ISSUES AND CONCERNS

Secularism -the need to walk the talk The concept of secularism in the West is that of the state keeping aloof from religion and religious faiths. In countries where a highly predominant majority of people belong to one community or large group of homogeneous communities secularism can be narrowly defined as it is usually understood in the Western countries – as indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations from the state.However, Secularism gets a distinct connotation in societies with a substantial plurality with many fundamentally different faiths, religions, languages and social mores. The Nobel Laureate Amarthya Sen says, “The long history of heterodoxy has a bearing not only on the development and survival of democracy in India, it has also richly contributed…to the emergence of secularism in India, and even to the form that Indian secularism takes, which is not exactly the same the way secularism is defined in parts of the West… The form as w...

LEST WE FORGET FREEDOM IN THE FANFARE OF INDEPENDENCE Most people equate independence with freedom. Freedom, unlike independence, cannot be turned into a ceremony or an event. It cannot be put down to a date. It is either an ongoing condition of life, or it is nothing. The dawn of independence is an event, an outbreak of aspirations. Outbreaks have their dates. To have a date is to be fixed like a monument. It is there, solemnly marginalized from the general run of life. The attainment of Independence, as an event, belongs to the past. Its scope –no doubt, glorious- is realized and closed. Nothing further can be added to it. It can only repeatedly commemorated. The coloniser left on 15 August 1947. A long night ended that day. Did it mean the beginning of a new dawn as well? Well, that question has to be answered with reference not to independence but to freedom. Freedom is the womb of the new and the emerging. It pertains to the capacity for innovation and enterprise. Freedom is futu...

August 2021 - Points to Ponder Will India’s Turn Ever Come? During early 2000s, economies of China and Brazil were growing at breakneck speed. Between 2003 to 2013, China's GDP per person grew by more than five times, from $1,288 to $7,050. Brazil's GDP per person also quadrupled during the same period, from $3,070 to $12,300. But by 2019, while China recorded a per capita GDP of $10262, Brazil regressed to a per capita GDP of $ 8717. Where does India stand in the GDP pecking order? As per data put out by the World Bank for 2019, India was the 5th largest economy in the world But in terms of per capita GDP, India’s ranking was a dismal 144 out of 194 countries, which implies entrenched inequality in distribution of income and unsustainable population. Yet, we are given to flaunting many a claim to fame and proclaiming that we are a super power in the making even as people die in hundreds of thousands with a clueless government scrambling for vaccines to fight the pandemic. N...

INDIA @ 75- A STORY OF NEVER ENDING WORK-IN-PROGRESS “Kaarwaan Nikal Gayee aur Ghubaar Dekhtey Rah Gaye” is an old urdu couplet, which literally means, ‘Caravaan has passed by but the dust, left behind, kept gaping at it’. 108 years ago in 1912, one Ram Jiyawan, a landless labourer, from a village, in the assembly constituency of Tiloi (in 2003) Uttar Pradesh, was picked up by the British as an indentured labourer and transported to far away British Guyana in South America. Three generations down the line Ram Jiyawan’s grandson Mr. Bharat Jagdev, in the last week of August 2003, came to India in search of his roots. The family of two households had multiplied to 24 households in the intervening 9 decades that passed by between 1912 & 2003. India had become a free nation in 1947, from its colonial past. Yes their numbers had increased by some 12 times but nothing else had changed to these Lonias, the community to which Ram Jiyawan belonged. They were landless then in 1912, they we...

NEW DELHI: In one of the novel initiatives for the first time this government of NDA at the centre has identified 115 districts from 28 states, at least one of each state, in a transparent manner by a committee of senior officers to the government of India, in consultation with state officials using a composite index of key data sets that included deprivation enumerated under the socio-economic caste census. It is true that there are significant inter-state and inter district variation in development indices, reflecting a high heterogeneity in the living standards among different sections of Indian society, as reflected in the HDI determined by UNDP. Hence, this initiative, Transformation of Aspirational Districts program was launched in January 2018, through mass movement to quickly and effectively transform these districts. Reportedly this program is a policy priority of government of India with NITI AAYOG anchoring it. In these 115 districts of 28 states there are 19 districts in J...

BIHAR:GRBR, is an acronym used in some yappy circles, but has its contextual relevance. GRBR extends to read as Good Riddance of Bad Rubbish. It’s a tongue in cheek tribute or at best a left-handed epitaph to the soul dead and gone. Some weeks ago, there was this news in the print media, probably was on electronic media as well, that the 53 year old Don-turned-Politician Mohammad Shahabuddin died of Covid-19 at a Delhi hospital. TOI’s Sunday Times carried this news on the top of the front page. For a Don-turned-Politician (D-t-P) as Sunday Times called him, who according to innumerable Indians was eminently qualified to be forgotten as GRBR, for this “INDIA’S LARGEST ENGLISH NEWSPAPER” to top bill the news of the death of this D-t-P make a mockery of press freedom. This person, who has been described as convicted gangster, has reportedly killed 16 public figures from the Communist Party of India including student leaders, who raised the banner of opposition to his nefarious activities....

UP Population Control Bill For us at ISSUES & CONCERNS (I&C), issue of exploding population, especially of India, has been very close to our heart. When I&C got launched in November 2000, the first issue on the cover was POPULATION, for the universal relevance of the issue even then. In successive editions during the last 20 years, I&C has tried to highlight the issue of uncontrolled growth in numbers. Despite argument in favour of the so-called Demographic Dividend, we persisted in highlighting the vagaries of this problem of all problems. It’s been a kind of saga for us at I&C. 11th July 2021, the World Population Day came and went into national amnesia as usual. The customary government advertisement (both central & state) had stopped years ago. Leadership at all levels did not lose their sleep on this mother of all problems. But for the first time a Chief Minister of a state decided to bell the cat, it’s “Hum Do, hamare do, nahi toh!” Chief Minister Yogi Adi...

WHEN FR. STAN SWAMY ‘DIED’, WAS SUPREME COURT SLEEPING! On 8th October, 2020 reportedly 4 National Investigation Agency (NIA) officers came to Bagaicha, a hamlet in Jharkhand without summons or warrant, and arrested Fr. Stan Swamy on charges of instigating violence in Bhima Koregoan. They took him to Mumbai and presented him to the court the following day. Fr. Stan Swamy respectfully stated in the court “I neither had any connection with Bhima Koregoan incident nor any links with Maoists. All along I dedicated my life for the development of my poor Aadivasi sisters and brothers. I wanted justice to be done to them as per the constitutional provisions and Supreme Court judgements”. He was sent to judicial custody in Taloja outside Mumbai. He was 84 years old, frail and in indifferent health. Suddenly a little known Jesuit Fr. Stanislaus Lourduswamy became known to the news reading Indians across the country, as the oldest person accused of terrorism and was jailed for his alleged role ...