Investigation: Beware, The 'Capital Of Fakes' In India

By Kumar Vikram / New Delhi

A thriving organised market in counterfeit items, with Delhi assuming the central position, is driving an economy running into several thousand crores. INN went to check the spread of the market and discovered that skillfully- run establishments sell anything from cosmetic products, packaged items of common use, electronic appliances, computer accessories, auto parts mobile phone accessories and more making the National Capital the hub of counterfeit goods. They flourish because of lower costs but the investigation revealed that these goods find their way into the market and are often sold as genuine products at the MRP of a regular item.

The Dark & Horrifying Tale Of Delhi's 'Great Baby Bazaar'

A new industry is taking deep roots in the Delhi’s underbelly. This is the great baby bazaar where bidding for a newborn starts the day a hapless woman gets pregnant, while the kid is still in the womb. 

Girls and young women, mostly from Jharkhand, are fodder to this illicit business. They are brought to the national Capital on the pretext of being employed as helps, then raped and sexually assaulted by the unscrupulous owners and employees of placement agencies and forced to bear babies. But that’s not the end of their misery. 

India splitting atoms over nuclear deal

By M H Ahsan

Just at the apogee of the India-US nuclear agreement saga, Indian domestic politics are condemning its final conclusion to another round of contentious debate. The outcome of this eleventh-hour stumble, however, goes beyond simply evaluating the technical parameters of the recently negotiated bilateral agreement with the United States over civilian nuclear cooperation. The issue at stake is nothing less than redrawing the fundamental premise of Indian grand strategy and the role New Delhi seeks to carve out for itself in the emerging international system. An August 18 resolution by the left-wing parties - vital allies for the ruling United Progressive Alliance central coalition in New Delhi - exemplifies the domestic political divide: "The politburo decided to take the issue of the nuclear agreement and the dangers of the strategic alliance with the United States to the people through a nationwide mass campaign."

At the outset, it is useful to reflect on the original logic of engagement with the US and specifically on what the nuclear deal was meant to achieve for Washington and for New Delhi. Until the July 18, 2005, India-US joint statement on the nuclear agreement, India's status in the global non-proliferation system was that of a pariah state. Since the 1974 nuclear test (Pokhran-I) and the ensuing sanctions regime imposed on India, New Delhi's goal was in essence one of preserving its strategic weapons program and insulating itself from an adverse external diplomatic assault, prosecuted largely by the US.

Finally, in May 1998, India chose to abandon its ambiguous posture by demonstrating a declared nuclear-weapons capability (Pokhran-II). This was a point of no return, and indeed India in the ensuing couple of years endured yet another US diplomatic onslaught, manifested in automatic sanctions to compel New Delhi to reverse course. Suffice it to say, New Delhi stayed the course and by the early 2000s, most pragmatic voices in Washington had accommodated themselves to an India that would be permanently nuclear. As the primary enforcer of the non-proliferation regime, Washington chose to pursue the next logical step of identifying a solution to the Indian nuclear question - enabling India to enter the nuclear system on an exceptional basis and thus eliminating the most contentious obstacle to the normalization of US-India relations.

But why would the US choose to bestow such an extraordinary gesture on India? Students of realpolitik and US foreign policy would be acutely aware that altruism in international affairs is as absurd as "to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason". This is where the timing of the nuclear deal becomes important. By 2005, it had become clear in Washington that the fantasy of reshaping the security structure of the Middle East had reached an impasse. Geopolitical developments elsewhere were equally disconcerting for Washington. Russia, after more than a decade of internal upheavals, was displaying signs of breaking free of the shell that Washington's cold warriors had confined it to since 1991.

