Opposition vs Modi vs TINA

Photo: Twitter/@INCIndia

For record, I have not been able to have 'respect' for politicians. In my experience of political reporting and writing, I have found politicians to be extremely opportunist and mean people at business. Humans are, it has been my impression, just tools for politicians across the spectrum from extreme left to ultra right.

But as things stand today, only politicians can rule the country and since we have a self-proclaimed democracy, we are required to choose a leader. Choosing a leader is a process, which must be a decision akin to an informed choice.

Since politicians have been able to acquire more right to privacy than We, The People of India, knowing their true character has become difficult. Income tax department can place your financial details in public domain but an RTI application about a politician will return saying the information sought is very personal in nature. And, then the same politician will go about hankering about transparency in public life. They make every attempt to keep crucial information required for making an informed choice.

So, as the election approaches, the people have minimal information about the leaders and parties they may be forced to elect to power for next five years. On the available evidence, Narendra Modi appears more convincing. Not because he is a better leader but because he is a better communicator.

Modi appears to be in lead not because of his policies adopted or ignored in the last five years but because of the fact that the Opposition simply doesn't inspire enough confidence. Modi, to my understanding of politics, became Modi because of myopic politics of Sonia Gandhi and the Congress party. There were too many challengers to Modi within the BJP. But, Sonia Gandhi, when she was the most powerful politician of the country, targetted and attacked Modi so much, right from her Maut Ka Saudagar comment, that she brought him at par with the top national leadership. Modi cashed in on his criticism by the top politicians of the then ruling party and turned it to his advantage because he was a better communicator.

Sonia Gandhi's son and successor in the Congress party Rahul Gandhi seems to have not learnt from those mistakes. He doesn't seem to have learnt the lesson properly from the history. Pay some attention to his speeches and one would know that he is playing into the hands of the BJP. The way he has been addressing, mind it addressing not campaigning against, Modi, there has been rudeness - Narendra Modi bolta hai...kahta hai...jhooth bolta hai... This looks surprising given the support Rahul Gandhi and the entire Opposition is getting from the intelligentsia in media and academia.

Plus, Rahul Gandhi and his Congress party keep embarrassing themselves and their supporters. Perhaps calling Pulwama terror attack an accident by Osamaji and Hafiz Sayeed Sahab-fame Digvijaya Singh was not enough for the Congress party that the president Rahul Gandhi himself called Jaish-e-Mohmmed chief as Masood Azharji.

And, if you said it, it is better to admit that it was a slip of tongue. India is changing. Indian youth has changed a lot over the last one decade. Admitting to one's fault is now appreciated even if Modi-like opponent would try to cash in on it. Nitish Kumar in Bihar and Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi - both incidentally in 2015 - have proved this.

Instead of admitting, a spokesman of the party is spent on it to make people believe that it was sarcasm. Dear Congress, when the video is in public domain, anyone can hear it and call your bluff. Trying to cover upa faux pa is bad politics which only may satisfy a feudal lord not the subject, if you still treat the people of India that way.

The Congress already had people like Mani Shankar Taiyar, Digvijaya Singh and Kamal Nath, Rahul Gandhi need not enter the competition if he is serious about harbouring the dream of leading the country as a prime minister. Modi is far superior a communicator to use rewire the defused verbal salvos to bomb the Congress party back. :Achchhe Din' should remain fresh in the Congress's memory.

It's for people like Rahul Gandhi, who fail to show any consistensy in their public politics, that Modi appears to be armed with TINA - there is no alternative.

To me, five years of BJP-led government has been no different from the Congress-led regime for previous ten years. All are the same. Only the faces have changed not the facets.

Vote on account or budget?

A vote on account is Parliament’s permission to the government to use money from the exchequer to pay for essential expenditures for a few months, usually three to four, during a period when regular permission to use the money, through budget, is not available, as happens in an election year. It also allows the government to collect taxes from the people and businesses beyond March 31 in the absence of any law governing taxation during that period.

