Wordsmiths & Newsplumbers

BY R.K.MISRA The political developments in neighbouring Maharashtra where a Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government   assumed office   has had a trickle down effect in Gujarat with both the ruling BJP and the Congress opposition going into revamp mode. Though the process   was 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 Narendra   Modi and home minister and BJP chief Amit Shah. Both had been assured by chief minister Vijay Rupani and state party chief   Jitu Vaghani of a clean sweep. The Gujarat   results, which came alongside Ma

BY R.K.MISRA Narendra Modi just cannot take no for an answer !  Not even from Presidents, the last one   during his own rule at the Centre. It took a fourth one, installed by his own government, to get the nod for the Gujarat   Control 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 this   Bill is that intercepted telephonic conversations wou

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’s   legitimacy 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 given   the 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 t

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 acquired    for 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