It will also be recalled that China had gained from the strategic surprise of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, which had diverted US strategic attention to the West Asian theater, from President George W Bush's pre-September 11 national-security goal of expanding the scope of its East Asian containment strategy. In sum, by mid-2005, with the US bogged down in Iraq and the two primary Eurasian land powers, Russia and China, rapidly accelerating their geo-economic profiles and influence, America's unipolar triumphalism appeared all but over. Indeed, China was seeking to refurbish its own equation with India, manifested most importantly by Premier Wen Jiabao's April 2005 visit to New Delhi and the mutual declaration of a "strategic partnership". Russia's expanding military-technical market share in India's modernization drive in the same year again suggested that the US was being excluded from a growing arms bazaar. Within South Asia, too, there was a sense of deja vu.

After the initial exhilaration of New Delhi's elite in the aftermath of September 11, one that had anticipated a natural elevation of India-US ties, the United States' geopolitically expedient decision to ally with Pakistan as its frontline state in Afghanistan implied that the India-US honeymoon was over. It is in such a structural flux that Washington's subsequent engagement with India must be considered. In retrospect, the timing of Washington's decision to revolutionize its relationship with New Delhi appears to have immense geostrategic and geo-economic logic, the latter arguably a critical parallel driver for Washington eager to gain the fruits of a belated Indian economic renaissance. By dangling the nuclear deal, it offered an irresistible instrument to New Delhi's strategic elite and re-altered the incentives for subsequent Indian foreign policy.

The above perhaps succinctly capture the larger US incentives for the nuclear deal - gain a vital strategic foothold in South Asia, one that it had unsuccessfully sought over the entire course of the Cold War. What were the Indian motives for the nuclear deal? This was obvious. As a nuclear-weapon state, but one outside the international system manifested in great-power arrangements, New Delhi's security elite was acutely aware that until its pariah status was transformed, one that had lasted more than three decades, India would remain condemned to the periphery of the international system, without access to high-technologies in the nuclear sphere, and excluded from any subsequent modifications to such arrangements.

Also cognizant of the reality of India's lack of system-shaping capabilities, Indian foreign policy chose to engage with the primary manager of the contemporary system, the US, to alleviate its "status discontent" with the prevailing reality. Of course, negotiating the terms of such an entry into the system of non-proliferation was imperative too. Thus preserving the essence of India's strategic weapons development and its indigenous three-stage reactor program rightly became a vital goal in itself. Indian political and intellectual discourse over the past two years has vividly reflected this imperative and has arguably contributed to New Delhi adopting appropriate negotiating positions.

That New Delhi was largely able to reach a more or less acceptable bilateral agreement last month was as much the result of internal checks and balances as it was to Washington's larger grand strategy (ie, India as the strategic prize), extending the United States' maritime cordon sanitaire around the East Asian landmass and thus achieving dominant control over the vital sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Japan. Returning to domestic political events, it should be clear that the nuclear deal was a means to an end. That end was the much-belated acknowledgment of India's nuclear status and, by extension, its entry into an important multilateral arena of great-power commerce, namely the market for dual-use technologies that would enable India to augment its socioeconomic and military potential.

Up to this point, I suspect there would be little bipartisan objection in India for such a strategy, for it preserves the fundamental premise of Indian foreign policy, one that lays an exceptional premium on independence and autonomy, and an aversion to extra-Indian evaluations of Indian national interest. Suffice it to say, only by the successful adherence to these principles can India achieve its great-power aspirations. The ongoing discord, however, arises from certain domestic political quarters that have viewed or are now viewing the nuclear deal as a stepping-stone to an open-ended strategic alignment with the United States, especially in the military sphere. For such ideologues, the nuclear deal has paved the way for the emergence of a natural relationship between two great democracies that were separated only by the contradictions of the Cold War. In many ways, these ideologues are the mirror-image of the Indian left, which is ideologically anti-American. As usual, India's international salvation lies in the middle path.

Again, it must be emphasized that constructive engagement with the US is in India's interest. As is evident from the extraordinary record of Beijing's own open-door policies since 1978, cultivating economic linkages with the US offers enormous developmental advantages. At the geostrategic level, too, with all major powers continuing to place a premium on their relationship with the United States, India by disengaging only loses out. Yet the major powers are also adopting omni-directional, non-exclusive relationships. The patterns of interaction between today's actors are a critical element of the evolving order that deserves some elaboration.

