2010

Most people who survive a disaster want the opposite of a clean slate. They want to salvage whatever they can and begin repairing what was not destroyed; they want to reaffirm their relatedness to the places that formed them. But disaster capitalism’s ‘reconstruction’ begins with finishing the job of the original disaster by erasing what is left of the public sphere and then quickly moving to replace them with corporate-designed economic and political structures before the victims of the (…)

Most reports emanating from Washington indicate that the United States is caught in an acute dilemma over Afghanistan. Having spent nine years fighting in the mountainous terrain without achieving what it wanted to, policy-makers in Washington are debating not the pros and cons of a pull-out, but when to pull out of Afghanistan.
The issue will be clinched in December when President Barak Obama has called a high-level review conference after which he will take the call about the time-table (…)

The consultations by Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasul and National Security Advisor Rangin Dadfar Spanta in New Delhi in successive weeks will be noted regionally and internationally. They took place at a critical juncture in the geopolitics of the region.
For Indian foreign policy-makers, Afghanistan assumes an unprecedented priority today as the stakes are high for national security, and harmonising our vital interests and core concerns with those of the international community (…)

Sumanta Banerjee, an eminent political activist-cum-author and journalist, has written the following open letter to distinguished intellectuals, literary figures, artists and human rights activists of West Bengal criticising their current alignment with Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee with the objective of electorally defeating the CPI-M in the forthcoming Assembly polls next year. We are publishing, for the benefit of our readers, this piece along with a reply to Sumanta Banerjee by (…)

Sumanta Banerjee is shocked at actions by intellectuals of West Bengal which might help the TMC electorally. He thinks a TMC victory will be a disaster for the people of West Bengal, and points to the bad performance of TMC-led panchayats, Mamata Banerjee’s Congress (and Youth Congress) antecedents, including support of the Emergency and closeness to Siddhartha Ray, her political mistakes, her controversial acts of commission and omission as the Railway Minister.
Sumanta Banerjee (…)

Beyond the ascent of the starving hill
We reach now this valley,
At the end of the precipitious battle of the roads,
Does this cool shade construct homes?
Here in trees life is sap,
Here in hutments songs are simple,
Here man’s honour lives easy.
Have we come to our life’s own valley?
We have crossed all our beggar days
Crossed with the wind of the azure sea,
We have fought out the famine nights
The cloudy nights, we have the Sun
With whom we build the autumn dawn. (…)

Ravi Narayan Reddy was the outstanding leader of the Telangana armed struggle. His birth centenary celebrations took place last year and are still continuing. September 7 marked his death anniversary and September 17 is the Hyderabad Liberation day. We offer tributes and salutations to Ravi Narayan Reddy by publishing the following article (constituting the introduction to RN’s autobiography) written by the renowned Marxist ideologue and CPI leader, late Mohit Sen.
The continuity of his (…)

One aspect of the debate on nuclear power which deserves more attention is the very low number of under-construction nuclear reactors in most developed countries. While the number of operational reactors is very high in countries like the USA and France, the number of under- construction reactors is low even in these two leading countries. This is evident from the table given below: Table - Number of Nuclear Reactors S. No. Country Operational Under Construction 1. USA 104 1 2. (…)

BOOK REVIEW
Identity Politics in Jammu and Kashmir edited by Rekha Chowdhary; published by Vitasta Publishing, New Delhi; pages: 470; Price: Rs 695, US $ 26.45.
In these last few days I have been reading and re-reading this volume in the backdrop of the anger spilling out on the very streets of Srinagar and adjoining locales. Needless to say that this anger wasn’t built up overnight but has been simmering over the last decades. Twenty years back it had burst (…)

If Californian fires rage, Russian fires destroy crops. If Californian floods destroy the crops of vine fields in NAPPA, if oil spill destroys marine lives near Mexico, floods overtake Pakistan and China. In all these natural disasters human life is a casualty. Is it man-made? No, not natural disasters, except indirectly, as a result of playing with Nature, if one believes in entropy. It is man-mismanaged. Ask Obama and BPO, they will agree. Ask the Russians. The smog has reached Moscow and (…)