Editorial

Rattled by the 2024 election outcome, the Modi government and the Sangh-BJP establishment are working on a multi-pronged strategy to counter the growing opposition of the people. The budget session found the Modi government somewhat on the back foot. The government had to refer the proposed Waqf Board bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee and defer the idea of legislating measures of control for social media. Even the UPSC was asked to withdraw a circular for lateral entry recruitment to the Union bureaucracy.

Bulldozer raj. If we are to choose one metaphor to illustrate the terror, injustice, impunity and arrogance that have emerged as the hallmarks of BJP rule in the Modi era, the bulldozer symbolises them all. The use of the bulldozer as a tool of 'governance' began in Uttar Pradesh under Yogi Adityanath's stewardship and today other BJP-ruled states, Madhya Pradesh in particular, have also adopted this model with great alacrity.

The horrific rape and murder of a 31-year-old postgraduate trainee doctor in Kolkata's RG Kar Medical College and Hospital has triggered a massive people's assertion in West Bengal powered by a remarkable women’s initiative called 'Reclaim the Night' – derived from an international movement - on the eve of Independence Day. This August 15, the focus was turned on the crucial question of women's freedom, women's safety and women's inalienable right to a dignified and democratic life in today's India.

Hindenburg Research's second report on the Adani scam is in some ways even more explosive than the first report that had rocked the world eighteen months ago. The first report had exposed the monumental corporate fraud perpetrated by the Adani group and pushed Gautam Adani down the global ladder of wealth. Questions were raised across India, including in the Indian parliament, about the Modi-Adani nexus.

On 1st August 2024, a 7-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court delivered a 6:1 majority judgment upholding the legality of sub-classification of Scheduled castes-Scheduled Tribes for the purposes of reservation. No carte blanche, though, is granted by the Court.

The first full budget of the third term of the Modi government has left even large sections of the middle class support base of the regime highly disillusioned and angry. Even Godi Media anchors have started raising inconvenient questions before the Finance Minister. A budget coming in the wake of an election in which the economic crisis cast such a long shadow and the ruling party lost its majority could not remain completely quiet about the concerns haunting the country.

Bangladesh is witnessing a historic student upheaval. What triggered the unrest was a High Court verdict restoring the old quota system in government jobs, but what has evidently led to the intensification of the movement and its spread like a wild fire across university campuses and district towns of Bangladesh is the government's attempt to suppress the movement by unleashing state terror and extra-judicial violence.

When thirteen Assembly seats go for by-polls just a few weeks after the Lok Sabha elections and the BJP manages only a couple of narrow wins, the by-poll results can surely be seen as a reconfirmation of the 2024 mandate. The results acquire added significance in view of the Modi regime's arrogant rejection of the spirit of the mandate as reflected in the attitude and announcements of the government and the renewed spate of mob lynchings and bulldozer demolitions aimed at intimidating the people.

In April and May 2024 it was testing time for India and the world was watching us. On 4 June as the BJP juggernaut was stopped at 240, democracy lovers across the world heaved a mild sigh of relief. But just when India seemed to have succeeded in pushing the fascist forces back at least partially, elections to the European Parliament recorded a major surge of the xenophobic far-right in country after country.

Political observers have often characterised the first ten years of the Modi government as an undeclared Emergency. With the coming into force of the three new criminal codes, that state of Emergency has now been institutionalised. The three codes replacing the Indian Penal Code 1860, Criminal Procedure Code 1973 and Indian Evidence Act 1872 were passed hurriedly in Parliament without any serious debate or parliamentary scrutiny on 20-21 December 2023 when almost the entire Opposition was suspended by the Speaker.