The international political economy and its globalizing forces are compelling actors to pursue multi-vector foreign policies - the core thrust of foreign policies of the major states is being driven by non-exclusive engagement. It is useful to recall that the bipolar division of the past system was geopolitical and geo-economic. Both blocs were self-sufficient and inter-bloc trade and investment were irrelevant. Today's system is clearly more interdependent than during the Cold War. To be sure, this interdependence is state-driven, and the economic division of labor is nowhere near as efficient as in national economies. In an anarchic world, it never will be. But certainly, trade and investment are becoming both the means and ends of state power and leverage.

India's primary goal must be to assume a growing share of this international division of labor, one that is gradually decoupling from the United States, as the industrial revolution across the Eurasian geo-economic space attests to. Thus India's US policy must operate in a multi-vector framework. It is only by engaging all major actors that India can achieve strategic flexibility to leverage its foreign and economic goals, and simultaneously preserve the ideational foundations of Indian foreign policy. The ideological discord within Indian foreign policy has also manifested recently in debates over New Delhi's military diplomacy.

India's decision to participate in the quadrilateral - US, Japan, Australia and India - naval exercises in the Bay of Bengal next month, while remaining ambivalent to developments in the Eurasian land space exemplified by the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization military exercises, illustrates New Delhi's inability to implement a multi-vector policy, and indeed is a futile attempt at ignoring its own geography. Thus while naval cooperation among the quadrilateral group would in principle be defensible, when seen in conjunction with India eschewing other multilateral developments in its periphery, it certainly arouses suspicion toward New Delhi's exclusive outlook. Surely there's more to India's "Look East" policy than naval cooperation?

At a time when China is rapidly integrating the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations into the Chinese economy, New Delhi is engaging with extra-regional actors in the military sphere, and yet achieving little influence in its extended neighborhood. The geopolitical pluralism today is heading one way - a multipolar world - with the underlying fundamentals arguably already in place. In such a scenario of systemic change, and given that the redistribution of power is accruing to the Eurasian geopolitical space, one where India resides, is it wise to pursue an uncritical path toward bandwagoning with an offshore power in relative decline?

The Big Expose: RSS Funded 'Operation Shuddhikaran'

By NEWS KING | INNLIVE

Although it did not make headlines, 31 poor tribal girls, all minors, from Assam brought to Delhi on June 11 last year have ended up in RSS-run schools in Gujarat and Punjab, as INNLIVE finds, which is part of a well-orchestrated conversion programme targeting children from poor minority communities to initiate them into Hinduism at a young age. Given the resources and reach the RSS and its sister organizations command, what INNLIVE investigation reveals may just be the tip of the iceberg.

India begins uphill journey with the SCO

By M K Bhadrakumar

A shift in India's approach to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has become unavoidable as Indian regional policy in Central Asia painstakingly works its way out of a cul-de-sac. Tentative signs first appeared during the visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Delhi last December and formed part of a rethink against the backdrop of the transition of power in Washington.

In a manner of speaking, Delhi began a slow, painful process of edging away from the George W Bush era. A top Indian official said over the weekend that it has become an "uphill task" for Indian diplomacy to cope with US President Barack Obama's Central Asia policy with regard to Afghanistan.

The shift in Indian thinking comes not too soon as the government's lackadaisical approach to the SCO through the past five-year period is increasingly becoming unsustainable. The heart of the matter is that the SCO is much more than a mere clearing house for the Caspian hydrocarbon reserves but is a security organization first and foremost. (The SCO comprises China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.)

Not that the Indian government did not realize this. But it pretended otherwise since Delhi was striving to harmonize India's regional policies with the George W Bush administration, and the SCO was anathema to Washington, being a challenge to the US strategy to propel the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as the prime security framework in the Central Asian region.

