Editorial

RECENTLY, the CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey visited India along with Twitter’s head of legal and public policy, Vijaya Gadde and met some Indian women journalists and writers. The latter briefed him about how the social media platform fails on many occasions to act against communal, casteist and gendered trolling. Indian Twitter is notoriously overrun by vile and violent trolls, many of whom are followed by India’s Prime Minister. After the discussion, one of the women, a Dalit feminist activist, gifted Dorsey a poster with the slogan ‘Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy’ on it.

THE unfolding saga of corruption and extortion in the Central Bureau of Investigation is one that comes extremely close to the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi. Modi was helped to power by a powerful anti-corruption sentiment in the country, and his famous promise of ‘Na khaunga na khane doonga’ (I will neither be corrupt nor let anyone else be corrupt).

IN Uttar Pradesh, the Government headed by Ajay Singh Bisht (who styles himself ‘Yogi Adityanath’) is on a name-changing spree. Some time ago, Mughalsarai was renamed ‘Deen Dayal Upadhyay Nagar’. Recently, Allahabad was remanded ‘Prayagraj’ and Faizabad district (named so after Ayodhya’s twin city of the same name) was renamed ‘Ayodhya’. The CM has promised more name changes, declaring that he will not hesitate even to rename the Taj Mahal as ‘Ram Mahal’, and demanding that India be renamed ‘Hindustan’.

WITH the BJP and the Modi Government swamped by scams, scandals and crises dogging almost every one of the country’s institutions, sectors and sections of people, they are increasingly relying on divisions and distractions to avoid accountability and change the political narrative.

AHEAD of the 2019 elections, with every passing day the Modi government is stepping up its war on the institutions of governance. The subversion that was earlier going on behind the scene has now given way to open intimidation and confrontation. The CBI, the RBI and even the Supreme Court are all feeling the heat as the government unleashes a covert strategy of intimidation, intervention and coercion to snuff out every attempt to hold it accountable.

AS the crucial election season draws closer, the contours of the Sangh-BJP game plan are becoming clearer with every passing day. We have four major pointers to the unfolding BJP agenda and campaign ahead of the great battle of 2019.

THE past couple of weeks have seen a virtual tsunami of first-person accounts by women exposing habitual sexual harassers in high places in the worlds of film, journalism, the arts, academia, and activism. These women, like American women exposing sexual predators in Hollywood like Harvey Weinstein last year, used the hashtag #MeToo to demand that women’s experience of sexual violence be acknowledged and believed.

IN the last few days, thousands of migrant workers from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have been venomously targeted as “outsiders” and brutally attacked in the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state Gujarat. Migrants are being targeted and beaten with sticks and stone, and hate messages are being circulated on social media after a migrant from Bihar was arrested for allegedly raping a minor in Sabarkantha district, Gujarat on September 28. Several districts in Gujarat have been affected by this massive violence - Sabarkantha, Patan, Mehsana, Gandhinagar and Aravalli.

THE killing of Vivek Tiwari in police firing in Lucknow has put the UP Police and the Adityanath government on the back foot. Such killings are no aberration in Uttar Pradesh, in fact the UP government routinely showcases and celebrates such killings as proof of the government’s commitment and progress towards a crime-free Uttar Pradesh.

AS 2019 draws nearer, the Sangh-BJP establishment has launched a massive outreach drive. Sometime ago we were being treated to a daily dose of Amit Shah knocking on the doors of eminent citizens to seek their support for 2019. We also had the spectacle of former President Pranab Mukherjee addressing a valedictory session of the RSS pracharaks in Nagpur.