It may be argued that invoking the Bhutanese king’s principled stance as a reference point for a country as vast and diverse as India is deeply flawed—or, at best, a theoretical abstraction. Yet the fact remains: the ethos of good governance knows no geographical boundaries. If the highest leadership of a small, landlocked nation with limited resources could believe in, and strive towards, such ideals, why should our country fall short of visionary leadership, especially when it is far larger and endowed with greater capacities, opportunities, and strategic advantages?
In this backdrop, opening up India fully to Chinese, including inviting the Chinese delegations, is akin to arranging visits of KFC owners to poultry farms! The hubris that this was to familiarize two big political parties and two economic powers with each other must have amused Beijing endlessly. Finally, insecurity is palpable in India’s handling of China and the US. About time we get over this.
History is not a tool to divide society and perpetuate the injustices of the past. It is there to show us what wrongs have happened in the past which should not happen again. We need to march towards a just society where all live the life of dignity and respect, a society where all of us enjoy equal citizenship rights.
Public opposition towards the reforms escalated after a web link to a gay dating site was found in one of the lessons in the grade six English language module. This website was subsequently blocked by the regulator for internet users in Sri Lanka. The lesson was intended to teach ten-year-old kids how to make online friends.
The context in which Nadda was making this statement needs to be understood in light of the party's electoral strategy. It no way signals differences in thinking or the parting of ways between the parent organization and its political progeny. Modi’s towering image is needed for the furtherance of the agenda of a 'Hindu nation'.
India can be forced to shine but whether the people of India will shine remains the question, and that remains the ground on which the Congress is making huge strides in its fight against the BJP in this election.
According to a new report by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), conflict and violence triggered 69,000 displacements in South Asia during 2023, with Manipur alone accounting for 67,000.
It is estimated that the Muslim population which is 14.2 per cent as per the 2011 census will stabilize at 18 per cent by 2050 as the trends amongst the Muslim community show.
India’s inward remittances keep growing, having more than doubled since 2010, and showing a growth of over 6 per cent per year, ahead of GDP growth. By comparison, China’s inbound remittances have been falling. Pakistan and Bangladesh get about one-fourth of what India gets.
If democracy does survive in this sub-continent, posterity will certainly hail these recently pronounced three judgments as the primary reason for its preservation.
While Iran’s ties with the West, especially US, may have hit rock bottom, Pakistan despite the public posturing will not be able to go ahead with the project at the cost of annoying the US.
At the heart of the violence lies majority triumphalism combined with a systematic denial of knowledge acquisition, specifically histories, for the minority community in Manipur.
Do note that the BJP because of its sloganeering and expectation-setting has to cross its previous mark of 303 to be seen as victorious; the INDIA alliance has to pull the BJP below 272 to claim victory. Barring the possibility, extremely remote at this time, of the Congress and/or the INDIA alliance faring very poorly at these polls, what we have is a party that will shape the direction of policy in India in the days ahead.
Despite learning a bitter lesson from Covid-19, our governments, whether at the state or national level, have failed to recognise the importance of ensuring trouble-free access to public health.
The rich build gated communities for themselves, in which they pay for their own private services of security, and 24X7 power and water supply. They lose sight of the needs of people living outside their walls.
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.
