Personal View

SC unleashed genie of ‘surveys’ under mosques and has responsibility to pull it back Alok Tiwari If the last few weeks have felt like India has travelled back in time to the chaotic days of late 80s and early 90s, you can be excused. Those were the days when Babri Masjid-Ram Temple dispute was building up and our minds were full of dark forebodings. It led to razing of the Masjid, bomb blasts, Godhra arson attack, Gujarat riots and many more. Now something similar threatens to happen again, only this time the turbulence might be much worse. Because communal flames are being fanned not just in one place but several. The crucible for re-enactment of that dangerous reaction is again Uttar Pradesh, but the resulting upheaval will be felt all over the country. A small glimpse of it was seen on Nov 24 when five youths were gunned down during a protest at a mosque in Sambhal, UP. They were part of a crowd protesting a survey of the mosque ordered by a local court on a petition moved by ...

Politicians misusing state agencies should be held personally accountable   Alok Tiwari The Enforcement Directorate (ED) raid on the offices of political consultancy firm I-PAC in Kolkata and other places and the premises of its owner Pratik Jain last fortnight was hardly a surprise. With elections due in the state in months, it was only a matter of time before BJP reached for its now familiar ED playbook. Remember the land grab case of Jharkhand and liquor policy case of Delhi in which the serving chief ministers of those states were jailed? Those too had acquired miraculous urgency as the elections in those states neared. Now that the elections are out of the way, the cases and need for having the accused in custody are no longer that crucial. The present case relates to proceeds from a coal smuggling racket allegedly paid to I-PAC for doing political consultancy for Trinamool Congress. This time though ED ran against a Mamata Banerjee wall. The WB chief minister barged i...

We are building many fancy Metro systems; the task is to make them viable Alok Tiwari Some months back, an international publication came up with a critique of India’s Metro building spree. It pointed out that while India has rolled out Metros, basically rail-based urban mass transit systems, at an impressive pace, most of the system were failing to live up to their promise. Even in bigger cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad, metro utilization remains below par. Indian government, thin-skinned to any foreign criticism, quickly came out in defence. While not disputing the figures in original report, it pointed to growing utilization of Metro systems, the suggestion being that with time utilization will improve. Then came the completion of first phase of Pune Metro where the same old story was reported. The ridership barely reached a third of what it was projected. The figures at smaller cities like Jaipur, Nagpur, Lucknow, Kochi are still worse. Yet, many of these cities are now...

Unregulated development and culture of exploitation will deter tourists everywhere Alok Tiwari Goa is in the news, and not for good reasons this time. Apparently, someone released figures that tourist arrivals, both Indian and foreign, in that pocket of Indian bohemia are down. The news so rattled the Goan department of tourism that it filed an FIR against the social media poster who put out the figures. Since then, commenters have pitched in with their own information and explanations. Overcrowding, increased hotel and food rates, reign of taxi mafia, and disappearing local culture have been offered as reasons for tourists turning away. All these may be true. For years Goa has been something of an outlier in Indian tourism. This former Portuguese colony began attracting foreign tourists long before they discovered beaches of Kerala and heritage of Delhi-Agra-Jaipur golden triangle. These foreigners, mostly Russians and some from UK, came in droves to escape harsh winters of Euro...

The only thing worse than harsh rule of clerics is the US-Israel meddling Alok Tiwari The images and news from Iran these days could not be more unsettling. As internal protests triggered by economic hardships have spread in several cities, there are reports of harsh reprisals by the security forces. Thanks to lack of access by independent media and a government ordered internet shutdown, genuine information is hard to come by. Still, there is no denying there have been large number of casualties. Different sources estimate the toll from a few hundred to a few thousand. For a time, it appeared that the protests may finally topple the 46-year rule by ayatollahs. However, in recent days the government appears to have gathered its wits. Not only it has cracked down hard on protesters, but it has also managed to get thousands of its own supporters out on the streets to counter the protesters. Whichever way it goes, Iran appears headed for a messy future and a continuing tragedy for one...

