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Another bill, which has very little to do with spending money from the Consolidated Fund of India, is being passed off as a money bill. This time, it is the National Medical Commission Bill, 2017.

The bill, which entirely centralizes medical education in India, is looking to replace the Medical Council of India with the NMC, in so far as medical education is concerned. It also seeks to enshrine the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test and Examination (NEET) into law, taking medical education almost entirely out of the hands of state governments.

Reservation policy is the weapon of last resort in Indian politics. Quite akin to a nuclear strike, it leads to an uncontrolled chain reaction; the last time this weapon was wielded by an Indian prime minister, it changed the face of Indian politics.

VP Singh sought to position himself as a messiah of backward classes via the Mandal Commission’s implementation, but his efforts were upended by emergent caste satraps like Lalu Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav and HD Devegowda.

Indian Army Chief General Bipin Rawat’s comments on homosexuality and adultery have created quite a furore.

Being a soldier and not a legally trained person, and perhaps speaking from the heart, I think what he wanted to convey was that any kind of homosexual (or heterosexual) behaviour which falls under the category of “unbecoming conduct” or is considered indecent, thereby reflecting “violation of good order and discipline”, will not be allowed, and will continue to remain punishable under military law, notwithstanding the law applicable on the civil side.

However, there are still a few things that may require clarity.

On 10 January 2018, I was on my way to the Islamabad airport in a taxi, when it was intercepted on the highway. I was almost kidnapped by armed men, who I believe are from the Pakistan Army, but I escaped at the last minute.

I have since left Pakistan, and now live in France. The military had been threatening me for a few years for my journalistic work, and I was told that the next time they come for me, they’d kill me.

I was lucky to escape the country, but my journalist colleagues in Pakistan haven’t been as fortunate. The situation for the press has only worsened under the new Imran Khan-led regime, whose political party came into power in July 2018, and is considered close to the army.

Watch Taapsee Pannu felicitate 10 feisty first-time women voters from across India on 17 January 2019 LIVE only on The Quint and Quint Hindi.

“Rohith was my inspiration. He was the first generation in my family to come to PhD level. But we lost him to this caste-based system in India. Because of this BJP, because of this RSS, because of this ABVP,” Raja Vemula says in this interview with The Quint.

It’s a familiar script. A government headed towards elections makes a bold proposal for extending reservation to a group that doesn’t yet have it, and then after the elections, the proposal falls by the wayside or gets struck down.

We’ve seen it in 1996 when the government sought to extend SC status to the Scheduled Caste converts to Christianity, and we’ve seen it in 2014 when the government notified Jats as OBC in 9 states.

The Lok Sabha debate on the Rafale jet deal inked by the Modi government was widely seen as a face-off between Congress President Rahul Gandhi and the BJP’s trouble-shooter and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Though the discussion followed a familiar trajectory, with charges and counter-charges flying thick and fast, the acrimonious and noisy exchange threw up some welcome surprises for the Congress president.