Red corridors of Naxalism transformed into green corridors of development: PM Modi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation on Independence Day. He stated that Naxal-affected "red corridors" have become "green corridors" due to development in the last 11 years. Earlier, over 125 districts were affected by Naxalism. Now, the number has reduced to 20. The government served tribal communities. Bastar now sees sports instead of Naxalism.
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Hindustan Times
26 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Interacting with judicial candidates helpful: CJI
Chief Justice of India (CJI) Bhushan R Gavai on Friday described the collegium's recent practice of personally interacting with candidates being considered for high court appointments as 'really helpful,' saying that even a brief 10-15 minute conversation can reveal how suitable a nominee would be in contributing to society. Chief Justice of India Bhushan Gavai visited his alma mater, Chikitsak Samuh's school in Girgaon, in Mumbai, on July 6. (Ayushman Poyrekar/HT Photo) Speaking at the Supreme Court complex during Independence Day celebrations, the CJI underlined that the exercise, revived in December 2024 and now firmly embedded in the appointments process, has strengthened the collegium's ability to assess candidates' temperament, outlook and commitment beyond what can be gleaned from service records or paper credentials. 'In our opinion, after interaction with them for 10-15 minutes, or half an hour, we can find out as to how suitable they will be to contribute to society,' he said, noting that the practice was initiated during Justice Sanjiv Khanna's tenure as CJI and has been continued under his leadership. The latest round in July saw the collegium, comprising CJI Gavai and justices Surya Kant and Vikram Nath, meet more than 50 judicial officers and lawyers over just two days, setting a record for the highest number of face-to-face interactions in one go for high court appointments. Candidates were considered for the high courts of Madhya Pradesh, Punjab & Haryana, Patna, Rajasthan and others. According to people familiar with the process, the trio, who include the next two CJIs in line, asked wide-ranging questions on constitutional values, pressing legal issues, ethics and institutional responsibility. This model, the CJI on Friday said, reflected the collegium's awareness of the need to evolve and adopt all measures required to enhance the efficiency and transparency of the judges' selection mechanism. Responding to Supreme Court Bar Association president Vikas Singh's call for a body to collate names of potential appointees to the constitutional courts, the CJI stressed that several lawyers practising in the apex court had in recent years been appointed to various high courts and that more such recommendations were in the pipeline. While the Supreme Court collegium could suggest names to high court collegiums, the first call, he emphasised, lay with the latter. 'The Supreme Court is not a superior court to the high court. Both are constitutional courts… Therefore, the first call has to be taken by the high court collegium. We only recommend the names… and only after their satisfaction do the names come to the Supreme Court,' he said. The revival of in-person interactions last December followed a controversy over judicial conduct involving Justice Shekhar Kumar Yadav of the Allahabad High Court, whose communal remarks at a public event earlier that month drew widespread criticism. At the time, the collegium, then led by Justice Khanna and including justices Gavai and Kant, saw such interviews as a way to ensure a more holistic understanding of a candidate's suitability. Union minister for law and justice Arjun Ram Meghwal, attorney general R Venkataramani, SCBA vice-president and senior advocate Rahul Kaushik and SCBA secretary Pragya Baghel were also present at the event. In the second half of his speech, CJI Gavai turned to the role of the judiciary in protecting constitutional ideals. He called on judges to interpret laws in ways that 'expand freedom, protect the rights of the marginalized, and strengthen the rule of law,' and urged both judges and lawyers to carry forward the legacy of the freedom struggle's legal luminaries, who 'argued fearlessly, challenged injustice, and defended the rights of the vulnerable.' He invoked a vision of India where 'no child is denied education because of her caste or poverty,' no woman 'walks in fear, by day or by night,' and 'no citizen is too small to be heard.' Judges, he stressed, bore the solemn duty not just to apply the law but to 'actively uphold and embody' liberty, equality, and fraternity. 'Our history teaches us that the struggle for freedom was not only a political movement but also a moral and legal endeavour…This legacy must guide the lawyers of today,' said the CJI, urging legal professionals to recognise that even seemingly minor disputes may carry deep implications for life, dignity or survival. Ends