The Bush administration's "Great Central Asia" strategy attributed a pivotal role to India insofar as it envisaged India as a balancer to the traditional Russian (and increasingly Chinese) influence in that strategically vital region. Senior officials of the Bush administration and noted American regional experts and think-tankers dropped by in Delhi on a regular basis and nudged the Indian establishment toward the "Great Central Asia" strategy.

The main thrust of the US diplomacy was to use Afghanistan as a strategic bridge between Central Asia and South Asia and to encourage the Central Asian states to forge economic and political bonds with India. On a parallel track, the Bush administration's strategy strove to involve India gradually in the NATO processes so that the alliance's agenda of isolating Russia and containing China received a fillip.

In the kind of worldview - or "global vision" - that the present Indian government (which is completing its five-year term in May) claimed to possess, the US's regional strategy aimed at building up India as a major regional player and as a counterweight to China.

The Bush administration carefully nurtured these Indian aspirations - though Washington also quietly kept encouraging Beijing to make inroads into the Russian preserves in Central Asia and began developing common ground between the US and China on the contentious agenda of energy security.

At any rate, the Indian government followed a policy of masterful inactivity towards the SCO. The most glaring sign of this was that India was the only country among the SCO's member and observer countries that was not represented at head of state/government level at the organization's gala fifth anniversary summit meeting in June 2006 in Shanghai. In an appalling insensitivity toward the SCO's political agenda, Delhi kept insisting that petroleum minister Murali Deora, in the Indian cabinet, was the most appropriate official to advance the country's interests within the SCO.

For these reasons, the SCO's conference in Moscow on March 27 holds special significance for Delhi. The conference underscores that regional security and stability have been and always will remain as the raison d'etre of the organization. The agenda of the Moscow conference focuses on the situation in Afghanistan and how a regional initiative can be structured for stabilizing that country. The Indian decision to participate in the conference at the level of the prime minister's special envoy duly takes note that the SCO is placing itself in a key role in any Afghan settlement.

The main challenge for Indian diplomacy is that among the regional capitals, Delhi faces potential isolation apropos the Afghan problem. This is partly because of the centrality of Pakistan in any Afghan settlement, and most big powers are chary of Islamabad's aversion to including Delhi at the high table of conflict resolution in the Hindu Kush. Furthermore, India's adversarial relationship with Pakistan somehow has come to figure as a major template of the Afghan problem.

Such a linkage, historically, has no basis and must be counted as a failure of India's Afghan policy in the past seven years. Delhi now has to grapple with growing international opinion - especially among Western experts - that a regional solution to the Afghan problem must include a settlement ("grand bargain") of India-Pakistan differences, including Kashmir.

In retrospect, the propensity of Indian policymakers to view Afghanistan as a "second front" against Pakistan and build up an axis with the Kabul government has come to haunt them. India should have known that the government of President Hamid Karzai was too fragile as an ally. The irony is that the Obama administration itself has lately put a distance between itself and Karzai.

The SCO conference in Moscow, therefore, provides a window of opportunity for India to harmonize its Afghan policy with Russia, China, Iran and the Central Asian states. But this also poses challenges to Delhi insofar as India's US-centric foreign policy during the recent years has not gone down well in the region. Indian diplomacy must strain every nerve to recapture the verve of strategic understanding that India used to enjoy with Russia and Iran.

Nonetheless, the Moscow conference provides India with an opportunity to become part of a major regional initiative on Afghanistan's stabilization. It is highly unlikely that the SCO will be inclined to take a stance that is confrontational vis-a-vis the US's strategy. This provides comfortable space for India to negotiate. (Incidentally, India is also participating in the US-sponsored conference on Afghanistan scheduled to be held at The Hague on March 31.)

