Rahul, Now Is Not Your Time To Quit

The 2019 election campaign did not give too many indications of the eventual one-sided outcome. Narendra Modi, backed by Amit Shah, managed to defeat the opposition comprehensively and come back to power. As usual, the winner takes all the accolades and the mob needs a scapegoat.

In what is now being termed as a Modi wave, Ocean, Tsunami and what not, most of the opposition parties, each one with their own Prime Ministerial aspirations, received massive setbacks. However, accountability is solely being demanded from Congress President Rahul Gandhi. It is curious that the very same commentators who tried to establish the irrelevance of the Indian National Congress and Rahul Gandhi in the run-up to the polls are precisely the ones demanding his resignation today.

National, Opinion, Politics

By Jayasankar Keezhayi

May 25, 2019

The Politicization of India’s Armed Forces and its Implications

Never in the history of Independent India have people been so polarized and so hostile towards each other. The British famously adopted the “Divide and rule policy” to perpetuate their rule in India. This strategy seems to have made a comeback bundled with a political ideology, threatening to rip apart the secular fabric of our nation.

What is even more dangerous from a national security standpoint has been the blatant politicization of the country’s armed forces in the last few years—so much so the security forces find itself in a state of conflict today.

National, Opinion, Poetry

By Nazma Parveen

May 23, 2019

Congress Sweeps Kerala, Keeps BJP Out

When the Congress president, Rahul Gandhi, decided to pitch his tent in Wayanad as the United Democratic Front (UDF) candidate in the beginning of April, the decision attracted national attention. Despite the media underplaying the RG effect, the clear sweep indicates that Rahul factor was a game changer in Kerala. The Congress-led UDF walked away with 19 of the 20 Lok Sabha seats in the state, even as the Left barely managed to win the Alappuzha seat with a small margin and the BJP drew a blank.

Most constituencies saw intense three-cornered contests amid a do or die battle staged by the BJP. For various reasons and particularly going by the state’s track record in the past Lok Sabha elections, the majority of Kerala’s population seemed to have ultimately voted in favor of peace, stability, communal amity, socio-development factors disregarding the hate spewed by the Right-Wing.

Kerala, Opinion, Politics

By Mathew A Thomas

May 22, 2019

Has the BJP finally arrived in Kerala?

Towards the fag end of the election campaign in Kerala, an advertisement sponsored by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) played out on all channels. The fifth in a series of ads for the Kerala BJP, it had the familiar setting of a tea shop with a small group of youth talking politics. One of the young men is seen professing his newfound love for the BJP to his Modi-fied friend but seems unsure if he should go on and vote for the BJP. “Even if I were to vote for the BJP, would they win from Kerala?”

For a long time, many pro-BJP folks in Kerala have faced the same predicament. A vote for the BJP meant a waste of a vote as BJP candidates contested ritually for third place. However, the 2016 assembly elections saw the contests becoming triangular in a dozen constituencies with the votes polled by the BJP (or their ally BDJS) deciding the winner and loser in many more seats. This was never the case earlier and it presaged a brighter future for the BJP after decades of toil.

Kerala, Opinion, Politics

By Anand Kochukudy

May 19, 2019

Godse is not an ideology but an illness

Mahatma Gandhi is regarded as the man who defined the 20th century. He is also counted among the greatest human beings to walk the planet. Gandhi had inspired the likes of Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela et al and has been applauded by people across the spectrum from mathematical genius Albert Einstein to the Dalai Lama.

The controversy surrounding the hailing of the Mahatma’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, as a patriot has not died down. There’s been a lot of hair-splitting about Godse being an assassin but not a terrorist; Godse being portrayed as a desh-bhakth and so on. We need to ask questions and find solutions to this festering problem.

