Editorial

IN the final week of the 2019 Parliamentary Election campaign, Prime Minister Modi, the BJP and the RSS scrambled to distance themselves from the declaration of BJP candidate Pragya Thakur, that “Nathuram Godse was and will remain a patriot, those who call him a terrorist will get a reply in this election.”

PRIME Minister Modi’s ‘interviews’, given to certain select journalists during the 2019 parliamentary election campaign reveal much about himself and his politics. They reveal much in spite of the fact that the journalists who interviewed him avoided doing their jobs. The worst of these journalist acted as fawning cheerleaders; and even the best among them avoided the most relevant and vital questions.

IN the past few days, fresh evidence of Modi-era scams have mounted rapidly. And to draw attention away from Modi’s gifts of joblessness and scams, BJP leaders are daily making speeches trying to alternatively intimidate the electorate and focus its attention on Islamophobic hate instead. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court and EC give the appearance of being toothless and partisan in their failure to act against such unconstitutional intimidation and hate speech.

THE day before campaigning ended for the first phase of the 2019 elections, the BJP released its Manifesto. Five years ago the BJP Manifesto created a lot of buzz with promises of development (sabka saath, sabka vikas), repatriation of black money and advent of ‘achchhe din’, but this time round, the Manifesto appears to be only a statement of power, the arrogance of power to be precise.

AT a speech at Wardha launching his formal campaign for 2019 Parliamentary elections, PM Narendra Modi resorted to blatantly divisive communal rhetoric, accusing rival parties of having an anti-Hindu agenda. The tone and content of the speech betrayed Modi's nervousness and desperation. Unable to convincingly face voters on questions about jobs and farmers, and beleaguered by multiple corruption scandals, Modi and BJP are trying the last trick possible - of turning the election from BJP vs Opposition to Hindu vs Muslim.

THE horrific murders of 50 people who were at prayer in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand by a white supremacist terrorist has left people across the world shocked, grief-stricken and angry. It has also confirmed that a global network of white supremacists is now a major international terrorist threat, all the more sinister because they are gaining not only inspiration but tacit approval from the US government and other far-right regimes.

THE Election Commission of India has, finally, declared the schedule for the 2019 Parliamentary elections and the Assembly elections in certain states. The delay in making the announcement, and the inexplicable phasing of the polling schedule has rightly raised some questions. Was the announcement delayed to enable the Prime Minister to finish his hurricane tour of inaugurating (and in some cases even re-inaugurating) projects? Has the polling schedule been devised to allow the PM to address the maximum rallies and the ruling party to deploy its cadres as effectively as possible?

SINCE the Pulwama attack and the subsequent ‘air strikes’ by India and Pakistan, the subcontinent has been brought to the brink of a dangerous war. Such a climate of war between two nuclear-armed powers, accompanied by irresponsible media talk asking for the “nuclear bluff” to be called, presents a serious danger for the subcontinent and the world.

THE Modi Government and its Tribal Affairs Ministry remained mute spectators as a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court dealt a death blow to the Forest Rights Act (FRA) and ordered the summary eviction of nearly 20 lakh adivasi households across the country.

DAYS after the horrific attack on the CRPF convoy moving from Jammu to Srinagar, the country is still coming to terms with the Pulwama tragedy and its aftermath. The death toll has gone up to close to fifty and several jawans are yet to recover from the serious injuries they sustained.