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Essential HuffPost
Pakistan parliament became the first in the world to completely run on solar power, a venture supported by China with $ 55 million funding.
In January 2000, a Harvard academic wrote a piece in The Frontline titled The RSS Gameplan, describing a "creeping fascism" perpetrated by what he called a "disillusioned and dispirited" RSS. Journalist Prem Panicker, noted how prescient the article resonates in today's political environment. Check it out.
A controversial book penned by the brother of Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar, claiming Jesus Christ was a Tamil Hindu, is being re-launched 70 years after it was first published.
The assistant sub-inspector of police who was assaulted, forced to hold a saffron flag and paraded in a town in Maharashtra, marking yet another case of violence unleashed by extreme right wing activists, said he was let down by his own colleagues.
An Indo-Canadian Sikh comedian was forced to take off his turban here during a security check, weeks after a Sikh-American actor was barred from boarding a flight in Mexico for refusing to take off his turban.
Main News
JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, accused of sedition for shouting anti-India slogans, surrendered outside the institute’s gate and were taken to South Campus RK Puram police station in Delhi.
The left-leaning and centrist political forces of the country flocked to Jantar Mantar to support the family of Rohith Vemula, a Dalit scholar at Hyderabad University who committed suicide on January 17, and demanded a new legislation named “Rohith Act” to prevent caste-based prejudice in educational institutions.
Amidst the raging JNU row, a BJP MLA has stoked fresh controversy by alleging that the premier university is a hub of sex and drugs where over 3,000 used condoms and 2,000 liquor bottles are found daily.
The Border Security Force found an abandoned Pakistani fishing boat with a gun on board near Harami Nala area in Kutch district along the Indo-Pak border.
Blockades disrupted train movement to Assam and Northeast. The National Convention Committee, a newly-floated umbrella body of several adivasi organisations, blocked trains in Kokrajhar district, demanding ST status before the ensuing Assam assembly election.
Off The Front Page
Lalji bhai Badshah, whose family shot into fame after bidding up to Rs 4 crore for NaMo's famed suit that had 'Narendra Damodardas Modi' monogrammed as pinstripes on it, has announced the donation of Rs 200 crores to 10,000 girls (Rs 2 lakhs each) in Gujarat.
Chilled potable water will be sold through kiosks in Hyderabad, modelled on the lines of ATMs. The water board chief directed officials to work out the proposal of installing “water ATMs”, through which pedestrians could get a litre of chilled water for Re 1.
In Karnataka’s Malur taluk, deity procession and cultural events were organised to mark a temple's 10th anniversary. As part of the cultural programmes, an orchestra troupe from Bangarpet was asked to perform in the evening. But the devotees where shocked when it turned into a strip dance. Three people, including a priest, were arrested.
A pregnant woman, who was going to the hospital for a regular check-up with her husband on his bike, ended up delivering a baby by the roadside. Husband said the bumpy road induced the early labour.
Leela Santhosh, 28, is not a product of any film school, nor has she had any formal schooling. But, this young tribal woman from Nadavayal in Kerala, with a documentary film to her credit, is busy planning her first feature film.
Opinion
In the absence of critical data on the Other Backward Classes, we are only playing a political poker game, with mob violence on one side and paper drafts and legislations on the other. The Haryana incident is a good example, writes Priyadarshi Dutta in The Pioneer.
If the threat of sedition hangs heavily on its campuses, zombies will come out of it, not innovators. You will have cyber coolies and ideology slaves emerging from the campuses rather than innovators and radical thinkers, writes Josy Joseph in The Hindu.
Once again it’s budget season, and railway minister Suresh Prabhu will not only be taking stock of last year’s performance but also revealing the road ahead. Hopefully this year, too, he will stick to his tried and tested pragmatic approach, which may not please his political colleagues, but ensure that the nation’s engine of economic growth, writes RC Acharya in the Hindustan Times.
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