THE three Hindi heartland states – Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan – have rejected the BJP in varying degrees in the elections to the state assemblies. These elections show that even with money power and its electoral machinery including its formidable WhatsApp reach, BJP is vulnerable to peoples’ discontent. People rejected BJP’s false claims of development and their hate campaign in good, old fashioned ways – through talking to each other in homes, tea shops and in every day conversations with friends.

AFTER many months of stonewalling, hiding behind supposed confidentiality clauses, and yet putting out all manner of partial information, numbers that conceal more than they reveal, and explanations that raise more questions than providing answers, the government has filed in the Supreme Court (SC) an official document on “Details of the steps in the decision-making process leading to the award of 36 Rafale fighters order.” Copies of this document have been provided to the petitioners, namely lawyer Prashant Bhushan and former BJP cabinet ministers Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha.

THE Defence Acquisitions Council (DAC), the apex decision-making body for all domestic and international defence acquisitions, as well as for indigenous R&D, finalised guidelines for the vaunted Strategic Partnership (SP) Model under which foreign manufacturers would tie-up with identified Indian partners for manufacturing the concerned platforms in India.

IT is now about ten months after Hurricane Maria hit the US territory of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean in September 2017. The hurricane destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes, brought down electricity and drinking water systems, and communications networks. It also wreaked havoc on health facilities, roads and other infrastructure, much of which has not yet been restored. Estimates have put the total damage caused at over $100 billion (Rs 6,80,000 crores), making it the third highest economic loss due to tropical cyclones in the US since 1900.

LAST week, we had written on the rise of lynch mobs, the spreading of hate and false rumours through social media, and the complicity of the government. This week I will look at a particular feature of the WhatsApp platform that helps in spreading hate, and why the BJP government is not asking them to change this feature.At the heart of the problem with WhatsApp, which is now owned by Facebook, is the feature that anybody’s mobile number can be put in a WhatsApp group, even without the consent of the owner.