CAMOUFLAGED in jargon that speaks of ‘monetisation of de-risked assets’, the BJP-led NDA government has announced its plan to sell out India’s public sector. In that plan, assets ranging from roads, ports, airports and railway track and stations, through fuel pipelines, telecom towers, optical fibre cabling, warehouses, and stadia, are to be handed over to big private investors in return for upfront or staggered payments of around Rs 6 lakh crore over a four year period ending financial year 2025.

AMERICA’S ignominious exit from Afghanistan, the collapse of the Afghan National Army, the fleeing of President Ashraf Ghani and the rapid takeover by the Taliban, have all been stunning developments. Twenty years after the United States and its NATO allies invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban regime, the Taliban are back in power in Kabul.  The US spent over $ 2 trillion in these two decades and at the height of the occupation there were 130,000 NATO troops stationed in Afghanistan.

THE announcement by the Modi government providing for 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and 10 per cent reservation for Economically Weaker Sections in the all-India quota for undergraduate and postgraduate medical and dental courses from the current academic year is being hailed by the BJP and its supporters as an example of the Modi government’s commitment for the welfare of OBCs.

The chronology suggests new security collaboration initiated with Israel during NSO Ajit Doval’s visit in March, 2017 preparatory to Modi’s visitTHE Pegasus spyware scandal is not just a case of violation of privacy, or illegal surveillance or snooping by security agencies. It is all that, and much more.  The Pegasus is military grade spyware which takes surveillance and hacking to a new level altogether. The bigger picture must not be obscured.The Pegasus usage is part of the larger authoritarian architecture that has been built up over the past seven years.

THE opening of a judicial probe in France on June 14, 2021, into suspected ‘corruption’, ‘influence-peddling’, ‘money laundering’, ‘favouritism and undue tax waivers’ surrounding the €7.87 billion Rafale-India deal has given new life to a major scandal that the Narendra Modi government has done its best to cover up. The decision of the French National Financial Prosecutor's Office (the parquet national financier or PNF) to support the opening of a judicial investigation into the deal was based on a complaint by Sherpa, an anti-corruption French NGO.