The bottom line of current Indian diplomacy is that Delhi should find a berth in the mainstream international and regional efforts in search of an Afghan settlement. Clearly, India shares the SCO's concerns over the ascendancy of the forces of religious extremism and militancy in Afghanistan. Having said that, the Indian stance towards the Taliban remains rooted in the past, whereas international opinion has evolved and nuances have appeared in Russian, Iranian and Chinese thinking. Whereas India remains stuck in the argumentative contention that there is nothing like "good" or "bad" Taliban, the Russian and Chinese stances seem to take note of the fact that the Taliban do not constitute a monolithic movement.

Moscow and Beijing seem to appreciate that there could be "moderate" elements within the Taliban, and the issue is really how practical will be any attempt to distinguish the moderate elements in the present climate of violence where the hardliners call the shots. In comparison, as a top Indian official maintained, Delhi insists that the task ahead is to "isolate the Taliban and deal with Afghanistan". He added wryly, "We do not accept this 'good-Taliban-bad-Taliban' theory because how do you decide who is a 'good Taliban'?"

All the same, India would share with Russia and China a deep sense of disquiet over any US attempts to bring about a regime change in Kabul. All three countries have made sustained efforts to cultivate Karzai and will be loathe to forfeit their political capital if the Obama administration chooses to replace him. All three, equally, would like to see that any change of leadership in Kabul should be a matter left to the Afghans themselves to decide rather than for the international community to prescribe.

The SCO, in fact, has taken a consistent position on the subject of regime change. On the Andijan uprising in Uzbekistan in July 2005, and the failed "Tulip" revolution in Kyrgyzstan earlier in the same year, in March, the SCO took a clearcut position opposing the US's intrusive regional policies. This was one of the main issues for the SCO's extraordinary call at its summit meeting in Astana in July 2005 for the termination of the American military base in Manas, Kyrgyzstan.

But Delhi assesses that a sense of realism is finally prevailing in the Obama administration about the importance of Karzai and there is no longer any compelling urge felt within the Obama administration to rush through a regime change in Kabul.

Another area of similarity in the Indian, Russian and Chinese approaches will be the three countries' emphasis on the "Afghanization" of the war. That is to say, all three countries are of the opinion that enduring peace cannot come to Afghanistan unless the capacity of the Kabul government is strengthened and the importance of economic reconstruction duly recognized. Similarly, all three countries share an aversion towards deploying troops in Afghanistan, but are prepared to make substantial contributions as "stakeholders" within that threshold.

Finally, India is developing proximity with the SCO at a time when NATO and Pakistan are getting close to establishing a formal relationship. NATO is keen on stepping up its cooperation with Pakistan, and Islamabad also wants to engage more with the alliance. NATO is working on improving its lines of communication through Pakistan, despite the availability of a northern corridor through Russian territory.

This is understandable, as NATO would like to keep in check the dependence on Russia, which has implications for European security and US-Russia relations on the whole. But 80% of NATO supplies for Afghanistan pass through Pakistani territory. Thus, NATO is under compulsion to seek a qualitatively new level of relationship with Pakistan, making it a partner in the alliance's operations in the region. NATO's decision to establish a "liaison office" in Islamabad will be seen from this perspective.

Without doubt, the developing NATO-Pakistan tango will be closely watched in Delhi. Also of concern to Delhi is NATO's plan to develop a new matrix of intelligence-sharing with Pakistan, even as the alliance is in the process of setting up six border cooperation centers along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The idea is to conduct joint NATO-Pakistan military operations along the border and make it a regular process with set agendas. Incidentally, Pakistan is already operating an intelligence cell in Kabul which coordinates with NATO.

Obviously, there is a divergence of opinion between NATO and Delhi regarding Pakistan's role in the stabilization of Afghanistan, where India views Pakistan as part of the problem. But NATO sees things differently. A senior Indian official said over the weekend, "Our view is that Pakistan should not use extremism as a strategic instrument and that it should make that choice clear."