Every budget is a law, whose validity exists from April to March for a year. Budget becomes a legal instrument only after Parliament gives its approval of the proposals - of taxes to be levied on the people and businesses and expenditure made for welfare and security of the nation - contained in it.

In the election year, the government or Parliament is not authorized to propose or vote for a revenue collection or expenditure plan beyond March 31 due to absence of sovereign mandate, i.e. authorization from “We, the people of India”. People vote for a Lok Sabha for a period of five years. The Members of Parliament (MPs) cannot vote for a period beyond their tenure or loosely said validity. So, a regular budget is proposed and approved by those comprising freshly elected MPs of the Lok Sabha.

Vote on account is a provision devised for interim period like this. However, the first vote on account was not presented in an election year. It was presented in 1948 by then Finance Minister RK Shanmukham Chetty, who followed it up with a regular budget. The practice continued since then.

Going by the logic of democracy, a vote on account should not alter tax regime or make fresh policy decisions for the next fiscal. But in recent times, the outgoing finance ministers have not strictly adhered to this principle.

In 1991 before Manmohan Singh announced his economic reforms as finance minister of the PV Narasimha Rao government, the outgoing Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha of Chandrashekhar government made the policy announcement of 20 per cent disinvestment in certain public sector units (PSUs). At that time, India was facing its worst balance of payment crisis. This was the first policy on disinvestment. Manmohan Singh followed it up with more nuanced liberalized economic policy of India.

In 2004, Jaswant Singh allowed Indians travelling abroad or returning home from abroad to carry up to Rs 25,000 as baggage allowance. It was a major policy decision of the time. He also reduced certain customs duties – peak duty on non-farm goods slashed to 20 per cent from 25 per cent, special duty on customs duty of 4 per cent was abolished. He also merged dearness allowance of the central government employees with their basic salaries. The government was going into election equipped with a feel-good factor for its employees.

In 2009, Pranab Mukherjee, as finance minister, revised fiscal deficit target from 2.5 per cent to 6 per cent. He presented a vote on account in February but before that in January he had announced tax cuts worth Rs 40,000 crore.

In 2014, P Chidambaram, then finance minister, altered indirect tax rates related to capital goods and consumer non-durables. Excise duty on small cars, special utility vehicles (SUVs) and two-wheelers, and mobile phones was slashed.

In 2019, the stand-in finance minister Piyush Goyal does not have much elbow room to maneuvre as indirect tax rates, the large part of taxation, can now be altered only by the Goods and Services Tax Council (GST Council). What all he may announce include income tax concessions, customs duty, special agriculture or farm package, stimulus to employment generation or a special provision similar to one promised by Congress president Rahul Gandhi for minimum income guarantee to unemployed youths – the scheme was originally proposed by former chief economic adviser to the government, Arvind Subramanian.

There could be another scenario should Goyal decides to make some policy announcements. He may do so expressing confidence that the government would be voted back to power and under the circumstances, the general elections cannot be considered as a disruption or obstruction in the path of government’s welfare or corrective/reform policies.

10 per cent reservation for general category poor untenable

Neo-poor among the middle-class may soon, if Parliament and half of state legislatures give their nod, get 10 per cent quota in jobs and educational avenues. Photograph shows fliers waiting to board their respective airbuses at Terminal 2 launge of the IGI Airport, Delhi. (Photo ©Sindhustan)

India devised a unique way of dealing with social inequality with the adoption if Constitution. It implemented a policy to economic empowerment of thosefound to be weak in their social status. It provided for reservation in jobs and education to those found to be socially and educationally backward. It was the time when only a few Indians were earning enough to sustain themselves. A handful had the resources to run businesses and business houses. Less than 12 per cent Indians were educated to take up government or corporate jobs. 

Practically the whole of India could easily have been categorised as socially and educationally backward. 

