PRIME Minister Mr. Narendra Modi has hit the nail on the head by attribution the surge in coronavirus infection in the country to widespread negligence about COVID-19 among people. India was among the first countries to impose a lockdown when the first wave hit the world. It helped in breaking the chain of the pandemic and bailed out the country from a perceived deep crisis. However, as the battle against the virus enters the final phase..

AFTER the acrimonious electoral fight for Presidency between Mr. Donald Trump and Mr. Joe Biden stretched beyond levels of tolerance over the final outcome, a ‘new’ normal is in the offing for the United States of America. Though he has not conceded defeat Mr. Trump has finally agreed to begin transition process for President-elect Joe Biden “in the best interest of our country”. This has ended weeks of speculation and weighing of various options to get the transition in place. The Biden administration ..

THE killing of four heavily-armed terrorists of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) --Masood Azhar’s jihadist outfit -- in an encounter by the J&K Police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) on November 19, at the Ban Toll Plaza near Nagrota has exposed Pakistan’s fresh offensive to sabotage the Valley’s first major democratic exercise. The incident has taken place just a few days ahead of the eight-phased elections for all the 20 District Development Councils (DDCs) in Jammu and Kashmir, slated between ..

A MAJOR talking point of the recently-concluded Indian Premier League (IPL) was the fitness of opener Rohit Sharma, who was declared injured by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) while leaving him out of the Australia-bound team. Sharma surprised all by turning up for his franchise Mumbai Indians and also led them to title. Now undergoing rehab in the National Cricket Academy (NCA) under the watchful eye of Rahul Dravid,..

WORLD leaders at the G20 Summit hosted by Saudi Arabia have advocated for a unified approach to tackle some pressing issues haunting humanity. Two of the biggest problems that have not spared any country are COVID-19 and climate change. Dealing with the twin problems would entail a calibrated, cogent and cohesive response from the world community, keeping aside their political and geographical disagreements aside for the sake of larger human good...

A TEAM that has men with the ability to knock over 20 opposition wickets can only claim superiority in Test cricket. The longest form of the game is as simple as this logic. The difficult part is marshalling those capable men in conditions and surroundings that are way too different from what they are bred upon. Winning overseas is as simple as that! As India begin their test of character in the Australia series, their success hinges on the bowlers who are up for the tough challenge...

THE Bihar verdict has compelled many political commentators to wonder how come the incumbent National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of JD(U) was able to come back to power again amid the coronavirus pandemic. After all, it’s a fact that the Nitish Government failed to address the worst migrant crisis in recent times that the State had to face during this pandemic. The Biharis working in other States were forced to move out during the lockdown to reach back ..

INDIA-FRIENDLY Joe Biden’s ascendency to the top job in the United States means a lot for India, especially in the area of trade and economic relations as the country is looking for large foreign investments from diplomatic allies to grow its domestic industry and boost employment. Contrary to the official data on sources of FDI inflows into India from April 2000 to December 2019, putting the USA as the fifth largest investor after ..

INDIA’S reminder to the United Nations to initiate a decisive movement to achieve the long-delayed reform of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) should set the process in motion rather than making it a platform for futile debates. Mr. T S Tirumurti, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, used the right expressions to make his lament known to the powerful body that seems to have been caught in a time warp and keeps paying mere lip..

THE conglomerate of various regional and national political outfits in the form of People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) has all elements driven by the only vicious agenda of keeping Jammu & Kashmir under their control, far from mainstream India, for their personal gains. By terming the alliance as a Gang of people with deep-roo..

SINCE the first talked-about Made in India Over-the-top (OTT) content, Sacred Games, featured on Netflix in June 2018, there has been hue and cry about the kind of content that was peddled in the name of home entertainment. The feature was everything that the CBFC would have rejected after watching the first few minutes. Just about everybody who watched it found it gory, macabre replete with foul words, violence sans reason with overdose o..

CONCEDE: This weak-looking word needs a lot of strength to pull off. And who could’ve told that it would be an election in the great country of the United States of America that will bring us face to face with the power of the word? Though it may look so at present but conceding isn’t Mr Donald Trump’s problem alone. The word has trumped each one of us in one way or the other on so many occasions, hasn’t it? The dictionary says concede accurately means..

