2010

This article was written before the latest landmark decision of the Centre rejecting environmental clearance to the Vedanta group’s $ 1.7 billion bauxite mining project in Orissa’s Niyamgiri hills with Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh citing serious violations of the Environment Protection Act 1966, Forest Counservation Act 1980 and Forest Rights Act 2006 by both the Orissa Government and Vedanta in this regard.
The four-member committee headed by N.C. (…)

(This statement was issued on July 20, 2010 but could not be carried earlier due to unavoidable reasons.)
After more than twelve years of struggling to get justice in Indian courts 34 Burmese freedom fighters are still in prison even though the case in court has finished. The question is: why?
The saga of the struggle of the 34 Burmese freedom fighters never caught the imagination of the media except in the beginning of their detention because these are men who have no faces. They are (…)

The humanitarian situation resulting from the unprecedented floods in Pakistan has been turned into a playground of regional geopolitics. The responsibility for this primarily lies with the United States, which fashioned its response to the crisis in a needlessly competitive spirit.
The needs of Pakistan are of stupendous proportions. Even cold statistics bring this out. One-fifth of the landmass of Pakistan is inundated and the lives of 20 million people have been affected. Nothing (…)

The Foreign Minister of Japan, Okada Yatsuya, visited India on August 21, 2010 as a part of his five-day trip to India and Thailand. During his visit, Okada held important discussions with his counterpart; S.M. Krishna, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. Okada had the fourth round of strategic dialogue with his counterpart. However, what emerged as the most important agenda in the dialogue (…)

There was uproar in Parliament against Mamata Banerjee and her party for inviting the Maoists for her rally in Lalgarh. The uproar continues and there have been arguments for and against what Mamata Banerjee said and did. That violence has no place in a democracy is accepted by all. Nobody can glorify violence, not even the state. But the central question is: why is it that we have not succeeded in handling the Maoist and Naxal issue threatening the foundations of our democracy? There is no (…)

We are on the threshold of yet another Independence Day—our sixtyfourth. In the last 63 years since August 15, 1947 the country has registered considerable progress in different spheres ranging from science and technology including nuclear power, and heavy industry to Information Technology, an area where our achievements are unhesitatingly recognised by the most developed nations of the world. We have also emerged as a major power in today’s global scenario by dint of our advancement in (…)

It will be our 64th Independence Day on August 15, 2010 and a time to celebrate according to our official calendar. Personally, I have found little cause for celebrating it as our independence Day. Achieving independence of the British was hardly a rare event. Firstly there had been many more invaders of our country who had beaten us either temporarily or till they had been ousted by another invader like the Mughals by the East India Company and then the British Government or had been been (…)

Well over three score and three years we two neighourly Republics have become indigent independent countries. India, that is, Bharat, a united Republic, would be a culturally powerful and resourceful nation. But while giving Freedom from the imperial Crown, a treacherous stratagem was practised. India was divided into Bharat and Pakistan ever to be on belligerent terms with communal hatred. And as disastrous history would have it, J&K, a Muslim majority State, has its resources wasted on (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
Fifteenth of Agust is a sacred day in the annals of our nation as the day that marked the dawn of freedom from colonial bondage. And it is also the day of promises to keep. This country won its political independence not without a commitment, and that commitment was to emancipate its millions from the grinding poverty imposed by the social and economic structure built under colonial rule.
This is the pledge that successive generations of the nation’s leadership (…)

By now it is clear that the real-life experience has removed the ground from under the feet of neo-liberalism. On the one hand the whole world is witness to the fiasco of neo-liberalism at the global level. The stock markets and the corporate bottom-lines are heading towards the same old pre-recession levels while the masses are languishing. Based on massive public money based bailout packages of the financial sector (a process of socialisation of the losses of speculative capital grown too (…)