Making sense of breaking stories
Pakistan launches offensive against Taliban, new anti-terror policy to follow
Two days after the ghastly attack on an army-run school in Peshawar, Pakistan has resumed its war against the Taliban. The Pakistan military launched 20 air strikes killing 57 terrorists in Khyber Agency's Tirah Valley. Pakistan's main intention is to break the back of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which was behind the Peshawar attack. Islamabad is also seeking the handover of TTP chief Mullah Fazalullah, a demand which Pakistan Army chief General Raheel Sharif raised during his visit to Kabul recently. The Pakistan government is planning to prepare a new anti-terror policy in a week's time. Though interior minister Chaudhry Nisar has been asked to seek the inputs of various political parties for his policy, knowing the nature of the Pakistani state, the policy would largely reflect the views of the military establishment. The moot issue here is: will the policy and Pakistan's war on terror remain restricted to anti-Taliban operations in its western border or will it be extended to anti-India groups operating out of Punjab and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir?
Conversion row can cut both ways
The controversial "conversion" of 57 Muslims in Agra by an RSS-affiliated organisation recently might have given the opposition a stick to beat the BJP with, but the issue can just as easily backfire. The BJP wants to divert the discussion from the Agra incident to a larger debate on conversion itself, as was evident in Union parliamentary affairs minister M Venkaiah Naidu's proposal that there should be a law against conversion. Such a law would give the BJP a weapon against Christian missionaries as well as Muslim and Buddhist proselytising groups. The issue here isn't conversion or proselytisation, which any individual is free to do so. What happened in Agra is conversion through fraudulent means, against which there need to be safeguards.
Nothing new in India's request to Islamabad
It is difficult to understand the purpose behind Union parliamentary affairs minister M Venkaiah Naidu's comment that Pakistan must hand over Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed and fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim to India, if it is indeed serious about fighting terror. Such requests have been made by India repeatedly, both during the BJP government as well as the UPA government, and were conveniently ignored by Pakistan. Therefore one doesn't quite get what Naidu is trying to achieve by reiterating this. Yes, India needs to hold Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif accountable for the promise he made after the Peshawar attack: that his government would eliminate each and every terrorist from Pakistan. India needs to impress upon Sharif that this war against terror needs to be applied to anti-India terrorists such as Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar. Asking for them to be handed, that too by the parliamentary affairs minister and not the external affairs minister, makes for a good news byte and nothing else.
Big B rules, even in the Twitter age
"Hum jahaan khade hote hain, line wahiin se shuru hoti hai." Amitabh Bachchan's immortal dialogue from Deewar is as true now as it was when the film came out nearly four decades ago. Big B is still number one. Leaving behind all other actors in the film industry, Bachchan has been ranked number one on Twitter, in terms of both popularity and activity. In an analytics report of the most popular Bollywood stars on the social networking site, Big B with 12 million followers on Twitter topped the popularity list. Digital services provider 'TO THE NEW' rated various Bollywood celebrities on the basis of their popularity and their engagement with fans on Twitter. 72-year-old Bachchan is followed by superstar Shah Rukh Khan (10.4 million followers) at number two. With an average of 20 tweets, re-tweets and replies per day, Bachchan also came out as the most active one among all.