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Uttar Pradesh assembly elections: the story so far…

OpIndia Staff
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Uttar Pradesh assembly elections: the story so far…

Uttar Pradesh is the biggest state in India in terms of population where a whopping 404 assembly seats are up for grabs when it goes for polls next year. The stakes are high, some are fighting to strengthen their position, some aim for greater national relevance, and some hope for survival.

Primarily, there are four key players – BJP, SP, BSP and Congress – and everyone is getting into election mode.

A lot has been happening of late, and those who are not news junkies would have found it cumbersome to keep track. So this article is a summary of what has happened so far in build up to the assembly elections:

Bhartiya Janta Party:

First the BJP. Its alliance won a record 73 seats out of 80 in the state during the Lok Sabha elections, and to maintain that lead is a herculean task. For the party, the challenge can be called similar to what it faced in Bihar assembly elections, where it failed to maintain the lead it had witnessed during the general elections.

In absence of a declared Chief Ministerial candidate yet, PM Modi remains the star campaigner. He chose to attend Ramlila event on Dusshera in the state and earlier this week he addressed a rally where he talked about issues like development and triple talaq.

Party has not yet raked up Ram Temple at Ayodhya issue openly and is sticking to its stand that courts should decide it, but issues like construction of a Ram Museum have been in news.

The state unit of BJP has been able to attract rival leaders of other parties in its fold. Swami Prasad Maurya of the BSP and Rita Bahuguna Joshi of the Congress are notable names, and analysts believe that their admission into BJP was a signal that the party was looking to make inroads into the dalit support base of BSP and the Brahmin voters of Congress, with the party being reasonably confident of getting non-Yadav OBC votes.

However, the issue of CM candidate remains elusive – something many analysts believed had hurt the party in Bihar. There are reports of factionalism too with many leaders trying to prop themselves up as the candidate. Varun Gandhi too was reported to be in this race, but the recent controversy surrounding his alleged blackmail has hurt his chances.

Indian National Congress:

Coming to the Congress, the party is hoping that some Mahagathbandhan like Bihar may happen where it can ride the bandwagon and declare victory over BJP, especially over Narendra Modi.

There have been conflicting reports of Prashant Kishor actively leading the elections strategy. Apparently he had proposed that the party reached out to Brahmins – once their traditional vote bank, and which is why Sheila Dixit was projected as the Chief Ministerial candidate – but later he reportedly got upset that his strategies are not being implemented by the party.

Rahul Gandhi is leading the campaign and it’s the farmers, not Brahmins, who currently appear to be the group that the party is reaching out to. There have been Kisan Yatras and Khat Sabhas, which have made news with farmers fighting for khats (wooden cots).

Apart from the farmers, Congress is wooing OBCs too as it promised within a quota for the Most Backward Castes within the OBC.

The party appears to have put confidence in Rahul and his leadership, claiming that there was some conspiracy by the Modi government to keep him away from campaigning.

In a latest development, Priyanka Vadra attended a poll strategy session of the party, which has sparked hopes in a section of a workers and media that the party could pull off a good performance.

Bahujan Samaj Party:

BSP, led by Mayawati, is aiming to retain its Dalit support base and add Muslims to it. The party had first made a huge issue of a BJP leader using abusive terms for Mayawati. BJP had to expel the leader, but the BSP ended up with self goal as their workers used equally abusive terms for the BJP leader’s wife and daughter. As a result, the BSP lost the moral high ground and any associated political advantage.

Now the party’s focus appears to be reaching out to Muslims and trying for the often talked about Dalit-Muslim vote bank. Be it by reciting quranic verses in rallies or conducting rallies targeted solely at Muslims, BSP is not keeping it subtle – which is a hallmark of Mayawati.

In a way, BSP is replacing its earlier strategy of Dalit-Brahmin combine with Dalit-Muslim combine. Then, a Brahmin face Satish Chandra Mishra was projected as second in command after Mayawati, now it is the Muslim face Naseemuddin Siddiqui.

The party has opposed Modi’s comment on triple talaq and is hoping that Muslims, who are supposed to vote for SP, will now support BSP. And after the bitter family feud in SP – which we will talk about later in this article – it is speculated that the Muslims might actually tilt in BSP’s favor.

Although the party had failed to win even a single seat in the state during the general elections, it will surely register an impact in the coming assembly elections.

Samajwadi Party:

Finally the SP, which has been making most of the news lately. The thing going on in the party is like quantum mechanics – many have heard about it but no one understands it. It’s almost a desi Game Of Thrones going on, though thankfully sans the violence.

