CounterView

By RK Misra*
He that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache. An India in somnolent slumber after voting for development in 2014 may wake up to find itself saddled with an archaic agenda riding astride a society in strife. For starters, take meat. As if on cue, state after BJP-ruled state has suddenly woken up to the overarching religious need for keeping meat and fish shops as well as abattoirs closed on Hindu and Jain festival days.

By Rajiv Shah
Gujarat is, again, No 1— assessed for “ease” of doing business. At least this is what a new report, titled “Assessment of State Implementation of Business Reforms”, is said to have made out by a World Bank report. The moment news broke out, I was amused, and decided to go to the source.
I visited the World Bank site, and found a small summary, prompting one to visit the Government of India’s Department of Industrial Policy and Policy (DIPP) site to download it. Initial remarks on the World Bank site were revealing: “This report captures the findings of an assessment of reform implementation by states, led by the DIPP, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India, with support of the World Bank Group and KPMG as the knowledge partner, and facilitated by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).”
A clear effort of the government of India to “highlight” Gujarat model, this time with the hel…

By RK Misra*
Politicians and pundits enjoy floating pretentious bubbles when chasing power and pelf. Once in, the remaining time is spent either in denial, deceit or demagogy. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is no exception. A political pugilist akin to Mohammed Ali, Modi as chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 had also incorporated the one time World Champion’s classic slogan ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ into his style sheet.

By Rajiv Shah
It was Wednesday, October 31, 1984. After finalizing the semi-left Link newsweekly, for which I worked then, the office driver boldly drove the Ambassador late at night through Delhi streets, which were already in the grip of anti-Sikh riots, erupted following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. The driver squeezed his way through burning vehicles. At several places we could see houses in flames and heard painful, shrieking voices. It was a ghastly scenario, of the type I had never witnessed, or even imagined, before. I reached home, a middle class South Delhi locality; to my consolation all was quiet, though we had a Sikh neighbour.
My lovely daughter on that fateful day was just 21 days old. After taking my dinner, it befell on me to look after her, as she would refuse to sleep. I was still awake, and at 2 am, I found somebody knocking on our door. “Shah saheb”, the person who knocked the door loudly said. I immediately recognized his voice: We used to call him a “chadd…

By RK Misra*
The demand of the Patidar (Patel) community for caste-based reservation under the Other Backward Class (OBC) category has led to turmoil in Gujarat. And there is more in store. The community is seeking statutory guarantees for government jobs and admissions to educational institutions despite being numerically very strong and economically quite influential.