2010

The interviews for an article in the Rolling Stone magazine has cost General McChrystal his job. Nevertheless, the Obama Administration is keen to move ahead with the Counter-insurgency (COIN) Doctrine in Afghanistan since the offensive at Marjah. Against this backdrop, this article looks into various aspects of the COIN for the impending battle in Kandahar: the Taliban’s fortress.
Since McChrystal has now expectedly capitulated to his Rolling Stone misdemeanor, the American COIN (…)

Last week the CPI (Maoist) spokesperson and one of the topmost leaders of the organisation, Cherukuri Rajkumar (popularly known as Azad) was killed in a dense forest in Andhra Pradesh’s Adilabad district. The official version was that Azad was having a meeting with some people in the jungle when the Andhra Pradesh Police, on a tip-off, swooped down on them. There ensued a gunbattle at the end of which two were killed—Azad and another person who was first thought to be Sahdev, a tribal young (…)

Why can’t the Commission-cum-Panel on Child Rights order a probe into the killings of school-going boys on the streets of Srinagar city? Rather blatant killings out there, in broad daylight. And when this Commission can order a probe into any unnatural death of any child across the country, so shouldn’t the children of the Valley come in its very focus? In fact, last evening whilst hearing that follow-up on that young student of Kolkata’s La Martiniere School who’d hung himself within days (…)

Late at night on July 1-2, 2010 Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad, the CPI (Maoist) spokesperson, was killed in the Jogarpur forest area near Sarkapalli village in Andhra Pradesh’s Adilabad district. Azad was shot dead by the Andhra Police.
According to an official of the Special Intelligence Branch (SIT), “We raided on a tip-off. About 25 Maoists were present there. The fire-fight started late in the night and ended at 3 am. Two persons were shot dead by police while the rest escaped. One of (…)

TRIBUTE
Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad, killed by the Andhra Pradesh Police, was a brilliant student of Regional Engineering College, Warangal, where he studied M.Tech in the late seventies. He led the Andhra Pradesh Radical Student Union after the Emergency. Subsequently he went underground and had been looking after political and organisational responsibilities for over 30 years. He was a member of the CPI (Maoist) Central Committee and Political Bureau and functioned as the party’s (…)

TO FIGHT PSEUDO-MAOIST MENACE
Few, among the top political executives, realise that our own fate is inextricably linked up with the fate of the adivasis. If mankind is to survive, it has to imbibe the quintessence of communitarian spirit and conservation ethics of the tribals. Modernism’s accent on individualism has led to acute self-centredness of a rapacious civilisation that has reached its peak in assured mutual destruction. Redemption from the looming threat of self-destruction lies (…)

Jnaneshwari Express Sabotage and The people of the unfortunate State of West Bengal will recall the five famous cases of Bhikhari Paswan murder, Choto Angaria mass murder, Tapasi Malik rape and murder, Nandigram mass murder and Rizwanur Rahaman murder. There are some more similar cases, but the people distinctly remember these five important cases where the findings of the State CID were completely overturned by the subsequent CBI investigation.
Since the disastrous results in the last (…)

A recent news report revealed that after its initial reluctance the Army is now raising a 50,000 strong force to fight the Naxal war. Quite expected. The state cannot afford to lose any war it has started to impose its writ on the territory it owns.
That’s what we are told every now and then. The ‘state’s writ’, ‘democracy,’ ‘development’, and so many arguments are put forward to prove the legitimacy of a war against the Maoists. A civilised society cannot tolerate such dissent, we are (…)

I wrote the following outline of a comparative study of M. N Roy and Gandhi in 1992, when I retired from Rajdhani College, University of Delhi. I did not intend sitting idle and wanted to do some research on Gandhi and M.N. Roy. I thought I might be able to keep myself engaged in writing on this subject and a friend of mine, who knows my background, suggested that I should be able to get a grant from the ICSSR for doing research on this topic. That’s how I wrote the outline. One day I went (…)

On May 15, 2010 the police fired rubber bullets and tear gas shells and lathicharged hundreds of villagers staging a dharna on the road at Balitutha in Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa to clear all hurdles against land acquisition and allotment of mines to Posco at the earliest as committed by the government.1 To help the administration acquire land for the steel project—Posco—police mercilessly beat up the villagers injuring more than 100 including many women from Dhinkia and nearby (…)