Opinion, Politics, Religion

By Rahul Easwar

May 19, 2019

Political Dress Code: When White gives way to a Riot of Colours

We have had in Narendra Modi a Prime Minister who oozes charm and is more a gentleman than officer—only when he hits the outbound button, from Indian shores. We have a Chief Minister in Pinarayi Vijayan who sheds his preferred white shirt and mundu to don elegant black suits—only when he hits the continent or other parts of the world. True, our Prime Minister does not spare his own country a daily offensive from the arsenal that is his wardrobe, sometimes with as many as four dress-change routines. Many lesser leaders in the BJP have followed suit, pun unintended.

Features, National, Opinion, Politics

By Vinod Mathew

May 10, 2019

The Myriad Shades of Patriotism

Umpteen debates and discussions have followed the recent “Apolitical Interview” conducted by actor Akshay Kumar with our Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It gave us a fascinating insight into some of today’s burning issues like the length of Modiji’s shirt sleeves and the various techniques of eating a mango.

In the past few years, Akshay Kumar films themed on nationalism have done well, and so it wasn’t all that surprising that he was chosen to give the much-needed propaganda push to a government that thrives on the nationalistic narrative.

Opinion, Politics

By Nazma Parveen

May 9, 2019

The SC’s Tryst with Sexual Harassment Cases: From Vishakha to Gogoi

It is often said that India joins a global movement a bit late. In October 2017, Hollywood erupted with allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault against a big time producer, Harvey Weinstein, by several actresses and actors. Thus, began the #MeToo Movement in North America and Europe that soon engulfed most countries around the world.

In India, the #MeToo movement hit the ground exactly a year later, i.e., in October, 2018, when journalists, actresses from Hindi/Tamil/Telugu/Malayalam industries and women in the advertising field spoke out against entrenched sexual harassment at their workplaces by their male bosses or colleagues.

Still, the judiciary and the legal profession seemed unnaturally quiet. Even in the recent past, excepting for a few allegations—a case of a district judge from Madhya Pradesh who had accused a High Court judge of sexual harassment in 2014, or the cases of interns accusing either retired or current judges of Supreme Court in 2012-2013—not much had come to light.

Gender, Law, Opinion

By Amritananda Chakravorty

April 30, 2019

The Rise of Populism

A cloud of uncertainty hangs over India’s economic policy agenda. Two key concerns have emerged. First, whichever political party wins the Lok Sabha elections – on from 11 April to 19 May 2019 – one thing is certain: in the name of poverty reduction, public spending is set to increase on lazily-thought-out schemes.

Second, it is also widely expected that the new government will likely have a smaller majority in the Lok Sabha than the current government, and may, therefore, find it tough to garner support for difficult reforms on which the political consensus is weak. Except, these reforms can no longer be postponed without seriously damaging the economy’s underlying growth prospects.

Economy, Employment, Opinion, Politics

By Puja Mehra

April 30, 2019

Trial By Fire

In my 15-year career in Courts, I have realized that great patience and maturity is expected from those on the Bench. In times of crisis, the leader has to be calm. Kipling was perhaps referring to an ideal judge in his poem If when he wrote:

“If you can keep your head when all about you
are losing theirs and blaming it on you
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
but make allowance for their doubting too”

My former Chamber Senior, the Late Mr. Goolam Vahanvati, Former Attorney-General of India, often recounted his favourite quip:

Law, Opinion

By Suruchi Suri

April 29, 2019

Bogus Voting In Kannur: The Left On The Backfoot

During the mid-2000s, Mamata Banerjee was often asked why her party kept losing to the Left Front despite her grassroots connect in West Bengal. Her standard response was: “scientific rigging”. In the other Left bastion down south—Kerala—allegations of “scientific rigging” (or scientific bogus voting) has been a common refrain by the Congress in the Marxist strongholds of Kannur and Kasargod.

Gone are the days of wanton booth capturing after the replacement of ballot papers with Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). Yet, people who didn’t mind cutting corners to win seem to have continued to find ways to perpetuate such subversive practices. In many polling booths in North Kerala, particularly in Marxist “party villages” (a euphemism for a village where only the CPI (M)’s writ runs) in Kannur, the very high turnout often evoked suspicion in the past but was passed off as routine for a “politically conscious” electorate.

Opinion, Politics

By Anand Kochukudy