2010

by Pravesh Kumar
Naxalism has been branded as a serious problem for national security by various intellectuals and the media. The Planning Commission of India has also highlighted this as a serious problem with regard to India’s national security, growth and development. On the other hand, there is another section of society who thinks Naxalism is a social movement against the rampant social exclusions of the have nots. It is the fight of the poor, discriminated and the marginalised Indian (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS The following report by Nikhil Chakravartty, the Calcutta correspondent of People’s Age (published from Bombay), appeared in the weekly’s August 24, 1947 issue (it was wired from Calcutta on August 17, 1947) under the following headlines : ‘End of a Nightmare and Birth of New Dawn!’; ‘Calcutta Transformed by Spirit Of Independence’; ‘Hindus, Muslims Hug Each Other In Wild Joy—Tears Roll Down Where Blood Once Soaked The Streets’. We are reproducing it on the occasion of (…)

Tempus fugit. Time flies. And how! I was completely taken aback on being reminded by Sumit that the tenth death anniversary of Nikhilda will fall on June 27. “No, it cannot be,” I protested. “Not ten years already.” “Yes, yes,”said Sumit, “it is, it is.”
It is unbelievable that ten years have passed since we lost Nikhilda. Yet, in its rapid sweep, Time has devoured those years and completely overshadowed an event which when it occurred deeply saddened a number of people whose lives had (…)

by N.S. Jagannathan
My acquaintance with Nikhil Chakravartty began in the mid-sixties when I was working with The Hindustan Times. Mainstream had just been launched and my Leftist friends had introduced me to the journal and, a little later, to Nikhil himself. He had not yet become the father figure he had since, and even though I was much younger to him, pride would not let me address him as ‘Nikhilda’ as others had even then started to do. He was still a distant figure to me, though (…)

From the end of the 1950s, Delhi became India’s densest journalistic jungle. The transplantation there of a wholly Bombay phenomenon like Frank Moraes was a pointer to the inexorability of the process. No one will understand the economics of newspaper proliferation in Delhi. What is clear to all is that by the end of the Nehru era, the Capital of India had more journalists per square inch than any other city in the country.
Among them were stars. Inevitably, some twinkled by pretension. (…)

by Hiranmay Karlekar
It is only with time that the magnitude of the void created by Nikhil Chakravartty’s passing becomes clear to some of us. Initially, we took the news with resignation; sorrow was tempered by the realisation that he was terminally ill and it was a matter of time. Gradually, however, the implications of the loss to India’s factured media of perhaps its most commanding moral presence begin to gnaw. Whose sober counsel, whose voice of wisdom stemming from a non-negotiable (…)

The drone attacks on the Afghan-Pak border killing civilians and terror alert in Europe fairly strongly link up with terror attacks by Mend in Nigeria, raising of the terror threat alert from red to scarlet in France and the stone-pelting youths and their consequent deaths in the Kashmir Valley inviting the all-party farcical visit to Srinagar. All these may have to deal with foreign policy and domestic policy. The level of violence is much deeper than the unprece-dented violence shown in (…)

The movement initiated by the ‘Campaign for Information and Employment (Suchna Evum Rogjar Adhikar Abhiyan—SERAA)’ in Rajasthan has the potential to benefit millions, even crores, of poorest people not only in Rajasthan but eventually all over India.
The ‘yatra’ and people’s contact programme of this movement started in September with the predominant demand for increasing the minimum wage rate for workers. The State Government had last notified the minimum wage rate at Rs 100 per day for (…)

BOOK REVIEW
by Raj Kumar Sen
Economics of River Flows: Lessons from Dam Removals in America by Bharat Jhunjhunwala (ed.); Kalpaz Publications, Delhi; pp. 311; Rs 750.
This book under review attracts the attention of its readers from the pictures on its front and back covers. These are respectively of the Embrey Dam in operation, the Embrey Dam being removed, and the Rappahannock River flowing freely after removal of the dam. In a nutshell these three pictures tell the story of what (…)

Last week it was written in these columns:
Despite all the mismanagement, inadequacy of preparations and allegations of mega-size corruption that at one stage threatened the very holding of the XIX Commonwealth Games in the Capital, the Games have on the whole gone off well….
The Games have indeed been a success defying all the initial fears and misgivings. Now has begun the probe into all the charges of corruption. The government had promised to conduct, after the gala sports (…)