Above the Fold: Top stories of the day
1. The Shiv Sena has said that the voting rights of Muslims should be revoked as the community has often been used for “vote bank politics”.
2. In Germany, Prime Minster Modi wooed investors by saying that the government is trying to end frequent rule changes and surprises.
3. Sania Mirza became the first Indian woman to grab the World No 1 spot in tennis doubles.
4. A 20-year old student of OP Jindal University has filed a complaint of gang-rape on campus.
The Big Story: Andhra, Telangana Police get pulled up for holes in custodial killing stories
The National Human Rights Commission has taken note of the killings last week in which the Andhra Pradesh police gunned down 20 alleged red sanders smugglers. After the killings, it emerged that the police had pulled some off the victims off a bus, hours before the act. Three men escaped from police custody before the killing and two of them will now appear before the NHRC.
In Telangana, following political pressure, the government has decided to form a Special Investigation Team to inquire into the April 7 encounter near Hyderabad, in which five Muslim undertrials were shot dead.
The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's biggest story
Why do these custodial killings take place in India with such chilling regularity? Because the media and the middle-class in India doesn't really care about either blue-collar workers or Muslims, says Aakar Patel. The media show little concern about police abuse as long as it doesn’t affect their target readers.
Apart from class and religion, caste seems to be India’s other great blind spot: Three people of a Dalit family asleep in a hut in Rajasthan were attacked over a land dispute seven weeks ago. The community has been on a dharna since then, demanding action.
Politicking & Policy-ing
1. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday announced time-bound regularisation of all unauthorised colonies in the Capital.
2. Ahead of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation polls, the BJP alleged that its party members were attacked by workers of the ruling Trinamool Congress at a public meeting.
3. The Congress is split down the middle on the issue of Rahul Gandhi's elevation.
Giggle
Punditry
1. In the Economic Times, Indrani Bagchi walk us though the Rafale deal.
2. Shiv Visvanathan writes in the Hindu on how the Bharatiya Janata's Party's Hindutva now makes our culture uniform and our politics majoritarian.
3. In The Telegraph, Mukul Kesavan explores why football never took off in India.
4. Akhileshwar Sahay discusses ways to reform the Indian Railways in the Indian Express.
Don't Miss
Author Nabina Das wonders why women writers don't make it to literay awards in India. This, in spite of the fact that there are a large number of women writers that publishers are churning out in every financial quarter.
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1. The Shiv Sena has said that the voting rights of Muslims should be revoked as the community has often been used for “vote bank politics”.
2. In Germany, Prime Minster Modi wooed investors by saying that the government is trying to end frequent rule changes and surprises.
3. Sania Mirza became the first Indian woman to grab the World No 1 spot in tennis doubles.
4. A 20-year old student of OP Jindal University has filed a complaint of gang-rape on campus.
The Big Story: Andhra, Telangana Police get pulled up for holes in custodial killing stories
The National Human Rights Commission has taken note of the killings last week in which the Andhra Pradesh police gunned down 20 alleged red sanders smugglers. After the killings, it emerged that the police had pulled some off the victims off a bus, hours before the act. Three men escaped from police custody before the killing and two of them will now appear before the NHRC.
In Telangana, following political pressure, the government has decided to form a Special Investigation Team to inquire into the April 7 encounter near Hyderabad, in which five Muslim undertrials were shot dead.
The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's biggest story
Why do these custodial killings take place in India with such chilling regularity? Because the media and the middle-class in India doesn't really care about either blue-collar workers or Muslims, says Aakar Patel. The media show little concern about police abuse as long as it doesn’t affect their target readers.
Apart from class and religion, caste seems to be India’s other great blind spot: Three people of a Dalit family asleep in a hut in Rajasthan were attacked over a land dispute seven weeks ago. The community has been on a dharna since then, demanding action.
Politicking & Policy-ing
1. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday announced time-bound regularisation of all unauthorised colonies in the Capital.
2. Ahead of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation polls, the BJP alleged that its party members were attacked by workers of the ruling Trinamool Congress at a public meeting.
3. The Congress is split down the middle on the issue of Rahul Gandhi's elevation.
Giggle
Revoke Muslim's voting rights says Shiv Sena. My #cartoon pic.twitter.com/xlDVY5sKk9
— MANJUL (@MANJULtoons) April 13, 2015 Punditry
1. In the Economic Times, Indrani Bagchi walk us though the Rafale deal.
2. Shiv Visvanathan writes in the Hindu on how the Bharatiya Janata's Party's Hindutva now makes our culture uniform and our politics majoritarian.
3. In The Telegraph, Mukul Kesavan explores why football never took off in India.
4. Akhileshwar Sahay discusses ways to reform the Indian Railways in the Indian Express.
Don't Miss
Author Nabina Das wonders why women writers don't make it to literay awards in India. This, in spite of the fact that there are a large number of women writers that publishers are churning out in every financial quarter.
Otherwise, why wouldn’t everyone just ask – where are the women writers and what the hell are they writing, prize or no prize? Every time I’m on a sojourn to discover new landscapes on women’s writing via an article, an academic paper, or a long/short list of books, I see the same names, constant as Dhruva aka the Pole Star. The windmill doesn’t change direction while my horse kicks impatiently. Have to say I feel a little more intimidated than the indomitable Sancho Panza.
The names I always encounter are Anita Desai (by default, Kiran Desai comes trailing), Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Bharati Mukherjee, Shashi Deshpande, Shobhaa De, Arundhati Roy, Gita Hariharan, Meena Alexander, Jhumpa Lahiri, and so on and so forth. Diaspora, native, mainland, off grid – wherever you tread, the beautiful greenery is all those names and a few more we get to read in English translation (a territory I’m not stepping in at the moment), such as Kamala Das, Ismat Chughtai, Mahasweta Devi, et al. what lies beyond this sylvan spread?
