The legal aid arm of the consumer complaints redressal wing of the Consumer Guidance Society of India (CGSI) receives plenty of grievances on a weekly basis. To address the issues of customers, CGSI is now organising a series of camps. The
Why do we vote? We don’t benefit from casting our votes; we don’t benefit from not casting our votes either,” said Dinesh Nayak, summing up the status of voter empowerment after more than six decades of democracy in India. Sittin
For the finance world Bitcoins are a bit like dark matter for physicists. It’s not part of daily conversations, yet every once in a while it pops up with its seemingly brooding presence that threatens to change every single belief about mone
Manoj has been in prison for the last four years, even though he was a juvenile at the time of his arrest. Johra, a foreign national, languishes in prison even after the completion of her sentence. Pradip was detained for 12 years in prison before
The voting for the biggest elections in India’s history is, finally, over. So is a major controversy over appointment of the country’s chief of army staff (COAS): on Monday the defence ministry recommended Lt Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag&rsq
As India concludes voting for the 16th Lok Sabha, projections of the exit polls give a clear victory to BJP-led NDA. According to a CNN-IBN-CSDS-Lokniti post-poll survey, BJP is expected to do well in northern states of Delhi, Rajast
On May 8, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi accused the Election Commission (EC) of being biased against him for not allowing him to hold a rally at Varanasi. BJP demanded removal of the returning officer, Varanasi DM Pranjal Y
The more things change, the more they remain the same. This truism can be aptly applied to the working of the central bureau of investigation (CBI) following the decision by a constitutional bench of the supreme court that set aside legal immunity
It is a hot April afternoon in Chapa Dalir More, a partly commercial residential area in Barasat on the outskirts of Kolkata, and it is business as usual: the roads are more or less empty, yielding to the pressure of afternoon siesta. A few metres
Often commuters or tourists in Delhi fall prey to auto or taxi drivers asking for irregular fare that is too high in respect to metered charges. To remove the inconvenience of travelers, the Delhi traffic police has launched an app—titled &l
It is late morning and the ground floor of a two-storey office building in an otherwise slow-paced Sovabazar area of north Kolkata is in a flurry of activity. Bharati Dey is busy attending to dozens of women who have come to her with problems. Som
As the Modi-Mamata war of words heats up in West Bengal – elsewhere it`s still Modi versus Priyanka Gandhi – it emerges the BJP`s prime ministerial candidate might not have much to smile about so far as Bengal goes. Though the BJP`s vo
Suddenly Lalu Prasad has started getting peppery towards journalists; his arch-rival Nitish Kumar, on the other hand, is heard quoting the statement of the great socialist thinker late Ram Manohar Lohia: “Politics is a short-term religion wh
With the publication of ‘Ashoka and the Decline of the Mauryas’ in 1961, Romila Thapar emerged as one of the foremost historians of ancient India. Even after 53 years, this book remains the most authoritative interpretation of the grea
About the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the news from Australia is that a group of Indian-origin Punjabi taxi drivers in Adelaide raised funds to the tune of Rs 1.6 lakh in support of the fledgling party’s candidates’ electioneering in Punjab
If there is one area for which it is difficult to predict how a Modi government will work, it is internal security – beyond an aggressive approach of a Hindu nationalist. Also, if there is one area which can turn up a Waterloo for Modi, it i
Congress`s prospects in Haryana are riddled with a slew of controversial land deals and strong anti-incumbency of the party’s 10-year rule under chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. The Indian National Lok Dal opposition, on the other hand,
A day before Narendra Modi was to file his nomination in Varanasi, I called up my young friend Shahid, who is from the weaver community. “How can we meet, as the entire city is expected to come to a halt tomorrow?” I asked. I was aware
The Chinese have a curse which goes thus: May you live in interesting times! In the uncertain world of international affairs, the next prime minister of India can rest assured of exciting and challenging times. Exciting, because major geopolitical
Having a PM (or a PM candidate) from the state is not a first-time event for Gujarat. The twice-caretaker PM, Gulzarilal Nanda, used to be elected to the Lok Sabha from Sabarkantha in north Gujarat. Morarjibhai Desai, though largely Mumbai-based i
