2010

There was expected jubilation on May 6 when Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, that little devil who felled 72 innocent people including 14 policemen jointly with his deceased partner, Abu Ismail, on 26/11, was awarded death sentence by the Special Judge, M.L. Tahaliyani. Three days earlier when he was held guilty of all the 86 charges, Mumbai had heaved a sigh of relief as though it had apprehended his acquittal. All the news channels were full of Ajmal Kasab and Ujjwal Nikam, the new public hero in our (…)

Multi-party elections, as announced by the junta, to be held later this year raises hopes for ending the impasse in Myanmar. The pro-democracy activists and ethnic nationalities leaders are now awaiting the elections due this year. The elections, though, might just be a farce as it would adopt the new Constitution as drafted by the National Convention. With the results of the referendum held in May 2008 and 92.4 per cent votes in favour of the Constitution, the military is set to switch (…)

The Open Society and its Enemies by Karl Popper saw way back in the 1940s how the open society was being wrecked from within, something the enemies of the Panchayati Raj are doing at present. All efforts to give power to the people through democratic decentralisation and empowerment of the disempowered are being undermined by the vested interests. We have created a structure but it is like an edifice without base.
The Standing Committee of Parliament on Rural Development (2009-10) in (…)

The heart of the Kashmir Dispute is the triple claim on the sovereignty over the state by India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir. This continuing conflict has cast its shadow not only on the main protagonists or even the sub-continent as a whole but the global balance of power due to its non-emergence as a pole of the multipolar world under construction. The multipolar world cannot be limited to the USA, Russia, Europe and China; it has to take into account the Indian subcontinent and the (…)

In India (and elsewhere) we have several people’s struggles which are protesting against displacement and trying to protect their sustainable life-styles and livelihoods based on farmlands, pastures and forests, rivers and coastal areas. These struggles involve farmers, forest-produce gatherers (tribals particularly), pastoral people, fisherfolk and others with related livelihoods. These traditional livelihoods have been passed on from generation to generation, but are now increasingly (…)

Jharkhand is a classic example of the damage the political class does to India. One of the richest parts of the country, it has been reduced to a cesspool of iniquity, graft, deception and crime. One statistic sums it up: in the nine years of its existence, there have been seven governments. Shibu Soren has been the Chief Minister three times—the first time for ten days in 2005, the second time for five months in 2008; the third-time drama is unfolding right before our eyes.
Shibu (…)

On March 26, 2010, the Republic of Korea’s Navy corvette—1200-tonne Cheonan—sank in the Yellow Sea south of the disputed Northern Limit Line (NLL) near Baengnyeong Island. An explosion in the ship’s stern broke it into two parts.1 There were 104 sailors on board, of which 46 were killed and the rest 58 were rescued. Initially, South Korea suspected the North Korean hand in the mishap but without convincing proof, it did not charge North Korea of this act. In order to establish conclusive (…)

COMMUNICATION
This is with reference to the killing of 44 people —including 28 civilians and 16 special police officers—reportedly by Maoists, by blowing up a bus in Dantewada district (in Chhattisgarh) on May 17. (The Times of India, May 18, 2010) Those who are familiar with the ground realities in Chhattisgarh [including intellectuals, such as B.K.Roy Burman and Arundhati Roy, journalists, such as Shoma Chaudhury and Gautam Navlakha, and civil rights groups, such as the People’s Union (…)

COMMUNICATION
Introduction
About one hundred and fifty years ago Karl Marx in a historic study observed that British Imperial Capitalism smashed the economic foundation of the then pre-colonial India based on self-contained and self-sustained village units with a static stability for centuries. This, of course, facilitated its development by the Indian bourgeoisie after independence. But it appears that vast patches of areas, by no means insignificant and inhabited by poor tribal people (…)

In this benighted present, with a bleak future stretching ahead, pieces of our history have come back to haunt us. There are differences, of course, but there are samenesses also.
“Naxalism” was described as a threat in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Areas, tracts of land, were called “Naxalite infested”, just like areas that harboured malaria or pets who harboured fleas—and “Naxalites”, whose battle was political, were lumped together with common criminals both in the realm of (…)