TRUE OR FALSE?

You really don’t want the government to decide what’s fake and what’s real. That’s why there is all-round relief that attempts have been frustrated to punish journalists Now that the good folks at the Prime Minister’s Office have decided that the government should not bother itself with thinking of ways to check fake news, journalists […]

DO WE NEED THAT PLASTIC CARD?

Press freedom is best secured by journalists refusing government accreditation or perhaps, even better, the government scrapping it It was an eventful April 3, 2018, when Union Cabinet Minister of Textiles and Information & Broadcasting Smriti Irani, started a veritable bushfire by issuing an order to check ‘fake news’ by threatening to pull the accreditation […]

CONGRESS INCHES AHEAD

Shuffling the leaders’ deck and betting on the young, Rahul Gandhi is moving to revamp the party ahead of 2019 elections Somehow, the Congress now appears to be on a fast, brisk and neoteric run. A change of personae in the party that started alongside the Gujarat elections, catapulting Rahul Gandhi to the top, has, […]

LOOMING THREATS ON CAMPUS

Institutions that have been given autonomy will probably hike fees, taking higher education out of the reach of weaker sections No less than 62 state-funded universities have been given “autonomy”, which might be good for their managements but might cut off easy and affordable access to higher education, especially for students belonging to socially and […]

HAPPIER HOURS

Instead of getting their ears blasted by loud music at a bar, Delhi-NCR audiences are warming up to stand-up comics with their risqué jokes A city that laughs together stays together. No wonder, stand-up comedy is replacing Parliament sessions as a mode of entertainment. Papa CJ – winner of Asia’s best stand-up comedian award in […]

MIND YOUR TONGUE!

Why Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is on an apology spree, tendering amende honourable to many of those who slapped defamation cases on him There’s a joke going viral on social media: the new spelling of apology is ‘AAP-OLOGY’ – the pun is at the expense of Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) […]

WHO RUNS DELHI?

Reacting to traders holding the city to ransom while protesting against the recent sealing drive, the apex court observed, “Is there a rule of law?”   There’s great inertia in Delhi to implement reforms. Some hidden forces seem to guide the government. The multiplicity of agencies, the three tiers of government, have recently been at […]

BUNKER TOWN

Sandbags, bunkers and overwhelming presence of armed constabulary gives the impressing that Delhi’s a police state. But it’s not easy to secure a city of Delhi’s proportions and complexities A denizen of Delhi, irrespective of his or her social status, cannot miss one fundamental fact of existence: the ominous presence of security forces with guns […]