It’s heads I win and tails people loose …
This week saw Srinagar Mayor asserting that action will be initiated against all those who have violated construction norms, including commercial complexes that have come up in various residential areas of the city in violation of the Srinagar Master Plan, or encroached on the government land. Now if it really happens, it will be appreciable. […]
Debate on special status lends fresh coinage to politics here
Thanks to the raging controversy about the J&K’s special status, the two regional parties here have got a new lease of life. Having been pushed into the dock, these parties which were devoid of issues to talk with the people have suddenly got an opportunity to engage in some fresh rhetorical warfare. And this is […]
Shifting morality of the state
Today a whole lot of Indians find it difficult to reconcile with the way the India conducts itself, both internationally as well as with its domestic subjects, particularly with the have-nots. And their misgivings are completely not unfounded. Isn’t it the same country which pioneered the Non-Aligned Movement at a time when entire world was […]
Politics of brazen lies
To lie is a ‘sin’ or at least deplorable. This has got universal acceptability and people cutting across the differences of religions, and cultures and other markers agree that lying is inacceptable. Morally speaking, when someone lies about something he/she is and should be looked down upon by others as being insincere and deceitful. In […]
Nobody changes, yet everybody wants change!
Somewhere in mid-sixties, an American political organizer after finishing his lecture at the Stanford University was approached by a Soviet professor of political economics from University of Leningrad. Since both these people shared diametrically opposite worldviews about the global politics and its core definitions, the opening of the discussions between the two was obviously illustrative […]
I think, therefore, I am
‘I am Mr. A…, and I am from Kashmir.” This assertion from a Kashmiri participant could have perhaps gone unnoticed, but when another Kashmiri guy introduced himself in similar fashion – “I am Mr. B…, and I am from Kashmir,” one could see it raising the brow of the Indian contingent. And then the third […]
Exploring better ways of political expression
In the midst of the gassing and violence by the Chicago Police and National Guard during the 1968 Democratic Convention, many students, having found themselves at the receiving end of the police violence, went to meet one of the great organizational gurus of the time. After exchanging pleasantries, obviously the discussion that ensued centered around […]
Who is racist, us or them…?
It has been for long that the Muslims have been experiencing what has come to be known as – Islamophobia, or the fear of Islam and Muslims. This fear breeds prejudice and hate against Muslims at the hands of those who suffer a sort of mental condition wherein they are scared of everything related with […]
… and people’s disempowerment continues!
Immediately after the September 2014 floods, when Election Commission of India decided to go ahead with the electoral exercise in J&K, it assured that it should not impact the rehabilitation of the flood-hit population. However, this assertion, as was expected, proved no different than countless similar promises which have been observed only in breach. The […]
We’re tolerant people!
“As a young man in early nineties, most of my actions were, instead of rational thinking or logic, programmed by the adrenaline rush in my body. But today I am different; I have learned to tolerate dissent, and I am tolerant of even the worst of my detractors.” This is how one of Kashmir’s ‘leaders’ […]