Apparently all is not well between father (Mulayam Singh Yadav) and son (Akhilesh Yadav) with the family divided into two camps. As we write this article, neither truce nor further escalation has happened in this family feud.

It all started with Akhilesh removing Chief secretary Deepak Singhal who was considered closed to Shivpal Yadav, and then sacking Shivpal and three more from the state cabinet. Mulayam then countered it with removing Akhilesh and making Shivpal party’s state chief. All this was followed by a day full of drama which is well described here.

Amar Singh is being blamed by many in media and by people like Azam Khan as the outsider who broke the family unity, while there are theories of it being a result of Mulayam’s second wife plotting against Akhilesh to procure a better position for her son.

There is also another conspiracy theory that this entire family feud could be stage managed to play good cop-bad cop strategy where Akhilesh comes out as the good guy who is willing to take on even his father. This can’t be ruled out as many journalists started praising Akhilesh Yadav on his stand on “corruption” even though the entire fight was about control of the party.

Whatever be the real reason, truth is that Uttar Pradesh is now in full election mode and the coming days will see more and more political drama with more twists and turns. Stay tuned.

Why India is disappointed with the Ease of Doing Business rankings

Gaurav
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Why India is disappointed with the Ease of Doing Business rankings

The past one or two years have seen India rise rapidly in various rankings:

India was the fastest riser, moving up 16 spots to 39th rank in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index

India’s rank improved by 9 ranks in Transparency International’s International Corruption Perceptions Index.

India’s rank on the Global Innovation Index improved to 66th position, up from the 2015 rank of being number 81, after five years of continuous slide in its ranking.

India improved its ranking in the World Bank Group’s bi-annual “Logistics Performance Index 2016”, jumping from 54th in 2014 to 35th in 2016.

In November 2015, we had carried a separate report which documented India’s rise in over 7 different ranks worldwide. After seeing its Ease of Doing Business (EODB) rank slip from a high of 116 in 2007, to a low of 142 (134 as per revised methodology) in 2014, for the one year ended June 2015, India saw its rank improve to 130 (revised to 131) in 2015.

Going by the commitment and the efforts shown towards economic reforms, it was expected that India would show similar, if not much better progress this year too in the EODB ranks. In fact, India had even started a state-wise ranking system within India to make states more competitive.

But the release of the latest report by the World Bank shows that India managed to move just 1 place upward. The Government of India expressed its disappointment at this meager improvement, and listed out various reforms which they felt were ignored by the World Bank, which led to a poor improvement in the rank.  The common threads among some of these reforms were these:

1. The reform is still a work-in-progress which has not been fully implemented yet (for example, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, GST, etc.)

2. The reform has been implemented, but not been used by a substantial number of users, hence not considered by the World Bank (e.g. Introduction of online single window systems, Introduction and streamlining of INC-29 for company incorporation ,etc.)

3. The reform has been done, but the World Bank has not accepted the documentation (e.g. Elimination of the requirement of a company seal while applying for government registrations, Online registration for ESIC and EPFO registration, etc.)

Another factor which could affect India’s rank is the fact that the ranks are based on absolute scores, called Distance to Frontier, an absolute score that measures the gap between a country and the global best practice. So even though India may show a good improvement in the absolute score, its rank may not show commensurate increase if the other countries too put on a good score.

Absolute DTF scores
Absolute DTF scores

As the scores show, since 2014, India has been showing constant improvement in scores year on year, yet the ranks have not improved as much one would have expected.

Further, the studies conducted by the World Bank for this ranking system, are done only in Mumbai in Delhi. To that extent, this rank is essentially of EODB in Mumbai and Delhi rather than India. A quick look at the state-wise ranks of EODB show that if the surveyors had dipped the thermometer in say Andhra Pradesh or Telangana or Gujarat, instead of Delhi and Mumbai, the ranks could have been different:

DIPP Statewise Implementation Scorecard
DIPP Statewise Implementation Scorecard

The EODB rankings also provide granular data, sector-wise, and from this it is clear that India’s improvement this year, has been largely on the back of reforms in the Power sector, which showed a huge jump, as compared to others:

Granular break-up
Granular break-up

The Government’s response also mentions some of the reforms which should impact next year’s rankings. The prime game-changer among them is the ambitious GST. Although the Government feels this will impact the rankings next year, it seems highly unlikely since GST’s earliest implementation date is April 2017, just 2 months before the June 1st cut-off observed by World Bank for their findings. We may again see a scenario like this year, where a reform may have been brought in, but the World Bank doesn’t consider it.

