Editorial

Joshimath, the last city on the borders of Uttarakhand is fighting for its existence. New cracks are emerging each day in roads and buildings across the city, making the place totally unsafe and possibly unlivable. A callous administration that has refused to pay attention to every wake-up call and alarming signs all these years is now desperately marking houses and hotels that need to be vacated immediately.

The arrival of a new year is generally a time for setting new goals and making new resolutions. For the Modi government this of course means dumping of old promises and the launch of a new narrative with new goalposts.

Three years since the deadly outbreak of the Covid-19 global pandemic, the world is yet to emerge from its disruptive aftermath. Incidentally, more than anywhere else it is China, where the pandemic originated, which continues to experience aftershocks of the viral outbreak and even witnessed widespread social protests against the coercive state interventions in the name of controlling the pandemic.

Recent past has witnessed a concerted attack by the Modi government on the Supreme Court. Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar and Union Law Minister Kiren Rijuju have taken turns to publicly berate the collegium system of appointment of judges with the Vice President also castigating the Supreme Court for striking down the National Judicial Appointment Commission (NJAC) Act in 2015, calling the judgment as being in disregard of the “mandate of the people”.

The results of the Assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh and the municipal elections in Delhi have been on predictable lines, except the scale of the BJP’s Gujarat victory which surely merits a close scrutiny. The BJP was the party in power in all the three elections, and it has now lost power in two of them. In this sense, the BJP is a net loser, but the loss clearly lies overshadowed by the scale of its victory in Gujarat in terms of both vote share (above 52 percent) and seat share (above 85 percent).

While awaiting the outcome of the elections to Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat Assemblies and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, it is instructive to take a close look at the campaign the BJP ran in these elections.

Constitution Day 2022 once again brought to the fore the urgency and enormity of the challenge to defend the spirit and values of the Constitution. In two reassuring signs, we saw Professor Anand Teltumbde walk free on bail after close to a thousand days in prison defeating a desperate NIA bid to get the bail order stayed by the apex court, and we also saw farmers on the march across the country determined to defend agriculture and their right to secure a fair price for all their crops.

December 6, 2022 will mark the completion of three decades since the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The time bomb that was planted in the wake of India’s independence, with the surreptitious installation of idols at the mosque on the night of 22-23 December 1949, exploded in broad daylight on 6 December 1992 afternoon, when a mob pulled down the mosque in the cheering presence of top BJP leaders.

It is once again election season for the people of Himachal Pradesh, Delhi and Gujarat. Himachal Pradesh has already voted to form the next Assembly and government, Delhi will be voting on December 4 to elect its reconstituted Municipal Corporation and Gujarat goes to the polls in two phases on December 1 and 5. Desperate to defend its thoroughly discredited and non performing dispensations, the BJP is once again relying on another high-voltage Modi campaign and Modi, in turn, depends on his loyal 'godi media' to amplify his campaign of mass distraction.

The recent Supreme Court judgement upholding Modi government 10% quota for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) aimed at providing reservation for forward castes clearly violates the objective and purpose of reservation embedded in the basic spirit of the Indian constitution. The judgement only solidifies the historic injustice against deprived sections.