OPINION

With the Lok Sabha polls just six-months away, Bharatiya Janata Party has started to make the right move to retain all the seven seats from Delhi. Despite its ignonimous defeats in the legislative assembly polls in 2015 and 2020, BJP fared well in the Lok Sabha polls in both 2014 and 2019.

Last week, the Parliament passed a bill to protect unauthorised colonies in Delhi from penal actions for three years. While the passage of this bill would bring relief to the unauthorised colonies, it would also create goodwill for the Narendra Modi government among the nearly 50 lakh people who stay in these colonies.

Granting property rights to residents in these colonies by regularising them has been hanging fire for decades. Despite the promise made, the Narendra Modi government has so far failed on this count. Thus the bill in the Parliament last week, with the argument that the finalisation of Master Plan 2041 has been delayed due to Covid 19 lockdowns.

Pushing the bill, Minister for Urban Development Hardeep S Puri went onto claim that the issue of affluent unauthorised colonies will also be addressed. Affluent colonies that includes Sainik Farms among other too have been waiting for regularisation now for decades.

Last week Delhi University constituted a committee pertaining to the use of social media platforms in respect of its employees. While the teachers and employees on the campus expressed concern over the issue, the public relations officer of the university came out with a most lame excuse.

Defending the move, the university official said, “The committee was formed to look into the multiple unofficial Twitter and Instagram pages that are being run with Delhi University in their names. This creates a lot of confusion as they are not being run by us.” The social media enthusiasts would point out that herein lies the catch.

In the ordinary circumstances an institution’s official handle claims itself being one and on some platforms get themselves verified. The content and the nature of postings by these handles establish their credibility. Over a period of time the quality of the content ensures that the official handles come to have a greater credibility and more important acceptability.

Last week a former colleague was on a visit to Delhi from Goa. He startled by a message from the airlines his ticket was booked for return journey. He was booked for a 9 pm flight. The airlines message at 2.30 pm advised him to avoid the roads leading to the airport after 6 pm.

What could be the cause, he wondered. The answer was there in the day’s newspaper which mentioned that quite a few thousand weddings were planned in the city that evening. The roads to the airport are best avoided during the wedding seasons as all the pathways to the ‘dream’ farm venue sites lead from there.

Chhatarpur, Mahipalpur, Mehrauli, Kapashera, Fatehpur, Satbari, all located in South-West Delhi are home to the farm house wedding venues. The weddings at these venues have less to do with rituals and more with fashion fads.

“Farmhouse weddings allow for creative freedom and customization. Couples can choose specific themes, decor styles, and catering options that resonate with their personalities, adding a personal touch to every aspect of the celebration,” that’s how an acquaintance, a property dealer-turned-wedding planner put it.

Politics in India is based on promoting contradictory concepts of welfare and development. This is necessitated due to the complex and multifaceted nature of the country’s political mosaic. Given the large population, variable socio-economic settings, and widespread regional and cultural differences, has led to a situation where maintaining a balance between welfare and development is increasingly becoming an insurmountable task.

The results in the just concluded assembly polls in four states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana make it amply clear that BJP’s current success is based on a complicated weaving of welfare, development and cultural nationalism and it cannot be dislodged by just one issue, whether its corruption in defence deals, Hinduvta or attempt to consolidate the backward castes through caste census. 

Congress’s victory in Telangana and defeat in Rajasthan and Chhattishgarh could well indicate caste census may prove to be its biggest handicap in 2024 general elections. In the just concluded polls, Congress won Telengana with a dominant caste (Reddy) leader as its face and lost the two ruling states of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh where its incumbent chief ministers were from the other backward classes.

Here Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s counter, despite himself belonging to a backward caste, that there were just four ‘castes’ -- the poor, the youth, women, and farmers, whose upliftment concerned him. This narrative pushed by the Prime Minister comes from the policies pushed by his party interlaced into the intricacies of welfare and development.

The past month of living in the gas chamber of the National Capital Region (NCR) has made one realise that the government and courts do not have the wherewithal to fight the monster of pollution. Government’s main machinery – Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) – in its fight against pollution has proved to be a toothless tiger.

With no explicit powers to direct the state governments, its advisories have largely gone unhindered with the state governments finding ways and means bypass them. For example in the neighbouring districts of Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddha Nagar of Uttar Pradesh, the state governments have gone slow on penalising industries spreading pollution.

With no authority to prosecute the violators, CAQM is handicapped to get the policies and guidelines formulated by it to tackle pollution effectively implemented. This is not just limited to industrial pollution, regulations related to banning construction activities and regulating vehicular emissions too have not been enforced rigorously.

With its implementation at the ground level in the hands of the respective pollution control committees of the state government, the CAQM advisories have proved to be most ineffective resulting in the violators escaping accountability, leading to month-long reign of severe pollution, breathing poison. Pollution monitoring too has been inadequate.