Overall, the signs are encouraging, but also underscore the need to work at an even more frenetic pace. The difficulty of implementing country-wide reforms over a federal country like India can be highlighted by all the troubles faced by GST to become a reality, and the Government must tread this path for many such pan-India reforms.

Poster boys of Congress: some awesome posters created by Allahabad party workers

OpIndia Staff
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Poster boys of Congress: some awesome posters created by Allahabad party workers

Indian politics is quite colourful with banners and posters being the brushes that bring the colour to the political canvas. Poster wars between political parties are as crucial and advertisement wars between commercial brands. Haseeb Ahmad and Shreesh Chandra Dubey are two such warriors for Congress.

Both of them are party workers from Allahabad, who earlier held posts in the organization. They have made news more than once with their creative posters, and we bring to you their story and some of their awesome posters.

They attracted eyeballs and attentions ahead of the 2014 general elections when they thought Priyanka Gandhi would be a better candidate to lead the party. They came up with a poster that almost trolled Congress’ official slogan “Main Nahin, Hum” that was created to project Rahul Gandhi as mass leader:

Congress election poster
The poster hinted that UPA-3 was difficult under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi.

Things became a bit too hot to handle for Congress when they came up with another poster in support of Priyanka Gandhi, this time commenting on Sonia Gandhi’s health:

Congress election poster
The poster that was not at all liked by the Congress high command.

Since even the media doesn’t comment on Sonia Gandhi’s health, both of these were suspended from Congress party for the above poster. But this didn’t deter them and they continued with their posters in support of Priyanka:

Congress election poster
The duo hinted that they were not sycophants like Digvijay Singh, who gave dishonest feedback.

With Congress losing the general elections, the duo continued hammering their demand and suggestion that Priyanka should now lead the party at least in Uttar Pradesh. Their past sin was forgiven in the meantime and they were inducted back in the party:

Congress election poster
Haseeb and Shreesh appear to be fan of Bollywood too. Agnipath.

With Amit Shah’s strategy credited for BJP’s spectacular win in Uttar Pradesh during the general elections, the duo claimed that only way to checkmate Shah’s strategy was… of course, Priyanka Gandhi leading the party:

Congress election poster
Both of them know who is the real threat to the party.

But with the party or Priyanka in no mood to heed to their demands, the duo appeared to have given up. They finally came up with a poster that praised Rahul Gandhi too, but Priyanka was there on the poster as well:

Congress election poster
Rahul Gandhi comes back on posters, and without being trolled.

However, their faith in Rahul Gandhi was short-lived as Congress lost another round of state assembly elections early this year. Both of them came up with posters that trolled Rahul Gandhi for the defeat:

Congress posters
The set of posters released after 2016 assembly elections defeat. Rahul Gandhi was again targeted and chorus for Priyanka was back.

Both were stripped off their posts for trolling Rahul Gandhi. They went back to their demand of getting Priyanka Gandhi to lead the party. However, this time they didn’t troll Rahul Gandhi:

Congress election poster
Both of them were back and declared that Indira was back.

With their demands of Priyanka at helm not looking to be met anytime soon again, both of them finally decided to praise Rahul Gandhi as disciplined Congress workers. They declared Rahul Gandhi a “yugpurush” and an avatar of Arjun (we don’t think they were trolling Rahul Gandhi):

Congress election poster
Sudden love and respect for Rahul Gandhi and his abilities was seen.

Their new found love and respect for Rahul Gandhi was seen again, when they used the “surgical strikes” moment to paint Rahul Gandhi as Brahmin superhero (Pandit Rahul Gandhi) all ready to take on Amit Shah. Looks like they are no longer dependent on Priyanka Gandhi to take on Shah:

Congress election poster
While Congress central leadership was clueless how to counter ‘surgical strikes’ fame of BJP, the duo found a way.

And in the latest poster, this love for Gandhi family has gone a step further. Now even Varun Gandhi of BJP finds a place in the poster:

Congress election poster
Sign of this to come? After all the duo were right about Rahul Gandhi’s inability to form UPA-3 government.

These posters don’t constitute the entire portfolio of Haseeb Ahmad and Shreesh Chandra Dubey, and we at OpIndia.com seriously suggest that they should host a website where they showcase all their posters.

Let’s see what their next poster will have. Will Priyanka be back?

Devendra Fadnavis: Party or Broker? Decoding Maha CM’s move in ADHM ‘deal’

Amit Kelkar
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Devendra Fadnavis: Party or Broker? Decoding Maha CM’s move in ADHM ‘deal’

Social media, newspaper op-eds and TV debates are abuzz with the ‘intervention’ of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in resolving the dispute between Karan Johar and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) in relation to the release of the move Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (ADHM).

