A senior Congress leader, considered close to interim party president Sonia Gandhi, has suggested a way out of the current impasse on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which is being opposed across India for making religion as the basis for providing citizenship to the persecuted minorities from three neighbouring countries -- Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

There was a time when we used to reject the Indian Constitution as "bourgeois". Those were the student days of early 1970s. Vigorous, youthful, though controversial. At that time, I used to be part of the Students Federation of India (SFI), CPI-M's student wing. We were told to believe by Delhi University party ideologues that the Constitution served the bourgeois-landlord state, led by the big bourgeoisie, which was in alliance with the imperialists.

  India appears to be competing with terrorist-stricken north-central African nation, Chad, in the number of internet shutdowns. In 2019, says a recent report, released by the UK-based top10vpn.com, which provides services meant to protect online privacy, India experienced 4,196 hours of internet shutdown, next only to Chad, with 4,728 hours of internet shutdown.

The other day, I went to attend an NGO event in Ahmedabad. It was called "Policies of Inclusion: Education and Wealth". Organised at the Ahmedabad Management Association by an NGO which claims to be working with governments in 22 states, including that of Gujarat, I attended the event during the second half, and my job seemed limited to answering a couple of queries on the role of media in helping usher in inclusive policies though development journalism. I don't know how far I satisfied those who attended the event. My argument was straight: While the corporate-controlled media would oblige you if you do proper media advocacy, you cannot expect much from it, as its interests lie somewhere else. I recalled how a top media baron struck a big cross after jotting down "liberal social agenda" on the board, stating, "We are in the business of news." So the way out, I suggested, was to look for alternative media for propagating inclusiveness, offered by seve...

In an amusing opinion piece in “Washington Post” (WP), former "Tehelka" journalist Rana Ayyub  – whose book on Gujarat riots, “Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up”, based on her undercover operations with government officials as a documentary filmmaker, made her famous – has blamed three Bollywood Khans, but most notably Saif Ali Khan, for playing an “off-screen role, enabling the worst impulses of the government.” The WP opinion piece seemed amusing to me, because, it is doubtful if highly well-informed journalist Ayub wasn’t in know of what was happening in Bollywood, though she lives in Mumbai. There is reason to wonder: When the WP piece appeared, there were no ripples of unease in the Bollywood over the police clampdown. Referring to “police vandalism and brutality” on anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protesters, especially in Uttar Pradesh, which led to several deaths, Ayub said in the opinion piece,  titled  “As repression in India gets worse, notable figures ...