Economically, per capita income of an average Indian was less than Rs 250 in 1947. Economic backwardness was as universal throughout the country as illetracy and social backwardness. The framing of Constitution saw intense yet open minded debates. The result was provision to give economic power to those socially and educationally backward. It was considered okay for a period of 15 years to rein in talent and power in the matters of jobs and education. 

But who should be given this benefit? The whole of India was backward and upbeat after Independence. The British were there earlier to be blamed for all the ills and ailments. Providing earning through jobs or private vocation was the most difficult task. A commission called the Kaka Kalekar Commission was set up by the government in 1953 to decide who could be considered socially and educationally backward. The commission had to evolve its own criteria for identifying the people who could be classified as backward. 

Identifying individual backwardness would have been a mammoth task only to be matches by an honest conduct of census process. Not possible in 1953. Focus, that's why, must have shifted to community identification of backwardness. India's old communities had already classified itself in castes and the boundaries were invisibly thick. Kalekar Commission couldn't have pierced through these walls and formed new communities or future caste groups of people suffering from backwardness. Team Kalekar, hence, proceeded to identify 2,399 castes who could be termed backward.

But Kaka Kalekar was not happy with the findings. He penned a letter to the President of India requesting him to look for other alternative for economic empowerment of socially and educationally backward people. He argued that caste-based reservation in jobs and education was not in the interest of the nation. Incidentally, the government, too, didn't find the report convincing and it was rejected.

But those running the government were convinced that Indians needed protection and should be given concession in jobs and educational avenues as the topmost political leaders of the time were from socially and educationally forward class and also had relatively better economic background, they believed the have-nots were not capable enough to make a mark for themselves in generally backward society of India despite having seen the likes of BR Ambedkar establishing themselves as stalwarts of the same society. The problem was that the decision makers were not confident of their own ability to work for creation of enough jobs, education and earning avenues. 

Fearing a backlash from society, well-trained, by now, in Gandhian way of demanding rights, in the same way as against the British administration, a formula for reservation was enforced. Needless to state that only the forwards among the declared backwards benefitted from the limited earning and learning avenues that India has generated under the guidance of the government. 

There has never been enough in India, at least in the living memory. Population growth was organic due to societal belief and lack of other entertainment alternatives. This theory doesn't need any further authorisation after recent experience from Nepal, where massive power outages a few years ago coincided with unusually high number of pregnancies and child-births. 

While population kept rising, the penetration of scientific temper eroded people's belief in the theory of karma. Globalisation and internet fuelled their aspirations further. Money, muscle, sex, youthfulness and remaining central in and under all circumstances became the focal points of life. This aspiration was not compartmentalised by the invisible thick walls of castes. The cumulative effect is putting pressure on the government to provide for everything that the people can't get themselves. After all, the freedom was won in the name of prosperity, now better worded as achchhe din. This achchhe din is missing from everyone's life, almost everyone. 

If SC/ST or OBC individual gets an earning or learning avenues and a person from the other community sees this happening, she feels strongly agitated. Then she learns that it is the government which facilitated it. She first rallies for abolition of inequal rights failing which she demands such a right for herself. 

If elections are to be won to run government, people need to be on the side of ruling or aspiring to be ruling group, the party. Jobs and educational avenues are not enough to be offered to every desirous individual. So, what should a government do. Offer equalising proposal of reservation.

The government announced 10 per cent quota I'm jobs and education for non-reserved category aspirants. This means the offer is valid for all religious grouping, a secular offer. But this offer came on a ground that was first rejected, by virtue of its omission, by Constitution and then by the Supreme Court.

Nearly 25 years after the Kaka Kalekar Commission report was rejected, another commission came up in 1979, called BP Mandal Commission to decide on the proposal of provding reservation. 

Mandal commission reported in 1980, an election year, that caste-based reservation should be given to uplift socially and educationally backward people. For 10 years, the report was wrapping itself in dust before VP Singh facing threat to his PMO chair and a certain loss of power, brought the quota report out and issued an Office Memorandum to implement reservation for identified and declared OBCs. Reservation, 27 per cent, to OBCs failed to save Singh from losing power. 

