Articles

Governance in India today is driven by a relentless aggression of the executive which has reduced the legislature to a loyal instrument of law making. Any corrective measure coming from the judiciary is being disdainfully discarded through executive ordinances. The media, the fabled fourth pillar of democracy, has effectively been refashioned as a willing ally whose job has become to advocate and amplify the agenda of the government and function as an advertisement medium for the supreme leader. The separation of powers and the institutional checks and balances that have been crucial to the survival of constitutional democracy in India over the last seven decades today stand badly dented and damaged. Facilitating this aggressive centralisation of power has been a massive imbalance ...

by Dipankar Bhattacharya If there has been one single day in the nine years of Modi government that has most tellingly encapsulated the essential character of the regime and its future game plan, it was May 28, 2023, the day Narendra Modi inaugurated the new Parliament building and India's ace women wrestlers protesting against sexual harassment by a BJP MP were pulled and dragged by the police on Delhi's Parliament Street. The Modi government now stands squarely exposed as being completely antithetical to the fundamental tenets of our constitutional democratic republic and must be voted out in the coming elections. The new Parliament building is part of the Modi government's Rs 200 billion Central Vista Redevelopment project which was planned and launched completely unilaterall...

by Lekha Adavi Popular cinema plays an important role when we examine the development of a society. While it is necessarily true that popular culture like cinema reflects society and its values, its ideas also leave an indelible mark on the society. Cinema influences people in a way that it mirrors, reinforces and adapts their perceptions, biases and prejudices. For instance, Hollywood has made it its business to “reflect” popular perceptions about Communism, and yet what it achieves is to demonise the ideology and justify the hunting down of communists in the McCarthy era. Similarly, Hollywood has exported enough of its heroes in various films, to all corners of the Islamic world to 'rescue democracy from the hands of the barbaric Islamic fundamentalists', to create a public co...

An old man hailing from Sugo village of Bhadrak district in Odisha is walking among the hundreds of bodies placed in a school compound. One by one he lifts the cloth over dead bodies to see their faces. Asked who he is looking for,.the weeping man replies in a broken voice, “I am looking for my son who was in Coromandel express, but I can’t find him.” His story is one among hundreds of people who had their family or friends in the two trains that met with a horrific accident on the evening of June 2 in Balasore (Baleswar) district of Odisha. It was in the morning of June 3 that India began to wake up to the extent and intensity of the tragedy, with nearly 300 dead and 1000 injured identified. Apart from the huge toll of identified deaths, we have to take into account the list of passe...

Since 2014 we have often heard the term 'double engine government' in BJP election rallies. It is the most favoured Modi-Shah metaphor used to seek votes in states on the basis of the BJP's control over power at the Centre. The Chief Economic Advisor has now introduced an aviation term to describe the economy. According to CEA V Anantha Nageswaran the Indian economy is now on 'auto-pilot mode' and will grow steadily in the 6.5-7% range till 2030! For much of the nine years of the Modi government, we have witnessed prolonged economic stagnation and decline. The triple blows of demonetisation, GST and lockdown and the policies of privatisation, downsizing and casualisation of the workforce have pushed unemployment and prices to a record high. But now ahead of the crucial Lok Sabha elect...