But the NATO perspective on Pakistan lacks any such cutting edge. On the contrary, it is manifestly sanguine. The aide to NATO's secretary general and the director of policy planning, Jamie Shea, said recently, "We've [NATO] got to bring Pakistan as closely as we can into a regional approach in order to be successful in Afghanistan ... We want the closest possible relationship with [Pakistan] on the basis that the threat we face is also the threat they face - and that they can't face it without us and we can't face it without them. So there is the logic of working more closely together."

Fair enough. But what is bound to raise eyebrows in Delhi are the nascent moves by NATO - under active US and British encouragement - to have a long-term bilateral security cooperation program with Pakistan within an institutionalized framework. Shea broadly admitted, "There have been some ideas that have been around about assistance the [NATO] allies could provide to the Pakistani armed forces ... So I don't rule it [formal structures such as the Partnership for Peace program] out. But we're going step by step."

In short, NATO disagrees with Delhi's bleak view regarding Pakistani intentions. Shea said, "I think it would be very unfair to claim that they [Pakistani military] are not putting their shoulder to the wheel, as we say, in terms of making an effort. They could perhaps benefit from assistance and training, or whatever, that could be given by allies. That's something we may discuss with them in the future. But, of course, we cannot impose that upon Pakistan."

The Pakistani military being raised to NATO standards? Arguably, it is a logical move if viewed in the context of the struggle against terrorism. But then, India holds an altogether different sort of prism for viewing the Pakistani military.

At the Moscow conference, the Indian special envoy is almost certain to realize that there are virtually no takers in the region to any campaign to isolate or "pressure" Pakistan. The SCO - like NATO - will in all probability also visualize Pakistan as part of the solution rather than berate it as the problem. None of the SCO member countries will be interested in isolating Pakistan. Curiously, Pakistan may find itself being courted by NATO and the SCO alike. The region's geopolitics are dramatically changing.

Hauz Khas Village: The Hypocrisy Of Lavish Lifestyle

By Rajyasree Sen (Guest Writer)

It’s a Saturday afternoon, and it’s time to head out the door. Not to anywhere as declasse as a mall or predictable as the run-of-the-mill overpriced Dilli restaurant. That wouldn’t do for someone who thinks green, eats organic and is single-mindedly dedicated to the pursuit of cool. It’s time instead to throw on that Anokhi summer dress, Aldo chappals, Amrapali silver jhumkas, ask the driver to pull out the Audi and head for Hauz Khas Village.

Over the past 3 years, Hauz Khas Village, with its mushrooming restaurants – 62 at last count – and niche bookstores, has blossomed into the lifestyle mecca for the Delhi culturati with hearts and wallets of gold. You can’t throw your Aldo sandal two feet without hitting a career socialite. This is Delhi’s answer to Soho and Greenwich Village all rolled into one. Sadly, it looks more Southhall, but in Delhi, that is just fine.

The HKV mystique
HKV is the jewel in the crown of this alternative universe which caters to the we-have-money-but-hate-it crowd.  It offers its clientele the unbeatable and delectable combination of feeling morally virtuous while spending vast amounts of money. But woe betide the local landlord who wants to charge more rent from a favourite establishment — perhaps because it is located on premium real estate in a high-end shopping area. Facebook groups are launched, hashtags of #savethealternative trend on Twitter and all of Delhi’s chatterati  is at the ready to start a candle march against this grave injustice against the entrepreneur with a heart. Screw the landlord who simply wants more buck for his property. The crass bugger should just be happy that the gods of alternative things chose to set up shop on his premises.

Focus: AAP's Kejriwal Promised Much But Delivered Little

By Siddharth Kapoor | INN Live

Populism is the platform of promise for change. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won on a manifesto that promised to radically change the lives of Delhi’s dispossessed and disadvantaged as well as fulfil the aspirations of a corruption-weary middle class.

The newest hurdle the chief minister has hit is the politics of power.  The over one-and-a-half crore residents of the capital are getting ready to pay eight per cent more on their electricity bills after voting a government to power which promised to halve tariffs.

