My Columns: Without Fear and Favour

VIVA KARNATAKA!!! (A satire on the prevailing political situation in the South  Indian state as on 16th May 2018) Musically speaking: ...Money's never wrong... When the dogs Get their bones Remember they'll be howlin' Money's never wrong🎼🎼🎼 Publicly speaking: Voters are donkeys...🐴🐴 Politically speaking: Legislators are horses...🐎🐎🐎🐎 Constitutionally speaking: Governors are gullible...🙏🙏 Lightly speaking: Democracy is a joke 😂🤣

Poetry and diplomacy combine ambiguity and brevity: Diplomat Abhay Kumar Abhay Kumar speaks about the poetry-diplomacy connect and how poetry is an effective diplomatic tool Deepak Parvatiyar | May 9, 2018 This interview was published in Governance Now magazine https://www.governancenow.com/views/interview/poetry-and-diplomacy-combine-ambiguity-and-brevity-diplomat-abhay-kumar   Photo: Facebook/Abhay Kumar Abhay Kumar is a poet and a diplomat, a 2003 batch officer of the Indian Foreign Service, now serving as India’s deputy chief of mission in Brazil. He edited 100 Great Indian Poems, an anthology that was published in February and is being translated into Portuguese. He is also known for the Earth Anthem, which he penned in 2008. It was set to music in 2013 and recorded in eight languages. The Symphonic Orchestra of the National Theatre of Brasilia recently performed the anthem in English and Portuguese. In an interview with Deepak Parvatiyar in Brasilia,...

Act or Perish: Message from Brasilia is loud and clear As water crisis looms large across nations, creating water-secure societies is the need of the hour Deepak Parvatiyar | March 30, 2018 This article was published in Governance Now Magazine http://www.governancenow.com/news/regular-story/act-or-perish-message-from-brasilia-is-loud-and-clear Photo courtesy: Twitter/WaterForum8 On the eve of the 8th World Water Forum (WWF), held in March, social media was abuzz with ‘news’ that the Brazilian government had handed over its two large aquifers to private companies – Coca Cola and Nestle. This raised the concerns of water conservationists across the globe and led to signature campaigns on the social media against such a move. There were fears that the move would further hasten the process of commodification of water – an issue that water activists have been concerned about particularly after they labelled the World Water Council (WWC), which organises the WWF eve...

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. ...

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...

Karnataka Election 2018 Why Corruption is a non-issue in Karnataka? By Deepak Parvatiyar The Marathi translation of this article was published in Pudhari newspaper on 9th May 2018 http://newspaper.pudhari.co.in/viewpage.php?edn=Solapur&date=2018-05-09&edid=PUDHARI_SOL&pid=PUDHARI_SOL&pn=4#Article/PUDHARI_SOL_20180509_04_3/359px/15759FF With Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling the Siddaramaiah government a “Seedha Rupaiya sarkar” (straight money-minded government), and the Chief Minister serving a legal notice on the BJP,  PM as well as the Karnataka BJP president B.S. Yeddyurappa slapping  Rs. 100 crore for defamation, electioneering in Karnataka has hit a new low. It has been reduced to the level of a  slugfest  to prove who is more corrupt than oneself. Congress president Rahul Gandhi too has stepped in, asking the Prime Minister to tell that  “ he is taking the money from common man and g...

Karnataka Elections 2018 Can evoking "Kannadiga pride" help Siddaramaiah in Karnataka? By Deepak Parvatiyar The Marathi translation of this article was published in leading Marathi daily Pudhari on 4th May 2018 http://newspaper.pudhari.co.in/fullview.php?edn=Sangli&artid=PUDHARI_SAN_20180505_08_2     Can evoking “Kannadiga pride” unify the voters in Karnataka where they are bitterly divided over caste and creed? To begin with, unlike in some neighbouring states, Karnataka had never voted any party to power in the past that defined itself in terms of linguistic or regional identity. Incidentally, the Congress, which has raked up this issue, had always carried an image of a national party with secular credentials. Hence, the whole exercise has assumed farcical proportion and incumbent chief minister Siddaramaiah of the Congress, who was first to rake up the issue in the run up to the elections to counter Bharatiya Janata Party’s star campaigner N...