Shoaib Daniyal: More than two years after his thumping win, why is Modi struggling to implement big policy moves?

By Dilip -

On May 23, 2019, Narendra Modi became only the second non-Congress prime minister to win two consecutive terms. The Bharatiya Janata Party won more than 37% of the popular vote with 303 seats in the Lok Sabha, giving it 55% of seats in the House – marking just the second time a party had an absolute majority since 1984.

Back-to-back wins by the BJP meant the moment was historic, cementing the saffron party’s place as India’s most powerful party, significantly eclipsing the Congress, which had ruled India for decades after independence. Political scientists even started to argue that India now had a new party system, with the older coalition era giving way to one in which the BJP was the clearly dominant pole....

https://scroll.in/article/1000377/more-than-two-years-after-his-thumping-win-why-is-modi-struggling-to-implement-big-policy-moves

Naxalites should lay down their arms and challenge the ruling class to abide by the Constitution

Bharat Bhushan: It suits the RSS to allow BJP to encourage defections from other parties

Swati Chaturvedi: It Was BJP Who Made It Mamata vs Modi. Too Far

Socrates: If the whole is ailing the part cannot be well / Ajit Prakash Shah: Darkness at noon, felled by the judiciary

Society of the Spectacle / 'इमेज' - 'Image': A Poem on Deaths in the Age of Covid

Modi says Congress committed 'sin' of partition // The Non-politics of the RSS

The Supreme Court, Gandhi and the RSS

A whiff of evil

The Broken Middle - on the 30th anniversary of 1984

Alexandre Koyré The Political Function of the Modern Lie

The Judiciary is the Defence of the Innocent. Or so we thought...

WANTED: Immediate Justice in the Bhima-Koregaon Conspiracy. By Cedric Prakash

Govt wants to cage women who speak against it, say Narwal & Kalita as they and Asif Tanha walk free / Delhi HC criticises 'wanton, frivolous use of UAPA by the State' / P.B. Mehta: Has the blackbox of UAPA finally been opened?

Father Stan Swamy: I’d rather suffer, possibly die if things go on as it is

Pinjra Tod activist Natasha Narwal's father dies of Covid day before her bail hearing // That Monday will not come, Judge Sahib

Gujarati Poet Parul Khakkar Blames 'Naked King' for Corpses Floating in the Ganga

Avay Shukla: LEST WE FORGET

A Call for National Mourning and a Proposal for a National Government. By Anil Nauriya

Society of the Spectacle / 'इमेज' - 'Image': A Poem on Deaths in the Age of Covid

Nandini Sen Mehra: And night has come upon my land

The Hindu priest struggling to cremate India’s Covid dead – video

पुजारी का कर्म

Former Civil Servants Write to the PM: ‘Take Effective Action Now’ / The BJP Can Be Defeated but the RSS Project Remains

TISHANI DOSHI: Out of Breath

Suhas Palshikar: A monumental failure of governance // ‘There should be no clampdown on information, people can voice grievances on social media’: Supreme Court

Geeta Pandey - Varanasi: Anger rises as coronavirus rages in Modi's constituency

VINEETHA MOKKIL - An Open Letter to Modi Bhakts in America: Your God has Feet of Clay and Blood on His Hands

Mukul Kesavan - Kumbh vs Corona The logic of Hindu nationalism / Milind Murugkar: The political project of Hindutva is up against many contradictions

Bharat Bhushan: Short of answers or assurances; Govt unable to handle farmer protests

'The law related to Agricultural Produce marketing is a death warrant' / P Sainath: Farm Bills Will Create a Vacuum That May Result in Utter Chaos

Vijender Singh to return Khel Ratna if protesting farmers’ demands not met // Farmers respond: Farmer Protests Delhi | किसान आंदोलन & Godi Media

Winds from Punjab: By Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Thousands of protesting farmers enter Delhi defying water cannon and police crackdown

Alessandra Mezzadri: Informal labour, the majority world and the need for inclusive theories and politics


Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

By Dilip -
The People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Tuesday alleged that third degree torture methods were used by the Gurgaon Criminal Investigation Agency while interrogating workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited’s Manesar plant who are accused of involvement in the killing of an HR manager and the violent attack at the plant on July 18. The PUDR alleged that the Gurgaon CIA investigation “did not seem” to be directed at solving the crime or probing the involvement of the arrested workers in the incidents and crimes recorded in the FIR but instead was based on their involvement in trade union activities. Grave doubts  “The use of third degree torture in police custody, and the securing of arrestees’ signatures on blank papers by the police, gives rise to grave doubts regarding the ability of such an investigation in effectively identifying or arresting those guilty. The police and the State seem keener to reassure Maruti Suzuki Ltd. and ensure that production continues,” the ...
Read more

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

By Dilip -
According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories,   which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I just made it long.” One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert..." read the story: http://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227...
Read more

Albert Camus's lecture 'The Human Crisis', New York, March 1946. 'No cause justifies the murder of innocents'

By Dilip -
The morning after a great historical crisis, you feel as sad and sick as after a heavy night. But there is no aspirin for historical hangovers .. The world is no longer divided into the just or unjust, but into masters and slaves. He who is right is he who enslaves.  Albert Camus     La crise de l'homme : THE HUMAN CRISIS   (Text read by Viggo Mortensen on March 28 2016)   Ladies and Gentlemen: when I was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States of America, I felt some doubt and hesitation. I am really not old enough to give lectures, and I am more at ease with the process of thinking than I am making categorical statements... since I don't feel I have any claim on what is generally called the truth. I shared this reservation and was very politely told that my personal opinion didn't matter. What mattered was that I'd be able to offer some facts about France so that my listeners could form their own opinions. It was then suggested...
Read more

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

By Dilip -
Image
'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certai...
Read more

Etel Adnan - To Be In A Time Of War

By Dilip -
NB: Etel Adnan, writer, poet, artist and musician was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. This prose poem is the final chapter of her book  In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country .  Read more about her here  - DS To Be In A Time Of War To say nothing, do nothing, mark time, to bend, to straighten up, to blame oneself, to stand, to go toward the window, to change one’s mind in the process, to return to one’s chair, to stand again, to go to the bathroom, to close the door, to then open the door, to go to the kitchen, to not eat nor drink, to return to the table, to be bored, to take a few steps on the rug, to come close to the chimney, to look at it, to find it dull, to turn left until the main door, to come back to the room, to hesitate, to go on, just a bit, a trifle, to stop, to pull the right side of the curtain, then the other side, ...
Read more

After the Truth Shower

By Dilip -
Dear Readers Thank you for reading my blog for the past eleven years. (This is a link to the new one) During this time it has had nearly 1.7 million hits; and I have posted over 9500 posts covering a variety of themes. From July 11 to 19, 2022, my blog was withdrawn by the Blogger administration on account of what its machinery suspected to be 'Impersonation'. It took over a week and the efforts of several well-wishers to get it back online I thank them all for their kindness and goodwill  My blog has always been - and remains - non-commercial. I have used it for academic purposes; and to foster a culture of debate and informed commentary in civil society. Because it contains a large amount of material gathered and collated for over a decade, I cannot afford to lose its contents. I hope it will remain undisturbed now and function as an archive. However, I have decided to use a new blog on WordPress as a platform for my newest comments and posts The new blog is titled After the...
Read more

James Gilligan on Shame, Guilt and Violence

By Dilip -
Shame, Guilt, and Violence / James Gilligan During the past 35 years I have used prisons and prison mental hospitals as "laboratories" in which to investigate the causes and prevention of the various forms of violence and the relationships between these forms and to what I will call (with a nod to William James) "the varieties of moral experience." In the course of that work, I have been struck by the frequency with which I received the same answer when I asked prisoners, or mental patients, why they assaulted or even killed someone. Time after time, they would reply "because he disrespected me" or "he disrespected my visitor [or wife, mother, sister, girl-friend, daughter, etc.]." In fact, they used that phrase so often that they abbreviated it into the slang phrase, "He dis'ed me." Whenever people use a word so often that they abbreviate it, it is clearly central to their moral and emotional vocabulary. But even when they did n...
Read more