A Tale Of TMC And AIADMK Pact: The Hard Poll Bargainers

By Mahesh Mahtolia | Delhi

CLOSE LOOK Elections to 16th Lok Sabha are just started of phase one in Assam and Tripura. In later of this month it will make an impact and grip the poll fever across the country. These elections will decide the political careers of many stalwarts and will signal the end of many others. Many regional parties see this as their chance to cash in and make most of the situation. 

It is these small parties who are bargaining with the large national parties - Congress and BJP. Most are seeking seat sharing arrangements which will only benefit them locally. They usually lack any national perspective or agenda.

ALSO READ: Why 2014 Polls Could Spell The End Of Congress In India?

World’s Largest Democratic Excercise As Voting Begins In Assam, Tripura - Technical Snag In EVMs Hamper Voting

INNLIVE | Election Bureau

People queued up at polling booths in Assam's five constituencies as balloting began in the first phase of the Lok Sabha election Monday. The state recorded 12 percent voting in the first two hours, officials said here. 

The polling started at 7 am in most of the polling stations, barring a few polling booths under Kaliabor and Tezpur Lok Sabha constituencies where the process was delayed due to some technical snags in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). People were seen queuing up at most of the 8,588 polling booths since early hours in the morning. 

Spotlight: 'Jumping Jilanis - The Parachute Politicians'

By M H Ahssan | INNLIVE

Jumping Jilania or Parachute politicians: Newbie politicians bypass hierarchies to launch themselves into Elections 2014.

Actor Moon Moon Sen says her political inspiration is Julius Caesar and by contesting the elections this time, she hopes to restore Caesarean nobility to politics. Her idea of Parliament, she recently told a TV interviewer, is "that poor lady Meira who says 'quiet' ineffectively". The voters of Bankura in West Bengal willing, Sen could be among those occupying the coveted green benches in the Lok Sabha when it starts business less than two months from now.

The 'Striking Similarities' Of 'NaMo And Indira's' Politics

By Rajdeep Sardesai (Star Guest Writer)

OPINION Narendra Modi today claims to derive inspiration from Sardar Patel and Swami Vivekananda even if his original icon was the long-serving RSS chief, Guru Golwalkar. Patel and Vivekananda are natural choices for the BJP's prime ministerial candidate: with Patel, there is the instant strongman from Gujarat connect while Vivekananda gives him the image of an "inclusive" Hindu nationalist. The truth is, Modi's real role model in the 2014 election is someone very different: the former prime minister, Indira Gandhi.

'Nearly 20 Lakh Private Arms Licensed In Half India': RTI

By Ashmit Sinha | INNLIVE

ALARMING SITUATION Governments across Indian states have issued 19.80 lakh private gun licences in 324 districts, or in just under half the country’s 671 districts.

States that have suffered terrorism and those with poor social indicators top the list. Uttar Pradesh, which has 16.50 per cent of the country’s population, has issued 11.23 lakh private licences, according to a government affidavit filed in the Allahabad High Court last year. The district-wise data were received over four years from queries sent to 600 districts; many didn’t respond. For the 324 that did, the average works out to 6,113 licences per district.

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal 100 Times Richer Than Manik Sarkar - The Tripura's Poorest Chief Minister In India

By Arvind Kumar | Delhi

Barely a few minutes after Arvind Kejriwal has taken over the mantle of the Chief Minister of Delhi, he may soon find himself enlisted among the former Chief Ministers of Delhi whose worth run in crores. An interesting fact about the Kejriwal couple is that they combined own assets worth Rs. 2.10 crores.

As per information furnished by the AAP chief to the Election Commission, Arvind Kejriwal had declared Rs. 2 crore worth of moveable and immovable assets, including those of his wife, according to an affidavit filed by him. Kejriwal filed his nomination papers from the New Delhi assembly constituency for the Dec 4 elections.

Can Mizoram's Campaigning Be Replicated Elsewhere?

By Vishant Shah / Aizawl

The fervour of two events driving the country crazy — Sachin Tendulkar’s swansong Tests and the upcoming assembly elections — is missing almost entirely in Mizoram. 
    
Being in a football-crazy state, it is understandable that most television sets are tuned in to mundane Hindi soaps, films dubbed in the local language and western music videos even as the Maestro turns out at Kolkata’s Eden Garden. But the absence of any din related to polls — barely a fortnight away, is conspicuous, more so for a state that recorded an impressive 82% voter turnout in 2008. 