The next in line, PVN Rao tried to counterbalance it in 1991 by giving another 10 per cent quota to the poor from general category people. 

Both the decisions were challenged in the Supreme Court, where Indra Sawhney case of 1992 still Stan's out as a landmark judgment. The court herein rules that caste-based reservation is constitutional, quota on the basis of economic backwardness not valid under constitutional arrangement and that total number of reserved seats can't breach the ceiling of 50 per cent. 

The new proposal, the 124th Constitution Amendment Bill, provides for raising the ceiling to 60 per cent. It is bound for a test in the Supreme Court. 

The Bill, interestingly, proposes to declare those having annual income for their nuclear family less than Rs 8 lakh may avail this quota benefit. Commensurate arrangement has been prescribed for land and property ownership. But taking one earning person per family, the Rs 8 lakh cap translates into asalary/income of Rs 65,166 per month. Compare this criterion of economic backwardness with the existing cap for BPL identification, just for fun 😊

It wouldn't take a genius of Chanakya to understand that the target community of this reservation scheme is a major chunk of middle-class, who is said to be angry with the government. In any case, if jobs in public sector are dwindling, what good use this 10 per cent cap can bring to the neo-poor community of the general category people?

When women used to visit Sabarimala temple

Woman protesters at Sabarimala temple. (Photo: Twitter/@iamsrp007)

Huge uproar followed today after two women aged below 50 years reportedly entered the Sabarimala temple. Identified as 42-year-old Bindu -  a CPI(ML) worker from Kozikhode and Kanakadurga – a Kerala governemnt employee from Malappuram claimed to have entered the Sabarimala temple at 3.45 this morning.

Protests erupted in various parts of Kerala with the BJP joining chorus. The BJP has called a shutdown in Kerala on Thursday to protest entry of women in the Sabarimala temple, which was allowed by the Supreme Court last year in a majority judgment by a bench led by then Chief Justice Dipak Misra.

The full ban on entry of women aged between 10 and 50 years was enforced after a Kerala High Court judgment in 1991. The order came on a petition that was filed after Devasam board commissioner held traditional rice feeding ceremony for his child at the Sabarimala temple in 1990. The ceremony was attended by women of the family and also some relatives. 

The petitioner challenged that entry of women in the Sabarimala temple for which there was a law passed by the state assembly. The law was not strictly imposed and women used to visit the Sabarimala temple, sometimes raking up controversy while at other without much notice. 

The first documented record of ban on entry of women in the Sabarimala temple is found in a survey by two British officials. They conducted the survey in 1820s but the report could only be published in 1890s and 1900s in two volumes. 

The report talked about the belief that Lord Ayyappa should not be visited by women of menstruating age. However, the belief did not necessarily translate into a complete ban on entry of women. 

Records have it that women from the Travancore royal family visited the Sabarimala temple. The queen of Travancore visited the Sabarimala temple in 1940s. It continued, though sporadically, till 1991. 

In 1986, a Tamil film was shot at the Sabarimala temple where actresses including Jayashree danced on a song. It led to a controversy and a fine was also imposed both on the film shooting party and the Devasam board. 

Former Karnataka minister Jayamala later claimed that she had visited the Sabarimala temple the same year. In 1995, a woman district collector visited the Sabarimala temple in order to gather first hand information from the priests and officials of the shrine. 

The matter of entry of women into the Sabarimala temple started making national headlines after a group of activists filed petitions seeking lifting of ban and quashing of the Kerala law that prohibited women from offering prayers at the Lord Ayyappa shrine.

Gandhi Must Fall hashtag in Africa, Ghana varsity demolishes Mahatma's statue

Mahatma Gandhi statue in the University of Ghana before it was pulled down following protests calling him a racist. (Photo: Twitter)

To the rest of the world, Mahatma Gandhi is an apostle of peace, non-violence and fight for the right to equality but to some activists in Africa, he is a "racist". A campaign is going on originating in West African nation Ghana to South Africa. Hashtag Gandhi Must Fall is bringing these activists together. They have claimed their first victim in a university in Ghana.

