The silly season in India is an all-year phenomenon, an occasion for political pantomime when participants display their skills in the black arts. Congress leaders, led by the preposterous Rahul Gandhi were on hunger strike following a sumptuous meal, with the BJP, not to be outdone, putting on a rival show. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his alter ego Amit Shah told reporters that their party was highlighting the chaos in Parliament, where little or no business was done because of the unruly conduct of certain MPs. True enough, but those mainly at fault were from the Andhra Pradesh Telugu Desam, which, until recently, was an ally of the BJP, which in opposition played a disruptive role against the Congress government. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are locked in an unseemly scrum which has brought politics to a new low and descending fast into the proverbial gutter (Print media, Television April 11,12)
Supreme Court rebukes Centre over Cauvery
The Supreme Court pulled up the Central government for its failure to draw up an effective scheme for sharing the waters of the Cauvery river by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. It has instructed the Centre to do so by May 3. The longstanding dispute between the States has given rise to mass agitation in Tamil Nadu disrupting life in Chennai and its surrounds. Thereis growing sdissatisfaction in the Southern States with the Centre, lwading to a South-North dide in the country. ‘Is the Centre trying to turn state governments into glorified municipalities,’ says Kerala Finance Minister, Thomas Isaac (Mint, Hindu April 10)
Damp squib anti-quota strike in Hindi heartland
An anti-quota strike in the Hindi heartland turned out to be a damp squib with little impact on the ground. Shops were closed in some parts of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan for a few hours, but normal life proceeded apace. Scattered reports of attempts to disrupt train services emanated from Bihar but none were of serious nature (Business Line April 11)
UP law and order under multiple threats
The brother of a BJP member of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly (MLA) has been arrested in connection with the death during judicial custody of the father of a girl who had accused the man of partipating in the gang rape of his daughter. Atul Singh Sengar, arrested by a team of the Lucknow Crime Branch will now also be charged with murder, said DIG of Police Praveen Kumar. Law and order in this notorious badland has been attracting growing media attention of late. Chief Minister Yogi Adtiyanath’s gung-ho policies on crime and violence beyond the parameters of the rule of law has come in for censure (Hindu April 12)
Outrage at Jammu gang rape of tribal minor
Outrage and horror went viral at reports of a particularly gruesome gang rape and murder of an 8 year-old tribal girl in Katyua, Jammu, and the attempted cover-up by Hindu confessional groups and their legal teams. BJP ministers and party representatives were joined by Congress leaders in expressions of utter disbelief that such a horrendous crime could have been committed by human beings. The punishment demanded by one and all was that the punishment had to fit the crime. Prime Minister Modi said: ‘I want to assure the country that justice will be done and fully. …it is not at all fitting for a society that claims to be civilized and we are ashamed of it. We must address this together as a society.’ (Hindu, Times of India April 13, 14)
Judicial integrity cause for hope
The Supreme Court has once again upheld the rule of law, with cavalier politicians determined to erode its foundations with populist rabble rousing, its justices made it plain in a lengthy pronouncement that any couple had the right to marry across the divide of religion, caste or ethnicity without the consent of a third party in reference to the recent Hadiya case in Kerala Her right to marry whom she chose was guaranteed by the Constitution which existed for ‘believers and agnostics.’ (Times of India, Hindu April 10)
Model judge
The best judge, like Caesar’s wife, must at all times be above suspicion. Judges have been known, fairly or unfairly, to pronounce rulings favourable to governments in the hope of securing sinecures after retirement. Supreme Court Justice Kurien Joseph has announced that he would refuse assignment – apart from arbitration and mediation - following his retirement from the bench in November. Justice Joseph was part of a multi-faith bench which quashed triple talaq as unconstitutional. ‘The beauty of democracy is its ability to differentiate a watchdog from a barking dog’, he said, addressing the Kerala Media Academy. However, divisions in the court are now open, while the gulf between judges insisting that the court collegiums must have the right to appoint new judges and not the government. The court’s recommendation of respected senior advocate, Indu Malhotra, and the elevation of HHigh Court Judge K.M. Joseph, has. been held up for the past three months by the Law Ministry. (Times of India April 10)
Jihadis behead Kashmiri
Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists beheaded a civilian victim, Manzoor Ahmed Bhat (25), in Hajim, his headless corpse discovered in an orchard. Bhat was abducted by armed LeT jihadis in an operation that injured his father. This was the second such murder in a week following the death of Muntazir Ahmed, whose body also was dumped in an orchard. Former Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah condemned the silence of separatist leaders. No strike calls, no demonstrations: Abdullah wasn’t surprised. (Hindu April 7)
The appeasement lobby headed by Yashwant Sinha must be gathering their wits for the next step in their PR dialogues with the Hurriyat leadership.
