OPINION

The dispute about the religion of Congress scion Rahul Gandhi just before his anointment as the chief of Congress party has raised serious questions on the functioning of democracy in India. Before going deeper into the issue, I must make it clear that we respect the prohibitory guidelines of the Election Commission of India on seeking or casting votes on the name of religion and caste.However, concealing the religious identify by a LokSabha MP who is being anointed as chief of the second largest political party in the Parliament of India is definitely a matter of serious concern.  

The entry made about Rahul Gandhi and his party colleague Ahmed Patel as ‘Non-Hindu’ in the register of prestigious Somnath Temple of Gujarat by his media advisor has raised an alarm in the Indian political system. Above all the vague defense of Congress by calling itsscion as ‘JaneuDhari Hindu’ (sacred-thread wearing Hindu) only reveals the habitual divisive politics of the decaying Congress which always nourished, groomed and used the leftists to name and shame each and every tradition of janeudhari Hindus including the Janeu (sacred thread) itself.

We living in the capital seldom try to look inwards and are always ready to find excuse for our follies. Last week newspaper headlines screamed putting the blame on West Asia for the hell that we have created for ourselves, which has in turn helped pharmaceutical companies see their sale graphs soar.

Delhi has been covered with smog, a layer of polluted air for a fortnight now and none seem to be worried about the way the whole city is turning sick. We have been going through our lives as usual at best the arguments now focus on which is best gas mask in the market.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has done what he does best, blamed the world for the smog in the city and has tried turning the misery into an opportunity to once again demand more powers for his government. One wonders if Ministers know only one way to get even with the problems of the capital -- by acting in an odd manner, thus the plea to bring in the odd-even car rationing scheme.

With the election schedule in place for the Gujarat Assembly polls in December 2017, the two mainstream parties, Congress and the BJP, have pulled up their sleeves to win the battle. Congress is fully engrossed in creating an anti incumbency environment through the social media apart from the print and the electronic one whereas the BJP is leaving no stone unturned to retain the confidence of the Gujarati voter and  ensure once again that the Congress is well knocked out.

Congress is looking at this election as defining its future political relevance in the national politics, more so in Gujarat. This election is also being seen as the last test of Rahul Gandhi’s efficacy as a political leader. Will he emerge as the natural heir of the Gandhi dynasty or will miss the train in the process is a question that might require to be settled on the basis of the electoral outcome of these elections.

The massive gap of affordable housing has drawn the Government of India’s focused attention and resulted in many initiatives to such housings. Cognizant of the constantly growing demand for affordable homes across the country, the market has started responding with a significant rise in new launch supply in this segment over the last one year.
On examining the composition of the new launch supply across the top Indian cities in the current year (till Q3 2017), it emerges that affordable housing (units with average ticket sizes below Rs. 40 lakh) clearly leads the pack. It constitutes more than half (52%) of the overall new supply:
 
The chart below shows the share of newly-launched affordable housing units (<Rs. 40 lakh) during Q1- Q3 2017 across all the top cities. Bangalore, MMR, NCR, and Pune are close together in terms of volumes, accounting for around 16-19% share of units in the sub-40 lakh price bucket. In MMR, the new launch supply in this segment is led by the Ambernath, Badlapur, Neral and Karjat micro-markets.

A few weeks ago the officials of Delhi Traffic Police had a torrid time when both the, as Bollywood potboiler was titled, ‘Raja Aur Runk’(the ruler and the ruled) decided to queue up at the Raisina Hills for a plate of Khichdi, the ubiquitous Indian two square meal for the poor. The occasion was World Food India Congress, a jamboree of leading investors and producers from food processing industry. But what caught the eyeballs, the camera bytes and twitter snipes was about the making of the poor Khichdi leading to a massive traffic jam.

When Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker would have set out to design New Delhi and planned the grand avenue down from the Viceregal House to War Memorial Arch (the present day Rashtrapati Bhawan to India Gate) and named it Kingsway, they would have never dreamt of it being anchor for a food festival that too under the government patronage.

Does the arrival of Khichdi as a meal of prominence, the Government just stopped short of declaring it the national meal, speaks about the deep roots our democracy has come to have? Khichdi certainly did not exist in the scheme of things of the English, or even the Anglo-Indians for that matter.