Express 5: UPA Nehru vs NDA Nehru; Notes of a Jihadi

READ MORE: UPA Nehru vs NDA Nehru: The battle begins

2. Dark Bihar
There has been a remarkable spurt in violent crimes against Dalit communities in Bihar this year. The numbers since 2005 are bad enough — 32,395 cases of atrocities till this August — but it’s the 10,681 cases in the past 20 months that point to an alarming uptrend. It gets worse from this January to August: 4,322 cases, including 361 cases under the Prevention of Atrocities against SC/ST, the highest in the past nine years
READ MORE: Dark days of violence on Dalits return to haunt Bihar

3.Intellectual Jihadi

Coca-Cola’s bright red logo, splashed across half a page. That’s the image that screams out from the dense exegesis on global jihad that is Maulana Asim Umar’s book Blackwater: The Army of Antichrist. Just below is the logo again, this time as its mirror image. “Look,” writes the cleric who heads al-Qaeda’s branch in the Indian subcontinent, “it reads, ‘Without Muhammad’, and ‘Without Mecca’.” Maulana Umar’s writing, arguably the largest body of intellectual work by a South Asian jihadist, does not contain exhortations to become suicide bombers, or to behead unbelievers. Instead, it calls for the dismemberment of the modern world itself.

READ MORE: Notes of a Jihadi

4.Debt Plane

In the privileged life of a professional international cricketer (or for that matter, any other sportsperson), everything from their travel arrangements to accommodation is taken care of. Their only job is to play cricket. So when such a situation as the one concerning the West Indian players arises, even routine may seem like rocket science.

READ MORE: Leaving on a debt plane

 
5.Big Picture

Year after year, Pratham’s Annual Survey of Education Report, or ASER, tells us about children who go to school but can’t read or do basic math. This year, as ASER volunteers fan out across 570 rural districts, Uma Vishnu visits a village in Rampur, a district in UP with some of the worst learning levels in the country, to see what it is to read.

READ MORE: Big Picture: Read me a story