Saving Pakistani lives
A Hyderabad-made vaccine for typhoid is playing a critical role in saving children’s lives in Pakistan’s Sindh province. Bharat Biotech International Ltd, the maker of the vaccine will supply 200,000 doses of its conjugate typhoid vaccine to Pakistan through the World Health Organization (W HO), said Krishna Elia, Managing Director of Bharat Biotech. (Business Line April 10)
ExxonMobil deal for L&T
Mumbai-based engineering giant, Larsen & Toubro Technology Services has been awarded a digitization contract by oil and gas giant ExxonMobil Exploration valued at $20 million in its first year of a three-year deal. The project would ramp up in the following two years. L&T said its work would convert historical geo-science content into a digitized format, which would provide geo-scientists with improved data availability and improve the speed and efficiency of analysis and evaluation. (Economic Times April 10)
Indo-Uzbekistan ties ramped up
Projecting its reach into Central Asia, India has drawn closer to Uzbekistan in a far-reaching deal that would entail an Indian defence manufacturing facility on Uzbek territory. The project was one of many issues discussed by M.J Akbar, India’s Minister of State in the Ministry of External Affairs and the Uzbek Defence Minister at Tashkent. Officials travelling with the Indian Minister told the Mumbai-based Economic Times that India had plans to to export defence equipment to Uzbekistan and was looking to establish a partnership for training military personnel.
Afghan accord
In the Tashkent Declaration both parties pledged support for an enduring peace in Afghanistan based on respect for the country’s sovereignty in face of the existential threat of terrorism that seeks Afghanistan’ existence. Minister Akbar highlighted the threat to Afghanistan’s security emanating from outside sources (March 29)
IRNSS-II empowers India’s fleet
Navigation satellite IRNSS-II was injected into space orbit last week [April 12] from the Sriharikota space pad off the Bay of Bengal. The 1, 425kg will be the eighth satellite to join the NAVIC constellation of India’s regional navigation satellites. The launch on a PSLV rocket completed the first phase of the constellation, said K. Sivan, Chairman, Indian Space Research and Organization [ISRO].
Timeline
Built for a 10-year stint, the atomic clock- civilian and military/security satellite will be fully operational by around mid-May. ISRO has planned a gruelling nine missions in the next eight months. Whilst the Chandrayan-II landing and rover is scheduled for late 2018, an important, path-breaking project is the second launch of the heavy lift GSLV III rocket designed to carry a three-tonne-plus GSLV-29 communications satellite into deep space geosynchronous orbit (Hindu, Times of India April 13)
Fake news the norm
Around a fortnight or so ago, a short Press Trust of India report in the Times of India, told of the Pakistani Defence Ministerial visit to Moscow to clinch an ambitious arms deal. The story was debunked by Russia as ‘wishful thinking.’ Russian diplomats in New Delhi were dismissive of thisa and earlier report by the Pakistan Foreign Minister of a new Pakistan-Russian alignment, a curious canard repeated from time to time in certain Indian newspapers in the hope, presumably, that something may stick and a dollar bonus or green card would attend their efforts for the promotion of freedom and democracy. Indeed the US and Russia were co-sponsors of Pakistan watch list for terrorist abetment (Economic Times April 10)
