Wordsmiths & Newsplumbers

  18.3.25 BY R.K. MISRA Past pulverizes but future fascinates. If one harks back to bygones, the other is a harbinger of hope. No wonder predictors remain in high demand, from the commoner to the cash rich and street side palmists to gold gilded astrologers, even face and forehead readers.   Knowledge soaked academics and cost conscious corporates are not left behind either. They too fall back on their ‘neural networks’ and ‘decision trees’ for studiedly predictive models. One such study undertaken by a threesome of impeccable academic credentials sizes up three Indian states-Gujarat, Bihar and Tamil Nadu- and predicts their growth trajectory over the next 25 years. The study released in February 2025 and titled “The Challenge of contrasted regional dynamics” focusses on India and has been carried out by Dr. Christophe Jaffrelot, a senior fellow on India at Institut Montaigne, an independent think tank based in Paris. He is also a Senior research Fellow at CRI(Centre d...

  BY R.K. MISRA Does a red rag provoke a bull? No, it does not, for bulls are colour blind. It is the movement of the cloth that irritates them, causing them to charge. The idiom, however, lends itself to political adaptation. When individuals and entities concern themselves with surface political conflicts, they make the mistake of the bull in the ring-of charging the cloth-and hasten their own decimation. Headed for a 30 year long rule in Gujarat and half that time in the country, the BJP finds itself in precisely such a predicament in relation to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi . The worst in language has been used to denigrate a political opponent. The comments range from the fanciful to the farcical and distasteful to derogatory- morkhon ka sardar - mahagyani - pappu to fused tubelight and even hybrid calf- it is a never ending litany that speaks a tale of moral degradation in public life and the mental levels of the ruling guardians of culture, in particular. In stark co...

  4.3.2025 BY R.K. MISRA Spectacles sparkle. The glitzy, eye-blinding, extravaganza that had India in thrall. The  crushing rush for a momentary dip to cleanse body and soul. The never ending stream  of religious fervor from the Ram temple to the ‘Mahakumbh’ and on to the next one,  still  in the works…..all designed for ‘deliverance’ of the majority . With the arch-lamps having been momentarily switched off and the booming 21- gun salute of the ‘media’ artillery subsiding, there are many mundane tasks crying for attention. The state of school education is one of them. Budgetary allocations may be going up but the enrolment across schools in India has registered a fall. According to the data released by the Ministry of Education, the enrolment of students has dropped by over a crore in 2023-24. In 2018-19 the total enrolment of students in school was 26.02 crore which increased in 2019-20 by 1.6 per cent and crossed 26.45 crore. A total of 24.8 crore s...

25.2.2025 BY R.K. MISRA Decisions determine destiny. Some to be roasted, others to be toasted! Two personalities at two distinct ends of the Indian socio-political spectrum, one is facing a debilitating fusillade of brickbats, another a deluging bonanza of bouquets. In facts and foibles, though, there may be little to choose in the metaphors used by the worthies. Ranveer Allahbadia, the young podcaster and U-tuber with a legendary 27 million following is being roasted by an ‘indignant’ nation for his comments on Samay Raina’s You Tube show, ‘India’s Got Latent’. Rekha Gupta, BJP’s surprise choice as  chief minister of Delhi, is all blooms and bouquets as her party comes to power after 27 years in the wilderness even as minions furiously worked at defacing her old tweets which not only bordered on slander but went way beyond.  Ranveer’s brand of dark humour posed a question to a contestant about incest involving parent and progeny with an either- or option. It lit the...

  18.2.25   BY R.K. MISRA Passion and politics take time, both building and spending. And wise is the one who peppers the future with salt from the past. Courting dust, after all, is no threat to the phoenix re-born from the ashes. But to do so, it must first burn. The Indian National Congress has undergone this process many a times since its formation by a group of 72 people on December 28, 1885 in Bombay. Nine years later at its 11 th convention when the strength crossed 1500 delegates, there was great jubilation. Turned into a mass movement by Mahatma Gandhi, it spearheaded the fight for Independence, secured it and ruled the country up to 1977. Defeated by a Janata coalition, it returned to power in 1980 and ruled until 1989 when it was once again defeated. The party formed the government at the head of a United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition in 1991 as well as in 2004 and 2009.The BJP came to power in 2014 and is into its third term in office. Lots has change...

  BY R.K. MISRA Victory invites fulsome acclaim, defeat a lingering loss. The Delhi State Assembly is finally in the BJP bag. Victor or vanquished, love and hate are being heaped a plenty depending on the side of the divide. Bouquets and brickbats are exchanging places with shameless singularity based on want, need and greed. Reactions, similarly, range from the pious to the profane. The desperation of the BJP for Delhi is akin to the lament of a direct recruit commissioner who missed being promoted to inspector. It has taken 27 years in the wilderness for the BJP -even after helming India for a decade plus under Prime Minister Narendra Modi- , to get into the driver’s seat in Delhi. Also pasted on the party has been the humiliation of being reduced to holding 3 and 8 seats respectively at the hands of a babe-in-the woods Aam Admi Party (AAP) in the 2015 and 2020 Delhi Assembly elections. Delhi has a 70-member State Assembly. The party came to power at the Centre in 2014 on...

  BY R.K. MISRA Uss gali meein kuch hua, iss khabar se mar gaye ! Aur phir kuch log, marjane ke darr se marr gaye !! So says an eminent Urdu poet . He speaks of the phantom fallacy of a panic-stricken mentality when the mere news of happenings across the street caused some to die while others perished, felled by just the fear of dying. Cancer kills but the fear of cancer kills faster. Walk into a cancer care clinic and a miasma of despair hangs heavy. Emotions spread taunt on stressed faces, giveaway creases on knitted brows, and an anxious demeanor vainly dodging doomsday prophecies is plastered all over.   Unlike the star reporters of today, the journalism of yore frowned on the faintest attempt at putting self before news. The story spoke and the byline bore the burden. This once, a     sliver of liberty would be in order for I am both the subject and the object of this engagement having faced the diagnosis and fought the disease over the last one year. ...