Saturday, July 4, 1998
Reservations aplenty
Things are back to square one on the ill-fated Bill for women's reservation in the legislatures, with the BJP government dropping it from Parliament's agenda for this session. The altogether intriguing thing is the BJP's new-found responsiveness to Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose desire for another all-party meeting on the subject ostensibly prompted its dropping. Such sympathy between the BJP and the Samajwadi Party has been hitherto a very well-kept secret.
Expose the ungodly
Banks were nationalised in 1970 principally to neutralise a section of the Congress which was keen to throw out Indira Gandhi. The fact that the money of the fourteen nationalised banks would be used to aid the poor and bring about development proved to be a handy slogan for her. The banker's bank, the Reserve Bank of India, is duty-bound to ensure that all government policies relating to the banking sector are complied with.
A rigged, scientific rape
I was recently re-reading Edward Behr's hilarious 1969 book on journalism, Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English? It was once billed as the funniest book ever written on the profession since Evelyn Waugh's 1930s classic, Scoop. The reason I mention this is that one rape -- or the politics of it -- has recently been in the news in Calcutta.
|
|
