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Showing posts from May, 2016

Bushfire in Modiland

BY R.K.MISRA The transfer of yet another Gujarat officer to New Delhi should hardly have been news. After all, many key pos¬itions in the national capital have been held by Gujarat-cadre officers since Narendra Modi became prime minister. But when the transfer is from state DGP to DG (Fire Services, Civil Def¬ence and Home Guards) and decided on without consulting the officer, and if the new DGP is an accused in cases of extra-judicial encounter out on bail, eyebrows are bound to be raised. It was a holiday in Lutyens’ Delhi—Ramnavami—on April 15, a relaxed Friday for the central bureaucracy, when the orders came from the MHA for the immediate transfer of P.C. Thakur. Such alacrity is normally reserved for ‘top priority’ movement ordered at a very high level. Gandhingar too was also at ease after the Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations the day before. The chief secretary was at home, unaware of the development until his att¬ention was drawn to order no. 6/6/2016-EO(SM-1) of the secreta

The Caged Quota Crusader

BY R.K.MISRA On the lines of writer George R R Martin’s famous quote “Oft-times a very small man can cast a very large shadow…”a hitherto unknown  22 year old son of a farmer sprang from nowhere to take reins of the leadership of  a pro-quota movement for a dominant community in Gujarat. Hardik Patel, a commerce graduate from an Ahmedabad college is just an average youth with no intellectual pretensions .Fond of cricket ,he like most of his ilk ,was happy in his small town pursuits when the frustrations of the jobless young and the plummeting economics of their agrarian elders infected him. As their numbers swelled ,the restlessness of the young welded with the plight of the old who had paid through their nose for the education of their wards only to find them idling away their time aimlessly or struggle in ill paid jobs .For well over a decade the then  Narendra Modi government in Gujarat had reeled out huge figures of employment through year round extravaganzas with exotic name