‘If Digged, 'Big Dam Scams' Could Be As Big As Coalgate’

By Uday Thakur / INN Live

Environmental journalist Urmi Bhattacharjee has released a research guide on dam-building in India. The report details the whole process of building dams on rivers, including their sanction and impact on life and livelihood. In conversation with INN Live, Bhattacharjee explains the politics of dams and the risks of building big dams without proper assessments.

Edited excerpts from an exclusive interview:

Should President's Rule Be Imposed To Create Telangana?

By M H Ahssan / INN Live

Contrary to the prevailing opinion, in this country, new state formation has never been smooth. Nor were the procedures exactly similar. Each state formation was unique and had followed a different sequence of steps.

The only thing common to all the state formations so far in Independent India has been the rigid applicability of Article 3 in its truest sense, where Parliament is given the supreme authority to carve out states irrespective of the opinion of the involved State Assemblies.

While the NDA followed a convenient procedure in the creation of Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand in 2000, where the state assemblies initiated the demand for separation, such a procedure is neither legally mandated nor is constitutionally prescribed and deviates from most other prior state formations. 

India Speaks 780 Languages, 220 Lost In Last 50 Years

By Nikhil Chinappa / Mumbai

No one has ever doubted that India is home to a huge variety of languages. A new study, the People’s Linguistic Survey of India, says that the official number, 122, is far lower than the 780 that it counted and another 100 that its authors suspect exist.

The survey, which was conducted over the past four years by 3,000 volunteers and staff of the Bhasha Research & Publication Centre (“Bhasha” means “language” in Hindi), also concludes that 220 Indian languages have disappeared in the last 50 years, and that another 150 could vanish in the next half century as speakers die and their children fail to learn their ancestral tongues.

Small States A 'Political Stunt' Without Decentralisation

By Shankkar Aiyar (Guest Writer)

India seems to produce a political paradox almost every week. Indians were told that overall poverty levels fell from 37 per cent in 2004-05 to 21.9 per cent in 2011-12. This did not trigger any review of the idea to give 67 per cent of the population subsidised grains. The chasm between statistics and political arithmetic persists.

Hidden in the reams of data on poverty reduction is an interesting fact. United Andhra Pradesh is among those states which brought down poverty the most. Since 2004, when K Chandrashekar Rao of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti was promised Telangana, poverty in united Andhra Pradesh dropped from 29.6 per cent to 9.2 per cent in 2011-12. And the absolute number of those below poverty line has come down from 235 lakh to 78 lakh. World over, poverty reduction is an accepted indicator of growth and governance.

Saradha Redux: Why Rose Valley Is A 'Ponzi Scheme'?

By Vivek Kaul (Guest Writer)

The Securities and Exchange Board of India(Sebi) in a significant order yesterday directed Rose Valley Hotels and Entertainments Limited (RVHEL) and its directors to stop raising deposits through any of its existing investment schemes.

Sebi also directed RVHEL and its directors not to launch any new schemes, not to dispose of any of the properties or alienate any of the assets of the schemes and not to divert any funds raised from public at large which are kept in bank account(s) and/or in the custody of the company.

WHY INDIA IS LOSING ITS WAR AGAINST NAXALITES?

By M H Ahssan / Hyderabad

Five decades ago, the special forces officer Roger Trinquier set about understanding why his nation losing to enemies it outgunned and outmanned. France, he wrote, was  “in studying a type of warfare that no longer exists and that we shall never fight again, while we pay only passing attention to the war we lost in Indochina and the one we are about to lose in Algeria.  The result of this shortcoming is that the army is not prepared to confront an adversary employing arms and methods the army itself ignores. It has, therefore, no chance of winning”.

WHY CHHATTISGARH CAUGHT IN 'NAXAL NAPPING'?

By Mithilesh Mishra / Raipur

“This period of peace,” Mahendra Karma had warned, “is dangerous for us.” The founder of the Salwa Judum anti-Maoist militia was shot dead on Saturday night, two years after the Supreme Court disbanded it; he was dragged out of his bullet-proof car as the commandos tasked with protecting him fled.

Former chief minister Vidya Charan Shukla was critically injured in the ambush, which claimed Karma’s life, along with Sukma MLA Kawasai Lakma. Nandkumar Patel, the state’s Congress chief, is missing—feared kidnapped, along with members of his family.

