No matter how much spin Mr. Jaitley puts on it, the fact of the matter is that the demonetization has failed to achieve its prime objective.  99 % of the demonetized currency in back into the banking system.  So, there is hardly any windfall gains for the government from the unaccounted for cash.  A negligible amount of fake currency has been discovered which is par for the course in a country like India.  As far as the digital transaction is concerned, the economy is pretty much back to pre-demonetization days.  Never have so many been put to so much trouble for so little.  Absolute chaos for months, hundreds dying in long suffocating queues, thousands of jobs in the informal sectors destroyed like Vandals assault.  The sheer arrogance and ineptitude of the government!  The Prime Minister's deluded and self-righteous anger has been neatly packaged and sold to the gullible masses that he is against all odds, fighting a holy war on behalf of the poor against the rich.

I finished reading A House for Mr. Biswas. It is a heartrending and darkly comic tale of one man's ceaseless quest for dignity and personal autonomy in the backdrop of a changing society in postcolonial Trinidad. To say that Sir Vidia Naipaul has been one of the literary giants of our time, would be to state the obvious. This book came out in 1961, and it has stood the test of time. In fact, it is timeless really. Even after going through all of the 625 odd pages, a part of me did not want it to be over. It is highly recommended for anyone who either wants to read something for their own pleasure or to gift someone.

After Gurmeet Ram Rahim has been locked away, the focus must shift on Asaram, another monster in the garb of spiritual Guru.  The Supreme Court has expressed its annoyance to the BJP state government in Gujrat for going slow on Asaram's trial.  On an individual level, practically every political leader has flirted with these so called ''Godmen'' at one time or another.  But because of its undying commitment to Hindutva, the BJP is mired neck-deep in the murky affairs of these forces of darkness.  From the prime minister downward, every major leader has eulogized these people for the simple reason that since these (un) holy men command such a stranglehold over the minds of the gullible, they can always come in handy in mobilizing a rich harvest of votes.

Come on, what the hell are some people smoking when they demand the resignation of the chief of Haryana, who it must be said is a pathetic administrator.  We are not some namby-pamby Scandinavian country where the heads of government will resign on 'moral grounds'.  It doesn't matter that in your insatiable hunger for votes, you have appeased worst kinds of reactionary elements in society, and when their sordid past catches up with them, you will be either unwilling or unable to stop their violent behavior.  Chief Ministers in this country don't resign because a handful of poor children have died because there was lack of oxygen supply in the government hospital.  We had a certain chief minister in 2002, who did not resign even though over a thousand people had been massacred on his watch.  In fact, the more the demand for his resignation grew, the more defiant and brazen he became.  People always try to learn from the best, and what they have learned over the years the accountability only comes in five years at the time of time of elections and is not a 24\7 phenomenon.  The hardware of our democracy is by and large, still holding up, but the software has been thoroughly corrupted with all types of viruses.

President Trump's so called new Afghan policy is, as the cliche goes, old wine in a new bottle.  The only difference is that now even the pretense of a definite timeline has been thrown out of the window.  Now, it's going to be an open ended engagement with no end in sight.  I also think India is being needlessly optimistic about his strong message to Pakistan.  He hasn't said anything radically different from what other administrations have been saying for the last 20 odd years; remember what Hillary Clinton said a couple of years ago about keeping snakes in your backyard, and expecting it to only bite your neighbor?  In doing business with Pakistan, the United States will continue to run with the hare and hunt with the hound which they have developed into a fine art.

It's a great day for women's empowerment no doubt, that this abominable practice of instant triple-talaq among the Muslim community has been consigned to the dustbin of history. In every community in India, religion must be separated from the basic human rights of both men and women. The BJP and its supporters should not be gloating too much, and should not be falling over themselves in giving all the credit to prime minister Modi for this historic Supreme Court judgment. In a true sense, this is a victory for all those Muslim women who took this issue to court, and over the years, tenaciously pursued this to its logical conclusion. The genuine paradigm shift will only come about when India has a common and uniform civil code across all religion.