ONE Hong Kong lawmaker, Claudia Mo, said it was “the death-knell of Hong Kong’s democracy fight.” But she was part of it: One of the fifteen remaining pro-democracy members of the Legislative Council (Legco) who resigned on Thursday in protest at the expulsion of four other democratically elected members of the pseudo-Parliament. Wu Chi-wai, speaking for the fifteen who resigned, tweeted that “‘One country, two systems’ in Hong Kong has come to an end.” That is true, and it is regrettable, but it’s ..

IN THE Order passed in the matrimonial case- Shruti Kaushal Bisht v. Kaushal R. Bisht on November 6, 2020, Justice V. Ramasubramanian, at the Supreme Court, has considered that the claim of the wife Shruti that she is not receiving maintenance, has not been disputed, therefore considering the fact that the marriage was also solemnised in Delhi the wife’s petition for ..

 The PRO Act would remove many of the roadblocks the courts, the National Labour Relations Board, and corporate criminals have used for more than 70 years to destroy unions and reduce workers to serfdom.CONGRESSIONAL passage of the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, the most pro-worker rewrite of US labour laws since the original 1935 National Labour Relations Act, is high among Democratic President-Elect Joe Biden’s economic priorities, assuming he successfully takes office on January. ..

  THE Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has received a rich addition to its prestigious campus with the unveiling of the statue of Swami Vivekananda at the hands of Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi. Swami Vivekananda was the epitome of courage and compassion and a great champion of national cause, towering over personal ideologies and beliefs. When the Prime Minister invoked the philosophy of peaceful coexistence of ideologies for the larger benefit of the country, he made a significant ..

E VERY world leader leaves behind a legacy. What kind of legacy has US President Donald Trump left? His successor Joe Biden has now inherited some bad and some good policies, which he has to tackle. A Reuter’s report sums up Trump’s legacy thus: “Saying that he knew best what ailed America and often governing by executive order, President Donald Trump dismantled or disrupted multilateral pacts, overhauled tax and immigration systems and, with the help of Senate Republicans, reshaped the judiciary. ..

THE attempt by Municipal Commissioner of Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh Mr. Swapnil Pundkar to bring a sense of discipline in the populace over littering of roads is an apt commentary of how civic sense assumes the least priority for people in India. Mr. Pundkar has asked his sanitation workers to give back the garbage to those people who throw it on roads instead of handing it over to the cleanliness team. The initiative is to create awareness amon..

GIVEN the imperative stemming from the current internal and international conditions, the United States of America under Mr. Joe Biden can be expected to etch out a tenuous middle path that will defy naive predictions of a lateral inversion of overall policies offering a mirror-image of whatever outgoing President Mr. Donald Trump did. No matter the electoral rhetoric that the world heard during the campaign with much bitterness, Mr. Biden will not make the nation take a reverse-swing on most of the ..

A 3-JUDGE bench of the Supreme Court consisting of Justice Ashok Bhushan, Justice R. Subhash Reddy and Justice M.R. Shah, has in the judgement of the case- Biraji alias Brijraji & Another v. Surya Pratap and Others, delivered on November 3, 2020, reiterated “fairly well settled” law that in absence of pleading, any amount of evidence will not help the party. After hearing the lawyers on both sides, the Supreme Court has noted after perusing the ..

INDIA’S defence capabilities have long been an issue of debate and boosting the same has been the priority of all Governments in the face of constant threat perceptions from inimical neighbours like China and Pakistan. While the process of induction of new technology and modernising the armoury has always been a tardy and long-drawn process in India, over the last six years, under the NDA II dispensation led by PM Narendra Modi, e..

LET us talk of happiness as our basic right. Let us ask ourselves a simple (yet intriguing) question : What constitutes happiness? And let us, then, move on to find an answer -- in simple terms. Since time immemorial, the human society has associated happiness with simplicity that teaches us to move away from greed. Since time began, the human race has often associated happiness as a condition available away from darkness. It has also associated ..

GOOD tidings are available from India’s corporate sector. Bigwigs from India Inc have come together to pledge to work with the Government to tackle climate change and build sustainable economies so as to help the country to achieve its targets under Paris (Climate) Agreement...

BY ANY standard, it is a great collective achievement that the International Space Station (ISS) has completed twenty years of hosting man. Several countries and their space agencies have made this feat possible through international cooperation of the highest order. The ISS, thus, is a symbol of global collaboration in space research that has yielded many wonderful outcomes in diverse domains. In the process of the past twenty years, sever..

