Dilip Simeon's blog

SHILLONG, JUNE 12: Cutting across political lines, the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly today unanimously resolved to demand the Centre to withdraw its recent notification on regulating of livestock markets which will impact the economy and food culture of the state. The government resolution on the Notification issued by Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change with regards to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rules, 2017 was moved by Chief Minister Mukul Sangma during a special session convened here. The Congress led government was supported by members of opposition political parties – United Democratic Party (UDP), Hill State People Democratic Party (HSPDP), National People’s Party (NPP) and independent MLAs. After taking the sense of the House, Assembly Speaker Abu Taher Mondal declared that the government resolution was approved and adopted by the House. Earlier while moving the resolution, Sangma said, “This House takes strong not...

NB : Lynching someone is a crime against humanity, no matter where and under what circumstance it is done, and by whom. My deepest condolences to the bereaved family of DSP Pandith. DS An irate mob on Friday lynched a senior police officer Deputy Superintendent Mohammed Ayub Pandith near Jamia Masjid in Nowhatta area of Jammu and Kashmir’s capital Srinagar after he allegedly opened fire at a group of people who caught him clicking pictures near a mosque. Three people were injured in the firing. The incident happened during prayers at around 12 am. Curfew has been imposed in the area. The deceased was allegedly making a video of stone pelting by locals, and objecting to this, the violent mob attacked him. Ayub opened fire through his service pistol in his own defence after the situation became out of control, according to the news agency ANI. Police reinforcements were rushed to the area to restore normalcy. As the officer was not in uniform, the police identified him after...

Evolution  will no longer be taught in Turkish schools, a senior education official has said, in a move likely to raise the ire of the country’s secular opposition. Alpaslan Durmuş, who chairs the board of education, said evolution was debatable, controversial and too complicated for students. “We believe that these subjects are beyond their [students] comprehension,” said Durmuş in a  video  published on the education ministry’s website. Durmuş said a chapter on evolution was being removed from ninth grade biology course books, and the subject postponed to the undergraduate period. Another change to the curriculum may reduce the amount of time that students spend studying the legacy of secularism. Critics of the government believe public life is being increasingly stripped of the secular traditions instilled by the nation’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The secular opposition has long argued that the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan  is pursuing a covert ...

Tensions are mounting between Iran’s supreme leader and the country’s president after the latter’s landslide victory in last month’s election.   Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , 78, has sharpened his criticism of the reformist president, Hassan Rouhani, including humiliating him in a meeting of the country’s most senior officials. A hardliner keen to preserve his legacy, Khamenei is believed to have tacitly backed Ebrahim Raisi, Rouhani’s rival, in the election. The president, who increased his mandate by 5m votes when he won his second term, fired back this week by saying that the political legitimacy of a religious leader is determined by the “people’s will and invitation” – comments that supporters of Khamenei, whose position as supreme leader is a lifelong appointment, have received with disdain. Clerics sympathetic to Khamenei argue that the legitimacy of the leader, or the rule of the Islamic jurist ( Velayat-e-Faghih ) is divine. Rouhani’s comments come after Khamenei d...

When Donald Trump’s secretary of defense, James Mattis, was called before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week to testify about the conflict in Afghanistan, he was unusually blunt: “We are not winning in Afghanistan right now,” he said. The Taliban have been on a dramatic offensive, he acknowledged, the security situation continues to deteriorate, and the Afghan government holds considerably less territory than it did a year ago. In other words, prospects for any sort of positive outcome are as remote as they have been in this sixteen-year war—the longest war in American history. Yet Trump - and Mattis’s - solution to this unwinnable war seems to be once again to send more troops. On Tuesday, Trump announced that the military itself would be given full authority to decide how many troops it needs. (By leaving all decisions in the hands of the military, he has abandoned the usual inter-agency consultations, especially with the State Department.) And Mattis is talking about...

We are obsessed with power. A French village shows life needn’t be this way: Christina Patterson  Summer in the Forest, a breathtakingly beautiful new film celebrates a community that gives strength to people at the bottom of the pile.    If you want beauty and kindness, then go and see this truly important film. It will make you laugh. It will make you cry When a Canadian naval officer-turned-philosopher arrived in Trosly-Breuil in 1964, he made a change to his life that started a revolution.  Jean Vanier  invited two men with learning disabilities to share his home. When the local priest retired, Vanier was asked to take over the running of a home for 30 men with learning disabilities in the same village. There was violence. There was noise. Hardly a day went by when there wasn’t a broken window. “It was to discover,” he says in his calm, clear voice, “that in humiliation there is something terrible.” It took a long time, he says, for Le Val Fleuri to “be...

An ex-company executive-cum-economist turns to the anchor during a discussion on the farmers’ agitation. “Overpopulation is destroying the farming activity. There are simply too many mouths to feed and the farms are shrinking. We must look to the urban areas for creating new jobs,” he says. The man at the local paan shop tells no one in particular: “Yaar, none of the farmers’ children want to dirty their hands anymore. They wear jeans and own mobiles. They will sell the land as soon as they inherit”. A respected Hindi anchor turns to a farmers’ representative, “Kaka (uncle)”, he says, “Our agriculture minister is out somewhere performing yoga asanas with some baba as our farmer brothers suffer. What do the farmers really want from the government?” Kaka thinks for a bit. “The farmer has traditionally never wanted anything from a government except a fair support price,” he says. What do these pictures and dialogues have in common? They have males talking to males about what is being...