| There is a reason why the Congress is attempting to make the BRS guilty by association with the BJP. It’s the Muslim votebank, wrote DK Singh. Muslims constitute around 13 per cent of the population and are said to swing results in about one-third of the 119 assembly constituencies. This explains why the Congress is taking the AIMIM head-on and with new aggression.
In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress appears to be ahead, but one cannot rule out both parties ending up with a similar vote share, wrote Yogendra Yadav. The outcome will then depend on how the votes translate into seats. We can be sure of one thing: The impact of the outcome will be disproportionately bigger than its margin. Not only will it impact the mood and equation for the 2024 Lok Sabha election, but it will also decide the trajectory of social change that is waiting to happen in the state.
Praveen Swami wrote about the real story behind Netflix’s hit film Khufiya by Vishal Bhardwaj. Read about how India’s R&AW was breached in 2003. It all began under the uncertain illumination of a tube light in one of the dank corridors of the R&AW headquarters in the low-budget late-Stalinist office blocks in New Delhi.
India’s language debate — English-medium versus Indian languages — is old, but it has gained new wings in the past decade. There have been calls for more emphasis on regional Indian languages in the curriculum, from schools to MBBS to engineering colleges. Nilakantan RS looks at data to find an answer to the provocative question: Do states that promote English-medium schools perform better than those that privilege regional languages?
How did a squabble between two petty medieval families become a massive Telugu national epic and a symbol of valorous peasant struggle? Anirudh Kanisetti wrote that the Palnati Virula Katha, the Tale of the Palnadu Heroes, is a unique Mahabharata of a medieval landowning caste. Every November, at the temple of Chennakeshava at Macherla, thousands of devotees congregate to worship the dead heroes of a medieval battle.
In our Ground Reports section, Mohana Basu wrote about the giant fire that brought Delhi’s six-floor Natural History Museum to ashes seven years ago. Most of the precious taxidermy mounts were lost, and those that survived were too fragile and frayed. She travelled to Rajasthan’s Sawai Madhopur to meet a scientist engaged in the painstaking, arduous task of bringing each remaining specimen back from the dead. These will find their way back to a grand new natural history museum in Delhi that is being planned.
Delhi’s government vet hospitals are in an abysmal state. Read Heena Fatima’s ground report on how the neglect affects the city’s pets. Some vet hospitals are doubled as badminton courts; one was co-opted as an MLA’s office. Overall, they are just rundown buildings with staff shortages, lack of medicines, water and electricity issues, malfunctioning equipment, and unsanitary conditions. Some hospitals were just abandoned.
Three decades after India set up the ambitious National Human Rights Commission against the backdrop of global criticism and scrutiny of human rights violations, the body is flailing. Its accreditation was deferred for the second time since 2016 by a UN-affiliated body based in Geneva. Apoorva Mandhani reported on why the commission has been struggling with a credibility crisis both domestically and globally – from being called a toothless tiger to a silent spectator to ‘not even ornamental’.
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