Journalist, Editor, Writer I Print/digital newsroom leadership for over three decades I Krika Cottage I "No rest for the weary"
New Delhi, India
Joined May 2009
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"If you don't see what's behind that which you see
You're as blind as blind can be"
Tirukkural, 355
Sunit Arora retweeted
Last week, a school friend returned a book he had borrowed fifty-six years ago.
Sunit Arora retweeted
A beautiful old staircase inside Mumbai’s City Sessions Court. Loved the arched window and the wooden railing. A little piece of old Mumbai.
Sunit Arora retweeted
Two days to go and 90% of the seats are gone …. Here is your last chance to watch Sandhya Gokhale’s new play ‘Silhouettes’ with Amol Palekar in Delhi on Oct 26. The performance is a fundraiser for @thewire_in …. events.thewire.in/ticket/
Sunit Arora retweeted
AEB a controversial safety feature because of sudden, heart-stopping applications that can get you rear ended. Calibrating AEB systems for low-speed chaotic Indian conditions has been a challenge that needs to be overcome before AEB becomes mandatory
.@MORTHIndia has proposed making Advanced Emergency Braking Systems (AEBS) mandatory for all cars from October 2032.
Tap below for more info: autocarindia.com/industry/mo…
Sunit Arora retweeted
Members of three Christian families were allegedly assaulted inside their homes by people identified by the victims and witnesses as members of the Bajrang Dal. The women were allegedly beaten, their clothes torn and some of them stripped to the point of partial nudity. Minor girls were not spared either, the families alleged.
The incident, an attempt at religious persecution, took place in Patlapur village, under Chandrakona police station in West Bengal's Paschim Medinipur district, amid the Durga Puja festivities. The families said they faced sustained attacks and intimidation over three consecutive days.
Madhu Sudhan Chatterjee reports from Chandrakona in West Bengal
m.thewire.in/article/communa… via @thewire_In
Sunit Arora retweeted
Short form video killed my species, and it wasn't even good
Humanity was raptured by the most mid slop imaginable
noahpinion.blog/p/maybe-the-…
Sunit Arora retweeted
India’s economy is apparently booming... just don’t ask the unemployed graduate, the indebted household, the struggling small business or the fleeing foreign investor. GDP growth has become the government’s success story, sharing its benefits remains someone else’s problem.
Sunit Arora retweeted
Emergency is Back! @instagram Account of a Prominent Cartoonist @satishacharya is currently restricted in India. Wah @narendramodi Wah!
Emergency is back ! RT @medianama Twitter Deletes Political Cartoons Posted By DNA Cartoonist @MANJULtoons goo.gl/fb/61Inl
Sunit Arora retweeted
This ties in with our study and concerns about usurious app loans and payday loans ! @RBI is sleeping!!
Piramal Finance Management Flagged an Emerging Risk in the Gold Loan Industry
One of the most interesting comments from the Q2FY27 concall was around the quality of gold loan borrowers across the industry
Management highlighted that around 15-23% of industry gold loan disbursements over the last year have reportedly gone to borrowers who were already 90+ DPD on another live loan
That is a surprisingly high number
Another important trend:
- Two years ago, only 20-25% of customers across Piramal's portfolio had an active gold loan elsewhere
- Today, that number has increased to >35% across every product category
Khela hobo 👇🏽
Election Commission's own software contains a lock written for one state, and only one - West Bengal.
An independent audit of the Commission's portal ECINET, reported by @htTweets has found a feature that can bar Electoral Registration Officers and Assistant EROs, only in West Bengal, from two critical functions:
🔹Reviewing voters' enumeration forms
🔹Viewing the notice and hearing dashboard
Officers in every other state have access to both. The audit found no such exclusion anywhere else in India.
The audit was carried out by the civic-tech initiative Charchagram. Its data scientist Saurav Rajput examined ECINET's publicly served code on October 2, 6, 7 and 9. The feature was still there in code fetched as recently as October 19.
In his words: West Bengal is separately hard-coded in the codebase & excluded from it (for ERO and AERO).
Understand what is at stake.
The enumeration form page holds each voter's details - name, voter ID, who submitted the form, the documents uploaded & the booth level officer's recommendation. It holds the ERO/AERO-Document & Hearing-Order files, along with the buttons to send a form back to the BLO or flag it.
The notice & hearing dashboard is where notices are tracked and hearings processed. It is where the decision is made about who stays on the roll and who is removed.
Under the law, the ERO is the officer responsible for preparing and revising the electoral roll. If ECINET can shut Bengal's EROs out of the forms & the hearings, the country has a right to know who would be reviewing them instead.
On September 24, the Election Commission told the country that ECINET is a decentralised platform and that nobody else can perform their statutory function on ECINet, including any other officer of ECI.
If only EROs and AEROs can perform these functions, and the code can bar Bengal's EROs and AEROs from the forms and the hearings, then the Commission's two claims cannot both stand.
Now look at the timeline -
🔹September 26: After two Election Commissioners raised objections, the Commission set up a committee to examine whether ECINET complies with the law, following complaints that control of electoral rolls had been centralised.
🔹September 28: Bengal exception has existed in the code at least since this date.
🔹October 16: A new build of the app is introduced. Bengal exception is still in it.
🔹October 19: The exception is still present in the live code.
While the Commission said it was examining whether its system had been centralised, the code continued to treat one state differently from every other.
When Hindustan Times sent the Election Commission a questionnaire, it did not respond.
Nation demands-
🔹Explain why ECINET's code contains a West Bengal-only exclusion for EROs and AEROs.
🔹Name who ordered this code to be written & when.
🔹Disclose whether this restriction has ever been switched on, in which constituencies, and for how long.
