Democracy is not just about voting every five years. Democracy is about the ability to look your government in the eye and say “you are wrong” — without fear of being beaten for it.And yes, July 20 was a sad day for democracy. It was sad to see brutal force used against young citizens. It was sad to see the Delhi Police behave in a manner that shames the uniform.
Data from India's ministry of road transport and highways show that road crashes claim around 175,000 lives each year, with pedestrians bearing a disproportionate share of the toll. In 2024, as many as 36,526 pedestrians were killed, representing 20.6 per cent of all road fatalities.
India must also deglamorise its bureaucracy. Bureaucrats occupy oversized office spaces, are allotted luxury housing, use oversized vehicles, get large numbers of support staff and personal assistants who work like personal valets and concierges. Political leaders across the globe carry their own bags. Here bureaucrats get servants to have their boots polished. This must clearly stop forthwith.
Few regions in India have such an extensive and layered system of representation. Ladakh is therefore not merely creating new councils. It is building a new model of governance based on geography, identity, participation and national interest. It is taking democracy beyond the main towns
Mixing politics with national security in sensitive border regions like Manipur and Ladakh can cost us dearly. China is a rogue state with aggressive designs and well well-advanced in hybrid and conventional conflict with an expanding arsenal of nuclear weapons.
One of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations calls for a reduction in inequality. On that count, India must exert more by making the income tax net wider and ensuring a lower indirect tax burden
Contrast this exchange against the utterly crass and debased rhetoric, both during the election season and otherwise, that India’s political and cultural leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, employ.
The narratives elucidate how historical marginalisation, compounded by contemporary socio-economic inequities, lays fertile ground for the propagation of Naxalite ideology, which promises liberation from caste-based oppression and economic deprivation.
The war clouds just keep getting thicker and darker. And the warmongers have so far outshouted those pleading for peace. The leaders have failed to bring any sanity, let alone ceasefire or peace talks. All this does not bode well for the Indian economy, which has already been struggling with the challenges of inflation, stagnant private investment, high youth unemployment and widening inequality.
This is the inner rottenness of India’s growth story, a self-imposed colonisation of a nation that has lost its standing, never mind the growing GDP.
The significance of American investment is that it plays an important role in transforming India’s industrialization and paving the path to challenge China to become the next-generation supply chain hub.
Why then is Modi sullying the glory of his third term by going to the polls with Arvind Kejriwal possibly barred from campaigning?
The national mood was well summed up by a cartoon that showed all others in the race locked up, with just the incumbent in the field, and then the question, half in jest: ‘Who is winning?’.
But how does one counter the Swiss-based air-quality monitoring group IQAir which reports that India was the third most polluted country in the world after Bangladesh and Pakistan in 2023 and Delhi was the “most polluted” capital in the world?
Essentially the world is looking for alternate supply chains which began with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and continues even today with growing trade tensions between the two camps.
The largest persecuted groups in recent times have been Tamils (largely Hindus) in Sri Lanka and Rohingyas (largely Muslims) in Myanmar. Why have they been left out from the list of the ones who will be given shelter citizenship here in India under the CAA?
India has only 2 percent of the world’s freshwater supply but 17 percent of the world's population. The present predicament of people in Bengaluru, skipping work to stand in long queues for a bucket of water is a sobering reminder.
While Dalits in India face atrocity, abuse and exploitation, in Pakistan there is "discrimination and distancing in the social and economic domains," Khangarani said.
India’s basmati exports are significantly affected as over one-third of production is shipped to West Asia, Europe, North Africa and North America via the Red Sea.