Arvind Kejriwal: The Most Dangerous Man In Indian Politics

By Sadanand Mihir | INNLIVE

SPECIAL REPORT Not rabble-rousing but deliverance through governance is what Kejriwal should be aiming at and for that he must steer clear of populist overtones that his 49-day rule as Delhi chief minister came to symbolise.

For many Indians, their country’s most exciting politician is neither the firebrand Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi nor the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty scion Rahul Gandhi, but Arvind Kejriwal, a mustachioed, bespectacled former tax inspector whom most people had barely heard of just three years ago.

Severe Health Alert: Bird Flu Scare For Chicken Capital

By Neetu Chandra / New Delhi

Delhi and NCR on watch after major outbreak in Chhattisgarh and Bihar known as bird flu, in Chhattisgarh and Bihar. The central government has informed all states, including Delhi, to conduct regular surveillance of poultry farms after outbreaks of avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu, in Chhattisgarh and Bihar.

Considering the outbreak of the avian influenza H5N1 virus in the two states, the Ministry of Agriculture’s Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying & Fisheries has recently informed the National Disaster Management Authority ( NDMA), Union health ministry, Union home ministry and all the states to carry out regular checks to enable early detection of any possible spread of the virus.

'Nirbhaya': A year On, Nothing Much Has Changed In Delhi

By Payal Kohli | INN Live

TRIBUTE The December 16 gangrape, which has come to be known in India and across the globe as 'Delhi gangrape', has not only left its deep mark on the city but has also created a fear psychosis in women about their safety.

On that fateful night last year, a 23-year-old paramedical student was gangraped and brutally assaulted by six men on a moving bus. She was stripped naked, gangraped, attacked with an iron rod and thrown out of the moving bus on a deserted street in the winter night. She succumbed to injuries later, triggering outrage, anger and protests across the nation.

Congress Crisis Deepens As Its Support Base Crumbles

Decimated in Delhi, the party draws solace from humiliation heaped on Modi.

Once it became clear that the Congress was all set for a wipe-out in the Delhi assembly polls, a group of party workers gathered outside the party office headquarters on Tuesday morning to demand that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra play a more active role in politics.

The all-too familiar slogans, “Priyanka lao, Congress bachao” were again raised, similar to the demand made after the party was routed in last year’s Lok Sabha election and subsequently in the Maharashtra and Haryana assembly polls.

WHY A POLICEMAN DOESN'T FILE AN FIR?

By Danish Raza (Guest Writer)

The Indian police often face the worst Indian justice system. The man in khaki has given up. Almost! Speaking on the wireless, he tells his bosses sitting in Delhi Police Headquarters to send another battalion of uniformed men. While his seniors contemplate the demand, he once again tries to negotiate with a group of 200 Jawarlal Nehru university students who are demanding the removal of his top boss, Delhi police commissioner Neeraj Kumar.

All Bets Are Off For 2014; Both BJP, Cong Have To Reboot

By M H Ahssan | INN Live

ELECTION ANALYSIS  Even as we are mid-way through the election result trends in the four major assemblies of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Delhi, the broad trend seems to be thumping wins for the BJP in the first two, a challenging revival of the Congress in Chhattisgarh (though a win can’t be predicted for either party at this time), and a spectacular debut by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi, which will probably rob the BJP of a clear majority. 

But some broad conclusions can clearly be drawn from these trends – regardless of what the final seat count numbers are in these four states. First, the pollsters appear to have got it more or less right – even in Chhattisgarh and Delhi, where there was a tight race on. Their predictions are well within the margins of error they had predicted.

Elections 2014 - Phase II: Polling Begins In 91 Lok Sabha Seats Spread Across 11 States And 3 Union Territories

INNLIVE Election Teams

Voting begins in Delhi 
Voting is being held for seven Lok Sabha seats in the country's capital, seen as test of Aam Aadmi Party's perceived erosion of support base, BJP's claim of 'Modi wave' and assertion by Congress that it was regaining lost ground after drubbing in last assembly polls.

