The video showing an alleged stone-pelter as a ‘human shield’ by security forces no doubt may have raised eyebrows from the Kashmir-centeric leaders and their supporters but ask a common Indian he never would have opposed such treatment. Pseudo human right activists and social organisations are crying hoarse over the treatment meted out to the pelter, one should not forget that a security man too…

Three irrigation projects in the Indus river basin in Jammu and Kashmir, which were supposed to be completed by March this year, have missed their deadline. These projects are part of the 23 irrigation works the government had prioritised to complete by the end of the previous fiscal under two central schemes. While the remaining ones are nearing completion, the Tral Irrigation Project in…

Hundred years of Champaran Satyagraha

PRIYADARSHI DUTTA The centenary of Mahatma Gandhi’s first Satyagraha in India is being marked this April. It was undertaken in the erstwhile undivided Champaran district in northern Bihar. He went there in April, 1917 on learning about the abuses suffered by the cultivators of the district, forced into growing indigo by British planters/estate owners. ‘The Champaran tenant’, informs Gandhi, ‘was…

The promise of providing 24-hour uninterrupted power supply remains a far off dream in Jammu and Kashmir. Govt accepts the fact that power sector is a key enabler to bring back the State’s economy on rails. In actual terms the State  is only tapping 3,272 MW of power  which is negligible compared to untapped vast reserves. State buys from central pool and other states to meet its need. As the…

India, Pakistan, China and Russia and several central Asian countries deliberated on the situation in Afghanistan at a conference in Moscow, a day after the US dropped the “mother of all bombs” in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province. Representatives from the leading regional powers reviewed the peace process in Afghanistan as well as the security situation, besides exploring ways to ramp up…

Decoding patterns of intellectual tradition

Vinayshil Gautam There is something about our social narrative which escapes attention, at least in terms of emphasis and projection. Two domains can be identified for want of a more communicable phrase. One can be called the cultural domain and the other can be called the social domain. A visit to France will establish that France has Paris as its political capital. Paris is also the cultural…

It looks like a video war has started in Kashmir. First  a CRPF jawan returning from election duty was heckled and against all provocation the jawan maintained restraint, which has been applauded widely, leading to debates on TV channel. The heat has not subsided another video has gone viral showing army using a man as ‘human shield’ against the stone-pelters.  The video that has gone viral…

For Bharatiya Janata Party reclaiming power in Uttar Pradesh as far as northern part of India was concerned had the prime motive to establish its saffron agenda and to remove Congress from its bastion state. It took 15 years to fulfill this dream of being the superior party. It looks now the party bosses would be bit relaxed and now they would be focusing on the states where it has been…