year as 75th year of Independence. Government of India and many other institutions have great plans for the celebrations even when our children have been out of school for one an half year, suffering great loss of learning and even the essential mental ability.

India is a federation of states, or should it be called a union of states? The Constitution-makers made the Centre more powerful. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin prefers to call it ‘union government’. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which seems to believe that India came into being on May 26, 2014, is using the extra-strong Centre to forward the BJP agenda, the Sangh parivaar’s blueprint, for India, without the states putting spokes in the Centre’s wheel.

India on completion of 74 years of the Independence from the British colonial rule on August 15, 1947 projects a very grim picture with all the public institutions corroded, hollowed out and dashed from within so much so that they cannot stand up to provide theneeded checks and balances on the democratically elected Union Government much less safeguard people’s fundamental rights enshrined in the rule of law based Constitutional democratic governance. Government today is more ruthless and repressive than the pre-Independence era, police mostly corrupt, partisan and oppressive, justicefor general public elusive, unemployment, poverty, hunger, ill-health, mal nutrition, starvation remaining all time high and endemic. Fundamental rights to life, right to privacy of data, right to Internet, right to freedom, right to liberty, democratic rights, human rights are all decimated. Seemingly, government is out to make India a surveillance state.

In these Corona pandemic- plagued hard times, news that fast-paced railway travel between Kolkata and Dhaka megacities — the two biggest growing urban conglomerations in South Asia — may be reduced to four/five hours from 10/11 hours as of now, comes as a pleasant surprise. If ongoing construction work on major infra projects in Bangladesh runs on schedule, this remark able upgrading in bilateral traffic movement would be possible by March 2024, estimate Dhaka-based experts.

To say that Members of Parliament are having a gala time disrupting proceedings of the two houses would be wrong. Climbing atop tables, hurling paper missiles, throwing the rulebook at the Chair! These are not signs of MPs having a good time. These are indications of gross mistakes committed and the reactions they elicit. After all, even politicians are fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, honest law-abiding citizens with anathema for wrongs.