Independent Intellectual Blogs

The electronic ' vulnerable ' machine is once again in controversy but now the issue is not another allegation of its malfunction rather a legal controversy as the Supreme Court (SC) has sent notices to the EC seeking the withdrawal of penal provisions in Conduct of Election rules, 1961 ( the rules which threaten voters complaining of EVM malfunction or deviant behavior with a jail term, if the allegations is not borne out). Currently the Rule 49MA ( section 177 of IPC) , deals with supplying of false information and the responsibility of proof lies with the complainant. Clearly, the threat of punishment cripples the freedom of speech and avoids the petitioner to question the credibility of the system known to protect the election enthusiasm. For example; in assam, in ongoing elections, a former DC of assam police, refrained from challenging the credibility of the machine where he had cast his vote, even though the VVPAT showed a different outcome from his input. He ...

So tonight i was thinking of writing my next blog on EVM malfunctioning issue in India but at I got another issue which once again returned to haunt India , but this time with a good news : that China approves blacklisting of Masood Azhar as a "global terrorist" .                 This clearly is a victory for India but I surely don't believe its 'only' the victory of Indian diplomacy here, what we cannot see is China's mere victory which comes with a ray of hope to the chinese government to engage India in their dream project ; " Belt and Road Forum " . As India boycotted China's second Belt and Road Forum , despite some countries joining the BRI project , even after boycotting it in the past , China did it's best to keep the diplomatic relations alive.                 Overall this counts as a diplomatic victory of the indian regime but at the same time a mere step towards constructive talks and engagem...

The garibi hatao chant was initiated by the indian supremo Indira Gandhi in 1984 when the opposition raised slogan "indira hatao" and now there's a mere change in the slogan and the both sides of the major parties are interchanged, now the slogan for ruling party is " congress hatao " and for that of the opposition it is " ab hoga nyay ", but are these chants from both ruling party and the opposition impirical? When the aim is to mitigate poverty, the one scheme that hits my mind in the very first place is MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) by the UPA-1 govt. , it was one of the most ambitious programmes to uplift the rural poor , by providing 100 days of guaranteed work at a minimum wage to any rural family suffering from chronic unemployment. The amount for the scheme earmarked by Manmohan Singh is 0.6% of the gdp, it provided work to 50 million people and brought 14 million people out of poverty. The minimum wag...