-The Economic Times At a little over 14%, India has the third-largest Muslim population in the world. Are Indian Muslims confronting the void? Political parties are no longer engaging with Muslims like they used to. This process of withdrawal and fracturing began with the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and carries on in 2019. Globally, the pathologisation of Muslims began after 9/11, which entrenched Islamophobia, and moved the discourse around minorities entirely towards terror,...

-Newsclick.in Like always, several myths are being propagated like – the irrelevance of economic issues or the supremacy of nationalism. But what is the truth? Like all elections everywhere in the world, India’s general election this year too has created its own mythology. Some of it was – understandably – created during the election campaign while some have been generated after the results were out and the BJP-led alliance emerged as a...

-Down to Earth Despite the rural hinterland being in the throes of agrarian distress, the incumbent coalition has won handsomely in these very areas The incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has beaten all odds to win the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Prominent among these odds was the agrarian crisis that rural India is currently in the throes of. Since 2014, the country has suffered two major droughts and 850-odd...

-The Hindu Say policymakers induce farmers to adopt incongruent crop pattern, causing water crisis Pune: The water crisis in Maharashtra is a “policy-induced failure”, according to economists and water academics who have specifically warned of the ‘desertification’ of the parched Marathwada region in the near future. “It is the ecological illiteracy of policy-makers and the selfishness of the power elite in inducing farmers across Marathwada to adopt a crop pattern that is not...

-The Economic Times The first Lok Sabha election in which each EVM was 100% backed by a VVPAT and in which physical verification of VVPAT slips has been done- concluded with a full clean chit to the machines. Just as the verdict of the Lok Sabha election is loud and clear on May 23, so is the verdict on the much maligned EVMs and VVPATs. The first Lok Sabha election in which each...