HUMAN PLAY-NET

By Nirmal Anshu Ranjan New Delhi, March 9 (IANS)  If you are planning to apply online to get your name included in the electoral rolls for a Voter ID Card, hold on -- chances are your efforts may come to naught since the Election Commission (EC) says it is not accepting applications online, at least for now. This digital disconnect of the top election body of the country comes at a time when the Narendra Modi government at the Centre is betting big on its "Digital India" programme by putting more and more people-centric services online. An RTI application filed by me to know the fate of two online applications, including my own, threw up the startling revelation about one of the premier institutions of India, which claims to provide several citizen services at their doorstep. I had applied online for inclusion of my name about six month ago -- on September 2, 2016, precisely -- through the National Voters' Services Portal (www.nvsp.in), touted as the "...

YES, you heard it right…the little, sweet Mannu Uncle – a respectable economist-turned-Prime Minister-turned-Gandhi family loyalist (won’t call sycophant yet) – may find it a bit too hard to handle his 78- strong jumbo Council of Ministers . However, the root of the plight of our so-called (Singh is) King does not lie so much in the size of his ministry as much as in the composition of it. Owing to the politics of compromise(s) and appeasement that the Indian democracy is witness to, Manmohan Singh’s Council of Ministers has characters of all castes, creed, regions, religions, complexions, shapes, sizes and age. There are Farooq Abdullahs , Pranab Mukherjees , Sharad Pawars , Veerbhadra Singhs, Mamata Banerjees , Kamal Naths , Ambika Sonis, Kapil Sibals, Jaipal Reddys and Ghulam Nabi Azads, to name just a few, around him to keep pulling his strings from all sides, apart from the bed-ridden, oxygen-fitted ailing M Karunanidhi calling shots from his wheel-chair in Chennai ! How many...

"THOSE who live by guns, die by guns" is an age-old belief, which may be true in letter but not always in sprit as well. The extent of appeal of the cliche depends on who are "those" being referred to and what prompted this "those" to take up arms. A cold-blooded killer, a hardcore criminal, a roadside robber or somebody akin to a freedom fighter? They may all use arms, but their mens rea - the real intent - may just not have any similarity. No, you got it wrong if you thought that I am here to defend the slain chief of LTTE Vellupillai Prabhakaran and what he stood for. Violence in any form must be condemned, as violence becoming the means of expression can only guide a situation to more violence. But at the moment, the twin crucial questions raising their heads are: "Has the death of Prabhakaran also laid to rest the cause he had been fighting for over 25 years?" and "If he was a terrorist, what should the Sri Lankan army be termed as?...