Pairokar

Strange are the ways of the governments! It is very difficult to understand why, at all, the Padma Vibhushan was announced for the late Mulayam Singh Yadav. There is hardly any contribution, which can be attributed to him to the country. He held many important offices but to the best of our understanding, he has never been known for any innovation or development in the country, cohesion or harmony in the society. It does not mean that awardees in the past were all worthies and deserving. There have been many Padma Awardees in the past, who have been abominably undeserving. However, if it is conferred on some politicians, people dissect them with a microscopic lens. The only qualification that went in favour of Shri Yadav was that he was a pseudo-Samajwadi. He lived and behaved like a feudal lord. In fact, the general impression about Samajwadis is that they are double-faced. Deception and ditching are inherent to their nature. They will say one thing and do another, which will mostly b...

      I would like to recall two recent instances in the Supreme Court of India. Both are, of course, casual, and off the cuff, yet as Fali Nariman says that even obiter dicta remarks made by the judges during the hearing of the cases convey some message, although they do not have any bearings on the case. The first was made by Justice Ajay Manikrao Khanwilkar, who was a Presiding Judge in Court Room Number 5. An elderly advocate did not address the bench as ‘My Lord’, which has become the habit, but rather the nature of most of the advocates, particularly Senior Advocates when saying or submitting anything to the court. So much so, even if an adverse order is passed most of the advocates bow their heads and say, ‘obliged my lord’. In fact, this is an inexplicable expression when there was nothing to be ‘obliged’.In fact, it is the height of the sycophancy that lawyers have inherited from British courts. It is the time when the In...

NDTV issue exposes the duplicity of a section of media and powerful influencers in India. This lobby has been telling people worldwide that the company's owners (wife and husband) were forced to sell lion's shares of their company to a business tycoon. They allege that huge pressure was brought to bear on them to offload their shares because their news channel has been an eyesore for the government. According to these people, NDTV became the most popular channel because of its boldness and unsparing reporting. However, one fails to understand that if its proprietors have been so bold then how and why did they buckle under the pressure of the government of the day? N Ram and company have been crying foul from the housetops that deal of Roy’s with the Adani group was done by adopting coercive methods. If it was so, then why Roys, the so-called champions of freedom of speech and expression and other conscience keepers of the country did not raise the hue and cry over the sini...

One often wonders that why there is so much brouhaha by a section of pseudo-intellectuals over the sale of NDTV by a crafty capitalist duo, claiming to be the espousers of public interest to a proclaimed industrialist. This duo made a huge amount of money by adopting all the tricks of the trade, which could be unbecoming of any ethical and intellectual person. But by their intellectual posturing both accumulated stinking amounts of wealth. They are said to have assets worth thousands of crores, that too, within a span of two/ three decades. It is said they were living in a Barsati of a house but in a very little time, they made hundreds of crores, mostly because of their connections with powers that be. They are, thus, classic examples of crony capitalism. There was an Income Tax Officer, some Srivastav, who used to publicly say that husband and wife duo- Pranoy Roy and Radhika Roy owned a ramp consisting of hundreds of acres of land in an African country. So, NDTV was like any...

          Frequent elections have made the manifestos redundant. They have now become an exercise in futility, although they were never taken seriously by most people. The general impression is that manifestos are merely for discussions and debates of some elites, who claim to be intellectuals but hardly have any say in the decision-making process of political parties or the electorates because elections are mostly held on the castes and religious considerations. For example, Muslims except for a group of Shias, never vote for the BJP irrespective of its highly promising manifestos. More or less the same is the case with Christians.  Manifestos are, therefore, meaningless for them because their only agenda is to defeat the BJP.  Look at the schemes of the BJP governments, which have been benefitting all sections of society regardless of their castes or communities and yet they are clear-headed that they would go for any candid...

  It is very sad that in less than a month two eminent retired Professors of Philosophy of Allahabad University- Dr D N Dwivedi and Dr Ram Lal Singh- left for their heavenly abode. Both of them were in their eighties and were the giants of Indian and Western Philosophy. I knew them through my father-in-law Dr Sabhajit Mishra, who is also a retired Professor of Philosophy from Gorakhpur University and who formed the distinguished company with them along with Dr (Professor) R R Pandey of the Banaras Hindu University. All of them have been very eminent and highly respected by their students and colleagues as well.   They have been foremost in developing the scientific temper of reasoning and logic among the students of philosophy. They inculcated the ambience of learning and thinking to the seekers of knowledge. It is because of these illustrious teachers most of the students coming from eastern Uttar Pradesh normally opted for philosophy as a subject for their unde...

               Planting fake and false news is not new to journalism. This practice has been going on for quite a long time but the scale and frequency with which it is being resorted to these days by a cross-section of motivated people and organisations are too much to recount. The sad part of it is that those who claim to be the champions of the cause of truth and objectivity are also indulging in this nefarious practice.  Some time ago we have seen that an operator of a Utube channel, who boasted himself to be the fact checker floated a wild rumour about himself having been shortlisted for the Nobel Peace Prize. Many news channels became a willing and collusive parties to give credence and wide publicity to the wild rumour.    A few years back a TV Channel spread the false news about a schoolteacher running the flesh trade and using the girl students at the school to make money. The said rumour spoiled not only the ...