Great literature has almost always gently travelled through the times. It is timeless in the wisdom it imparts and also the delight it grants. It is the fountain of youth. It is evergreen, prodigious and productive. No wonder then, that a couple of lines written some five centuries ago are the one that best describe my situation today! “To be or not to be, that is the question.”..

IF THE very idea of a charismatic spy with uber cool demeanor ever needed an honest soul who could transform the character into a cult, then late Sir Sean Connery’s living as James Bond makes an all-time cinematic success story. He brought to life a legend that continues to weave magic in the world of spy movies across generations...

VICE PRESIDENT M Venkaiah Naidu has recently called for according equal respect to all languages emphasising that no language should either be imposed or opposed. Addressing an online event organised recently, the Vice-President said all Indian languages have a rich history and people should be proud of the country’s language diversity and cultural heritage. Noting that Mahatma Gandhi had founded the Dakshina Bharat Hind..

COUNTLESS definitions and descriptions of what stuff champions and winners are made of. All human societies have found their methods and manners and modes of bringing up champions and winners not just in sports but in life. Each human society has its own different stories to share, its own formulae about how winners are made and of what stuff. But all these diverse accounts have one thing in common -- that there are no short cuts to the destination; each person dreaming of being a winner has to walk ..

WHEN I was in school, I was taught a phrase - news spreads like wildfire. We all know that wildfires are uncontrolled, unplanned and unwanted forest fires. They cause great harm to the flora and fauna in the jungle and can’t be brought under control easily. They can be started by human carelessness like discarding of lit cigarettes or campfires or may be intentional arson or due to intense heat from the Sun or strike of lightning. ..

THE action of the Jammu and Kashmir Police to seal the Srinagar office of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) headed by Ms. Mehbooba Mufti and arresting a few workers for protesting against the new land law and NIA raids on NGOs in terror-funding cases, is fully justified. Though Ms. Mufti tried to add an ideological touch to the protests by saying that the PDP would not allow any toying with Kashmir’s demographics, it is obvious that the protests are being made out of frustration of loss of political ..

THE month-old war between Azerbaijan and Armenia is so low on everybody else’s list of concerns that when Azerbaijan won the war last Monday morning, hardly anybody in the media elsewhere even noticed. Shortly after 8 am local time on Monday, Azeri troops gained control of the road through the Lachin Pass. That is the sole land route between Armenia proper and Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian enclave inside the borders of Azerbaijan that the whole war is about. A new road further to the north, offering ..

A WELCOME amendment has been made to the land laws in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir that now opens up purchase of land by non-residents of the region. This move has ended a long-pending issue that was always seen as a hindrance for development of the erstwhile State when it enjoyed the unjust Special Status under the Article 370. This amendment was on cards and will now open up channels for a slew of developm..

THE strongly-worded condemnation of Pakistan’s indulgence in cross-border terrorism by India and United States and their appeal to Islamabad not to allow the Pakistani soil for terror activities, is nothing but a customary formality that has not served any purpose so far. Likewise, the expression of the need for concerted action against all terrorist networks, also serves as a mere formality that is not likely to serve any purpose other than offering them a sense of satisfaction that they have at ..

HOW do we integrate virtual courts and digital justice delivery into the broader legal ecosystem of India? The urgency for developing some methodology or procedure for this has gained new relevance in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) of the department of Personnel, Public Grievances and Law and Justice recently tabled its 103rd report on the functioning of Virtual Courts and Digitisation of Justice Delivery in Parliament. Although it is an interim report, ..

However, there is a fine difference -- between the television and the book: The television is a medium that feeds you visions but do not allow you the freedom to imagine, to delve into the unknown, to define the indefinable. For, there is noise, there is an overdoing of colour, and there is a series of pre-meditated picture-frames aimed at creating only a certain effect...

THE arrogant assertion by former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) leader Ms. Mehbooba Mufti about India’s national flag needs to be condemned by every Indian. She has said that she would unfurl and salute the national flag -- which she called ‘the other flag’ -- only if the J&K State flag is also unfurled simultaneously. Any such condition should be termed as an act of insult of the national flag and national honour. But Ms. Mufti has been blinded by the narrative ..

Pune, October 17: “When I was a kid at school, I would debate on a topic like ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’. I spoke very much in favour of the motion. Today, having seen our country, its politics and its discourse, am no longer convinced it is, because if you interpret the sword as a metaphor of power and authority and you interpret the pen metaphorically as ideas and words, I am sorry to say that while ideas and words may outlast power and authority, power and authority, ..

