Past & Politics

India has seen 14 Presidents since its independence in 1947. Unlike the post of Prime Minister, the incumbents to the highest office of the republic has successfully upheld India's deep seated admiration for secularism and equality. The post has been held by luminaries and well regarded individuals beginning from Dr Rajendra Prasad, Dr S Radhakrishnan, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam and even Pranab Mukherjee. However, being a de jure position, each incumbent had settled his role and defined his boundaries quite differently as compared to his successors or predecessors. To examine the roles of each President would be a lengthy affair and I do not consider myself worthy to attempt such a daunting task. However something that recently caught my attention is the stark resemblance of an occupant who was once in this office nearly 50 years back and the current occupant of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Since 1950, Raisina Hill was home to fourteen individuals each of who conducted themselves ve...

Described as the largest miscarriages of justice in the UK, the Horizons Sub-Postmaster Scandal is one of the most intriguing occurrences of failure of technology in recent times yeilding cataclysmic results on the lives of hundreds. The story goes back to 1999, when Post Office Limited introduced the Horizons computer system developed by the Japanese MNC Fujitsu for tasks like transactions, accounting and stocktaking. Since it's inauguration two decades back, several sub-postmasters complained of bugs in the whole system that led to discrepancies in accounting and reported shortfalls amounting to thousands of pounds. The situation was so desperate that sometimes postmasters had to pour in their own money to reimburse the shortfalls in counting these huge ammounts of money and had to even remortgage their homes as a result. A Campaign organised by the Support Our Sub-postmasters Association. Many of the wrongly convicted came under these umbrella associations for seekin...