AT a time when the apologists of neoliberal economic reforms are celebrating World Bank’s declaration of India as the sixth biggest economy, two of the most important cities of our country – Delhi, the political capital and Mumbai, the financial capital are busy exposing the hollowness of such a growth. Successive neoliberal governments promoted cities as the engines of growth.

Left to Protest outside Parliament against Murder of Democracy in Bengal & TripuraTHE state of governance in Tripura is at a low ebb. It is the responsibility of the state government to maintain law and order. But the fact that the government here is failing to do so is clear from the incidents of mob lynching on the rumour of child lifting and organ trafficking that was spread by a minister of the government which has caused this violence and mass hysteria. RSS and BJP are patronising this atmosphere of violence and terror.

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.

KERALA has received international recognition for its effective prevention measures against Nipah virus outbreak. The Institute of Human Virology in Baltimore honoured Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Health Minister K K Shylaja for the government’s efforts in curbing the outbreak.Noted bio-medical scientist and co-founder of the institute Dr Robert C Gallo presented awards to the chief minister and the health minister.Dr Robert Gallo, who was part of the scientific team that discovered the HIV, along with other scientists in the institute held talks with the Kerala delegation.

MUCH has been written by now exposing the fraudulence of the government’s claims of a “historic” rise in the minimum support price for kharif crops. It has been pointed out for instance that while the Swaminathan Committee had recommended that the MSP should be fixed at 50 percent above the cost of production C2 which includes rental on own land, a recommendation that the BJP  in its 2014 election manifesto had promised to implement, the current MSP still falls way below that level.