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Despite slowdown in some markets, electric vehicles (EVs) are here to stay Alok Tiwari As the climate change rapidly becomes reality from mere theory, everyone is concerned about how to keep the damage minimal. To have any hope of limiting the global warming to 1.5 C, we need to almost completely phase out use of fossil fuels within the lifetime of most people living on earth right now. Scientists, policy makers, politicians, and even common people had pinned their hope largely on two technologies—renewable energy from solar and wind and Electric Vehicles (EVs) for transportation. Optimists saw in the emergence of two a silver bullet. Cars, a major source of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, switch to electricity and most of the electricity comes from renewable sources. If only things were so simple. While renewable power, despite its many limitations, is on track to be a huge part of global energy mix in near future, EV revolution appears to be sputtering. Critics of EVs, an...

India is drifting dangerously away from the sacred principle of equality before law Alok Tiwari Last week Delhi University professor GN Saibaba died, broken and broke. His end came just over six months after his acquittal by Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court in a case under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) in which he was accused of aiding and abetting activities of Naxalites. He and his co-accused were labelled Urban Naxals, an omnibus and meaningless term often used to disparage anyone even slightly left leaning or progressive. He was convicted by a lower court in Gadchiroli after years in jail but was acquitted upon appeal by the high court on technical grounds. The state government was so rattled by this acquittal and so desperately wanted to prevent Saibaba’s release that it urged Supreme Court to hold a special hearing on a Saturday evening to get the HC verdict stayed. SC obliged and sent the matter back to HC. This time HC examined the matter on merits and found ...

Developed India remains a chimera without steps to improve quality of life Alok Tiwari Even with Modi government’s penchant for far out and twisted acronyms, the VB-G RAM G (Viksit Bharat- Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission-Gramin) takes the cake. To think someone taxed their brains this much just to delete Mahatma Gandhi’s name from a scheme defies belief. To be fair, it does more than that. It also reduces, if not removes, central government’s responsibility towards the scheme and adds to burden of the states. And ah! It also adds the name of Ram, even if in a creepy way, and thus a touch of Hindutva. It does manage to sound like Jai Ramji. That is pure genius. Then it does not matter if, to do this, some Macaulayputra had to insert as many as four English (and horror of horrors, one Urdu) words in the name. It sure must have been a bitter pill for a government that is loath to even call the country India, preferring Bharat instead in all official communications. There...

Their prospects at Kuno appear dim, it is time to bring Gir lions there Alok Tiwari When Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Project Cheetah in 2022 it was on Sept 17 which, not coincidentally, was also his birthday. The prime minister was acutely aware of the importance of both events. “There was a time,” he bragged alluding to Pandit Nehru’s 65 th birthday celebration in 1954, “when pigeons used to be released on birthdays. Now it is cheetahs. The country is changing.” In hindsight, he should have given his desire to get the better of Nehru a pause. We do not know what became of the sixty-five pigeons released in New Delhi back then, but the cheetahs brought to India are not faring very well. Two years on, the project is in tatters with not a single cheetah roaming in the wild in Kuno Palpur sanctuary of Madhya Pradesh. Not just that, the task of establishing a free ranging population of cheetahs is facing multiple challenges with no clear path towards progress. All the ch...

If Tirupati fracas focuses attention of food adulteration, it would serve some purpose Alok Tiwari In the last week or so, India seems to have dodged a bullet. A very carefully leaked report of a lab from Gujarat told us about presence of animal fats in ghee used for making laddus at Tirupati. The report understandably led to a fracas with political parties quick to capitalize on the development. The controversy failed to gather much steam possibly because both the previous and the current rulers of Andhra Pradesh happened to be allied with those who would usually lead the outrage on Hindu matters. Also, it helped that nowhere in the supply chain was a Muslim person or business organization led by Muslims involved. With the biggest trigger of right-wing troll army and anchors missing, the issue is petering out. Also, the devotees of Lord Venkateshwara, unlike the devotees of some other deities in recent times, turned out to be mature. They did not immediately set out on the str...

