Wordsmiths & Newsplumbers

BY R.K.MISRA
With a critically important election in Delhi and the country in the grip of adebilitating CAA-NRC student stir, there has to be more thanjust ‘kite flying’ that brings union Home Minister Amit Shahtwice to Gujarat in a matter of ten days?
Ostensibly there were a string of engagements that dotted his official calendar during his visits but these hardly reveal the complete picture. For the record,the union home minister landed on home turf in the night of January 10 and left January 12 morning. He was back on the night of January 13  and after a two day engagement leftfor Delhi again.
That Shah should be spending extended time in his home state whenhe has a packed plate in the crucial Delhi Assembly elections andan overflowing cup of woes in the proliferating nationwide student protests on the CAA-NRC issue, is a pointer to the serious business on hand. While for the record Shah may have just spent two full working days in the course of his two visits but it is the oil burnt…

BY R.K.MISRA
Look before you leap and think before you speak for words return from the past to haunt the future.
Who would know it better than Prime Minister Narendra Modi. When safely saddled in Gujarat as chief minister, he would haul the Manmohan Singh led UPA government over the coals for rising prices of onions. In his speeches Modi conjured up a scenario wherein onions would be the prime target of thieves and people would need to keep them in  safe deposit vaults.
Ironically, India is headed towards precisely such a situation under  Modi rule with the social media overflowing with replays of his old onion speeches as well as film song parodies centering around the Indian staple !
From gems, jewellery, cash and hoards, even mobiles and ATM break-ins, the theft of choice is fast shifting to the edible vegetable: Onions!
In Gujarat the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and union home minister and BJP president, Amit Shah thieves are now targeting onions. With the wedding seas…

BY R.K.MISRA
The political developments in neighbouring Maharashtra where a Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government assumed officehas had a trickle down effect in Gujarat with both the ruling BJP and the Congress opposition going into revamp mode.
Though the processwas triggered off in Gujarat after the by-election results in which underdog Congress came from behind to bag three of the total six seats and narrowly missed a fourth one. It gained urgency when the BJP found itself outwitted and outclassed in government formation in Maharashtra despite bagging the highest number of states. If the BJP manoeuvre is borne out of a debacle, an energized Congress is cutting flab to become a lean-mean fighting machine.
Gujarat is the home state of both Prime Minister NarendraModi and home minister and BJP chief Amit Shah. Both had been assured by chief minister Vijay Rupani and state party chiefJitu Vaghani of a clean sweep. The Gujaratresults, which came alongside Maharashtra and Haryana ,proved a shoc…

BY R.K.MISRA
Narendra Modi just cannot take no for an answer ! 
Not even from Presidents, the last oneduring his own rule at the Centre. It took a fourth one, installed by his own government, to get the nod for the GujaratControl of Terrorism and organized Crime Bill. The three earlier Presidents- APJ Abdul Kalam, Pratibha Patil and Pranab Mukherjee had sent the Bill back.
“ President Ram Nath Kovind has given his assent to the Gujarat Control of Terrorism and Organised Crime(GCTOC) Bill”, Gujarat Minister of State for Home, Pradipsinh Jadeja announced in the state capital, Gandhinagar on November 7 adding ,“the dream of Prime Minister Modi has finally been fulfilled today”.
According to the minister, the provisions of the bill will prove crucial in dealing with terrorism and organized crimes such as contract killing , ponzi schemes, narcotics trade and extortion rackets. ”One of the key features of thisBill is that intercepted telephonic conversations would now be considered as legitimat…

BY R.K.MISRA
A generation brought up on Phantom comics in India would not easily forget the tribal way of communicating through drum beats in the jungles of Denkali. Swift, effective and encrypted.
In similar fashion, the outcome of the recently concluded polls mirrored effective, unspoken communication from west India extremity of Maharashtra through Gujarat to north India’s Haryana stretching onto Bihar. The results came in on October 24, 2019.
In no uncertain terms, BJP’slegitimacy to induced defection and largesse of party tickets and positions to the turncoats- by now upgraded to the level of it’s national strategy- was firmly giventhe order of the boot .
The most important thing in communication is to hear what is not being said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party commander Amit Shah, long used to the echo of their own voices, abysmally failed to decipher the silence. These elections to the Maharashtra and Haryana Vidhan Sabhas and bye-elections to 51 State Assembly seats i…

BY R.K.MISRA
Foundation stones laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi litter India’s cities, towns and villages but there are few projects which he has pursued with such perseverance and tenacity as the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train one. However, the overwhelming state power notwithstanding, farmers whose lands are being acquiredfor the Modi government’s dream project have no plans to give up the fight. The project, estimated to cost Rs 1.10 lakh crore, is being built with assistance of Rs 88,087 crore from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) through a 50-year loan at an interest rate of 0.1 per cent. The remaining cost is being borne by the Gujarat and Maharashtra governments. The foundation stone of the project was formally laid in Ahmedabad on September 14, 2017, in the presence of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Originally, the first train was to run by March 2023 but for reasons unstated, the prime minister has advanced the date to 2022 to coincide with 75 years of Inde…