The recent forest fires in Uttarakhand have brought back memories of the fires that ravaged the state’s jungles in 2016 and 2018, among the worst in the state’s history in the past two decades. Over.
Why Cong must lead the charge on abolishing sedition law April 11, 2021, 7:28 AM IST
Dear Rahul
Your recent statement that “democracy is dead” created the expected hullabaloo. Not surprisingly, the BJP ridiculed your justifiable solicitude at India’s slipping global image of becoming an illiberal democracy. They trashed the US-based Freedom House report that said we were partly-free, and the Swedish V-Democratic Institute findings which said India was like an elected autocracy. The government’s response was boilerplate: This was mere left-leaning vacuous intellectualism, jaundiced at its core. Fact is that the new global political model uses electoral triumphs to undermine civil liberties. Presidents Erdogan, Putin, Viktor Orban, Roger Duterte, Jair Bolsonaro have gradually converted democratic systems into an autocratic architecture. Modern-day societies do not need earth-shattering legislations to announce their new freedom strangulating avatar; democra
Dealing with gladiator syndrome in Khaki April 11, 2021, 9:11 AM IST
Lt General KJ Singh superannuated in August 2016 after 39 years of distinguished service. He commanded the formidable Western Command, an operationally committed Corps in the North East having borders with four countries, an armoured division in the strike corps, a T-90 armoured brigade, and an elite armoured regiment, 63 Cavalry. He is currently holding the prestigious Ranjit Singh Chair of Excellence in the Panjab University, Chandigarh. LESS. MORE
The current month has been disastrous for the reputation of police forces, with the ongoing sordid drama of Mumbai police, followed by Bijapur ambush. It is more painful as I had the privilege of ample opportunities to not only work with the police but also serve on deputation with AR, the only PMF. In the process, naturally, there is a fair degree of appreciation, understanding and sympathy for the conditions in which our Khaki Yodhas serve.
Bill ClarkGetty Images Thing A is vital to bringing about Thing B is fair enough when Thing A hasn t been in place for decades without bringing about Thing B. If that s the case, you start to sound a little loco. Naturally, this phenomenon is highly common in American national politics. Year after year we were forced to sit through lectures about how low taxes on the rich would fuel prosperity that would trickle down to the common folk and that the tax cuts would even pay for themselves! even as we had year after year of evidence that it had not and never would. Year after year we would get assurances from various four-star generals that we are going to win the war in Afghanistan. And now, once again, we are being asked to Stay The Course on the filibuster, this time by one Joseph Manchin III. The reason? This is the way to reach that hallowed ground known as Bipartisan Compromise, an aspiration deemed higher, even, than making good policy that helps your constituents.
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Readers of a certain age may remember the reactionary mantra of Stick to Sports, in which athletes who exercised their free-speech rights as citizens of a democracy to weigh in on the issues of the day in a way other citizens found undesirable were told they had no business expressing opinions about how the society they live in should be run. At times, this got particularly ugly, as when Fox News diplomat Laura Ingraham told LeBron James to shut up and dribble.
This kind of stuff was built on a couple of core beliefs: one, that Black athletes existed to entertain and had no right to remind viewers they were living under the same laws and structures of this nation as anyone else; and two, that sports were, up until Colin Kaepernick took a knee, somehow