WHEN Narendra Modi won the internal battles and was projected as the RSS/BJP’s prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 general elections, this column had the occasion to state that the RSS had finally decided to discard its “mukhota”. When the prime protagonist of the 2002 Gujarat communal carnage has been assigned this task by the RSS/BJP, it was clear that they no longer required a mukhota to mask the pursuit of their real agenda – the transformation of the modern Indian secular democratic Republic into the RSS vision of a rabidly intolerant fascistic `Hindu Rashtra’.

WITHIN six months of assuming office, the Modi government has been expanded with the induction of 21 new ministers in the council of ministers. This takes the total strength of the cabinet to 66. Of these, two are not members of either house of the parliament at the moment. Our constitution provides that such persons can hold office for a maximum period of six months before which they will have to be elected to either house.

ONE after another, all the election promises made by Prime Minister Modi during his whirlwind nationwide campaign, in a corporate jet, are turning out to be completely hollow – full of bluster and no substance.  On earlier occasions, we had exposed the feature of this Modi government with regard to its so-called `economic miracles’, achhe din aanewale hain etc etc.  Now it is the turn of the prime minister’s bluster concerning the claim that `his government’ will ensure that all the illegal black money stashed away in foreign banks in financial `havens’ will be brought back to the

FOLLOWING the recent elections to the state assemblies, the BJP is all set to form a government on the basis of its own strength in Haryana and a government led by it in Maharashtra. These results have come after the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) were in government for a long fifteen years and a Congress government in Haryana for two successive times lasting ten years. This has been the people’s verdict in these assembly elections which was, by far, fair and free given that there were no major complaints by any of the contesting parties.

THE United States’ military intervention in Iraq and Syria is inexorably leading to a wider conflict in the region. President Obama announced bombing strikes in Iraq in August against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, now Islamic State). The air strikes were said to be a humanitarian intervention to save the Yazidis who were threatened by the IS. Obama, however, declared that there was no time limit in the fight against the IS and it could go on for years. Obama also ordered more US army advisors into Iraq.