2010

The following letter was sent by the ANHAD Managing Trustee, Shabnam Hashmi, to Nitin Gadkari, the BJP President, on August 21, 2010.
Dear Mr Gadkari,
I am absolutely shocked to see a BJP advertisement issued by your party in The Indian Express on August 20, 2010 and Navbharat Times on August 21, 2010 wherein a photograph of an ANHAD demonstration at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, held on July 8, 2010, has been misused. In the said advertisement on top of the photograph appears the slogan (…)

The August 18-19 Sochi summit, attended by the leaders of Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan (the second quadrilateral one after the July 2009 Dushanbe meeting), showed that the format indeed helps to address the geo-political problems of Central Asia and to strengthen peace and security in the region.
The Sochi agenda was topped by the struggle against drug trafficking and terrorism and by the economic cooperation between the region’s countries. The tragic situation in (…)

During the recent visit by the Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari, to Beijing both sides declared to take forward the ‘all-weather friendship’. China and Pakistan have declared that they intend to build a railway line which will connect the Khunjerab Pass with Chinese towns including Kashgar. In addition to this, both the countries signed six agreements which covered areas ranging from health care and technology, justice and media, and agriculture and economy. During his visit President (…)

The Indo-Japan relationship scaled a new height after Japan successfully opted to negotiate with India regarding civil nuclear cooperation between the two states. The ice-breaking decision was taken on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Toronto, where for the first time Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his new Japanese counter-part, Naoto Kan, discussed the global security situation, including the civil nuclear cooperation. On the following day (June 28, 2010) India and Japan commenced the (…)

The Indo-Japan relationship scaled a new height after Japan successfully opted to negotiate with India regarding civil nuclear cooperation between the two states. The ice-breaking decision was taken on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Toronto, where for the first time Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his new Japanese counter-part, Naoto Kan, discussed the global security situation, including the civil nuclear cooperation.

Vivekananda was one of the most amazing personalities of modern India. Perhaps India has never witnessed a religious figure of the kind Vivekananda was. Far from renouncing the world, he was deeply involved with it. He completely redefined and revolutionised the concept of the Mahatma. The traditional Mahatma was supremely indifferent to his surroundings and the suffering of the people around him and sought his spiritual salvation alone practicing laissez faire of the spirit. Vivekananda (…)

New Delhi’s proposal to establish a $ 10-billion sovereign wealth fund should be treated with caution. The necessary preconditions for setting up an SWF are squarely lacking in India. Besides, the purported objectives of the fund to pursue strategic investment opportunities abroad are highly debatable.

The Union Government, and the PM in particular, have reasons to heave a sigh of relief: the contentious civil nuclear liability Bill has been passed in the Lok Sabha—the outcome of a broad consensus between the Congress and BJP with the former giving in to the latter’s insistence on a crucial change in Section 17(b) of the legislation reinforcing thereby the liability of the supplier in the event of a nuclear mishap.
However, this nuclear liability Bill was not the only issue that (…)

Max Muller said of India, the following eologatary felicitations:
If we were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature can bestow—in some parts a very paradise on earth—I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well (…)

Another Independence day has come and gone with the usual reflections on the nation’s achievements and its ills. With the shadow of another round of ferocious protest/violence in Kashmir, the continuing Maoist movement (‘the biggest internal security threat’, according to the PM) and inflation troubling the common man and leading to a united Opposition onslaught in Parliament, the mood of the nation and the rulers was sombre. These are the biggest worries but the smaller ones are no less (…)