A MISERABLE LIFE, WHEN PROTECTOR BECOMES PREDATOR

By M H Ahssan & Kajol Singh

A tailor. A farmer. A bootlegger. Often just young men going about their day. brutally tortured, then acquitted. INN captures the impunity with which this happens. And why society needs to react.

If the protector becomes (the) predator, civilised society will cease to exist… Policemen who commit criminal acts deserve harsher punishment than other persons who commit such acts, because it is the duty of the policemen to protect the people and not break the law themselves. - Supreme Court of India, 2010

On 14 May, police rounded up four men in Etah district of Uttar Pradesh, 260 km west of the state capital, Lucknow, in connection with a month-old case of murder. Three days later, one of them, a 33-year-old farmer named Balbir Singh, lay dead in a hospital in Lucknow. “The police gave him electric shocks and injected acid and petrol in his body,” says his brother- in-law, Sunul Kumar. “They forced him to sit on an electric heater that burnt his body horribly.” According to Kumar, Singh told him before dying that the police wanted him to confess his involvement in the murder.

CADBURY TO PAY 30K TO MAN FOUND 'PIN IN CHOCHOLATE'

INN News Desk

A consumer court in Tripura has ordered Cadbury India Ltd to pay a compensation of Rs.30,000 to a complainant who found an iron pin inside a chocolate bar made by the company, an official said.

“A man purchased a Cadbury chocolate on Dec 16, 2011, for his three-year-old daughter and found an iron pin inside the bar when the girl tried to eat it. Subsequently, he filed a complaint before a consumer forum,” a food department official told here.

“After conducting a hearing, the west Tripura district consumer disputes redressal forum last week ordered Cadbury India Ltd to pay a compensation of Rs.30,000 to the complainant within a month.” The forum, which in its judgment said the chocolate was hazardous, also asked the chocolate company to pay Rs.1,000 to the complainant towards the cost of litigation.

HORRIFYING INCIDENTS OF RAMPANT SEXUAL ABUSES

By M H Ahssan, Kajol Singh, Ashol Rai

Shocking statistics. Devastating stories. Our dirty national secret. INN bring you a horrifying report on the rampant sexual abuse of children in India. 

To begin with, hear the story of one child. On 17 December 2012 — just one day after the gangrape of a young paramedic in New Delhi shook the world — a three-and-a-half-year old baby girl returned from school with her clothes streaked with vomit and blood.

Her father, Gagan Sharma (name changed), had moved from Kolkata to a slum in west Delhi in 2003 in search of a better life. The little girl had been listless and reluctant to go to school for weeks. Now, when her mother asked her what had happened, she told the story haltingly, riven by fear.

GRIM FACTS: WHAT'S BEHIND A GLASS OF MILK?

By M H Ahssan / Hyderabad

INN throws light on some grim details about the cow in India, the world’s largest producer of milk.

You know that child who throws a terrible tantrum over a glass of milk. How he kicks and screams and refuses to touch the stuff? Haven’t you wondered what the fuss is all about? After all, it’s just a glass of milk.

It turns out the child may just have the right idea. The business of producing milk — indeed, the multi-crore rupee cattle industry it’s a part of — is sustained by a process of relentless cruelty towards animals, from birth till death, with little letup. Cruelty compounded by poorly defined, poorly implemented methods and gross violations.

SUMMER VISIT, AT INDIA’S UNKNOWN 'LAKE PALACE'

By M H Ahssan / Agartala

A blend of Hindu and Muslim architecture, Neermahal gets to see over three lakh people every year. Somen Sengupta visits Tripura’s now endangered lake palace to tell us more about it.

In India there are only two lake palaces which, by their size, shape and history, can make your jaw drop in awe. The first one is the well-known lake palace of Udaipur, which has now been converted into a luxury hotel. While many people would easily tell you about the Rajasthan lake palace, the one which remains lost in our collective consciousness is Tripura’s Neermahal. Thankfully, I saw this palace for the first time in a poster of Tripura tourism at Calcutta Airport. Captivated by its majestic presence over a huge water body, I got excited to explore this place.

'ARUNACHAL' TOPS IN HANDLING 'CHILD NUTRITION'

By M H Ahssan / New Delhi

The problem is likely to be less severe than UN statistics indicate, given faulty yardsticks. If asked to name the state with the lowest incidence of child malnutrition in India, readers will overwhelmingly pick one of Kerala, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Punjab or West Bengal. But they will all be wrong by a wide margin: none of these states appears among even the top five performers.