In sharp and focused criticism of the government’s new rural employment scheme, which he says is mistaken and misleadingly called a guarantee, Nikhil Dey, a founder member of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, says it has “completely demolished the idea of a rural employment guarantee scheme”.

It's time for our end-of-year tradition, an interview where Karan Thapar is the interviewee and is toughly or teasingly questioned by an interviewer we have invited on the show. On this occasion the guest interviewer is the highly popular YouTuber, journalist, radio jockey and political satirist Akash Banerjee, in the avatar of Bhakt Banerjee.

Chairman of Cerg Advisory and economist Omkar Goswami has said that IndiGo, which controls nearly 66% of domestic air travel and on many routes is the only airline flying, has become too big to regulate. As Goswami put it: “When one player accounts for almost two-thirds of the passenger market and when it’s often the only carrier to many airports, the shoe is firmly on IndiGo’s foot. Not the governments, irrespective of what the DGCA may claim …IndiGo has become too big to regulate. It effectively calls the shots.”

Professor of history Mridula Mukherjee, who taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University and is a former director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, says Prime Minister Modi was “economical with the truth” in his Vande Mataram speech in the Lok Sabha on Monday when he accused Jawaharlal Nehru of removing stanzas from Vande Mataram under pressure to appease Jinnah and thus put the country on what the PM called the path of “appeasement politics” that ultimately led to partition. Mukherjee says he is guilty of “not placing facts on the table as they should be”.

Author and columnist Tavleen Singh has said that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is “a tyrant, a dictator, a despot and a monster”. She called his invasion of Ukraine “evil”. She says Prime Minister Modi has damaged his image with the gushing and effusive welcome he accorded President Putin last week. She also said that by welcoming Putin as a hero, India has let itself down and undermined what it stands for.

Former ambassador to the United States of America, who also served in Washington during the first Trump presidency, says that President Trump has “broken” India’s trust in America and skepticism is back. Navtej Sarna says the optimism that used to prevail in the relationship, what he calls “the positive unquestionable narrative”, is no longer true and no longer holds.

Both Justice Madan Lokur, a former judge of the Supreme Court, and Dushyant Dave, a well-known lawyer and a former President of the Supreme Court Bar Association, have strongly criticised the Supreme Court’s advisory opinion given in response to the presidential reference on how Governors and the President should handle legislation. Both believe that the advisory opinion is not well-thought through and will add to the confusion. Both gentlemen also believe that if Governors start taking interminable time to pass legislation, it will place India’s federalism in danger. Both men also believe that the Supreme Court should not have entertained the presidential reference seeking an advisory opinion.

Defending her paper, The Kashmir Times, its Executive Editor, Anuradha Bhasin, has said that the litany of charges brought against her paper by the Special Investigation Agency of the Jammu and Kashmir police, when it raided the paper on Thursday, are “absolutely false, absolutely fabricated”. She said reports that several arms and weapons were found in the newspaper’s premises are “completely fabricated”. She suggested that this claim has been trumped up to provide an excuse for the raid. Amongst other things the paper has been accused of disseminating terrorist and secessionist ideology; spreading inflammatory, fabricated and false narratives; disturbing peace and public order and challenging the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India.