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Showing posts from September, 2015

Ban Meat And Beef Up Exports !

BY R.K. MISRA  He that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache. An India   in somnolent slumber after voting for development in 2014 may wake up to find itself saddled with an archaic agenda riding astride a society in strife. For starters, take meat. As if on cue, state after BJP ruled state has suddenly woken up to the overarching religious need for keeping meat and fish shops as well as abattoirs closed on Hindu and Jain festival days. Maharashtra  took the lead followed by Rajasthan, Gujarat, Chattisgarh, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir. A similar ban had been placed in Karnataka when the BJP held power. No prizes for guessing where this  inspiration/diktat comes from. Obviously, Nagpur. The Narendra Modi led BJP government is apparently frittering away a rock solid mandate for forward looking national governance befitting a robust, youthful country on archaic, delusional visions of ancient grandeur. The Fadnavis government in Maharashtra soon found itself done in when thei

Master Mohan and Modi

BY  R.K. MISRA Politicians and  pundits enjoy floating pretentious bubbles when chasing power and pelf. Once in, the remaining time is spent either in denial, deceit or demagogy. India’s Prime Minister, Narendra  Modi is no exception. A political pugilist akin to Mohammed Ali, Modi as chief  minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 had  also incorporated   the one time World Champion’s  classic slogan ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ into his style sheet. His repertoire of verbal aggression  was not confined to  probing  jabs and rulebook upper-cuts, but included lethal below-the-belt undercuts as he  punched, hooked and even head-butted his opponents all through his tenure as  head of  the west India state until he delivered the knock-out punch in the 2014  general elections. All along, the soft spoken, two-term UPA Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh was derisively referred to as a  ‘puppet’, deaf and dumb(gunga-bechara) while Sonia Gandhi would be mocked as a ‘maha

Anatomy Of An Agitation

BY R.K.MISRA The demand  of the Patidar (Patel) community for caste-based reservation  under the Other Backward Classes(OBC) category has led to turmoil in Gujarat. And there is more in store. The community is seeking statutory guarantees for government jobs and admissions to educational institutions  despite being numerically very strong  and economically quite influential. The Patels account for  about 14 per cent of the 63 million  population of the state.   Chief minister Anandiben Patel is from the community as is the president of the Gujarat BJP,R.C.Fardu. Seven of the 24 ministers and 42 of the 182 legislators in the Assembly are from the community. However, the Patels argue that it has become difficult to earn their livelihood. This they say is coupled with the lack of jobs  and difficulty of getting admissions to educational institutions. The leaders of the demonstrations have built up the agitation with amazing speed, fanning the sense of deprivation within th