🔹Reveal who reviewed Bengal's enumeration forms and hearings during any period the restriction was active.
🔹Publish ECINET's access rules and access logs, and place the portal before an independent technical audit with the findings made public.
Code does not write itself. A hard coded exception for one state is a deliberate choice & someone made it. The Election Commission must tell nation who made that choice & why.
From Karnataka's "dead" voters to Delhi's "untraceable" citizens & now a Bengal only exception in the Commission's own software, the same question keeps coming up: who is really in control of India's voter rolls?
The vote belongs to the people, not to whoever controls the code.
hindustantimes.com/india-new…
Sunit Arora retweeted
But why do they have to read books when they can just read the WA forwards and listen to 56" monkey baat?
Sunit Arora retweeted
Disenfranchisement is real - Jean Dreze and Yogendra Yadav respond to Surjit Bhalla and set the facts straight on SIR.
Sunit Arora retweeted
Made in Kurla - Fiat/ Premier Padmini is now a part of classic collections. #CarCultureinMumbai
Sunit Arora retweeted
Protests don't define the state of a democracy as much as the response of the government to the protests does.
Important:
Here’s something that a LOT of people don’t know about what’s actually going on with Delhi Police.
CJP’s Saurav Das & Ashutosh Ranka have been sent to 2 more days of judicial custody in Tihar Jail.
By a judicial court? NO.
They have been kept in Tihar Jail for the last 6 days on the order of a Special Executive Magistrate (SEM).
Who is an SEM? He is an ACP-rank (junior) police officer of Delhi Police appointed by the state govt.
Therefore, Delhi Police arrested Saurav & Ashutosh & now a Delhi Police ACP (acting as SEM) is keeping them in jail.
There’s no FIR against them. There’s also no judicial order.
Delhi Police are the accusers & well as the judge when it comes to keeping them in jail.
That’s how messed up it is.
Sunit Arora retweeted
@svaradarajan’s response to @KanwalSibal is civil, empirical and reasonable which is more than anyone can say for anything this diplomat-turned-troll emits online.
As a person well versed with the United Nations system, and better informed about the structure and mandates of its various organs than most of us, you know that the UN Human Rights Council and the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner deal with human rights violations (ohchr.org/en/about-us/mandat…) and not with terrorism per se. That responsibility lies with the UN Security Council, I imagine, and the UN Secretary General and General Assembly. In fact, the UNHRC mandate includes ensuring that counter-terrorism does not lead to the violation of human rights ( ohchr.org/en/special-procedu…). One may agree or disagree with this mandate but it is not of Navi Pillay's making but of the UNGA resolution of 2006 which India supported. (press.un.org/en/2006/ga10449…)
Under the circumstances, it would have been quite extraordinary for Pillay, as UN Human Rights Commissioner, to have condemned Pakistan for terrorism in 2008. In fact, while most countries condemned the attacks themselves, and many urged Pakistan to investigate/crack down/act against terrorist groups, I cannot recall countries (even those close to India) which "condemned Pakistan" for 26/11.
In any case, if we were to consider every world leader who did not condemn Pakistan for terrorism to be persons who "target india" or are "anti-India" – your yardstick for judging Navi Pillay – then, post-Sindoor, I'm afraid that would mean pretty much every country and every world leader is anti-India. And I don't think you would like to say that.
Finally, you quote Navi Pillay as saying: "Whenever there is an act of terrorism, one points fingers at neighbouring countries, thereby absolving oneself of all responsibility... Terrorists need not be from outside; they can be home grown. When you accuse others, you fail to take steps to correct the problem at home."
Could you please share the source of this quote because I failed to locate any document on the Internet which establishes that Navi Pillay actually said this. In fact, the words you attribute to her are part of an op-ed the Indian 'godman' Sri Sri Ravi Shankar wrote for The Hans India in 2019! Here is the link so you can condemn him instead of Pillay for saying this: thehansindia.com/life-style/….
Navi Pillay visited India in 2009, at the invitation of the National Human Rights Commission, an Indian constitutional body and she delivered a wide-ranging lecture. (nhrc.nic.in/media/press-rele…) The reference she made to the Mumbai terrorist attacks would, I imagine, not be what you might have said had they asked you to speak but can hardly be called the words of someone who is "against India":
"Both internal and external terrorist threats have led to counter-terrorist measures that put human rights at risk. The horrific terrorist attack in Mumbai has also polarized society and risks stoking suspicions against the Muslim community. It is imperative to counter violent religious extremism of any kind by insisting on peaceful coexistence, tolerance and acceptance of diversity."
In the end, I would like to say that the case you have made out for why the GOI is right to refuse to congratulate Navi Pillay for the Nobel Peace Prize just does not add up.
Might I suggest @narendramodi's real reason for keeping quiet despite his eagerness to congratulate the achievement of overseas Indians has everything to do with Pillay's stellar work exposing Israel's genocide in Gaza? (thewire.in/world/what-lies-b…)
And do watch her interview where she explains the evidentiary basis for the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide : xitter.cf/maynard_nick/status/21…
Sunit Arora retweeted
🕉️ TVS thalaiva Venu Srinivasan is a "large contributor to temple restoration in Tamil Nadu"
🕉️ "This has brought him into close contact with the RSS"
🕉️ "Modi govt had awarded him the Padma Bhushan in 2020"
@FT adds a saffron tint to the forces destroying Tata Parivar👇🏾
Surprised at how easily TVS thalaiva Venu Srinivasan could betray Ratan Tata's trust, and stab his half-brother Noel Tata in the front?
Don't be.
The @livemint expose of how he shortchanged his own daughter Lakshmi Venu is even more chilling.👇🏾 @varunstweets @satishjohn
