The virility of Muslim men vis-à-vis men from other religious communities have often been used as a political tool and to create a divisive agenda just before elections for getting votes from the majority of the Indian electorate who are Hindus. Instead of focusing on positive agendas like human development, employment generation, and poverty reduction, political campaigns just before the elections oftentimes reduce to mere communal propaganda (when a lot...

-Article-14.com The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is increasingly bypassing Parliament through executive fiat by promulgating an average of 11 ordinances a year, almost twice the number under the previous government, which averaged six. Legislative scrutiny is at its lowest point: from 70% of bills referred to committees in the previous Lok Sabha to 11% during the current. Jodhpur: On 14 November 2021, the President of India promulgated two ordinances, The...

The increase in the total number of suicides committed in India during 2020 in comparison to the previous years has hit the headlines recently. While some media commentators have stated that the economic distress (caused by job loss, income loss, failure of business, and growing hunger, among other things) in 2020 could have led to more suicides being committed, others have said that home isolation and deteriorating mental health (associated...

-Hindustan Times Delhi air was cleaner on Diwali eve in 2021 than it was in 2019 and 2020. Things went downhill rapidly. Delhi woke up to one of its most polluted mornings this year after Diwali, according to Air Quality Index (AQI) data, with farm fires in Punjab and Haryana, and the use of fireworks on Diwali night (Thursday) contributing to the spike. To be sure, AQI is not the best metric for...

-NetworkIdeas.org In recent weeks the media have featured stories bordering on the alarmist about a coal shortage in India. Coal inventories with thermal power plants had fallen to levels at which major country-wide power outages seemed inevitable. Fortunately, that has not (as yet) materialized, but it is indeed true that coal inventories with the power producers did collapse from the equivalent of around 30 days requirement to that for a couple...