September 2009

Michael Jackson’s musical message of social and political equality amongst races the world over influenced the political and social thinking of many around the world with a liberal ideology of progress, change, human emancipation and equality. Significantly, during the height of the Cold War, his song “We are the World” was popular in Eastern Europe and the USSR, to say nothing about the heart-beating popularity of his music album “Thriller” amongst the youth of these countries. Given his (…)

There is a significant sentence in the report of the Education Commission (1964-66), popularly known as the Kothari Commission: “India’s destiny is being shaped in her classrooms.” Indeed the statement of the Commission was inspired by an ideal situation in which education plays a decisive role in the development and destiny of the nation. The fact that the Commission gave the title ‘Education and Development’ to their monumental report of more than 800 pages revealed their vision of India (…)

The Professor Yash Pal Report (YPR) makes right noises about many of the inherently self-defeating practices, ideas and notions that have been the ‘ruling ideas’ of India’s higher education sector for the last four decades. The Report significantly persuades the existing university system and its ensemble of policy-makers, bureaucrats and teachers etc. to go for self-corrective measures that would redeem them from many a closure. As we go through the report, its frank and straightforward (…)

Book Review
Language and Politics in India by Asha Sarangi (ed.); Oxford University Press, New Delhi; 2009; pp. 431; Price: Rs 795.
The book under review is published as a part of a series of Readers on specific themes in Political Science and Indian Politics. It has an Introduction, three parts with 4, 3 and 4 reproductions, a select bibliography, note on foreign and Indian contributors (most of them working in foreign universities), figures list and tables. The Introduction needs some (…)

One out of a myriad Political Contest Models developed by the arcane theorists, the present one posits a sanguine and diligent comprehension of the notion of a state actor pitted against the non-state actor in a Gladiatorial contest of gargantuan proportions. This used to be a quintessential mode of analysing the arcadia of conflict zones in the international statecraft. The Model delineated a Blitzkrieg scenario, wherein the non-state actors in a given nation-state strive to assess the (…)

The concept of Social Exclusion has been on the anvil of social sciences for over a decade or so. This is mainly so due to the mobilisations of the nation-states against embedded social inequalities. In a country like India, the drives against caste-based inequities, deprivations of the tribes and religious minorities have gained steep ascendance. The main idea behind such moves is that in order to combat such exclusions, the state must create and adopt inclusive policies—acts of positive (…)

Veteran journalist G.S. Bhargava is no more. He passed away in New Delhi on Tuesday (September 23) afternoon; he was 85 and is survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter. The funeral took place at the Lodhi Road crematorium the same evening. Apart from his family members, relatives and close friends, Socialist leader Surendra Monhan and veteran journalist B.G. Verghese were among those present there to pay him their last respects.
A prominent political commentator who wrote (…)

COMMUNICATION
At a time when it is being widely realised that the displacement of farmers cultivating fertile and irrigated land should be minimised as much as possible, it is shocking that farmers cultivating nearly 650 acres of fertile, irrigated land in an agriculturally rich area of Kushinagar district (UP) are threatened by a project involving the construction of a huge statue and related activities. Social activists who have inquired into this so-called Maitreyi project have found (…)

come share a single course of gruel with me
I shall be waiting outside my hovel
not very far from where you live
to welcome you with a v sign.
come this will help you show up
a mindset that never mirrors
a faceless down-and-under like me
but don’t worry I shall keep
a clean towel ready for you
to throw up my insipid
gruel of salt and grain.
but please come by 6 in the morning
because I have to leave for work by 6.15
for if I am late I shall lose my days wages
and (…)

While the BJP’s victories in the by-elections to the State Assemblies of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand have somewhat lifted the drooping spirits of the party faithfuls, the Trinamul-Congress combine’s electoral success in ousting the Left Front from the Siliguri Municipal Corporation in West Bengal has given a further blow to the CPM in particular thus reinforcing the idea of a ‘change’ in the State’s governance. However, these are of peripheral interest at the national level. What (…)