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Showing posts from October, 2015

India In Anguish

BY R.K.MISRA India today is a sitting duck. Like a turkey voting for an early Christmas. Let’s sample a recent day’s national headlines. It no longer informs. It screams. Hatred in Mumbai. Violence in New Delhi. Fanaticism in Bengaluru. Punjab on the boil. Protests in Kashmir. Trucker killed in Udhampur over rumours of cow slaughter. The reference is to the storming of  the Cricket Control Board meeting discussing an Indo-Pak cricket series by the Shiv Sainiks in Mumbai, Hindu Sena workers smearing black paint on the face of J&K legislator Abdul Rashid for ‘disrespecting’ the cow, in Delhi and BJP activists harassing an Australian couple for sporting a tattoo of a goddess in Bengaluru. For Rashid this is his second experience of violence. The first time over he was assaulted within the august Jammu and Kashmir Assembly by ruling BJP legislators themselves. The Shiv Sainiks have already done the smearing act with former L.K. Advani aide, Sudheendra Kulkarni. Re-wind by two

Blows, Bruises And Scars

BY R.K. MISRA Wounds bleed. They also stain. The Patidar (Patel) agitation which began as a blow meant to bruise Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel is now a bleeding wound with a spreading stain inching forward to sully the crispy kurta of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Gujarat is facing the spectre of ethnic strife with the Anandiben Patel government  caught in a cleft-stick between the pro and anti-reservationists and the ‘leaders’ of the embattled police who have been at the receiving end, rolling up their sleeves menacingly. The problems stand further compounded by her BJP counterpart in Rajasthan Vasundhararaje Scindia  who on  September 22,2015 got the  State Assembly to clear two Bills providing five per cent quota in jobs and education to the Gujjars and some other groups under a new category of special Backward Classes besides 14 per cent for the economically weaker sections of upper castes-families with annual incomes upto Rs 2.50 lakh. The additional reservati