MNS had threatened the owners of multiplexes that if they exhibited ADHM, they may face disruption and forcible blocking of the movie because it has Pakistani actors. Other than MNS, some single screen owners themselves had decided to boycott the release in wake of anti-Pakistan feelings running high in the country after Uri attack.

With the opposition growing, Bollywood talking heads quickly conflated boycott with ban, misrepresenting the boycott as government intervention, and immediately took the battle to the only destination they recognize lately – PM Modi’s doorstep.

The matter went through familiar twists and turns adequately documented in “The Intolerance Playbook in Modi’s India” which was written before the Bihar election in November 2015. Given that Maharashtra was at the frontline of this controversy, CM Fadnavis had to act in some way to bring the issue to a logical closure. Last week, Fadnavis met the MNS chief Raj Thackrey and Karan Johar to put an end to this controversy.

After this meeting, MNS ‘cleared’ the movie release with three key demands accepted by Johar – no future association of Pakistani artists, a tribute to the soldiers before the movie plays, and a donation of Rupees 5 crore towards Army welfare by every producer who has cast Pakistani artists in any movie yet to be released.

The Maharashtra CM came in for heavy criticism for “brokering” such a settlement, though he claims he had opposed the MNS demand of donation of 5 cr, which was quickly agreed upon by the producers.

His intervention has been dubbed as a poor precedent, breakdown of good governance, and a blot on the position of a Chief Minister.

While all this is debated and more, the most important reason for Fadnavis’ intervention is being missed out on. His actions – whether or not befitting a Chief Minister – were completely political, and he has managed to strengthen his party ship in a big way after this ‘settlement’.

How? The answer lies in the Maharashtra state assembly election of 2014. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has about 42% of the seats in the assembly. It is supported by Shiv Sena (SS), which is still smarting from the loss of designation as the leader of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Maharashtra. The other option for the BJP is to take outside support from Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to keep the government stable. But BJP, and specifically Fadnavis, vociferously campaigned against NCP in 2014 on the way to power. So that’s an avoidable option. Therefore BJP would like to keep SS, but also have the upper hand.

BJP however cannot have the administrative upper hand, because it does not control any large municipal body in Maharashtra outside Nagpur. All these corporations are with SS, NCP, and Congress or in one case, MNS.

Retaining these municipal bodies is critical for each of those four parties – after all politics needs money and money is derived from power. All the moves with respect to AHDM were actually staged by every party not so much in an ideological way, but to position themselves ahead of the local body elections.

The new round of local body elections start November end and will culminate with the larger corporations Mumbai (BMC), Thane (TMC), Pune (PMC) and Pimpri-Chinchwad (PCMC) going to polls in February.

Ideally, Fadnavis would want to control BMC with the support of SS and PMC independently. He would also want to be a clear second in TMC (likely to be retained by SS) and PCMC (likely to be retained by NCP). This game of thrones needs a certain style of voting division. That’s where MNS comes into play – its voter base has significant overlap with that of SS and in some cases the BJP itself.

Fadnavis’ intervention has given a new lease of life to MNS in Maharashtra, and it may ride the ‘victory against Johar’ wave to cut some votes in these elections specifically in Greater Mumbai and Pune Metro regions.

This political action gains more prominence because for the initial rounds of polls for smaller local bodies, SS has decided to contest independently of the BJP. This announcement was made by the SS Chief Uddhav Thackrey just a few days ago.

BJP has a reasonably strong urban vote base in Maharashtra but it is not a strong party in semi-urban and rural areas. With that handicap, it is quite likely that the party does not fare too well in these smaller local bodies, which tend to be dominated by local strongmen, often aligned with either SS or NCP.

So it became doubly critical for Fadnavis to control the 4 February elections. The only way he could convince SS to have an alliance would have been to show them that BJP had a credible alternative (an MNS alliance) or could prop up a bogey (MNS contesting all seats against SS).

The meeting with Raj Thackrey and Karan Johan achieved that amply. Irrespective of the optics of the settlement conditions, ADHM will now release sans violence. SS will have to find another way to put pressure on the BJP to let them be the senior partner in February polls. And Fadnavis will go into these negotiations from a position of strength.

Was the CM intervention bad optics? Was this bad governance? A CM exceeding his brief? Debates will continue to take place and most people, including many vocal BJP supporters on the social media, believe that Fadnavis erred.