A statue of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi best known as Mahatma Gandhi has been pulled down in the University of Ghana. Indians consider Mahatma Gandhi the Father of the Nation but to activists in Ghana he was a "racist".

The demolished Statue of Mahatma Gandhi had been inaugurated by then President of India Pranab Mukherjee in June 2016. This was the first visit to Ghana by an Indian President.

But only two months after the inauguration of the Statue of Mahatma Gandhi on the campus of the University of Ghana in capital Accra, a campaign was launched in Ghana by a group of professors and students, who called Mahatma Gandhi a racist based on his initial writing in South Africa.

Before taking the cudgels against the British colonial rulers in India in 1915-16, Mahatma Gandhi had lived for 21 years in South Africa and waged a struggle for the right to equality there. During this period - 1893 to 1914, Mahatma Gandhi developed his tools - Satyagrah and Ahimsa - for struggle against the repressive colonial government.

During the period of struggle, Mahatma Gandhi also shed his own notions about racial differences and resistance to simplest of modern technology including the railways.

However, the protesting professors and students, who got enforcements from activists, rejected the evolving views of Mahatma Gandhi and singled out his initial writings to wage a war against his statue on the campus of the University of Ghana.

The inauguration of the statue of Mahatma Gandhi might also have been ill-timed. Mahatma Gandhi was being debated and protested strongly in Ghana when the statue was inaugurated in its capital two years ago.

The protests flowed from a book written by two South African authors, who quoted from the letters of Mahatma Gandhi to proclaim that the man who provided basic tenets of civil struggle to the likes of Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Martin Luther King  Jr in the US was a racist.

Two instances were most cited by the protesters. In one instance, Mahatma Gandhi in 1904 wrote to the British administration in South Africa using the word "Kaffirs" for native black people. The word was considered derogatory as a reference to the native black people. Today, this word as reference to the black people is compared with another derogatory word, "negros". Back then "kaffir" was the word used by the colonial rulers to refer to the black people in South Africa.

Two years later, in 1906, Mahatma Gandhi again used the same word to protest the treatment being meted out to the Indians living in South Africa. Mahatma Gandhi wrote, "The Boer government insulted the Indians by classing them with "kaffirs."

Protest against Mahatma Gandhi on the ground in Ghana soon found way to online campaign platform, change.org where a petition to pull down the statue was signed in large numbers. Mahatma Gandhi's quotes were circulated on social media and referred to in public meetings by the protesting activists to boost their campaign.

One of the oft-referred quotes of Mahatma Gandhi in Ghana was this: "Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness."

Finally on the intervening night of December 11 and 12, when the scores of Indians were hooked to screens watching the BJP versus Congress electoral battle in the Hindi heartland, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was uprooted from the plinth in the University of Ghana.

#GandhiMustFall - Statue of Mahatma Gandhi removed from University of Ghana campus.

Thousand of students signed a petition to get rid of it because of Gandhi's litany of racist statements against black Africans.https://t.co/so2cfCyt23 pic.twitter.com/wiZJUPDDoQ

— Tom Kavanagh (@_TomKavanagh) December 13, 2018

The Mahatma Gandhi statue was pulled down after Ghana's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration approved a petition by the university council. The government in New Delhi has not reacted to the development till the time of writing.

The successful protest against Mahatma Gandhi statue in Ghana has revived a campaign in South Africa, which withstood a similar protest in 2003-04. In South Africa, the campaign is against a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Johannesburg, near an ashram where Gandhi lived. Hashtag Gandhi Must Fall is being pushed on social media.

