Politics

After the Lok Sabha passed Bill (amendment to the 1969 Births & registration law) to create a National Database of Births & Deaths giving sweeping powers (and control) of birth, death registration data to the union government, its serious implications need to be examined. With birth registration already having severe loopholes (77 % of children in urban areas and only 56.4 % in rural areas have had their births registered) if a birth registration certificate is made a precursor to the right to vote, implications could be disastrous. And undemocratic.

113 former civil servants who have formed into the CCG (Constitutional Conduct Group), have urged urgent steps to end the conflict in Manipur, where violence has continued unchecked by the union and state governments for over three months

Achyut Yagnik (1946-2023), a well-known intellectual from Gujarat, passed away...

In the recent announcement of BJP’s new National executive,...

Were the 2019 general elections free and fair or did the BJP that won a disproportionate share of seats in closely contested constituencies, indulge in some manipulation, unrelated to EVMs? A research paper by an academic of Ashoka university says the density of the incumbent party’s win margin variable exhibits a discontinuous jump at the threshold value of zero’

'The whole country will burn like Manipur if these people are not contained,' the former J&K governor said, in an apparent reference to the Modi government. He also stated that like the ‘security lapse’ at Pulwama when 44 CRPF men in a road convoy were not given protection nor secure air travel, the next few months could see “attacks on the Ram temple’ at Ayodhya or the ‘killing of a senior BJP leader’

The inability of the state government to separate state functionaries from indulging in identity-based politics has always been a particular failure of the government and people of Manipur in general. It is also understandable that any move by the Union government will have a bearing on the Nagas who have been a silent observer throughout. If any bipartite or tripartite solution materializes, an impending bloodshed between communities is highly possible in the state.

Assam CM released a set of posters which describes, amongst other measures, instructions for police officials to develop means of tackling the alleged bogey of 'Love-Jihad', read SabrangIndia's report on this state-sponsored surveillance

There is clearly another environment-related sinister angle to the three-month long Manipur violent conflict that will have a huge impact on the ecologically fragile hill lands of Manipur; extractive mining on lands controlled by indigenous people (vast majority of them Christian) for high profit: mining limestone, chromite, nickel, copper, malachite, azurite, magnetite in violation of Forest Rights Act, 2006 and the statutory rights of indigenous peoples of the state

From the land of Assam, came a giant of...