But Fadnavis appears to be betting on the fact that the voters don’t take editorial commentaries too seriously and may well see the compromise as a ‘reasonable one’. He may have lost the morality perception of social media influencers, but gained in a huge way in his political standing. In his equations with SS, it is Advantage Fadnavis for now.

Some Twitter celebrities asked if Fadnavis was the party or the broker to the MNS – Johar settlement. He was neither. Instead he made a move to be the Baazigar – kuchh haar ke jeetne wale ko… Voters will complete the dialog one way or the other in February 2017.

3 retweets by Kejriwal within a day that made a fool out of himself

OpIndia Staff
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3 retweets by Kejriwal within a day that made a fool out of himself

Arvind Kejriwal is known to be an active Twitter user, like all his supporters are. He often makes news through his tweets and uses it as an important tool for his political campaigning. Only yesterday he made news when he got into a Twitter fight with Congress leader Captain Amarinder Singh as part of Punjab assembly elections campaign.

Popular opinion was that Captain won the Twitter fight. Thought that may not change the ground reality where AAP is expected to throw a tough challenge to both Badal and Captain, this “defeat” surely got the AAP supremo a little upset; this reflected in his choice of retweets that virtually boomeranged on himself.

To divert attention from this Twitter defeat, Kejriwal re-tweeted some other messages attacking the union government and Prime Minister Modi. However, those retweets ended up pointing fingers at Kejriwal himself.

The first of these retweets, while he was in the middle of fight with Captain, was a retweet of an AAP-leaning humour-parody account titled “History of India”. It attacked Modi for not acting against UPA corruption after coming to power.

Arvind Kejriwal retweets
Assumption is that public won’t question Arvind Kejriwal ever?

Discounting the fact that most of the corruption cases are sub-judice and the government can’t be expected to influence judiciary (and when government went after cases like National Herald or corruption in Delhi secretariat that went back to Sheila Dixit regime, Arvind Kejriwal too had joined chorus of political vendetta), the irony was lost on Kejriwal himself who claimed to have 370 pages proof against Sheila Dixit.

Perhaps he was sure that the humour-parody account won’t point out this irony, so he re-tweeted happily.

The second of these ironical retweets came up after he gave up on Twitter fight with Captain. It was a retweet of news blog Janta Ka Reporter, better acknowledged as a mouthpiece of Aam Aadmi Party. It questioned why media didn’t discuss snoopgate, which was related to “private life” of Narendra Modi.

Kejriwal retweets
No one in media discusses private life of Arvind Kejriwal. And is it about private lives of Varun and Sandeep, or misuse of public posts?

Perhaps Kejriwal forgot that media did discuss snoopgate, and it was even an election issue before the 2014 general elections. However, this tweet exposes the irony that “Aaloogate” was never discussed by any media. In case you’re wondering, Aaloogate refers to claims of a journalist and former aide of Arvind Kejriwal, who accused him of having extra-marital affairs with a girl 16 years younger to him.

All leading media organisations and journalists have kept mum on this, and now Kejriwal wonders why private life of Narendra Modi is not discussed.

And the final retweet, completing hat-trick of irony, came up when Kejriwal re-tweeted Congress leader Salman Khurshid claiming rising intolerance in the country while citing examples of isolated and fabricated incidents.

Kejriwal retweets
Achchhe din for sure as Mr. Khurshid, who had dared Kejriwal to visit his constituency and go back safely, is now being retweeted by Kejriwal.

This retweet came within a day after Arvind Kejriwal had asked Captain Amarinder Singh as to why BJP folks were supporting the Congress leader in the twitter fight. It is true that many BJP supporters were indeed supporting Captain by re-tweeting his tweets.

But by his own logic, why is he now re-tweeting a Congress leader? Sab mile huye hain ji?

Troll CM Kejriwal finally meets his match on Twitter, runs away from Debate challenge

OpIndia Staff
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Troll CM Kejriwal finally meets his match on Twitter, runs away from Debate challenge

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal officially does not have any portfolio allotted to him, although he is the Chief Minister of Delhi. The common joke was that he had been handed the Twitter ministry, on which his job was trolling opponents. Earlier this year we saw how Kejriwal had tried to troll Modi, but social media trolled him instead. Kejriwal tries to troll many political leaders, but rarely do they pay any attention to him. But this time it was different.

