Herein lies the paradox of Karnataka. The rest of educated India and the world knows the state mostly through the stories of its tech leaders and the vibrancy of Bengaluru, which has sometimes been voted as the top city to work for many and certainly for IT professionals. On the other hand, the state of Karnataka has become a tinderbox of…
On the one hand, India sees itself as the rising global power, the head of G20 today, and with an economy that is the fifth largest in the world by GDP. On the other hand, India is the story of flourishing gangsters who when they get too big must be taken to a secluded spot and shot.
India has some deep soul-searching to do as we explore the question: Are we truly a democratic nation? Or is democracy the story we sell to ourselves and the world when the nation and its people know that we are not what we think or claim to be?
There is a culture that refuses to understand the pain of an entire class of population subjugated over the centuries, a harshness that translates in general to every other aspect of Indian life, superimposed on which is the ever-present threat of violence (State and non-State) that makes the claim of a nation that stands for non-violence…
The government has a choice it can sit back and do nothing, or it can choose swift regulatory action and full-fledged investigations into what has been alleged to be, in the words of Hindenburg Research, “the world’s 3rd richest man pulling the largest con in corporate history.”
The manner in which bulldozers as tools of retaliatory State violence and punishment are being normalised now is akin to illegal 'encounter' (extra-judicial) killings which have now been normalised by police forces across the country.
Yet, many of the advocates of free speech and unhindered competition and zero controls fail to see that the enterprises themselves are anything but places where free speech is tolerated, let alone encouraged.
Doing all this and more does not indicate that a Congress revival is assured but the election of Kharge as Congress president is the best bet on a journey that the party must undertake at this crucial time when Inda faces threats that it rarely has before.
It is possible to use the numbers to argue in many ways but what should be reasonable to note is that there is no conspiracy among a certain set of people to grow their numbers. Demographics tells us that as the level of education (particularly of the woman) and the standard of living of the family moves up, the number of children per woman…
If India has to truly give up its colonial mindset, it must reform the bureaucracy, remove undue privileges for those in power, offer firm, enforceable and many more protections for ordinary citizens and decide on a growth journey that does not mimic the destruction that the West and China have wrought on the environment.
