Dilip Simeon's blog

Here are 15 questions posed by  The Wire  for the prime minister: Jobless growth:  Employment is one of India’s biggest challenges and during the campaign for the last Lok Sabha election, you had mocked the Congress for failing to deliver one crore (10 million) jobs. Now, four years later, multiple independent estimates say your record on job creation  is just as bad if not worse – for example, only 1.4 million net jobs were added in 2017. Why does your government continue to cite EPFO data as proof of healthy job growth, when a number of economists (including your  new chief statistician Pravin Srivastava ) say it reflects the formalisation of the economy and not job creation? As for loans under the Mudra scheme, which your ministers have claimed are creating millions of jobs, the  actual data makes it clear  that most loans are so small that they cannot create any employment, not even that of  a pakoda stall. So, Mr Modi, where are ...

For the last two years, Pu Wenqing, 85, has spent most of her time writing articles about her son, Huang Qi, a long-time dissident who has been in prison for more than two years awaiting trial. She posts updates about Huang, the founder of China’s first known human rights monitoring website, on Wechat and in October she recorded a video, pleading for help, and posted it on YouTube. Now, Granny Pu, as she is known to her friends, has disappeared and is likely under house arrest or in a black jail, according to friends and human rights advocates. On 7 December, she took a 10-hour train to Beijing from her home in Sichuan province with the goal of appealing to China’s leaders to release her son, who has been charged with leaking state secrets, a vague offence often used for activists. On the train, police questioned Pu and her travel companion several times and searched their luggage. When they arrived in Beijing, they were followed and then intercepted. “Seven or eight men in ...

Budapest:  From the far-right to the left, opposition parties across Hungary's political spectrum have been showing unity against what they consider the increasingly authoritarian rule of Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz Party. Thousands of Hungarians have marched through Budapest -- some chanting "Vik-ta-tor" (an amalgamation of Viktor and dictator) and waving pro-democracy placards -- since the government passed several laws on Wednesday that critics say will tighten Orban's grip on power. One of the new laws will allow employers to demand up to 400 hours of overtime annually; critics have dubbed it the "slave law." Another will create a new government-controlled court system. But what began last week as a rally against the overtime law has expanded into several days of demonstrations against Orban's government. On Monday evening, thousands protested outside the headquarters of Hungary's state-run broadcaster MTVA, cha...

The Delhi High Court Monday sentenced Congress leader Sajjan Kumar to life imprisonment in a case pertaining to the killing of five members of a Sikh family during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. A bench of Justice S Muralidhar and Justice Vinod Goel also made clear that Kumar’s imprisonment will be for remainder of his life.  The Broken Middle - on the 30th anniversary of 1984 Sulphur in the air: 1984 is not forgott en PUDR Report: Who Are the Guilty? It directed Kumar not to leave the national capital and surrender before the court concerned on or before December 31. The court also imposed a cost of Rs one lakh on Kumar. It held Kumar guilty of criminal conspiracy, promoting enmity, and acts against communal harmony. Besides Kumar, the bench upheld the trial court order awarding life term to former congress councillor Balwan Khokhar, retired naval officer Captain Bhagalpur and Girdhari Lal. The bench also upheld the conviction of two others in the case. In its 207-page ju...

NB: Another case of murderous misogyny and organised crime by the rulers of the Arabian peninsula. And the Indian government shamefully assisted the bloodstained ruler of Dubai. ' Atithi Devo Bhava' applies only to robber barons with lots of cash, apparently.  DS Watch Latifa's video of her doomed attempt to escape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN7OEFyNUkQ The ruler of Dubai and Prime Minister of United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is under global scrutiny for alleged forceful confinement and perhaps even murder of his daughter Latifa. Reports said the princess was captured in a highly secretive operation last March, some 50 km away from the coast of Goa from a US flag carrier and forcibly taken back to the UAE.  She was said to be running away from oppressive confinement with her friend, an alleged French-born US spy. Since then, there has been no news of the princess, and  many fear that she may have been murdered . Be...

People all seek to know what they do not know yet; they ought rather seek to know what they know already   -  Zhuangzi NB : A very important comment. Major sections of India's ruling elite have normalised genocide. Those of us who lived through the nightmare of 1984 will not allow the ruling class to wish it away. The Congress leadership could have made amends in a small way by accepting responsibility for the massive and bloody schism they opened up in the body politic. But instead, by appointing Kamal Nath at the CM of Madhya Pradesh, they have rubbed salt into the wounds of Indian citizens. That means all of us, not just the Sikh community. Many of us carried out a prolonged campaign for justice. We cannot and will not forget.  The 1984 carnage was (and still is) used by the so-called Sangh Parivar to justify the Gujarat pogrom of 2002. Now their ruthless incitement of violence towards religious minorities and cynical disregard for the law will receive ...

Early Friday, 12-year-old Yudhveer was woken up by loud voices in his home. He saw his grand-mother requesting suspected militants not to take away his father, SPO Kulwant Singh. “Everyone pleaded, but they did not listen,” says Yudhveer, sitting next to his father’s body outside their house in the afternoon. “I don’t know why they killed him. He never did any wrong.” Singh (35) was among the three police personnel abducted and killed by suspected militants in South Kashmir’s Shopian district on Friday morning. At his house in Batgund village, villagers and relatives are grieving. His wife, who has gone to Jammu, has not been told about the incident.  “My son told me he was not working with police anymore,” says Singh’s mother Pushpa Devi. “He was running a shop in Kulgam. If I had known he was with the police, I would have told him to announce his resignation on the internet.” Her family is the only Rajput family in the village, Pushpa tells The Indian Express. “We never le...