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THE DEMOLITION, THE VERDICT AND THE TEMPLE: THE DEFINITIVE BOOK ON THE RAM MANDIR PROJECT By Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay Speaking Tiger, Rs 699 The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party, are hopeful that the ‘inauguration’ of the incomplete Ram temple at Ayodhya would consolidate the Hindu vote in favour of the incumbent regime in the run-up to the general elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi thinks that whipping up religious fervour with the pran pratishtha...

Example 1: Ajay Mishra Teni, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, is the BJP member of the Lok Sabha from the Kheri constituency in Uttar Pradesh. In October 2021, his son, Ashish Mishra Monu, allegedly drove into a crowd of protesting farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri, killing four farmers and a journalist. The junior Mishra is under trial for murder. The government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi resisted immense pressure to dismiss Teni from the Cabinet at the time and he has now been...

Sreedhar Ramamurthi was a scientist as well as an activist who worked to ameliorate the condition of those impacted by reckless mining all over India. He worked with many others who shared his ideals about the need to conserve the planet with care. He was no starry-eyed social worker who believed he could change the world overnight. He was down to earth and practical about what could be achieved and what could not, and the extent to which the government could be convinced to support the under...

Here is a tentative list of entities in corporate groups that purchased electoral bonds and the controversies surrounding some of these groups. We know that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got more than half the funds from the redemption of bonds between 2018 and 2024. One of the companies that bought the bonds is Future Gaming and Hotel Services. This company bought bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore. The person behind this company is Santiago Martin, often called India’s “lottery king.” There have...

A bureaucrat, sometimes described as a civil servant, is, more often than not, a sophisticated slave of his political masters. Not all are, however, equally supine. Among them, a minority displays a strong spine. The privileged lot belonging to the elite IAS who are supposed to hold up the proverbial “steel frame” of the country, are a mixed bunch of the subservient (the majority) and the rebellious (a few). The author of the book under review may consider himself as belonging to the latter...

A trust associated with the Reliance group inaugurated the world’s largest private zoo on February 26. The zoo is the “pet project” of Anant Ambani, son of group head Mukesh Ambani. The zoo is the venue of Anant’s pre-wedding celebrations where the world’s richest and most famous are expected to be in attendance. The project was set up under the shadow of a series of legal challenges around the country by the petitioners concerned, with allegations of illegal transfer of elephants from different...

The Supreme Court judgement on electoral bonds on Thursday is reminiscent of two apparently contradictory cliches. First, it is too little too late. Secondly, it is also better late than never. When the then finance minister, the late Arun Jaitely introduced the proposal to have electoral bonds in his budget speech, it took the government 11 months before it was formally fleshed out. Even then, the law that was struck down by the apex court had to be introduced as a money bill, which does not...

If there were some who were expecting big-ticket announcements to be made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman while presenting the Interim Budget for 2024-25, the last “budget” before the general elections, they were disappointed. An interim budget is a vote-on-account to provide a grant to the Union government to meet its expenditures for four months. However, since the Narendra Modi government has broken many a convention after he became Prime Minister in May 2014, expectations of populist...

In the wake of recent diplomatic tensions between India and Canada, New Delhi-based BLS International, a company providing outsourcing services to India’s diplomatic missions under the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), including the issuance of visas electronically, encountered operational disruptions in Canada. Then came accusations that the private firm had botched up the implementation of an e-residency programme in Estonia, a country in northern Europe. The company claims the problems...

Book: India's Experiment with Democracy : The Life of a Nation Through Its Elections Author: S.Y. Quraishi Published by: HarperCollins Price: Rs 699 Conscious that his personal life coincides with that of politically-independent India, the former chief election commissioner, guitar player, the first Muslim officer of the Indian Administrative Service from “old Delhi” after 1947, born into a family of Islamic scholars and the son of a man who insisted that his children be benefitted by “modern...