My alma mater, the University of #Ghana was forced to pull down a statue of #Gandhi.
It followed the #GandhiMustFall campaign by lecturers & students who accused the #Indian Independence leader of using racist terms to describe black Africans.
I took this pics early this year pic.twitter.com/Adcq3rXVR4

— Benjamin Tetteh (@benjieluv) December 13, 2018

Why BJP questioning Rahul Gandhi's gotra is a setback to ghar wapasi campaign

Congress president Rahul Gandhi at the Brahma temple at Pushkar in Rajasthan. (Photo: Twitter/@INCIndia)

India is a growing nation. Economy is growing despite GDP growth rate adjusting marks with the change of government in the name of methodology. Various institutions may look like competing and fighting with one another: RBI versus government, judiciary versus executive, CBI versus CBI or any other friction in the establishment. But there is no denying that India is a major economic and strategic global player today.

India is growing and so are its needs, requirements and demands. India needs jobs in millions. India needs wealth creation in billions of dollars. India needs speed in the justice delivery system.

Justice is not limited to judiciary only. Delay in payment of wages to an entitled one is injustice. The government not providing health facilities to the remotest hut-dweller in the country is injustice.

Partial or total denial of food, house, education, health, employment, earning, well-being and other necessities of life is injustice. Murder, theft, corruption all are injustice. Delivering justice to a victim of injustice at speed must be ensured at all costs. And, towards this end, the people of the country elect government at almost every possible level - village, district, state and national.

But when election happens justice delivery machinery, policy and promises are not the most-talked about thing in the body politic of the nation. This exactly what is happening right now. The gotra of Rahul Gandhi is the talking point. Rahul Gandhi and his Congress party are hellbent on proving that he is a Hindu, a liberal Hindu, a Brahmin Hindu, a God worshiping Hindu, a temple-going Hindu who talks about leading the Indian society of Dalits and Muslims together.

The BJP and its support system have always put a question mark over the Hindu link of Rahul Gandhi. It needs to type a few keywords in the Google search engine to create doubt in the mind of an innocent citizen and voter about the religion of Rahul Gandhi. He has been proved anything but a Hindu. Some prove him a Muslim taking his Islamic ancestry to Motilal Nehru, the real empire builder in the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Some other would want you to believe that Rahul Gandhi is a Christian having adopted the religion of his mother and got rechristened in the Catholic belief. That Rahul Gandhi is only a political name.

But is this the question that one should be asking while she or he should be worried about delivery of justice? Or, should someone actually be answering this question? But it is happening. The BJP and its support system are asking the question, and Rahul Gandhi and the Congress are supplying the answers believing that if this question is left unanswered the grand old party would not come back to power again.

So, first came temple-hopping idea and propaganda. It was followed by a janeudhari devotee of Lord Shiva. Janeu is a sacred thread that only high-class Hindu believers were once allowed to wear. Fortunately, more awareness about core Hindu philosophy renders janeu useless. One can be a devout Hindu without wearing the sacred thread.

But, Rahul Gandhi is not the one to believe in this. He would proclaim his credentials as a janeudhari - wearer (and bearer) of the sacred thread.

It doesn't seem coincidental that a close aide of Rahul Gandhi and a former Union minister announced in Rajasthan at an election rally that only Brahmins can speak about Hindu religion. He validated Rahul Gandhi's greater claim over Hinduism compared to Hindutva brand leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

While Modi calls himself a member of the backward caste, Amit Shah is broadly a baniya community member. Yogi Adityanath is a born Rajput. So, Rahul Gandhi, undoubtedly, knows more about Hinduism than all his top BJP rivals put together.

Then came his own announcement that he was a Brahmin of Kaul ancestry. By visiting the Brahma temple at Pushkar in Rajasthan, Rahul Gandhi connected himself with the near-century old tradition started by Motilal Nehru to offer prayer at this shrine. He identified himself by the same caste and gotra as of Motilal Nehru.

A gang the BJP supporters and leaders latched on the opportunity offered by Rahul Gandhi by announcing his caste and gotra. As the tradition goes, gotra of a person is determined by the gotra of his or her father. Patrilineal control has been firm over many things including gotra. Varna and its offspring, caste had been fluid in the past.

