A new book, published by the New York-based Monthly Press Review (MPR), has blamed Microsoft founder Bill Gates for “crowning” the crisis allegedly engulfing India’s health sector, stating, the top American billionaire’s foundation of late has acquired “extraordinary influence" over India’s public health governance,  giving a fillip to a policy that deprives access of public healthcare facilities for majority of the country’s population.

  Bloomberg, a well-known financial, software, data and media company headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, has said that India’s GDP for 2020 would slip to –10.3%, in comparison to three of its immediate neighbours, China 1.9%, Pakistan –0.4, and Bangladesh 3.8%. The GDP comparison comes in a Bloomberg report of 53 countries in its Covid Resilience Ranking.

Ahmed Patel has passed away. It is indeed sad that he became another Covid victim, like thousands of others across the world. His loss appears to have been particularly felt in the Congress corridors. I know how some party leaders from Gujarat would often defend him even if one “negative” remark was made on him. “I personally cannot tolerate any criticism of Ahmedbhai”, Shaktisinh Gohil, Rajya Sabha MP from Gujarat, appointed Bihar in charge ahead of recent assembly polls, told me about a couple of years ago during a tete-e-tete in Ahmedabad.  I have known Ahmedbhai, though not intimately. The first time I met him was in Gandhinagar. It was 1997, when the BJP hadn’t yet taken over. The elections were to take place in December. Just posted as the Times of India reporter to cover government, I was called for a dinner at a very ordinary government-owned flat in Sector 16 where former Congress minister Urvashi Devi who later switched over to BJP, but now is not with any party, used to ...

Inside IAS academy, Mussoori The other day, I was talking to a former colleague of the Times of India, Ahmedabad. I have known him as one of the reasonable and rational journalists. He later served in a TV. When in TV, he would often tell me anecdotes of how they would report events if they failed to reach the spot on time: “We would just say, here the attack took place, and that was the place from where the attackers attacked.”  On phone for a little more than a half an hour, we talked a bit about how the Modi government was seeking to sideline IAS across India, who, I have always believed, despite their constraints (as serve they must the powers-that-be), are broadly wedded to the Constitution of India, something they are groomed for at the IAS academy in Mussourie. While I told him that my interaction with most IAS bureaucrats – which was direct and live till early 2013 when I retired from the Times of India as political editor, Ahmedabad, stationed in Gandhinagar – suggested th...

It was such a pleasure reading a Facebook post. Rajiv Tyagi is former Indian Air Force squadron, His profile describes him as “politically promiscuous anti-fascist dissident, brain defogger, atheist, adventurer, empath, humanist”. This is what says in his post : “Sanskrit for all practical purposes is a dead horse. No amount of flogging will make it pull a political cart any longer.”  It takes me back to the days when I started covering Gujarat Sachivalaya in 1997. It was, I think 1999, if I am not mistaken. Then education minister Anandiben Patel, currently Uttar Pradesh governor and a known Narendra Modi protege, told me, “We don’t need English, we need Sanskrit.” But before recalling all of it, let me first reproduce what Tyagi has to say about Sanskrit: “Even when it was in currency, it was never the language of the people. Sanskrit was like the silly k-language that schoolkids make up within their gang, by adding a k sound before every syllable, to make themselves unintelligib...

   Digital bank N26, based in Berlin, known to be offering services to customers to manage their bank account online and from their smartphone in real-time in Europe and USA, has ranked India 76th among 100 countries it has analysed in order to measure female opportunity and achievement around the world.

A new book, “Sustainable Development in India: A Comparison with the G-20”, authored by Dr Keshab Chandra Mandal, has regretted that though India’s GDP has doubled over the last one decade, its human development indicators are worse than not just developed countries of the Group of 20 countries but also developing countries who its members.

Mahurkar at GMC meet On November 18 evening, the Gujarat Media Club (GMC) organised a felicitation function for Uday Mahurkar, a long-time journalist with “India Today”, as the new information commissioner of the Central Information Commission, the Right to Information (RTI) watchdog of the Government of India. There were two reasons why I decided avoiding the meed (I conveyed it on WhatsApp that I wouldn’t attending).  The first was, of course, the pandemic, though GMC claimed it would do everything to ensure that “enough precautions” would be taken. And the second was, I have found myself a misfit in such ceremonies – I get bored, often lost, sit among the back benches, talking around with those sitting next by me. Surely, it was different when I had to attend some of such ceremonial functions in Gandhinagar as part of my duty as the Times of India reporter. Yet, I decided to watch the function on Facebook live – a link was sent by GMC on WhatsApp. What surprised me was, a maximu...

I am a little confused. How does one describe the arrest of Republic TV anchor Arnab Goswami? Most top newspapers, even as stating that they disagree with Arnab’s style of “journalism”, have condemned it, and so has the Editors’ Guild, which is headed by Seema Mustafa, founder of left-of-centre site thecitizen.in. A Republic TV insider suggested me, refusing to directly defend Arnab, that it all started with “clash of ego” between Arnab and the Mumbai Police Commissioner.  No doubt, Arnab’s way of interpreting things – whether it was the arrest of journalists across India, or of activists allegedly involved in the Bhima Koregaon violence, or for that matter of students and ex-students, even women, participating in the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) movement – were highly objectionable. It appeared to me, as did to many other journalists, that he was defending the authoritarian hand of the government. Arnab even took the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Central Bureau o...

Last month-end, a Dalit poet, Jayesh Jeeviben Solanki, passed away. I learned this from Facebook. Innumerable FB friends, including Gujarat’s topmost Dalit rights politician Jignesh Mevani, who won as an independent MLA with Congress support, paid glowing tributes to Jayesh. Young, perhaps in his 30s, the very name suggests that he wanted to proclaim himself to be: that he is not a patriarch. The middle name is Jeeviben, which, I think, should be his mother’s (he wasn’t married) – unusual, as in Gujarat’s patriarchal tradition, it’s a tradition to put father’s name in the middle.