000-tobecategorised

Congress boycott right. Ayodhya event not about Ram, but coronates Hindutva as state religion KAPIL KOMIREDDI 16 January, 2024 https://theprint.in/opinion/congress-boycott-right-ayodhya-event-not-about-ram-but-coronates-hindutva-as-state-religion/1925091/     to accept that the spectacle about to be staged in Ayodhya can be extricated from politics is to sanctify the falsification of our living memory. The inauguration of the temple  to Ram in Ayodhya is not a religious event to which politicians have been invited out of courtesy; it is the culmination of the most consequential political agitation to remake India into a Hindu state to which politicians of all persuasions are being summoned to perform a legitimating role.

 Where’s the V-shaped recovery? https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/wheres-the-v-shaped-recovery/3368633/ Santosh Mehrotra January 19, 2024
Data on real wages, jobs, savings, consumption, etc, point at a K-shaped rebound 

the share of India’s Biggest 5 firms in total assets of the non-financial sectors rose from 10% in 1991 to nearly 18% in 2021, whereas the share of the next Big 5 business groups fell from 18% in 1992 to less than 9% in 2021. This growth has been the biggest in the last decade. “In other words, Big 5 grew not just at the expense of the smallest firms, but also of the next largest firms,” Acharya said.

The Biggest 5 industrial groups referred to in the paper are Mukesh Ambani-helmed Reliance Group, Tata Group, Aditya Birla Group, Adani Group, and Bharti Telecom. He said the growth of such conglomerates raises several concerns, like the risk of crony capitalism, related-party transactions within their byzantine corporate organisation charts and overleveraging due to an implicit too-big-to-fail perception among others. This is what drives government spokesmen to claim the importance of ‘national champions’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IThzagMI_Y0&t=10s

Lest We Forget the Teesta Disaster 2023

Report and Recommendations: Praful Rao, SaveTheHills and Darjeeling Himalaya Initiative

The Teesta Valley Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) of 04Oct2023 was certainly the biggest disaster to have affected the Darjeeling- Sikkim Himalaya after the mega -disaster of Oct1968. It was coincident that both the disasters occurred on the same date only half a century apart.

But while this disaster was totally under-reported in the national media, we in SaveTheHills and the Darjeeling Himalaya Initiative have made an attempt to correct this by featuring many posts in our blog and also making a formal report to the NDMA as well as the SSDMAs of Sikkim and W Bengal states on the impact of the GLOF as well as suggesting some short term measures which would see us thru the monsoons of 2024.