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India seems to have more history wars than a genuinely historical consciousness. Representing the past is fraught with controversy. This is even more so when the contemporary political stakes of history are high. We often engage with history to construct a pedigree for ourselves, not to come to terms with the past. Some of the current opening of historical questions has been overdue. The simplistic versions of history that the Congress peddled, that narrowing of icons it encouraged, needed to be challenged. And the culture of secrecy created by undue denial of access to documents has licensed conspiracy theories about the past. It is also the case that, as social undercurrents shift, so will the sense of the past. The BJP’s big push to appropriate B.R. Ambedkar, beginning with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ubiquitous references to him in 2014, is understandable. It exposes the Congress’s own fraught relationship with the past. Even if motivated by opportunism, the BJP’s move is a ...

Adopt more stringent fuel quality and emission standards — and push for the national automobile pollution and fuel authority Approximately 20 years ago, in 1995, a process was started that held great promise for ameliorating the serious air pollution problem in Delhi. Under a provision of the Indian Constitution, environmental lawyer M.C. Mehta filed a public interest litigation with the Supreme Court, seeking relief from the serious health risks caused by motor vehicle pollution. The court responded with a series of orders between 1996 and 2001 that reduced the sulphur content of diesel and petrol, eliminated leaded petrol, required premixed lubricating oil and petrol to replace the loose supply of these fuels for two-stroke engines and ordered the retirement of commercial vehicles older than 15 years. Most notably, the court ordered the conversion of all commercial passenger vehicles — buses, taxis and three-wheelers — to compressed natural gas (CNG). As a direct result of thes...

I was a teenager studying at Ruia College in Matunga. One day in December, I saw a long queue had formed starting somewhere away and it wound around just across from our college doubling in length. The people who were queuing were patient but sad. You could see that they were poor and yet they had managed to put on their best, often ragged torn clothes. Here were the Lower Depths. I asked around why this long queue. I was told they were patiently waiting to pay their respects to Babasaheb Ambedkar who had just died. The sight changed my view of politics. I had of course been aware of Dr Ambedkar. I knew he had started Siddharth College. I was also aware of the Republican Party he had founded. What I had not realised was the depth of his following among the downtrodden. The word Dalit had not taken as strong a root in popular language as it has now done. As an upper-caste middle-class boy, I had been brought up like all caste Hindus to be blind to the existence, let alone the plight...

You know, I know and every Pakistani I know also knows that there is never going to be ‘azadi’ for Kashmir. Nobody seriously believes that there will be another redrawing of India’s borders. So it is time that this becomes the fundamental principle of a new policy to deal with our oldest political problem. Prime Minister Modi has the best chance of finding a permanent solution, since Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and he must seize the chance. Atalji tried but failed because instead of a fresh start he chose to adopt the same Kashmir policy that successive Congress governments followed since 1947. This was a crucial mistake. Prime Minister Modi has indicated that he is not burdened by past Congress mistakes and that he is ready for a new beginning. Otherwise the BJP would not be part of a government led by Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. Before writing this piece, I had a chat with BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, one of the architects of the Common Minimum Programme. He suggested that I read it. I...

As the beef traders’ strike continues, lions, tigers and other carnivores in Mumbai zoos now get chicken as their primary feed. Keepers worry about the animals losing strength Palash, the largest tiger at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai, still paces his cage for the hour

No country for women The national discourse since the December 2012 gang rape incident has largely been appreciative of the institutional response to the rape and welcomed the process of legal reform that it set in motion. But have empowering laws changed the ground reality for women? Thanks to the documentary  India’s Daughter  by British film-maker Leslee Udwin, the subject of sexual violence and attitudes towards women in India is back in the national headlines. Over two years ago, when the rape of a 23-year-old paramedical student in Delhi on December 16, 2012, shook the nation’s conscience, the Union government set up a committee to amend criminal laws pertaining to sexual violence in India. Some of the recommendations made by the committee led by Justice J.S. Verma were incorporated and stricter laws were put in place, expanding the scope of what constitutes sexual violence in India and the punishment for it. The national discourse since has largely been app...

India is a society where the poor, the nomad and the abandoned are waiting for someone to discover their silence. Today, silence is the secret untold commons of a forgotten India and our democracy will come alive the day we decode the silence of our majorities. Then, that silence will move from impoverishment to life I find myself at odds with our current society which is ravenous about news, greedy for information, disgruntled about noise, and yet never talks about silence. I think silence needs a storyteller. In fact, silence needs a demography to map its messages. In all the noise about self-conscious selfies, I want to talk about a different world. At one level, it is the same world, but no one talks about it. This world of silence has no representation, no voice, no effort of art that captures its messages, its nuances.

As one of the tens of thousands who marched in protest along with my daughters on the streets of New Delhi in December 2012 following the gang rape and murder of a young physiotherapy student, I often find myself asking: So, what has changed? Yes, we have tougher laws. But news of the brutal gang rape and murder of a 28-year-old woman in Rohtak, Haryana, bears uncanny parallels with the Delhi crime two years ago, with one significant difference: The scale of violence seemed higher and the level of outrage was almost absent. Violence against women is the topic du jour, not just in India but all over the world. In the US, the government has stepped in to crack down on an epidemic of sexual violence in colleges and universities where a White House Task Force reports that one in five women is sexually assaulted, most often by someone she knows. In the North Kivu province of the

Download PDF version The Indian Space Research Organisation's Mangalyaan mission is a remarkable success story. Over the last five decades of its existence, ISRO has notched up many successes and has played a key role in indigenous development of various technologies. Its various programmes are also outstanding examples of its ability to successfully perform complex technological and organisational feats. However, one has yet to see any specifi c spin-offs in the civilian domain of these fairly advanced technologies. Further, the gap between running a dedicated, focused technological mission and improving the general level of manufacturing competence and quality is huge. ISRO was earlier closely involved in the development of dual-use technologies, that involvement continues though the organisation has tended to downplay its role in military applications as it seeks to obtain a larger share of the global civilian space market. Shobhit Mahajan ( shobhit.mahajan@...