Re-release of the iconic movie reminds viewers of the country they have lost Alok Tiwari Movie re-runs used to be a thing. No longer. Internet, YouTube and OTTs have made sure that the days when viewers flocked to theatres to watch movies from another era are gone forever. Back in the day, you could see movies only in cinema halls. If you missed one at the time of initial release or want to savour it all over again you had to wait months, sometimes years, for its re-run. Then came the era of VCRs, the VCDs, and DVDs that brought movies home. Now, of course, practically every movie is available on-tap somewhere. Now re-runs, even with substantial value additions, do not fetch crowds. People literally killed to watch Mughal-e-Azam when it was first released. Its colourised version had a tame run in theatres. Ditto with Hum Dono despite the Dev Anand’s charisma and songs to die for. It is little surprise then, the re-release of even the biggest blockbuster of them all, Sholay, was...

Attitudinal change, not window dressing, is needed to bring about women's safety and security Alok Tiwari West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is nothing if not a fighter. True to her form, when pushed into defensive by the agitation following heinous rape-murder of a young doctor in Kolkata’s R H Kar Medical College, she has decided to come out fighting. Not only did she hold demonstrations of her own on the incident but has also announced a slew of measures that would supposedly improve women’s safety in the state. These include new law that provides an option of death penalty for rape, mandates death penalty for gang rape, and life imprisonment for acid attacks. It also has provisions for swift conclusion of investigations and trial in cases of crime against women, even though it sets apparently unrealistic timelines. Mamata also announced measures to provide more security equipment at medical colleges, more women police stations, more fast-track and other courts to ...

We all suffer when we let politics and religion determine our response to crime Alok Tiwari Selective outrage has been a thing with us for some time. As the society has become increasingly polarized, so have things that used to upset us. Crime, corruption, brutality, cruelty have all become neatly categorized into ours versus theirs. If it is theirs, we get angry. If it is ours, we just ignore or, worse, we find excuses. We try to find parallels in similar violations done by them and thus condone acts done by people on our side. Now, we have a president, who lives in a fortress-like Rashtrapati Bhavan and one who will have a security ring around her all her life, feeling insecure over rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata in a state that conveniently is governed by an opposition party. But the same president did not have a word to say when worse outrages had occurred serially in places run by her own party. She somehow failed to notice that people in her own party had felicitated ...

Crash landing of India’s largest carrier should help shed arrogance and laxity Alok Tiwari In a market infamous as graveyard of airlines, the rise of IndiGo over the last two decades has been amazing. Air Deccan may have introduced low cost flying to India, but it was IndiGo that truly taught us to fly. It turned flying the default mode of travel for the middle class. At a time when country’s airports still looked ramshackle, the airline exuded an air of professionalism. Though it was low cost it never looked low brow. From brand new planes to smartly turned-out flight attendants to an enviable on-time performance, IndiGo set the benchmarks. It not only grew at breakneck speed but also operated profitably, a no minor feat in the airlines business, especially in India. This earned it a jaw-dropping two thirds market share of Indian domestic market. Along with success came a certain cockiness. Polite condescension is what some staff tended to display, especially during difficult ti...

EPS95 scheme as it exists is a cruel joke on the pensioners and much more in need of reforms Alok Tiwari The effects of coalition politics on Prime Minister’s Narendra Modi’s third term are becoming clearer by the day. There is none of the brash confidence seen in his first two. After initially appearing to have its way with the NDA partners, the party is in one-foot-forward-two-feet-back mode. Not only has it quietly withdrawn the Broadcast Bill that would have given it powers to control independent online journalists but has also beat a hasty retreat on Waqf Board reforms and lateral entry into civil service. Now it has succumbed to the pressure of opposition and revised the pension scheme for government employees. The revision was quickly adopted by Maharashtra government too which faces an uncomfortable election situation and is throwing freebies at every segment imaginable. More state governments are expected to follow suit. The new Unified Pension Scheme does not quite brin...

The order on app was N Korea style overreach, should never have been issued Alok Tiwari Indian citizens can be excused if each day they wake up with a feeling of an unseen noose being tightened around their neck. The latest assault on their civil liberties came through a government order to mobile phone makers and importers to ensure that an app made by the government was pre-installed on all new phones sold in India. The existing phones and those in distribution pipeline will have the app pushed over the air through software update. The order clearly stated that the app cannot in anyway be disabled or its functions restricted. Two days of push back by users and phone makers saw government come to its senses and roll it back. But the damage to India’s reputation has been done, not for the first time by its own government. Sanchar Saathi, the app in question, is ostensibly meant to protect the user from cyber fraud and help recover the phone in case it is lost or stolen. The natur...