It all started with Capt Amrinder Singh of the Congress, tweeting this:


To this, Troll CM Kejriwal had this reply:


Most politicians back-off at this stage, since the adage goes that wrestling with a pig will make you dirty, and the pig happy. But Captain was in the mood for a “dangal”. He promptly questioned Kejriwal on his tall claims of jailing many people if he came to power:


A severely embarrassed Kejriwal sidestepped this question altogether, but he had to have the last word, hence diverted the topic to something else:


But Captain was not about to give up:


And with this next tweet, he challenged Kejriwal for an open debate:


And Kejriwal accepted the challenge! But with conditions!! He didn’t accept the debate challenge for himself, but on behalf of four of his party members. He claimed that any of the four would come to debate with Captain!


And that was the full toss Captain was waiting for:


No sooner did this happen, Twitter exploded and exposed Kejriwal’s dual standards. In his pre-CM days, Kejriwal would keep challenging opponents to debates and claim victory when they refused to come:


Finally Kejriwal replied, but by that time the damage was done:


Even after this tweet, people reminded him of his multiple logical fallacies:


And even as this was unravelling, the Indian Express came to Kejriwal’s rescue to spin the episode as “Kejriwal accepts challenge”:


(Tweets updated till time of posting)

Update: Captain has hit back:


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Man goes to Madarsa to understand Muslim viewpoint, is accused of interference

OpIndia Staff
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Man goes to Madarsa to understand Muslim viewpoint, is accused of interference

Dehradun based Alok Bhatt decided to take an extra step and learn about common Indian Muslim’s views on issues like triple talaq and Uniform Civil Code (UCC), but little did he know that he will find himself in middle of a controversy and unknown calls following this rather admirable effort.

Alok, who is an active Twitter user, visited a local Madarsa on Saturday and talked to a few children studying there and other men accompanying those children or managing affairs of the Madarsa. Later, he shared his experience in shape of a series of tweets.

In his tweets, Alok praised the hafiz (caretaker) of Madarsa for being welcoming and talked to a few students about their studies, career plans, etc. Later he talked to a couple of men about their views on ongoing debate over triple talaq and UCC.

One of the men, Alok spoke to, opened up and told him about his sister who was divorced by her husband and she was left to fend for herself. He accepted that it was unfair on his sister, but claimed that triple talaq was part of the Holy Quran, as was told to him by a Maulavi the previous day.

Alok was given some pamphlets, which were distributed in the Madarsa for the women in local community to fill up. Muslim women were supposed to sign these pamphlets and declare that they were “fully satisfied” with rulings of Islamic Shariah, particularly about marriage, inheritance, and divorce, and that they “fully support” the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (which has vowed to retain the triple talaq practice).

Pamphlet to support personal laws
A sample pamphlet that Alok saw in the Madarsa (a higher resolution variant can be seen by clicking here).

It should be noted that the Law Commission has asked people to send their views on UCC and other related issues, and it appears that Madarsas are being used to create this public “support” in sync with views of the AIMPLB. This “wave of support” will later be conveyed to the Law Commission, declaring that Muslim women in India are happy with the status quo.

But are they really happy? When Alok probed the man further and asked for his views on triple talaq given what his sister had to undergo, the man got emotional, and said – what can we do? we are poor – and went inside.

Alok later shared his experience on Twitter and made a case about importance of understanding Indian Muslims by having a dialogue with them as a commoner – a conclusion anyone can hardly disagree with.

However, phone calls started coming in the following day after his series of tweets were shared by many. People claiming to speak on behalf of Muslim organizations told him that he shouldn’t have visited the Madarsa and talked about issues like talaq to young children (even though he talked to them only about studies).

There was a call that virtually accused him of trying to “interfere” in religious matters and of “misinterpreting” Islam. Perhaps this accusation flew from the fact that Alok had asked one Maulavi about proof of triple talaq being present in Quran – an argument many Muslim scholars too have made (that triple talaq is nowhere mentioned in the Quran).

These phone calls didn’t stop and Alok found himself in the middle of a controversy that he never intended to trigger. His tweets had suddenly become “controversial”. He even tweeted “I will NOT delete the tweets” last night, but found the pressure from certain quarters a bit too much.

“My entire intention was to reach out, but I was being accused of interfering,” Alok said when OpIndia.com got in touch with him, “As tone of calls changed, I realized that perhaps it is better that I don’t talk about this. I don’t want to get into some legal trouble, being accused of blasphemy or creating enmities between communities when my intentions were just the opposite. What better proof of my clear intention than the fact that I left my telephone number with the Madarsa teacher?”

As a result, on Monday morning, Alok deactivated his Twitter account.

He still can’t believe that he had to face this after such an honest dialogue without any ill will or bias.

“It was so poignant, humbling, and yet so troubling experience when I heard the story of someone’s sister,” Alok told OpIndia.com on phone, “But I didn’t know that I will have to face calls from unknown people asking me to explain my visit and intentions.”

