The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Campaign) is powerful in its simplicity, and problematic for the same reason. The absence of complexity in the presentation of the campaign, and the inherent contradictions between Modi’s consumerist growth agenda and SwachhBharat’s objectives fuels my skepticism and raises many questions: Which parts of India will be cleaned, which not and why not?… Read more →
Inside Narendra Modi’s First 100 Days as Prime Minister of India Fast Track To Troubling Times: 100 Days of Narendra Modi – A Counter Report Several “100 day” reports have been issued by various media sources about the new Narendra Modi regime in India. While some tend to be little short of adulatory panegyrics for Modi, a few have… Read more →
Planning was a vision, a part of the nationalist movement and its history goes back to a many stranded dream of linking knowledge and power to serve society The old aphorism “old soldiers never die, they just fade away” might also be a story of the fate of most institutions. However, it was not true of the Planning Commission, which… Read more →
Murzban Jal is Professor and Director at the Centre for Educational Studies, Indian Institute of Education, Pune. He did his PhD from the Department of Philosophy, Panjab University on Marx’s theory of fetishism and consequently worked at the Centre for Civilizations, New Delhi. He was Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla and an Indian Council for Social… Read more →
What secularism did was it enforced oppositions in a way that the middle class felt apologetic and unconfident about its beliefs, its perspectives. Secularism was portrayed as an upwardly mobile, drawing room discourse they were inept at On May 17, Narendra Modi revisited Varanasi to witness a pooja performed at the Kashi Vishwanath temple. After the ritual at the temple, he moved… Read more →
Mohsin Shaikh, who was killed in Pune ten days ago, wanted to get on in life. A fine report in The Indian Express gives us a window into his world. He was from Solapur, a large town in southern Maharashtra where his father, Sadiq, like many Indian Muslims, was ‘self-employed’, which, in his case, meant running a small, unremunerative shop that doubled as… Read more →
Narendra Modi on MS Golwalkar, translated by Aakar Patel – Part 1 The Caravan – A Journal of Politics and Culture In 2008, after his second assembly election win in 2007, Narendra Modi wrote a book titled Jyotipunj (which translates as “beams of light”) in which he retold the life stories of sixteen men who inspired him. All sixteen men… Read more →
Neelanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of a much discussed book on Modi, made few interesting observations about AAP’s (Aam Aadmi Party ) foray into the electoral politics of Gujarat. Underlining the fact that Kejriwal’s entry into the state – wherein he tried to put the government on the mat for its acts of omission and commission – did raise expectations, he maintains… Read more →
There is a difference between the politics of representation, participation and empowerment. These three styles triangulated at Amethi this time to destroy an old myth, the myth of family constituency On May 7, 2014, as Amethi went to vote, spectators on TV watched a myth of a different kind, a soap opera of a different order. It was witnessing not… Read more →
Mohan Bhagwat brings a resurgent Sangh to the cusp of political power IN EARLY AUGUST LAST YEAR, a cohort of journalists gathered in Kolkata for a two-day seminar on Islamic fundamentalism convened by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the world’s largest non-political voluntary organisation and the eighty-eight-year-old bedrock of Hindu nationalism in India. This was the first time the RSS, also… Read more →
Narendra Modi was enacting a symbolic crusade in Varanasi, remapping history as he retraced the landmarks of a city. In mapping space, he was reclaiming history, the rejected or slighted history of a nation Politics is often a symbolic domain, where the grammar of a world and its historic logic are played out for a nation to watch. On April… Read more →
The Chiranjeevi Yojana programme in Gujarat claims to reduce infant and maternal deaths in rural India by encouraging mothers to deliver in private hospitals. The programme “received the Wall Street Journal Asian Innovation Award in 2006 and has been hailed by some as a model for wide adoption throughout India.” Narendra Modi’s website has a page on the scheme (http://www.narendramodi.in/chiranjeevi-yojana-special-care-of-mother-and-child/),… Read more →
What does the failure to present a serious Manifesto this time mean for the party that hopes to lead the next government? The Sangh Parivar has a “well-known repertoire of core issues: the concept of Hindutva; the project of building a Ram Temple in Ayodhya (on the grave of the Babri Masjid); the abrogation of Article 370, which confers a… Read more →
Who does Narendra Modi represent and what does his rise in Indian politics signify? Given the burden he carries of the 2002 anti-Muslim massacres, it is tempting to see the Gujarat chief minister’s arrival on the national stage as a watershed moment in the escalation of communal politics. Certainly the cult-like following he has amongst the sangh parivar faithful and… Read more →
It’s the same old city, reputed to be the world’s oldest settlement of people. No one is in a hurry, it’s as if everything moves on a cosmic timescale. But beneath the calm, one can sense something astir among those who swarm Varanasi’s ghats, streets and shops that sell chai, khana and thandai (with bhang as an option). With Narendra… Read more →
Resignation letters of suspended officers – who are in jail under serious charges- are never a cause of concern for the powers that be. But with Dahyaji Gobarji Vanzara, suspended DIG of Gujarat police and head of its Anti Terrorist Squad, who once happened to be very close to the powers that be and has the potential of further embarrassing… Read more →