My Columns: Without Fear and Favour

SOCIETY FIELD NOTES   SOCIETY People are coming back to the ‘cursed’ village of Ajabgarh thanks to water-conservation efforts Deepak Parvatiyar MARCH 10, 2018 16:00 IST UPDATED:  MARCH 09, 2018 14:06 IST MORE-IN The fear of witchcraft drove residents out of Ajabgarh a century ago. But something is drawing them back A State highway cuts through Ajabgarh village in Rajasthan’s Alwar district. On either side of it are homes, plots of land, the odd grazing cow. But there is, oddly, no one in sight. The houses — some of them with carved arches and ornate doors — are locked. Grasses have taken root between the exposed brick, the fields are overgrown with weeds. For close to a century, no one has lived in Ajabgarh, which lies within a fort of the same name, translating into 'strange fort’. Nestled in the Aravallis, Ajabgarh is named after its founder Ajab Singh Rajawat, grand-nephew of Raja Man Singh I, one of Emperor Akbar’s generals. D

Campaigning in Karnataka had a definite pattern By Deepak Parvatiyar The Marathi translation of this was published in Marathi Daily Pudhari on 12 May 2018  http://newspaper.pudhari.co.in/viewpage.php?edn=Kolhapur&date=2018-05-12&edid=PUDHARI_KOL&pid=PUDHARI_KOL&pn=8#Article/PUDHARI_KOL_20180512_08_2/446px/1A764FD No holds barred campaigning that at times stooped to the levels of personal attacks, and the Rs.100 crore legal notice slapped by the incumbent CM, Siddaramaiah on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, were some of the features of the high voltage electioneering in Karnataka that goes to polls on Saturday. But the unearthing of a Voter ID card scam towards the end of the electioneering would remembered more in Karnataka. The seizure of nearly 10,000 voter ID cards from an apartment in Bengaluru’s Jalahari area is a pointer to the efforts of political parties to rig the elections. These ID cards were purchased from poor voters, so that they could not