Alok told OpIndia.com that he will wait for the “controversy” to die down and then will decide whether to be back on Twitter.

And while Alok decides not to tweet or say anything on the matter, those pamphlets are being signed by Muslim women, who perhaps don’t even know what they are signing on, telling the Law Commission that they don’t need any change.

For someone bullied for his art, Karan Johar is not doing justice to this YouTuber

OpIndia Staff
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For someone bullied for his art, Karan Johar is not doing justice to this YouTuber

Karan Johar can lay claim for being one of the most harassed movie makers in India, for having his Freedom of Expression throttled at multiple stages. His movies like My Name Is Khan, Wake Up Sid and most recently Ae Dil Hai Mushkil faced troubles from goons for various reasons. Even when he was involved in the AIB Roast, various issues were raised for his insensitive jokes. Given this, you would think Johar would probably empathise with artistes who get bullied into submission under various garbs. But think again.

Meet Jaby Koay. He is based out of California in the United States of America, and is a filmmaker who reacts to movies and trailers and shoots some of his own work. He also does trailer-reactions to Indian movies by the dozens and has a substantial fan following, earning him requests from Indians to do more Indian movies. And this is probably because he does a good job, and is not the usual condescending American.

Recently, Koay had been getting fan requests to do the trailer of ‘Dear Zindagi”, the upcoming movie starring Shahrukh Khan and Alia Bhatt. But he just wouldn’t do a trailer reaction for the movie. This obviously had his fans a bit bothered and hence, Jaby decided to make a fresh video, explaining why he didn’t do Dear Zindagi:

Jaby explains that few months back, when he did the trailer reaction to Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (ADHM), he got his first “copyright strike” from the team of ADHM. He explains that a “copyright claim” is where companies say someone is using their material hence they will demand a piece of his revenues. On the other hand, a “copyright strike” is much more serious and when a youtuber gets three such strikes, his channel gets shut down. And from here on he explains that ever since he got that notice, he is scared, and hence has avoided any movie which has any remote connection with Dharma Productions, and which is why he will not touch Dear Zindagi, which is also co-produced by Dharma Productions. He even tweeted about this when he got the notice, asking for help:


So here is an American youtuber, who does hundreds of movie trailer reviews across the world, and he manages to get threatened into avoiding all of Karan Johar’s movies, because a source of income for him is at stake. Why? just because he used ADHM’s movie trailer.

In his video he expresses his surprise and bewilderment as to what he did to deserve this notice. Hence he asks his fans to politely ask Dharma Productions, to allow him to do Dear Zindagi’s trailer reaction. His reaction is pretty understandable since he has done this for hundreds of movies, yet he gets a notice only for ADHM!

While Jaby was clueless, some Ajay Devgn fans were prompt to suggest that this had something to with Jaby’s positive reaction to Shivaay’s trailer. So is this what a victim of “censorship” Karan Johar does to other artistes? We hope Dharma Productions don’t sue us for using their movie’s poster!

Bihar students blast media for focusing only on caste in school beating case

OpIndia Staff
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Bihar students blast media for focusing only on caste in school beating case

MUZAFFARPUR: A few days back a video of some students of Kendriya Vidyalaya Gannipur mercilessly beating up a fellow student had gone viral. NDTV carried an article by the victim student where he claimed that he was beaten up as he was a Dalit and because he was getting good grades.

The incident made national news with Union HRD Minister Prakash Javdekar taking cognizance of the situation and promising action against those responsible and helping the victim. As a result, around twenty teachers of that school were transferred and the principal was suspended by Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (managing body of the chain of schools).

The school saw visits by many politicians including senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, who claimed that Dalits were not safe in Bihar. Local administration too swung into action and a case under the SC/ST act was filed, making arrest of the principal a possibility.

Now these developments have sent other students and their parents into state of panic. With exams around the corner, they fear that the mass transfer of teachers and suspension of the principal could adversely affect their future. Already classes have been suspended in the school ever since the case got nationwide attention.

Some students have now come out in support of the principal and are blaming politicians and media for the current situation. A video showing some angry girls from the school has gone viral where these girls can be heard condemning the violence against the student, but finding it troublesome that only caste was made the focus by the media and then by the politicians.

One girl in the beginning of the video claims that she herself is a Dalit but didn’t face any discrimination in the school, while another girl, angrily, asks media to stop focusing entirely on caste:

Those accused of beating up the student have been arrested and sent to remand homes as they were juveniles. Reports suggest that these juvenile offenders had a history of indulging in such violence in the school. Even their father is an accused in a murder case and currently lodged in jail.