Delhi Police's 'Helpline Number' Belongs To 'Sub-Inspector'

By Kajol Singh | INNLIVE

Surprised! yes, Delhi police has fetched another feather in their cap, by declaring their sub-inspector's private number as Delhi police foreign national helpline official number.

The Delhi Police today launched a helpline for foreign nationals visiting the national capital. The number, 8750871111, will become active from Friday onwards.

The number currently belongs to a sub-inspector who has been asked to surrender it by tonight. According to the police, a set of officers has been assigned to handle the phone calls on this number and it will be monitored by Mukesh Kumar Meena, the Joint Commissioner of New Delhi range.

Fake Federalism: How 'National Parties' Turned The Concept Of 'Rajya' In Rajya Sabha Into A Farce?

By NEWSCOP | INNLIVE 

The upper House of Parliament, literally a Council of States, was meant to be a federal chamber to look out for the interests of the states.

The continued abuse of the idea of the Rajya Sabha – or the Council of States – by the so-called national parties continues with the upcoming round of Rajya Sabha elections.

Opinion: The Sheer Savage Greed of The Civilized Society

By Sudip Roy | INN Live

Delhi Law Minister and Aam Aadmi Party leader Somnath Bharti’s midnight raid in Khirki village, during which he ordered policemen to search and enter houses, arrest people without warrants, and allegedly said that “black people, who are not like you and me, break laws”—strips naked the unashamed inhumanity of the Aam Aadmi Party regime’s moral posturing. Underneath the holier-than-thou mask of that moral posture lies the unmistakably horrible sneer of the ordinary racist thug. This is the real face of Somnath Bharti. I hope it is a face that the Aam Aadmi Party can turn itself away from.

It's Time To Think The Unthinkable: Arvind Kejriwal As PM

By M H Ahssan | INN Live

WEEKEND SPECIAL The unthinkable happened in 2013: Arvind Kejriwal became CM of Delhi. What’s the most unthinkable thing that could actually happen in 2014? Kejriwal could become prime minister of India. 
    
Readers may laugh incredulously at the very suggestion. But the revolutionary success of the Aam Aadmi Party in the Delhi election shows it’s time to abandon conventional political logic and think the once-unthinkable. Conventional analysis suggests that the next national government will be headed by the BJP. But if the Aam Aadmi Party can scale up nationally, conventional analysis will become junk. 
    
In Delhi, the AAP won 28 out of 70 seats, with 30% of the popular vote. Skeptics ask, how on earth can you expect AAP to win such a high share of the vote, or of seats, in a general election? True, the AAP cannot hope to do anywhere near as well in a general election.

'LeT Imams Spent Night At My Home', Says UP Headmaster

By Suleman Ansari | Lucknow

SENSATION On October 13, one month after the communal riots in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts in western Uttar Pradesh began, two imams from Haryana's Mewat district — Hafeez Rashidi and Shahid — visited the home of Liaquat Ali in Kulehri village near Charthwal Kasbah in Muzaffarnagar.

The headmaster at a government-run junior high school in Jalalabad, Liaquat, 60, had apparently met Shahid in Deoband earlier that month, during the last week preceding Bakr-Id.

THE 'SHOCKING MARKET' OF 'CHILD LABOUR' IN DELHI

By Kajol Singh / Delhi

Children from poorer states are lured to the capital and put to work in sweatshops. In a long straight row, the boys walked slowly down a narrow lane in Seelampur market, in east Delhi's maze of congested neighbourhoods. There were some 21 of them between 10 and 14 years old. Passersby stopped and stared. The boys could have been schoolchildren following their teacher's instructions. Instead, they were victims of child labour just freed through a rescue operation.

“My brother brought me to Seelampur from Nepal,” says a scared Tojib, only 10 years old. “He went back to our village. I have been working here since five or six months. I get Rs. 2,500 a month. I work from 9 am to 5 pm.” Three rescued children nod in unison.