OPINION

We have now one more Muslim who feels insecure in this country. Thinking about his children’s safety in India makes Naseeruddin Shah shudder. This comes on the heels of the recent autobiographical account penned in Sarkari Mussalman by his brother Lt General Zameer Uddin Shah, who was Deputy Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army.

Zameer Shah was also the Vice Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University. He has written in the book the role of the State Government, both in surreptitiously   inciting and later handling riots which spread after burning of the train coach with karsevaks.

Zameer Shah was tasked to lead the Army troops in riot-torn Ahmedabad. What is more dismaying now in his statements is that by remaining silent then in the line of duty and several years since, is it not his implicit admission of having given precedence to personal convenience over his duty oath, reasons best known to him?

Delhi entered the New Year reeling under severe air pollution. There are no farm fires in Punjab right now and still air pollution condition in Delhi, if not worse, it’s definitely not better than what it was during the harvest time in November first week. The Delhi Government, having blamed one and all for the bad air of the national Capital, has now ordered a study to find out the reasons for the cloak of pollution hanging over the national Capital.

What do we need to study? Will it be possible for the present government led by Arvind Kejriwal to accept the honest findings of a sincere study? Unlikely; especially having come to power riding on populism propelled promises, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) can least take the chance of annoying its vote bank. Thus the souls in the national Capital can live and rest in polluted air for sometimes to come.

In order to provide for the promised subsidies to the power and water consumers, the Delhi Government has been scratching the bottom of the barrel to meet the financial needs. The has led to most unreasonable ‘rationalisation’ of budget expenditures including a 25 per cent cut in the funds meant for controlling air pollution in Delhi in its revised budget estimates for 2018-19. This has happened when pollution in Delhi is at dangerous level for the past one week.

Revolutions eat their children, goes the famous saying. This maxim was very effectively used by one of the founders of political journalism, Jacques Mallet du Pan while writing pamphlets during the French Revolution, in support of the Royalists. Time may have come to use the famous phrase with context to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which was born out of Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption movement and has since then devoured several of its founding members.

The latest farce in this context was played out in the Delhi Legislative Assembly, where a motion moved to provide succour to the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots ended up demanding stripping late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award bestowed by Government of India. It led to a skirmish among the different factions of the ruling party inside the house, it played out on their WhatsApp group and later spilled over into the news columns.

Delhi Assembly is celebrating 25 years of its existence in it’s present form. In keeping with the current political trend in the national Capital, this event too has courted controversy. The polls in Delhi assembly, ever since it came into existence in 1993, too were used to be held along with states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh (since 2003), Rajasthan and Mizoram.

The cycle broke in 2013 following the emergence of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The polls five years ago threw up a hung house in the national Capital and Arvind Kejriwal became Chief Minister for the first time, with the support of eight Congress MLAs. Kejriwal did not hold onto the chair for long and soon resigned from office leading to subsequent dissolution of the assembly and fresh polls in 2015.

Kejriwal’s rise in Delhi was at the cost of the Congress party, which till then had won three assembly elections (1998, 2003 and 2008) under the stewardship of Sheila Dikshit, who held the office of the Chief Minister for three unprecedented terms. Despite being an icon of development-oriented politics, Dikshit could not withstand the political tsunami created by charges of corruption brought mostly against the central Congress leaders and faced humiliating defeat in 2013.

The inauguration of the first multi-modal terminal on the Ganga river in Varanasi last month was publicised by the Centre as a major breakthrough in search for cheap mode of transport. It also was feted as major feet for generating employment in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency of Varanasi. The cargo route is soon to be extended up to Allahabad aka Prayagraj.

However, down the stream, the move has not generated much appreciation, as the river closer to the delta especially as it flows east of Patna into Jharkhand and West Bengal before joining the Bay of Bengal. This stretch is home to the threatened Gangetic Dolphins, which ironically has been christened by the government as the National Aquatic Animal.

The NDA government enacted National Waterways Act, 2016, which declared 111 inland waterways as National Waterways (NWs) in addition to the five existing NWs across 24 states for utilising them as sustainable mode of transport. Point to be noted is that out of total 111 inland waterways, 38 are habitat of the riverine dolphins.