Wordsmiths & Newsplumbers

BY R.K.MISRA   Never have so many suffered so much for the sins of so few.   As the puny and the petty head nations, a leaderless   world hovers on the brink   desperately clutching at miracle cures and searching for   economic succour . Neither seem at hand. The pandemic crisis is best summed up by free reference website, Worldometers which monitors COVID-19 round the clock. As of July 25, 2020, the outbreak of the coronavirus has been confirmed in around 210 countries or territories. The virus has infected 16,048,238 people worldwide and the number of deaths have totaled 644,679 with 9,808,404 having recovered . The disturbing aspect, says Ian Simple writing in the Irish Times, is that people   who have recovered   may lose their immunity to the disease within months, with research suggesting the virus could re-infect people year after year like common colds.   India ,as of July 25, with 1,382,995 cases, 467,124 active infections,883,793 recoveries and 32,078 deaths is now pl

BY R.K.MISRA Rahul Gandhi is a ‘pappu’ and Priyanka Gandhi , is a ‘babli’ but every time   the two open their mouth, why does the   BJP get verbal diarrhoea ? Cold derision to deep embedded antagonism has marked the targeting of the two along with their mother Sonia Gandhi, the widow of   former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who was the victim of a terrorist attack as was his mother, late prime minister Indira Gandhi gunned down . BJP leader Sushma Swaraj threatened to tonsure her head in 2004 if duly elected Sonia Gandhi   became Prime Minister but had no objection sharing space in Parliament   with 120 MPs facing criminal charges(ADR). If the saffron set-up is to be believed India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru not only fathered a daughter but also all that is ‘ill’ with India. And then off course the ‘designated’ trolls would have you believe that Indira Gandhi’s parsi husband was a muslim and so was her   Kashmiri pandit grandfather ,Motilal ! Convincingly trounced in

https://quaintnquirky.blogspot.com/2020/04/loved-and-lost-dedicated-to-grieving.html

BY   R.K.MISRA India   grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic is beginning to feel the first tremors of the economic shake-up caused by the 21-day shutdown as corporates , business, trade and industry, even public sector undertakings are burning midnight oil to wriggle out of prior commitments. The restriction on human movement   has had a spiraling effect on every aspect of human life   whether it is business or manufacturing, commerce or construction, trade or transport. Once   the attention from the control of the virus shifts a swarm of issues is expected to occupy attention for quite some time to come. A   major one-amongst the lot of them- will be the delays caused in meeting contractual obligations. These will be spread over a huge canvass from construction contracts to manufacturing and supply agreements, from   professional service providers to engineering contractors and their suppliers and even financiers who will be grappling with cost over runs due to time slipp

  BY R.K.MISRA Coming events cast their shadows ahead. The BJP is a bad loser - at least on the face of it.  Simply put, the party held   three of the four seats from Gujarat in the Rajya Sabha which are up for re-election on March 26. Now it possesses numbers only to win two seats but chose to put up a third candidate at the last minute giving indications of its ‘unethical’   intentions to either poach or induce intentional disqualification of Congress votes. The BJP has a history of such machinations in the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.The likelihood of postponement of polls in view of the carona outbreak will hardly make a difference for need has long given way to greed. And true to form the dice began to roll when five Congress legislators resigned in the run up to voting day. That some such thing was in the offing had been in the air in the corridors of power   here for some time. The speculation had gained in intens

BY R.K.MISRA There is this tale about the wise man and the fool.  The wise man does at once what the fool does finally, said Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political philosophy and science. Whether Jyotiraditya Scindia is the wiseman   and the Congress a fool is best left for posterity to decipher but   current facts bode a different political script . This is not about Jyotiraditya Scindia who took 18 benefit-filled years to realise that the grass on the BJP side was greener. Nor is it about the fall of the Kamal Nath led Congress government or the consequential rise of a possible BJP equivalent   in Madhya Pradesh.  Again, it is also not about the political   engineering genius of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his   party chief turned home minister Amit Shah. This is about the Indian National Congress. In a canvass that spans centuries   many ‘Jyotis’ lighted up and extinguished. Even father Madhavrao left Congress and returned to the fold for

BY R.K.MISRA Estimates may deign to deceive but figures ferret out   facts. In Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, the government’s cumulative public debt has shot up to an astronomical Rs 2,96,268 crores which is   almost 75,000 crores   higher than the size of the   state’s budget estimates   of Rs,2,17,287   for   2020-21 placed in the State Assembly on February 26. The projections for 2022-23 see this   debt burgeoning to   Rs 3,71,989 crores in 2022-23.An assertion in the State Assembly would have you believe that a every child in the state is born to a burden of Rs 48,000. On 31 March 2012 this figure was   Rs 23,163 (calculating the state population as 6 crores). Gujarat hit headlines recently when it splurged to give a spectacular welcome to US President Donald Trump during his three hour visit to Ahmedabad. Gujarat’s public debt has been consistent with the rise of chief minister Narendra Modi who took charge of the state in Octo

BY R.K.MISRA There is an element of irony as India and Gujarat roll out the red carpet to welcome US President Donald Trump. The Narendra Modi government move to give the US access to its dairy and poultry markets may help bail out the US milk industry but is set to   hurt Gujarat and consequently India the most. According to a report in 2017 India contributed 21 per cent of the world’s milk production making it the largest milk producer in the world. This was made largely possible by 73 million marginal farmers and landless labourers working in the dairy sector and possessing an average of one or two milch animals. The World Dairy Situation Report,2019 states that the US milk yield per cow is the highest in the world at 10,500 litres per cow as against 1,715 litres per cow in India which is the second lowest in the globe ,only after Pakistan. As a big-wig of the co-operative dairy sector in Gujarat put it on condition of anonymity, a trade deal with India may help

BY R.K.MISRA What is common between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and American President   Donald Trump?   A king size ego, giant size events and   an obsession with walls that separate rather than bridges that bind !   Modi’s Gujarat is fond of   comparing   his brainchild, the Statue of Unity(SOU) as being twice as high as America’s Statue of Liberty. Again, Houston’s ‘Howdy Modi” last year should be   both outclassed and outnumbered two to one   in the ‘Namaste President Trump’ at Ahmedabad. If the US President   is building a 576- mile wall. costing   $20 million a mile, to fence off his country from Mexico, the civic body in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat is   at work building a wall of its own too. Only that this one is to keep the slums of   his model state out of Trump’s sight. Then again, the Trump extravaganza is the inaugural event at the 1.10 lakh capacity, biggest stadium in the world   built at a cost over Rs 800 crores. It is un

BY R.K.MISRA History repeats itself -first as a mistake, second time as stupidity and thereafter as a tragedy-invariably with lethal costs. It   began in 2002   as an experiment in crass communal cleaving to win elections in Gujarat   and has endured up to   February 2020 as the BJP pulled out all stops in ethnic animosity to wrest India’s capital, Delhi from the Aam Admi Party(AAP) only to fall flat on its face. A recap would be in order. If AAP chief minister Arvind Kejriwal sought   votes for his work, BJP toiled to unseat him through a vicious witch-hunt. The Prime Minister termed the ongoing Shaheen Bagh protests in Delhi, a proliferating mindset which needed to be checked. His Home Minister Amit Shah wanted voters pressing the saffron button so hard that those protesting the   CAA(Citizens Amendment Act) and NRC(National Register of Citizens)   scamper home by counting evening . Again Union minister Prakash Javadekar termed Kejriwal a terrorist and BJP’s Uttar Prad