Despite scions’ protestations, the age of kingdoms was not a pleasant one Alok Tiwari The scions of many erstwhile royal families were up in arms against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s remarks in an oped about some ‘pliant’ maharajas and nawabs that led to East India Company making a chokehold over our country. The article was not about role of those families but rather a warning about what happens when fair competition gives way to crony capitalism. The reference to royals in the opening paragraph of the article was in passing. Still, it rattled the descendants of the families enough to condemn the article as ignorant and insulting. Most of these former royals, mostly owing allegiance to BJP (no surprise there), called out the article as demeaning the role played by their families in upholding and their sacrifices in formation of modern unified India. It is a bit rich that the BJP, whose leaders otherwise miss no opportunity to condemn the dynastic succession in Congress and ridic...

BJP’s unprincipled push for uniform civil code is driven purely by electoral calculations Alok Tiwari If the campaign period of Lok Sabha elections was time for saving your buffaloes and mangalsutras, the current campaign period for Jharkhand and Maharashtra appears to be devoted to Uniform Civil Code (UCC). It is one of the many issues that Bharatiya Janata Party keeps bringing up in the hope of consolidating the Hindu base. The tone was set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Vadodara during birth anniversary celebration of Sardar Patel. He rooted for One Nation-One Secular Code while spewing usual venom on urban naxals, his omnibus term for anyone who differs from him. This was followed up by including the code in party’s election manifesto for Jharkhand. While releasing the manifesto Union home minister Amit Shah declared the code would not apply to tribals in the state. This was on the lines of UCC implemented in Uttarakhand but in Jharkhand it is even more important as the s...

We can do without both, dictators like Maduro and hegemons like Trump Alok Tiwari Last week’s raid by United States in Venezuela was audacious by any standards. US military not only infiltrated into the Venezuelan capital Caracas but, in probably a first action of its type, abducted President Nicolas Maduro and his wife in an operation barely lasting a few hours. Even though US President Donald Turmp had been warning of doing something in Venezuela for months, the scope and nature of the US operation left the world astounded. While lots of different types of actions were being speculated upon including a full-fledged ground invasion, nobody had anticipated a swift decapitation of the government. The only thing more surprising than the raid itself was the international reaction to it. Very few countries, unsurprisingly led by Russia, outrightly condemned the naked aggression and violation of Venezuelan sovereignty. Most confined themselves to expressing concerns and vague calls for ...

The national heritage animal of India is in mortal danger and govt is ducking its head Alok Tiwari In the hullabaloo of elections in Haryana and J&K, an important news published in the Indian Express last week completely escaped public attention. It was about a report on elephant estimation exercise that is conducted once in five years. Hundreds of copies of the report were printed when the government decided not to release it citing usual flimsy reasons. The main finding of the report was that wild elephant population in the country has suffered a precipitous decline. The numbers were never healthy to begin with and the trend was negative. But the last five years have seen an unprecedented steep decline. Overall, the population dropped nearly 20% from close to 20,000 to about 16,000. The drop was highest in central and eastern cluster where the number of majestic beings declined 41% to under 2000. It was least in Himalayan foothills at about 2%. Even in Western ghats, where ...

Its concern about losing political power due to shrinking population must be addressed Alok Tiwari We have worried about an exploding population for such a long time that to see something opposite of it as a problem is disorienting. But that is exactly the case. India is now the world’s most populous country and will remain so for a long time. We still have a growing population though the rate of growth is rapidly going down, a subject this column had discussed earlier (A depopulating world, Personal View, LT Jan 31, 2024). Now the problem has begun to bite. At least two southern chief ministers—N Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh and M K Stalin of Tamil Nadu—have spoken of measures to increase population in their respective states. Naidu is going to extremes, suggesting legislation to bar anyone with less than two kids from holding public offices, an about turn from policies that presently put similar bar on people having more than two kids. Their concerns are rooted in the fa...

Hindutva troublemakers are undermining country’s moral authority globally Alok Tiwari It has been a sad and worrying end to 2025. Violence erupted afresh in neighbouring Bangladesh after unknown gunmen fired at and fatally injured political activist Osman Hadi on Dec 12. Bangladesh police tried to insinuate an Indian connection to the killing claiming his assailants had fled to India. Hadi was a key figure in the uprising against Sheikh Hasina and a fierce India critic. When Hadi succumbed to his wounds a few days later, protesters lynched a Hindu man in public over allegations of blasphemy. Fundamentalists in the country have been trying to channelise the anger against Hasina, who was seen as close to India and who is exiled here, against Bangladesh’s Hindu minority. This has already resulted in at least three deaths in the last couple of weeks including a cold-blooded, unprovoked murder of a Hindu paramilitary soldier by his colleague. The man was killed for no reason other tha...