My Columns: Without Fear and Favour

Farmers Suicide at AAP Rally By  Deepak Parvatiyar April 24, 2015 5.00/5 (100.00%) 1 vote An Intelligence Bureau (IB) report of 19 December 2014 titled ‘Spate of Cases of Suicide by Farmers’ alerted the current government about the rising trend in cases of farmers’ committing suicides in states like Maharashtra, Punjab, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana. The reasons cited in the IB report for the spurt in the trend of farmers’ suicides included uneven rains, drought, floods and hailstorms that affect the crop yield, along with certain man-made factors like pricing policies and poor marketing facilities that cause post-yield losses. These factors result in creating a debt trap for the farmers. A major reason that has been attributed to the farmers’ suicides, in the report, is that the government relief packages are highly inadequate and fail to check the dominance of the private moneylenders from whom the farmers are forced to borro...

Politics in the name of Ambedkar- Does it really matter? By  Deepak Parvatiyar April 22, 2015 Rate this post Much politics has been played in the past in the name of the great freedom fighter and iconic Dalit leader Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar. And, the saga still continues. With his 125th birthday anniversary on April 14th, the latest announcement came from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s side on how they were going to commemorate the social reformer’s birthday. The RSS contended that Ambedkar – the chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution – was much misunderstood.   The RSS sought to draw similarities between him and its founder, Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar. On the release of the “Collector’s Editions” of the RSS mouthpieces; namely, Panchjanya and Organiser, in New Delhi on Ambedkar’s birthday, RSS Sarkayavah Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi said, “I don’t know whether they (Ambedkar and Dr. Hedgewar) met in their life, but the objectives of...