Hindustan Times
26 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Digital independence is the next step for the India story
Yesterday we celebrated freedom. The speeches were stirring, indicating India's time had come. And yet, in the real world where our economy now lives, inside racks of servers, lines of code, and foreign-owned systems, the picture is less about sovereignty and more about how easily the rules can be changed on us. Illustration of social media concept Two weeks in this space, I wrote about Microsoft pulling the plug on Nayara Energy. A decision taken in another country, quietly yanked control away from a major Indian company. No troops crossed borders. No sanctions were announced. Just a click somewhere far away, and the lights went out here. If that sounded like an isolated incident, it wasn't. In India's data centres, a friend in the software business pointed to a software from VMware that has been quietly running the show for years. It lets one physical server behave like many smaller ones, squeezing far more work out of the same machine. Operators bought it on perpetual licences. Pay once and run it as long as the hardware lived. Budgets were planned on that certainty. Then VMware got acquired. The new owner announced the old licences would no longer get support. From now on, you had to renew every year. The machines hadn't changed. The work hadn't changed. Only the rules had. 'It's like paying off on your house and being told one morning you now have to rent it from someone else,' said the aforementioned friend. You can't move house. You can't build a new one overnight. You just start paying. These are the visible dependencies, the ones that show up as invoices, blocked accounts, higher bills. But there's a quieter layer that's harder to see. Artificial intelligence, now woven into banking, farming, retail, and governance, arrives with the cultural DNA of where it was built. On paper, the top AI models can speak in dozens of languages. In practice, they think in one. That's not a conspiracy theory. It's how systems are trained. The logic, the assumptions, the frames of reference are imported along with the code. And here's the kicker: India generates nearly 20 per cent of the world's data but has the capacity to store just three per cent. Imagine a dam filled to the brim but with a release pipe barely wide enough for a garden hose. The overflow is simply routed elsewhere. In tech speak, to servers we don't own. None of this would matter if the global game was balanced. It isn't. Interdependence works only when both sides need each other equally. In our case, the dependency is often one-way. Tariffs on goods might sound irrelevant to IT, but they ripple outwards. Inflation rises, American clients trim budgets. In certain industries like textiles, gems and jewellery, orders from India are being shifted to Bangladesh and Vietnam to dodge duties. In tech, the shift is quieter: contracts are being rewritten, compliance costs are climbing, margins are getting squeezed. Yet, on Independence Day, we tell ourselves the digital powerhouse story. But power is not the same as independence. Kavi Arasu, a colleague who has spent years thinking deeply about this, described this imbalance using the lens of Indian languages. Imagine if your education system taught you to speak a language fluently, but never to think in it. You'd always be translating in your head, bending your thoughts to fit someone else's grammar. You could function, even excel. But your mind would be living in borrowed space. That's what happens when your digital infrastructure, your data, and your tools are designed elsewhere. His point is, it's time we start building our infrastructure and tools to work on our data. This is why the day after Independence Day matters. It's the day we remember that political freedom was just the first step. Economic liberalisation was another. Now we need digital sovereignty—the ability to keep working even if decisions in a faraway boardroom turn against us. That means storing far more of what we generate. Building AI that don't just speak Indian languages, but also thinks in them. These can negotiate contracts with the expectation that rules will change; and create back-ups for when the plug is pulled. The next VMware-style shift or Microsoft-Nayara moment won't come with warning. And when it does, there won't be flag-hoisting ceremonies or speeches to rally us. Just the quiet sound of systems stopping, and the sudden knowledge that somewhere, far away, someone else just decided how free we really are. This is why it is time to get past the notion that Independence Day is a date. It is a discipline we apply in the digital world with the same seriousness that we use to guard borders. Else, we risk turning the 15th into mere theatre.