Varna was chosen by an individual according to his or her profession and status in society. Caste was rigid in comparison. But in cases of inter-caste marriages, the children got a caste lower than their father's and higher than that of their mother's. However, gotra retained its identity from the father side.

Even gotra was fluid in earlier times. We hear of nine original gotras and then their diversification in over 50. This clearly hints towards influx of people in the fold of Hinduism and their amicable accommodation in the system.

But, after a point of time - perhaps when new peoples and the old peoples did not mingle well culturally or socially, the new peoples were not granted the shade of any gotra making them an open people. So, while all Rajput sub-castes and even Gurjars have a gotra to identify with, the Parsis, the Muslims and the Christians don't have any gotra. Even those people who adopted Islam and Christianity lost their gotra by dint of conversion.

The case of Parsis is very interesting. They are perhaps the only people who have their motherland somewhere else and found exclusively in India. Still they did not get a gotra. Rahul Gandhi's paternal grandfather was a Parsi. The maternal side believed in Christianity.

Since, Rahul Gandhi's grandfather was a Parsi, he is not entitled to have a gotra, according to patrilineal tradition of gotra among Hindus. Union minister Smriti Irani recently explained it beautifully while responding to a troll on Twitter. Smriti Irani identified herself with the gotra of her father. Her children may have to face the barrage of questions that Rahul Gandhi is facing today. However, they would be in more advantageous position than Rahul Gandhi as the Congress president does not have a gotra to identify himself with on the maternal side either.

Are you nuts??? I HAVE A GOTRA. BOTH PARENTS ARE HINDU. Father’s gotra - Kaushal. Mother’s gotra - Shandilya. Since Father’s gotra Kaushal so is mine. Get a life. https://t.co/n9gxsSZRKG

— Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) November 28, 2018

To deal with the deficiency of gotra, Rahul Gandhi picked up the gotra of his grandmother, Indira Gandhi, who like Smriti Irani identified herself with the gotra of her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, the son of Motilal Nehru.

The BJP is not happy with Rahul Gandhi picking up the gotra of his grandmother, great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather. The identification makes Rahul Gandhi a real claimant on Hinduism - a Brahmin with a gotra. The argument, for the BJP, is simple that gotra is decided by the lineage of the father.

It is here that the BJP goes against its own agenda. The BJP and the RSS have always supported what is popularly known as ghar wapasi campaign. It stands for reconversion of Muslims and Christians into Hinduism. These are the people who lost their gotra and, in many cases, caste also due to their association with Islam and Christianity.

If the BJP is not willing to let people adopt a gotra and a caste under the fold of Hinduism, the ghar wapasi campaign would hit a firewall. The whole ghar wapasi campaign would soon lose its cultural reassimilation touch that the RSS keeps talking about. How can a person be a Hindu and not have a caste and gotra.

If Rahul Gandhi is a Hindu - natural or adopted, he is entitled to have a caste and gotra. If he has identified himself as a Brahmin of Dattatreya gotra (an offshoot of original Atri gotra), the BJP would do harm to itself by taking Rahul Gandhi head on over the issue. It would lose its political vantage point of supporting ghar wapasi.

Why no insurance cover to people born with defects

YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

Photo credit: Twitter/Newshunterinfo

The Delhi High Court has asked the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDAI) to "explain the reasonableness" of not granting insurance cover to people suffering from congenital anomalies.

"What is the objection to giving insurance cover to them (people suffering from congenital anomalies)," the high court asked the IRDAI to explain before the next hearing on December 17.

"Give the justification for such exclusion," the court said to the insurance regulator.

IRDAI circular of July 29, 2016 denies the Persons with Disabilities (PwD) the right to seek insurance cover for themselves on the ground that their conditions are categorised under the scope of "congenital anomalies".

Congenital anomalies are also known as birth defects caused by single gene defects, chromosomal disorders, multifactorial inheritance, environmental teratogens and micronutrient deficiencies.