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THE HIMALAYAS HAVE SPOKEN IN JOSHIMATH, IS ANYONE IN SHIMLA  LISTENING? Now that the Himachal Chief Minister, Mr. Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu, has managed to form his Cabinet and appoint more Chief Secretaries/ Special Chief Secretaries and Advisors than there are trees in Shimla, I earnestly hope that he will apply his mind to more important […]

Last week a voter enrolment camp was organised by the government in our RWA. While filling in the required Form 6 I realised that it was mandatory to provide a copy of one’s Aadhar card. Now the law as it exists today and as reiterated by the Supreme Court states that the Aadhar is a

According to the 2011 census India has 26.80 million disabled people, which constitutes 2.21% of its population. This is a staggering number, but both society and the government have done little to take care of their special needs and to smoothen their integration into normal life. One of the areas from which they have been

So now it’s official: in one of those rare moments when Parliament functions the govt. revealed that 1,83, 473 Indians have given up their citizenship so far this year and emigrated to countries which do not aspire to become Vishwagurus. The number since 2014 is 1200,000. These are all HNIs (High Networth Individuals) who have

Sometime back it was reported by an NGO tracking election expenditures that roughly Rs. 50000 crores of black money was spent on one round of Parliamentary elections. To put the amount in perspective, this is equivalent to the  annual expenditure on the  flagship scheme of the govt.-viz. MNREGA ; to put it another way, it

I am sure most people can’t remember the last time the Congress won a state election, even a by-poll. In this context, the 8th of December, 2022, is a red letter day for the party, with its emphatic win in Himachal and in the two by-polls in Rajasthan and Chattisgarh. It won 40 of the

I guess, in these Orwellian times, we should be grateful for small mercies. Which is why we should be relieved that the five judge Constitution bench has finally taken up the issue of the independence of the Election Commission, seven years after various PILs were filed on the subject. One is also happy with the

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And then God committed one of his periodical goof-ups, the second after the original mistake of creating Eve and involving us for perpetuity in sexual molestation cases: he created the Bureaucracy, and the Bureaucrat took over the Word. Originally intended to convey meaning,

Last month the editor of a leading newspaper asked me to do a piece on the elections in Himachal and the prospects of the various parties. I politely declined, and with good reason- when it comes to elections I am an inveterate loser. I never get my analysis/ predictions right, and I am pretty consistent