2010

There is worldwide discussion today about inclusive growth. Our government and Planning Commission have also mentioned it now. To make growth inclusive some measures like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Right to Information Act, Right to Education Bill, Right to Health Bill, Right to Food Bill etc. have been taken but none of these, barring the NREGA and RTI Act to some extent, is being implemented in a way that would help all the people concerned. If the government is really (…)

August 13, 2010
Four more were killed in the Valley. It was the first Friday, Jumma of the Holy month of Ramadan. The killing began immediately after the morning (fajar) prayer—in Trehgam near Kupwara, Bommai near Sopore and in Patan. Throughout the day in different parts of Srinagar slogan shouting youthful demonstrators and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), aided by the Jammu and Kashmir Police, continued to clash. While there was no curfew in the morning, by mid-day it was (…)

“There are people in Washington who never intend to withdraw military forces from Iraq and they are looking for ten, twenty, fifty years in the future. The reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a permanent military base in the Gulf region and I have never heard any of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi people that ten years from now there will be no military bases of the US in Iraq”
—Jimmy Carter (former US President), February 3, 2006
President Barak (…)

At last, Prakash Karat has gathered enough courage to call a spade a spade. At Vijaywada, where the CPI-M had a meeting of its extended Central Committee, he reportedly told his comrades that farmers’ land should not be taken without their consent. He admitted that Nandigram was a blot on a party’s face that thrived as a pro-poor pro-peasant party. It clearly shows that he wants to bring the lost Leftist sheen of his party back. What remains to be seen is whether he and his party changes (…)

DOCUMENT
The following is the preliminary report of the All India Fact Finding Team on the killing of Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad and Hem Chandra Pandey. This was released to the media at Hyderabad on August 22, 2010.
The Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisations (CDRO) put together a team of concerned citizens consisting of Prof Emeritus Amit Bahaduri, JNU, Delhi, Senior Counsel of Supreme Court Prashant Bhushan, Kavita Srivatsava, human Rights worker from Rajasthan, Gautam (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
The month of August marks the death anniversaries of distinguished diplomat-administrator-educationist G. Parthasarathi and renowned journalist C.N. Chitta Ranjan (who, apart from being the Editor of National Herald, Assistant Editor of Patriot and Editor of Link, was the first Editor of this journal in 1962-63). Parthasarathi passed away in New Delhi on August 1, 1995 and Chitta Ranjan breathed his last in the Capital on August 2, 1990. Remembering them today, we are (…)

It was in 1960-61 that I came to know Chitta Ranjan who was then working in The Hindustan Times. I had met him earlier in Madras where he was desperately trying to run a daily brought out by a working journalists’ cooperative. When that project folded up, Chitta Ranjan moved to Delhi.
When we first met, he was a staunch Congressman, an ardent follower of Kamaraj. I was in search of a forum where there could be dialogue between Congress opinion and the Left, to start with; and then if the (…)

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan had an integral view of the individual, society and the world community. This integral view was like a thread that ran through and held together his philosophy of education, of religion and social regeneration, and of the One World of the human family. He perceived the building of this One World as the challenge to statesmanship in the era after the Second World War and the advent of nuclear weaponry.
One of the great teachers of our century, whose lectures and (…)

Fifteen years have gone by and yet the Kashmir dispute has defied settlement. And today it has got entangled in a mass of other issues, ranging from defence against the Chinese menace to the securing of Western aid.
The six rounds of ministerial level talks may have heard many a sophisticated proposal, pertaining to maps and alignments. They may have been accompanied by hectic back-stair—sometimes even frontporch—lobbyings by interested outsiders, but there was something severely missing (…)

At present, perhaps about one-third of available Army troops are deployed in counter-insurgency (CI) operations in Kashmir and the North-Eastern States. There is no question that government is empowered to call in the Army for the CI role, but this is taking its toll of both training and preparedness for its primary role of countering external threat and maintaining India’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. While the Army can be called to perform its secondary role of aid to civil power (…)