When I think about the world he has described, it's hard to believe that VS Naipaul wrote this masterpiece in a North London flat over a period of three years between 1958 to 1960.  This is a complete and almost perfect novel according to many who know better than me.  At the time, Vidia Naipaul was a 28 years old young man, and a much greater glory was yet to come.  On a personal level, like Mr. Biswas, I have also felt from time to time, that I was born in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that the struggle will always continue to keep the world from grinding you into the dust.

I wonder if it has registered on the radar of many people.  Yemen is a desperately poor country on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula.  It's beyond belief that 90% of the country has been ravaged by the cholera epidemic.  How is it possible in this day and age when something like this can sweep across an entire country like a Biblical plague from the dark ages?  But that's exactly what's happening in Yemen right now.  People are dying like flies.  Those working on behalf of the World Health Organization and the International Red Cross are saying that they are absolutely horrified by the scale of the pandemic.  The unending civil war in the last couple of years has all but decimated the physical infrastructure in the country.  The whole of Yemen resembles like a gigantic, broken down sewer.  Every water body has been fatally contaminated.  Hundreds of sick people are lying outside a few dilapidated hospitals, on this streets because of massive overcrowding.  When I was watching the reports on Al Jazeera, I had to avert my gaze from the Television.  It was unbearable.  

In the BJP ruled state of Maharastra and Rajasthan, a systematic effort is underway to erase the significance of the Mughals in India from the history textbooks in schools.  This is beyond outrageous!  This is a dangerous attempt to turn the impressionable minds against the composite nature of Indian culture.  Why stop at merely altering the text books?  I suggest they should take the next logical step and remove all of the physical manifestations of that period.  They should blast the Taj Mahal, the magnificent Humayun's Tomb, should destroy the Jama Masjid and must bulldoze half of Delhi.  And yes, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi should also consider giving his Independence Day speech next week not from the ramparts of the Red Fort, for that is also a Mughal creation, but from the RSS headquarter in Nagpur.

The Recent set of data is clearly hinting that the Indian economy is doing rather badly.  Eight core sectors of the economy have performed their most abysmal in the last many years.  Manufacturing output has been the lowest in the past nine years.  Not enough gainful employment is being created to absorb a large number of youthful workforce, who voted with their feet to propel Mr. Narendra Modi to the prime ministerial chair.  And when you consider the fact that demonetization has practically destroyed the informal economy, things aren't looking that rosy in the immediate future.  I haven't even mentioned the acute agrarian distress sweeping across the country, and you get the picture.

President Nicholas Maduro has unleashed a reign of terror in Venezuela.  Two of the most respected and prominent opposition leaders were taken away after a midnight knock at their doorstep, even as they were already under house arrest.  Two days ago, the conducted a sham election to have a new constituent assembly to write a new constitution by which he intends to give himself more draconian powers to establish his complete authority on the people.  Meanwhile, the country is in utter chaos and disorder.  The streets of the capital city of Caracas have turned into a war-zone between the supporters of the government and the opposition.  There is literally not enough to eat.  Food riots have taken place in the last few months or so.  There have been appalling news reports of people rummaging through the garbage in order to find something to eat.  Clearly, the socialist utopia promised by their great leader Hugo Chavez has become toxic.

Corruption in other states of India is Chinese style corruption where you make money from the output of the investment made by either the government or the private corporations.  When that happens, even though there will be inequality in society, people, in general, will also benefit at some level.  However, I have always maintained that corruption in Bihar is Africa like corruption where money disappears into some black hole at the input level, at the very source in the food chain.  And that money is spent on conspicuous consumption by the politico-bureaucratic elite, like a few shiny hulking SUVs, opulent farmhouses, holidays abroad etc. etc.  This kind of corruption not only hollows out the institutional ability of the executive, but also corrodes the state from within, and leaves it like an empty shell.