Wordsmiths & Newsplumbers

BY R.K.MISRA The death of 24 lions in as many days in Sasan Gir is evidence of the systemic failure of the western India state of Gujarat to look after these mighty cats and its false pride in not relocating some of them to neighbouring Madhya Pradesh. The worst fears of the Supreme Court, which ruled in favour of an alternate home for Asiatic lions in Madhya Pradesh five years ago, seem to be coming true. Twenty four lions have perished in the last 24 days ending October 15 in their only home of Sasan Gir in Gujarat.   The government, which initially tried to cover this up by attributing the deaths to infighting, has now been forced to admit that many were caused by canine distemper and babesiosis infection. Based on a PIL, the Supreme Court on October 3 questioned Gujarat and the centre over these deaths. “This is extremely serious...so many lions have died”, observed a bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur. “Lions must be protected. Why so many deaths...you mu...

BY R.K.MISRA Gujarat is the flavor of the Indian season. Mahatma Gandhi, the   man who won us independence is Gujarat’s gift to India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi who flagged off the country’s year long ,high profile celebration of the Mahatma’s 150 th birth anniversary on October 2,2018, hails from here   as does Amit Shah who runs the ruling BJP .There are two state Governors and additionally a long line of bureaucrats, technocrats and politicians   from the state doing duty in Delhi and around the country . Two days before he kicked off , the India-wide celebrations, the Prime Minister spent a busy day in Gujarat on September 30 with a   slew of back to back engagements. One of them was the inauguration of the World class museum at the Alfred High School in Rajkot   where the Mahatma had studied. Just   two kms from it is the Rashtriya Shaala , a 97 year old school founded by Gandhiji which closed down for want of funds two months ago....

BY R.K.MISRA Caught between a rock and a hard place, t he Vijay Rupani led BJP government in Gujarat has ended up tying itself in knots over the just concluded   indefinite fast of   patidar quota stir leader Hardik Patel.   The protest fast which began on August 25,saw the youth leader enlarge his demands to include farmer’s debt waiver and   emerge as a bridgehead for the national opposition, BJP rebels ,even garnering support from NDA ally,Shiv Sena. He   gave up his indefinite fast on the 19 th day on September 12,2018 but not before he brought divergent sects of his community on a common platform in a show of unheralded unity. Present   on the occasion of his fast breaking were key leaders of   the major sub-castes of patidars, not very often seen on a common community platform. As the reverberations from his stir spread out in concentric circles countrywide, the BJP was at it’s wits end dealing with the political fall-out of a...

BY  R.K.MISRA After a life embedded in flowing prose and lyrical poetry, embellishing harsh politics with soft imagery, Atal Bihari Vajpayee has entered the domain of the dead. A sombre nation spared time from lynchings and launchings to lament. He passed away on August 16,2018. The dust has settled.The man is no more but images linger. Of ironies and contrasts, of the first saffron prime minister viewed from the home state of the next one. Of the time when there was melody in politics and the heart stirred to a captivating tune. Now feet stomp  stadiums to shrill-shriek speeches  and snuff lives on the street. As in his last days so  in 1980, Vajpayee stood straddling the divide between irrelevance and irreverence. The 1977 post-Emergency Janata Party experiment, which had brought the first non-Congress government to power headed by gujarati Morarji Desai , had come unstuck. The contentious issue was the dual membership of the erstwhile Jan Sangh members. T...

FROM R.K.MISRA If you can’t beat them, deplete them. After over twenty years of uninterrupted rule in its model state, Gujarat, the BJP is still  foraging for rival’s crumbs to fill it’s overloaded basket. And so it was that on July 14,it inducted Mahendrasinh Vaghela   ,former Congress legislator and son of the eternal rebel, Shankersinh Vaghela into their party. Earlier on July 3,Kunvarji Bavalia a senior Congress leader had switched to the BJP and was gifted a full- fledged cabinet ministership in the Gujarat government the same day. Mahendrasinh had been elected to the Gujarat Assembly in 2012 on a Congress ticket from Bayad constituency in Central Gujarat but had quit the party along with father Shankersinh and 13 other legislators before the Rajya Sabha elections in which Ahmed Patel won narrowly. Mahendrasinh was expected to join the BJP before the 2017 Gujarat Assembly elections. He neither did so nor contested the elections though his father created a...

BY R.K.MISRA An idea rarely gets bigger than the brain cell it occupies, or so goes the saying. And thus every time   polls near, the foxes develop a pronounced interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. Two   events on the national political canvass held in close proximity provide a clear indicator of the Narendra Modi- led BJP government’s strategy for the general elections 2019. While the first was the promulgation of Governor’s rule in Jammu and Kashmir on June 20,the second was the two day   meeting in Ahmedabad, Gujarat on June 25 to formulate it’s strategy for next year’s Lok Sabha elections. The meeting was   attended   by   BJP national chief Amit Shah, Union ministers   Purshottam Rupala and Mansukh Mandavia , Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani, deputy chief minister Nitin Patel ,BJP Gujarat in-charge Bhupendra Yadav two Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS) leaders -Yashwant Chaudhary and Gujarat prant pracharak Chintan Upad...

BY R.K.MISRA India is in ferment. It’s rulers are hard at working teaching a new language. I reproduce here  the first part of a scintillating piece of journalism by L.K.Sharma which appeared on 9 June 2018 in   Open Democracy , a UK anchored global media platform  publishing up to 60 articles a week and attracting over 8 million visits per year. About the author Open Democracy states - L K Sharma has followed no profession other than journalism for more than four decades, covering criminals and prime ministers. Was the European Correspondent of The Times of India based in London for a decade.  Reported for five years from Washington as the Foreign Editor of the Deccan Herald.  Edited three volumes on innovations in India.  He has completed a work of creative nonfiction on V. S. Naipaul.  His two e-books The Twain and A Parliamentary Affair form part of The Englandia Quartet. As a greenhorn,I was privileged to work alongside the great master....