By Sidharth Mishra

In the midst of the crisis caused by Coronavirus swamping the national Capital, an emerging human tragedy which has failed to find focus is the state of the 12 Delhi University college, which are funded by the Delhi government. There has been no disbursement of salary for the teachers and non-teaching staff of these colleges since the month of April this year.

These colleges are – Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, Bhim Rao Ambedkar College, Mahrishi Valmiki B.Ed College, Maharaja Agrasen College, Shaheed Rajguru Women’s College, Deen Dayal Upadhyay College, Indira Gandhi College of Physical Education, Bhaskaracharya College, Acharya Narendra Dev Women’s College, Keshav Mahavidyalay, Bhagini Nivedita Women’s College and Aditi Women’s Mahavidyalaya.

In addition to the salary, there has been no encashment of the medical bills, pension bills and retirement benefits. The situation has arisen following the Delhi government going almost bankrupt in the midst of the Corona crisis. There are also reports of doctors working in Delhi government-run hospitals not being paid their salary.

By Sidharth Mishra

The spread of Covid-19 pandemic in India in the past three months has been variously described and compared. The most cited comparison has been the spread of Spanish Flu in 1918. It has been looked at largely from the lens of being a health issue. In doing so we miss a very pertinent point that the spread of pandemic in 1918 was in an India which was a colony and the counter led by a government which was colonial, not accountable to the dying masses.

Fast forward to 2020, we have elected governments at all the three levels – grassroots (panchayats/municipal bodies), states and the Centre. The model so far has been that the Centre has limited its role to being a nodal agency as far as prevention and containment at Ground Zero goes. It has allowed the state governments to variously draw their roadmaps suitable for implementation at the district level.

By LT GEN NS BRAR (RETD)

Listen in the north, my boys, 
there’s trouble in the wind;
Tramp o’ Cossack hooves in front, 
                  grey great coats behind.
                  Trouble on the Frontier of a most amazin’ kind ..
                  —Rudyard Kipling, Mutiny of the Mavericks

By Sidharth Mishra

New Delhi: In a state-wide operation run by the Uttar Pradesh government over 36 hours last week around two lakh people were evacuated and dropped safely under much challenging situation. This is an extra-ordinary story about an efficient and alert bureaucracy which worked overtime to end a near catastrophic situation created by an equally callous administration of the neighbouring state.

On March 19, the Prime Minister, following the outbreak of Coronavirus pandemic, had announced plans for Janata curfew on coming Sunday and the bureaucracy was sounded of a possible longer lockdown thereafter.

By Sidharth Mishra

Country’s strategy to fight Coronavirus though not totally dreary but has certainly been vacillating at places. The most disturbing evidence of the same was the siege which the migrant labourers from across the national Capital laid at Anand Vihar - Kaushambi on Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border. The crisis emanated not just from the lack of coordination between the two state governments but also the various arms of state government working at cross purposes.

This happened because of the erosion of the political edifice and larger than life role assigned to the social media. The support provided by the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) to ferry migrant labour to the border has been attributed to a message by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on the micro blogging site Twitter. Can a social media post be taken as cornerstone of inter-state relationship?

By Sidharth Mishra

Bang on Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border across Anand Vihar is a small quite colony – Kaushambi. The colony is home to mutli-storeyed apartment towers, which were built much before they came into vogue in Noida or for that matter Gurugram. Several of these towers house quarters of the officials of the Indian Revenue Service, SAIL, HPCL, public sector banks, Bureau of Indian Standards and such other prominent institutions in addition to privately owned apartments and bungalows.

The township was in news a few days ago when a Corona positive case was detected in one of the towers and thereafter it has been in a lockdown. Though next to Ghazipur vegetable and meat wholesale market, both are in short supply. The upmarket provision stores, which have been listed by the Uttar Pradesh administration as supply points, have not been able to bring much succor to, would not say starved but definitely mentally harassed residents.

By Sidharth Mishra

As one approaches Delhi from the North, the first major landscape which attracts attention on entering the national Capital is the garbage mount at the Mukarba Chowk. Once a busy crossroad leading to jams, the movement here is now relatively free thanks to the grade separators built during the Commonwealth Games. On taking left turn from Mukarba Chowk and driving down the road one approaches the sleekly built Signature Bridge.

Built about eight years back and made operational only two years ago, the Signature Bridge is gateway to North-East Delhi, the epicenter of the recent Hindu-Muslim conflagration. Parallel to the Signature Bridge still exists the Old Wazirabad Bridge and the road leading into this portion of the sprawling trans-Yamuna area is called the Wazirabad Road.

By Sidharth Mishra

That the Delhi BJP is in poor shape, one really did not really need to know from the organ of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh – Organiser. In the editorial of its latest edition, it has been stated that the state units should not expect Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to win all elections for them.

What the editorial preferred not to mention was that if the Delhi state unit was in poor shape, it was the making of the Central leadership. The state unit has been led for past four years by Manoj Tiwari, who is for sure is not an organisation man. A political traveler, Tiwari started his career from the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, hobnobbed with the Congress for a while and finally took refuge in the Bharatiya Janata Party.