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

The loss of the Bharatiya Janata Party at the hands of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Delhi Assembly elections held in February this year, made two very clear conclusions – one that BJP Delhi unit president Manoj Tiwari failed to enthuse the substantial migrant voters and also that the saffron party lost it traditional Vaishya (Baniya) vote to the rival party.

By Sidharth Mishra

It’s lagan (marriage) time in Bihar and one should not wonder that why it’s giving sleepless time to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal ahead of Lok Sabha polling in the national Capital on May 12. During the Vidhan Sabha polls in the spring of 2015, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had fielded around 15 candidates out of 70 from among Purvanchal migrants and most of them had romped home.

By Sidharth Mishra

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday last announced a Rs 20 lakh crore package for the revival of the Indian economy. Wary of the fact that his government is seen to be pro-rich and has come in for criticism for the not able to take care of the poor, especially the migrant labour population, during the Covid lockdown, the Prime Minister was particular in assuring that the relief package would empower one and all and will not be “trickle down”. He claimed it would cover all sections from the word go.

By Sidharth Mishra

It’s said that politics is a great leveler. Last Sunday Atishi Marlena, the Aam Aadmi Party candidate from the East Delhi Lok Sabha seat held an unusual press conference to clarify her religion. She said that she was a Hindu Punjabi belonging to the Kshatriya community. Atishi, born to Marxist Leninist parents, who gave a surname extracted from the names of their ideological icons Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, pushing her caste identity is an indication that politics in India is a way bit different from what Marx, Lenin and their ideological heirs pitched for.

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?