It emerges that not only does the CIDR project fails the test of fairness, justness and reasonableness besides the test of not being fanciful, oppressive or arbitrary; it also fails the test of Arthashastra, Hadith and the Bible.
Its pre-consultation paper has been silent on the issue of closed electronic communication network, a loophole telcos can exploit to offer discriminatory pricing.
'If Modi were to be elected, he would be part of a coalition government, and within that he would have to take this minority into account. Muslims cannot relate to the idea of Hindu nationalism. Although it is presented as a pan-Indian idea, it appears to them to be exclusive.'
RBI's out-of-turn rate cut has surprise few economists.
HC on Thursday upheld the 10-year jail term awarded to former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala.
The British administration ignored the mounting evidence of violence between Hindus and Muslims... Military historian Barney White-Spunner traces the countdown to the tragedy in his book, Partition.
'When workers in other industries enjoy protection, why should sex workers not receive similar protection?' 'Sex work should be treated as work and brought under the work schedule of the labour department.' 'We will only end up giving immunity to the pimps and brothels to buy or sell human beings. This will in turn increase trafficking of young women and children.' Rashme Sehgal reports on the debate over legalising prostitution, a bugle in whose favour has been sounded by the new chairperson of the National Commission for Women, Lalitha Kumaramangalam.
'One big problem for the RSS is, while they spread their ideology of hard, Hindu-ised Indian nationalism, the absence of their own pantheon of modern nationalist giants. They missed out on the freedom movement quite comprehensively, in some ways comparable to the Muslim League and latter-day Communists. They have to find heroes elsewhere.' 'They borrow who they can from the Congress, like Madan Mohan Malviya and Sardar Patel, and then steal the entire lot of revolutionaries, from Bhagat Singh to Netaji, never mind that many of them were extreme leftists.'
'At that time the Delhi police was reeling under various controversies. This case was more of an attention diversion.'
In a relief to Sahara, a US court has rejected a plea seeking to attach the Indian group's prized Plaza and Dream Downtown hotels.
The National Democratic Alliance on Monday finalised its seat sharing for Bihar polls with the Bharatiya Janata Party contesting 160 out of the 243 assembly constituencies while allies Lok Janshkati Party and Jitan Ram Manjhi's Hindustani Awam Morcha being allotted 40 and 20 seats respectively.
An international tribunal in the Hague has ruled in favour of the Philippines.
By removing Avinash Chander last week, the government has chosen to sacrifice the organisation's most potent symbol of success
'The youth have given New Delhi a chance. Now it is up to the policy-makers in Delhi to respect their political choices.'
Biometric authentication is based on the unscientific and questionable assumption that there are parts of human body that does not age, wither and decay with the passage of time.
'There has definitely been a breakthrough in the nuclear logjam. It is good to see nuclear energy back on the rails,' says Dr Anil Kakodkar, former chairman, Atomic Energy Commission.
Immediate NSG membership will not help India realise its nuclear ambitions any faster. It could have easily left the process take its own course, instead of running a high-stakes campaign to get in, says B S Raghavan.
'Rajan brought in a healthy air of competition in the banking sector.'
The Karnataka government is divided over filing an appeal in the Supreme Court against the acquittal of former Tamil Nadu chief minister. N Sathiya Moorthy analyses the possibilities
If anyone is targeting Sasikala or the AIADMK, then they should be looking elsewhere, not at Deepa for leading a revolt successfully, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Admittedly, EVMs too have a UID number and any convergence of data can make the secret ballot system a party of history, warns Dr Gopal Krishna in the 5th part of his series against Aadhaar.
'The book has immense value because it reveals the inner workings of the think-tank which appears to provide facts and insights to Modi, though he himself takes the final decisions and articulates them in his characteristic rhetorical style,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
'What I mean by the BJP's political mafia raj is they descend in such a way that they want to form the government anyhow and murder democracy, no matter what.' 'Knowing Amit Shah, knowing Parrikar, knowing their style of working, they will engineer a split in the Congress.'
'What of Modi? They are willing to take their chances. Maharashtra's Muslims recall how the Congress scared them with the Bal Thackeray bogey for decades, yet, when it came to using all the might of the State to protect them from Shiv Sena goons, be it in 1970, 1984 or 1992-1993, it did nothing. For them, the Congress's secularism is a cruel joke.' 'This argument that we ('seculars') must vote for the 'winning secular candidate' has one more implication: Those who are against Hindutva must forever be stuck with the same corrupt, cynical and tired old parties, who are not even secular,' says Jyoti Punwani.
'The National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party, as recent events suggest, are quite content as New Delhi's collaborators rather than trying to be true representatives of the Kashmiri people,' says Athar Parvaiz.
The perception that 'winnability' is based on gender is very strong, even though, if you break up the electoral success rate by sexes, the women who do win elections are proportionally far more successful than the men who win, given the huge number of men they have to beat.
The President talked about demonetisation, electoral reforms and disruptions in Parliament.
States need to create alternative marketing structures for farm produce since middlemen also provide vital services that are otherwise unavailable to the farmer.
Internal simmering in the army has come to a boil after the government tries to retain a discriminatory promotions policy.
Only reforms that accelerate economic growth can generate the revenues to finance expenditure on social infrastructure for the poor, not the other way round, insists Jagdish Bhagwati.
The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance were ranged against each other both inside and outside the Parliament on the opening day of the budget session on Monday.
'How many people have been skilled up and thus able to escape from needing to be in NREGA? The true success of NREGA would lie in its irrelevance -- that is, people no longer need it as a crutch.' 'NREGA should enable them to climb out of poverty and stand on their feet.' 'But this is expressly forbidden by NREGA rules. Skill development, which is what India needs more than anything else, appears to be outside the purview of NREGA,' points out Rajeev Srinivasan.
'Biometric Aadhaar-based surveillance is not only about violation of privacy, but also about the treasure hunt for unprecedented financial surveillance and economic intelligence in the economic history of mankind,' asks Gopal Krishna.
'Muslims and Dalits must erase the way they remember their past, or carry out their their performances in private,' says Jyoti Punwani, as Maharashtra's Censor Board denies permission to a play Jai Bhim, Jai Bharat.
'The intrusion in Chumar, during and beyond the Chinese president's visit, is unprecedented and has qualitatively changed the tone of the India-China relationship,' says Jayadeva Ranade, a member of the National Security Advisory Board.
'The Cauvery river has become excessively politicised by all political parties.' 'They see a vote bank in an emotive issue of this kind.'
'If policy-makers hold the lives of animals to be more significant than the welfare of a human populace, I can't believe that they're likely to do anything progressive for India.'
'Over 50 crore Indians are currently suffering from a livelihood crisis, something to which the whole country had shut its eyes to for the past six months.' 'We woke up only after the IPL was affected.'
Let Bihar be damned under its contradictions of having gone 'dry' and then having been submerged under flood, which is a recurrent phenomena? After all it is a godforsaken land, having lost its promises of overcoming its problems, says Mohammad Sajjad.