This surely puts the school administration in question as to why these guys were not taken to task earlier if they had a history of such acts. Did the teachers fear retribution or were they being irresponsible? However, it also suggests that caste could not be the only reason for the criminal behavior by these goons.

Nonetheless, the case exposes many flaws in our education system – how schools are not safe from bullies, how outsider and political intervention can upset normal functioning of schools, and how media and politicians should be extra careful when dealing with issues that can impact young lives.

The curious case of Barkha Dutt and Shekhar Gupta’s joint venture

OpIndia Staff
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The curious case of Barkha Dutt and Shekhar Gupta’s joint venture

In the beginning of this year, senior journalist Shekhar Gupta of the coup story fame and controversial journalist Barkha Dutt of Radia tapes fame announced launch of The Print – a news media startup. They tweeted almost the same thing while making the announcement:



There was much excitement – mostly from Mr. Gupta and Ms. Dutt themselves and their fans – about this new venture that was another in a series of news media startups that followed ventures like leftist propaganda blog Scroll, its not-for-profit clone The Wire, AAP mouthpiece Janta Ka Reporter, and Patrika group’s Catch News that was led by Shoma Chaudhary of Tarun Tejpal fame.

In individual capacities, both Mr. Gupta and Ms. Dutt had taken interesting professional decisions before this announcement was made public. Mr. Gupta had “restructured” his relationship with India Today group, which he had joined after quitting The Indian Express, in a way that allowed him to form his own venture, while Barkha Dutt had done the same with respect to NDTV.

With their announcements coming on heels of such career decisions, it was assumed that The Print was their joint-venture. However, company records told a different story. Shekhar Gupta had formed a company called Mediascape where Barkha Dutt was not publicly listed as a director even six months after the announcement, while Shekhar Gupta was not listed as a director in a company formed by Barkha Dutt.

OpIndia.com checked the public records of all the companies where either Shekhar Gupta or Barkha Dutt were listed as directors, and found that none of these companies had both of them listed together as directors. The only place where both of them were listed together as co-founders was the bio or tweets of Twitter account of The Print.

However, the bio of The Print on Twitter was changed in July this year, and Barkha Dutt’s name was removed as co-founder.

This happened at a time when Barkha Dutt was involved in yet another controversy where Pakistan based terrorist Hafiz Sayeed had praised her for “doing good work in Kashmir”. She was also involved in a war of words with Arnab Goswami at the same time, lobbying with fellow journalists to attack Arnab.

People online wondered if this was the reason Barkha Dutt’s name was removed. Was Shekhar Gupta trying to disassociate himself from Barkha Dutt after she was praised by a terrorist?

Once such questions were asked by many on the social media, Barkha Dutt’s name was added back as co-founder within a day by The Print:


As always, these two media personalities, who love to ask questions to others, chose to ignore the questions about why Barkha Dutt’s name was removed in first place.

Now around 10 weeks later, Barkha Dutt’s name has gone missing from The Print’s bio on Twitter again. We noticed it after The Print actively started promoting its flagship event Off The Cuff with industrialist Mukesh Ambani.

In the invite for the Off The Cuff event with Mukesh Ambani, Barkha’s name as a co-host was missing, though her company “Barkha Dutt Live Media” was mentioned as being in alliance along with 5 other brands.

Not only Barkha Dutt’s name was missing, but Barkha herself was missing from the event, as confirmed by herself:


Also notable is the fact that while The Print and Shekhar Gupta have been advertising the interview with Mukesh Ambani almost non-stop on Twitter, Barkha Dutt hasn’t sent out a single tweet, except the one above, about it, let alone advertising it (at the time of writing this report, which is five days after the event got over).

Maybe because Mukesh Ambani said he likes to watch Arnab Goswami at prime time?

Or maybe because Shekhar Gupta and Barkha Dutt have parted ways and are no longer partners in The Print? If so, what caused this rift? Did Barkha leave voluntarily or was she asked to leave due to continuous controversies surrounding her?

We got in touch with The Print both on Twitter as well as through email on Tuesday and waited for their response for 4 days. We sent reminders too, but we received no response. We will update this report if we receive a response.

In absence of any response, we conclude three things:

  1. For some reason, The Print doesn’t want to disclose who owns the brand legally.
  2. Removal of Barkha Dutt’s name as co-founder, twice since inception, indicates that something is not working between Shekhar Gupta and Barkha Dutt.
  3. Our celebrity journalists love to ask questions, but hate to answer them.
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