'Bharatiya Janata Party leader Virendra Singh Mast on Thursday dismissed reports of a slowdown in the automobile sector and claimed that traffic jams on roads were an indication of the growth, ANI reported. He alleged that the Opposition’s talks about slowdown were a conspiracy to “defame” the government and the nation. Mast, a Lok Sabha MP from Ballia constituency in Uttar Pradesh, told the Parliament that an atmosphere of economic slowdown was being created. “To defame the nation and government people are saying that the automobile sector has slowed down,” he said.
'A group of people who chose not to stand up during the national anthem were abused and heckled by another group in a Bangalore movie theatre on October 23. One of the people hurling abuses at the group – including calling them “Pakistani terrorists” – has been identified as actor Arun Gowda. In a video of the incident, Gowda and his friends can be seen trying to shame four people for not standing during the anthem. “Not able to spare 52 seconds for the country, but you have the audacity to sit here and watch a three-hour movie? Are you Pakistani terrorists?” one of them men said...'
'Union minister Jitendra Singh on Wednesday said those who “do not feel proud” of US President Donald Trump’s comment that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the “father of India”, do not consider themselves Indians. “India is being respected in a way which was rare in the past,” Singh said on the sidelines of the launch of CPGRAMS reforms in the department of posts. “People who live abroad are proud today of being Indian. This is happening due to the personality and personal outreach of Prime Minister Modi,” said the minister of state for the Prime Minister’s Office...'
'The entire debate around outsiders and foreigners has been based on the long held belief that Bangladeshi infiltrators are threatening the demography and culture of Assam. But now, as per a community wise break-up of the over 19 lakh people excluded from the final National Register of Citizens (NRC), nearly a third of the people left out of the list are actually non-Bengali people, many of whom belong to indigenous tribes and ethnic groups. Shockingly thousands of Karbis, Rabhas, Sonowal Kacharis and even Ahoms have been excluded from the final NRC!
'The authors of two scientific papers about Aryan migration endorsed a theory closer to the cultural triumphalism of the political right while the papers had themselves disfavoured it... What is surprising is that, in a press conference held in New Delhi on September 6 to explain their findings from Rakhigarhi soon after the papers were published online, coauthors Vasant Shinde, archeologist and vice-chancellor of Deccan College, Pune, and Niraj Rai, head of the ancient DNA laboratory at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleosciences, Lucknow, advanced the contested ‘Out of India’ theory.
'It seems almost sacrilegious to be less than sentimental about Chandrayaan 2. Such a huge and heroic effort! Such a massive investment of scientific skills! Such a national fervour worked up to a feverish pitch! The pride of 130 crore Indians! However, the truth is greater than any scientific breakthrough, and it must be reckoned with at all costs. First, the national hysteria about Chandrayaan 2 was deliberately worked up.
'...For Modi, the achievements of ISRO’s scientists are of the same order as the miracles worked by India’s mythical ancients and they serve the same purpose: the greater glory of Bharat. This is the opposite of the scientific temper: it’s science as a kind of aarti where the goddess honoured is Bharat Mata. Prime ministers are influential people, their example matters, their actions and words are cues for others. A year after Modi became prime minister the Indian Science Congress had sessions where ‘scientists’ read papers documenting interplanetary travel in ancient India.
'A piece of “breaking news” published by several media outlets on August 31 claimed that the Kerala police had booked 30 students of Kozhikode’s Silver Arts College for waving a Pakistani flag during the campaign for college elections. The anchor on Times Now channel (which reported that 25 students had been booked) said that the Bharatiya Janata Party had protested against the incident. She went on to question the channel’s correspondent, “Yes, Vivek, could you give us details about what really happened because we can see the visuals of a massive Pakistani flag being raised?”...
'Fourteen years after the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the state and central governments entered into a tripartite agreement in New Delhi to update the National Register of Citizens (NRC), 1951, as per the exclusive citizenship cut-off date of March 27, 1971 for Assam, the revised NRC was published by the office of the Registrar General of India (RGI) this August 31. As per a press note issued by the office of the state coordinator for NRC in Guwahati on August 31, a total of 3,11,21,004 persons were included in the final NRC out of the 3,30,27,661 applicants.
'It is ironical that the Narendra Modi government, which never tires of reminding everybody about their nationalism and patriotism, is actually following an economic policy of selling off the country’s national resources to foreign companies. It recently announced measures of easing foreign direct investment (FDI) in coal mining and associated infrastructure, contract manufacturing, single brand retail and digital media.