Indian Express
26 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Opposition targets PM on RSS praise: ‘Insult to freedom struggle, shameful'
The opposition on Thursday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for praising the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) in his Independence Day address. Terming the speech 'stale, hypocritical, insipid, and troubling', Congress general secretary, communications, Jairam Ramesh said the PM mentioned the RSS since he was 'decisively weakened' after the 2024 Lok Sabha results and was 'reliant on (RSS chief) Mohan Bhagwat's good offices for the extension of his tenure'. 'The most troubling element of the PM's speech today was his name-checking of the RSS from the ramparts of the Red Fort — a blatant breach of the spirit of a constitutional, secular republic. It is nothing but a desperate attempt to appease the organisation in the run-up to his (PM's) 75th birthday next month,' Ramesh posted on X. 'This politicisation of Independence Day for personal and organisational gain is deeply corrosive to our democratic ethos,' he said, adding, 'The PM was tired today. Soon he will be retired.' Congress's media and publicity department head Pawan Khera said the PM's speech was 'not of uniting but breaking India'. 'By naming the Sangh from the Red Fort, the PM has insulted Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Babasaheb Ambedkar, the Constitution of India and the Indian tricolour,' Khera said on X. Modi on Friday hailed 100 years of RSS as a 'very proud and glorious' journey of the 'world's biggest NGO' and lauded all its volunteers for their dedicated service to the nation. The BJP, on its part, said the PM had spoken about the Sangh to commemorate its 100th year. 'In 1963, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to join the Republic Day parade and called it 'an organisation of patriots…' As the RSS marks 100 years, it is fitting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentions it from the Red Fort,' said BJP IT and media cell chief Amit Malviya. The BJP also questioned the absence of Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi at the Independence Day celebrations at Red Fort. Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav took a veiled dig at the RSS after it was lauded by the PM, saying 'it should congratulate the British on the completion of its 100 years'. 'The BJP itself had resolved to follow the path of secularism. The RSS ideology does not align with secularism… On this completion of 100 years, they should congratulate the British. Because we have heard and some historians have also written that some organisations were made by the British so that 'Bharat' could be divided on religious lines…,' he said. CPI (M) general secretary M A Baby accused Modi of 'dishonouring the memory of India's martyrs and the spirit of our freedom movement' by lauding the RSS. 'This is profoundly unacceptable and shameful,' he said in a post on X. '… it is deeply regrettable that Prime Minister Modi…chose to praise the RSS — an organisation with a dubious historical record,' Baby said. AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi said 'glorifying the RSS in an Independence Day speech is an insult' to the freedom struggle. 'They (RSS) never joined the fight for Independence and hated Gandhi more than they ever opposed the British… RSS rejects the values of inclusive nationalism that motivated our freedom fighters,' he said. 'The ideology of Hindutva believes in exclusion and is antithetical to the values of our Constitution. Modi could have gone to Nagpur to praise RSS as a Swayamsevak, why did he have to do it from the Red Fort as the Prime Minister,' he asked. RJD MP Manoj Kumar Jha accused PM Modi of having spoken from a perspective of 'dog-whistling and politics', having 'distorted history' and 'negated the foundation' on which the country was built. 'Dog-whistling, politics…it does not behove you even during elections; but when you…spread lies from the ramparts of the Red Fort, legitimise hatred and enmity…it is an opportunity for you, Pradhan Mantri ji, to introspect where we have reached from 'A tryst with destiny…'' he said. The Trinamool Congress accused the Prime Minister of using his I-Day address to target 'infiltrators' as a 'new enemy'. 'After Andolanjeevis etc now 'infiltrators' are the new target. Again, new 'missions' announced while targeting past governments. When will Modi give an August 15 speech truthfully, addressing his own record of 11 years marked by over-promising and under-achieving,' TMC Rajya Sabha deputy leader Sagarika Ghose posted on X. The Congress reiterated its concerns over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar among other issues such as unemployment, 'open misuse' of constitutional bodies and investigative agencies over the last decade under the BJP. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge credited the party's 'visionary leaders' for having laid the foundation for a strong India and accused the BJP of being 'ready to stoop to any level of immorality to stay in power'. 'Large-scale irregularities in elections are coming to light. Under the guise of SIR, opposition voters are being openly removed from the rolls,' he said.
