2010

Just a few weeks ago, the Economist (London) flashed a story highly critical of the GoI and its leaders for their lacklustre performance. Among the major steps it advocated for putting the governance process back on rails were a slew of measures to complete the agenda of what is misleadingly described as reforms. Among them a star place was assigned to the permission to global retail majors to invade the Indian retail market space. This, as is well known, is a segment occupied still largely (…)

by Lathika Nath
Nuclear generated electric power meets the energy demands of many countries around the world. This is a reliable source of energy without any release of greenhouse gases, smoke or emissions. In a developing country like ours, it will significantly impact on the quality and comfort of life and bring about significant changes. In the years ahead nuclear energy for civilian purposes will meet our growing energy demands.
India’s stand on non-proliferation was an important (…)

BOOK REVIEW
Rise of the Plebeians? The Changing Face of Indian Legislative Assemblies by Christophe Jaffrelot and Sanjay Kumar (eds.); Routledge India, New Delhi; 2009; pages 494; Rs 895.
Electoral Politics in Indian States: Lok Sabha Elections in 2004 and Beyond by Sandeep Shastri, K.C. Suri and Yogendra Yadav (eds.); OUP, New Delhi; 2009; pages 453; Rs 795.
These two volumes published nine months from each other in 2009, the first just before the fifteenth general elections got (…)

We condemn the reported reinstatement of four police officers accused of tampering evidence in the Shopian rapes and murders case. Right from the very beginning the police tried to dismiss the rapes and murders of the two women, Neelofar and Asiya, whose badly bruised bodies were found in Rambiara nallah in Shopian in the morning of May 30, 2009, as cases of drowning, refused to lodge a first information report and made all possible efforts to tamper with evidence in the case. The policemen (…)

Strange things are happening in Tripura, the red citadel of the North-East.
On August 28, a tribal widow, Baralakshmi Debbarma, of Anandanagar village in Sonamura Subdivision of Tripura, had a quarrel with the ex-CPI-M chairman, Shibcharan Debbarma’s sons, Manish and Uttam, over malpractices in the payment of NREGA money due; this infuriated Manish to beat up a pathetic Baralakshmi mercilessly, dragging her in a naked condition. Her younger daughter’s protest was met with the threats of (…)

As we go to press, the news has come that the Supreme Court has deferred pronouncement of the Ayodhya verdict by the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court. (The date fixed for the verdict was September 24.)
On a petition filed in the Apex Court seeking more time for bringing about an out-of-court negotiated settlement of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute between the contending parties, the two-judge SC Bench came out with a split verdict: one judge rejected the petition on the (…)

The hard reality in Kabul today is that Washington is averse to the emergence of a strong leader in the Afghan capital enjoying an independent power base.
This was quite evident from the US’ overdrive to tear apart President Hamid Karzai’s front with the Northern Alliance groups against the backdrop of the September 18 parliamentary elections in the South West Asian state. At the other end Karzai’s approach has been different: he is interested in working out a genuine reconciliation with (…)

Both the government and the Opposition and the public in general are rightly in panic awaiting the verdict on the Babri Masjid by the Allahabad High Court—a situation brought about by the faltering non-secular stand by all the concerned governments. The High Court is to give verdict on the following points:
1. Was the place under the Babri Majid the birth-place of Lord Ram?
2. Was there or not a temple on the land on which the Babri Masjid was built? Now it is obvious to the meanest (…)

In early July this year, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made a statement which forced many people inside and outside the country to sit up and take notice,
“Pakistan should abandon this thinking that Pakistan has to keep influence in Afghanistan,” he told Dunya TV. “Neither will they (the Afghans) accept influence, nor should the pro-influence people here (in Pakistan) insist on it.” Continuing his rather stunning “confessional”, he said: “Our policy in the past has failed. (…)

The Telangana armed struggle against Nizam’s autocracy in 1947 was an important historical event as Nizam declared Hyderabad as an independent country in connivance with British imperialism on September 11, 1947. The CPI had given a call asking the people to take up arms against the Nizam of Hyderabad Samsthan and for the merger of Hyderabad into the Indian Union. Comrades Ravi Narayan Reddy, Baddam Yella Reddy and Makhdoom Mohiuddin signed the statement on behalf of the CPI, Andhra (…)