As the dust begins to settle on the Ambedkar cartoon controversy, it may be useful to reflect on what it was all about. Contrary to some rhetorical grandstanding, it was not really about freedom of expression. Nor was it about how (not) to produce livelier school textbooks. Nor indeed about our sense of humour or lack thereof, or the special privileges of comic exaggeration or caricature that cartoonists have enjoyed...
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Interlocutors for empowering the people of Jammu & Kashmir-Vinay Kumar
Eminent journalist Dileep Padgaonkar who headed the group of three Central interlocutors for Jammu and Kashmir said on Thursday that the thrust of their report was to empower the people of Jammu and Kashmir so that they were able to exercise their civil and political rights in full measure. The 176-page report of the group of Central interlocutors was uploaded on the website of Union Home Ministry on Thursday, seven months...
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Delhi high court to hear central bank challenge to CIC order seeking information on defaults by top industrialists The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has challenged an order by the Central Information Commission (CIC) asking the central bank to disclose names of the top 100 industrialists who have defaulted on loan repayments. In a writ petition to the Delhi high court, which is scheduled to be heard on 29 May, the central...
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-The Hindu Dr. Ahluwalia does not contradict a single fact in the article: (i) Rs.2.02 lakh daily average expenditure for trips between May and October 2011 (well after his “busy” G-20 period ending in 2010). No “gross extravagance”? (ii) 274 days abroad, or one in every nine. Factor in travel days and it could be one in seven away from office. (iii) 42 trips, half of them visits to the U.S. (several trips not...
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-The Hindu Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, responds to P. Sainath: The article “The austerity of the affluent” (The Hindu, May 21, 2012), is so misleadingly distortive on two points that I feel compelled to clarify the position. I have high regard for your newspaper, and subscribe to the notion that there should be full transparency in government. It is in this spirit that I hope these clarifications...
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