By Adfar Shah The elections in the state of Jammu and Kashmir have already started and a high turnout (69.18%. in Jammu and 70%, in Udhampur) like the historic Panchayati elections held in 2012 (turn out 90%) in the state has become the trend now. The elections in Kashmir valley will be held on April 24, 30, and May 7 ...

By Shreeshan Venkatesh With the shadows of the 2002 communal violence looming large, vying for a position at the head of the government would have seemed inconceivable for Modi. Yet, today in the run-up to the General Elections 2014, Narendra Modi stands at the cusp of achieving his prime ministerial ambitions. Modi’s rise to a position of this prominence can ...

Subramanya Chandrashekar takes a look in to why the Supreme court’s decision to review the April 2013 judgment ordering translocation of Asiatic lions out of Gujarat is a welcome step in the history of Lion conservation in India. The primary motive of this article is to challenge the ever increasing demand for Lion translocation and substantiate that the current research and investigations are ...

By Adfar Shah My own commitment to understand the social and conflict phenomena in Kashmir has been fundamentally shaped by the very identity of belonging to the State. Today when we are going to vote for next Lok Sabha, the ghost of uncertainty still haunts the valley despite the fact that in spite of enough peace loving creatures in the ...

By Sumita Mukherjee Over five weeks, 815m Indians will have the opportunity to choose a new government many hope will tackle inequality and corruption and lead the country to greater prosperity.The choice is ostensibly between two men: Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rahul Gandhi of the Congress Party. So how will India’s more than 200m women ...

By Jivanta Schottli India’s general elections, to be held from 7th April to 12th of May 2014, rest upon some critical features that will have a bearing on the country’s foreign policy. Foreign policy per se is not usually a theme in Indian elections and neither of the two main national parties has unveiled it in any election manifesto yet. Therefore the implications ...

By Shreeshan Venkatesh The jargon-laden manifesto released by the BJP, in many ways, confounds rather than clarifies. A victory for BJP would just go to prove that the more strategic noise you make, the less there is a need for workable plans. The long wait for the master-plan of development ended recently with the release of the BJP manifesto- setting off ...

By Dr Subhash Kapila India’s Muslims are at fateful crossroads on the eve of General Elections as they face the predicament of breaking out of the mind-set and the political mould that they are merely “vote-banks” to be used and then discarded by their political secularists’ patrons. On the other hand is the prospect of being part of the political ...

By Rohini Hensman Narendra Modi, whom some consider a human rights criminal, is running for PM of India and being touted as an economic saviour based on his record in Gujarat. An analysis of these claims reveals a version of corporation-driven neoliberalism as extreme as that of the US, argues Rohini Hensman   General elections in India are scheduled to ...

By Dr Subhash Kapila Perceptionaly, India today seems to be at political crossroads as the General Elections 2014 draw near. Unprecedented vituperative abuse and undignified political rhetoric that now dominates political discourse and the bitterness now dominating India’s political space is itself an indication that the political stakes are high as the Indian voter steps forward to exercise his political ...