  NO MATTER the amount of explanation offered by the Maharashtra Government over its withdrawal of ‘general consent’ to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe cases in the State, the step smacks of a fishy agenda by the Maha Vikas Agahdi (MVA) dispensation in the State. Home Minister Mr. Anil Deshmukh has made public the Government’s apprehensions of the CBI being misused for political purpose.  It is an indirect way of casting aspersions of the capabilities ..

The State claims that the protests have been infiltrated by criminals, and in some places that is clearly true, but that’s not why the ruling political class is panicking. That’s not why they shot down well-educated, trendy but law-abiding young people in Lekki. It’s because those in power fear a youth revolt that could not only transform the country, but split it in half. THE young Nigerians who were protesting at Lekki Toll Plaza in Lagos on Tuesday night were not the African touring company of ..

IT IS a common occurrence in a democracy where a big chunk backing or opposing a statutory provision is mostly ignorant of the nitty-gritties of the law brought in for a certain purpose. Call it a byproduct of the herd mentality but the fact remains that every agitation or support to a cause has participation of a large element that just toes a line offered to it by some crafty political masters...

THE word of caution and the word of relief that Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi offered the nation have their own importance in the current context. He has signalled reopening of the economic sectors. He has indicated relaunching of various activities that were affected due to coronavirus restrictions in the past seven months But he wants the nation to be careful. ‘Yes, lock-downs are over. Yes, the country has done well on the coronavirus front. Yes, the world appreciates whatever India has achieved ..

UNION Minister of Environment Mr. Prakash Javdekar has pointed out rightly that the problem of pollution cannot be resolved in a day, and that continuous and long-term efforts are needed to tackle it effectively. The Minister also highlighted what efforts are being made to reduce vehicular and other kinds of pollution. Even if we see sense in the Minister’s statement, we also realise that the efforts to reduce pollution are not moving at a desirable pace. There is still a lot of slackness in the efforts ..

IT IS perfectly all right for an Opposition party to criticise the Government at every step of the way. It is very much expected of an Opposition party to act as a perfect watch-dog on the Government so as to restrict any abuse of power. But when a political party indulges in hollow cantankerousness shouting itself hoarse against the Government, then the people start losing faith in that party faster than anybody can imagine. This is happening w..

JUSTICE Sarang V. Kotwal, at the Bombay High Court, while granting bail to the actress Rhea Chakroborty, has dealt with in detail, the aspect of the case, as to whether all the offences under the NDPS Act are non-bailable. The High Court has referred to the observations by the Supreme Court that despite the stringent provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act 1985, as amended in 1988, the drug business was booming, addicts were rapidly rising, crime with its role in narcotics ..

NO MATTER what people may say, it certainly offers a happy feeling to find families in whose homes there is no television, and whose children are not given mobile phones well until their adulthood. The happy feeling gets enhanced when one realises that families attach certain sacredness to their dinners and spend time together not just enjoying food but enjoying one another’s company -- exchanging good stories, good ideas, good thoughts, good dreams, and in the short and long terms, good fortune of ..

In the past some years, countries like India have often questioned the wisdom of the present global structure that actually keeps power concentrated in just a few hands in a wide spectrum of activities...

The great majority of the countries with under 100 COVID deaths per million people are Asian and African nations with fast-growing populations and a median age of well under 30. COVID-19 selectively kills elderly people, and such people are very scarce in these countries. bbbbbbbbbb AFTER eight full months of the global pandemic, the..

BANGLADESH Government has made a bold move by granting capital punishment in rape cases. President Md. Abdul Hamid signed an ordinance awarding maximum punishment in rape cases to death of the convicts. This move came after a nationwide protest against a series of recent sexual assaults in the country. In India also, a social ..

THE proactive policing and security operations in Kashmir in the last few months have proved beyond doubt how it is possible to counter terrorism effectively with right intent and and right action. The security forces are able to stop infiltration of terrorists and arms and ammunition into the Indian territory and have succeeded in eliminating or capturing hundreds of ultras...

SOME day, the question about having a regulatory mechanism for broadcast media -- just as it is for the print section -- was to come up in public consideration, which happened when the honourable Bombay High Court asked the Union Government about the arrangement. A bench of Chief Justice Mr. Dipankar Datta and Mr. Justice G.S. Kulkarni raised this question as it heard a bunch of Public Interest Litigations seeking regulation of unrestrained coverage particularly on television news channels about ..