2010

Violence is committed not just when someone physically attacks another person or fires a gun. Violence is not just an action but a way of thinking. Violence is committed whenever someone plans to harm others or deprive others for self-gain. When big companies and politicians in collusion with them conspire to grab huge areas of land and destroy the livelihood of millions of villagers in the process, then these companies and politicians are certainly committing large-scale violence even (…)

In India peasantry is under assault. There is a five-pronged attack on this class and the mighty Indian state is sometimes an active and sometimes a passive abettor. The first point of attack is from the corporate sector. The corporate sector is in a land grab mode. Though not justified, one could understand their urge to get land for industry and real estate purposes. Not that they are causing aggressive incursion into the agrarian sector per se. The reason is the chimerical idea of (…)

(May 9 this year marks Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s 149th birth anniversary—on that day will commence the yearlong celebrations to commemorate the poet’s 150th birth anniversary in 2011. On this occasion we are publishing the following articles to remember him and offer our sincere homage to his abiding memory.)
Rabindranath Tagore’s name is synonymous with Bengali culture. His prolific outpouring of poems, songs, novels, plays, short stories and essays are golden threads woven into the (…)

Attending a Namasudra Conference, Banned from Entering Puri’s Jagannath Temple
It may not be news to many that the entry of the Tagores of Calcutta was banned in the Jagannath temple of Puri. At least many might have heard in whispers but disbelieved and dismissed it as slanderous gossip. Or not much importance was attached to it by them. However, hardly anybody would have heard in wild gossips that Rabindranath Tagore attended a caste conference which, ipso facto, would cause revulsion (…)

The stage seems to be ready for a constitutional crisis in Nepal. The deadline for enacting the new Constitution is on May 28, 2010. The preparation for making the Constitution seems to be half done. Prachanda is strongly against the partial enactment of the Constitution. This will lead to the derailment of the constitutional process. It is a well-known fact that the people of Nepal have been tricked numerous times in the name of the Constitution. But earlier attempts were being made by (…)

There are more than 20,000 Tibetans residing in Nepal, living with no defined legal status as the Nepalese law does not recognise the rights of refugees under the principal treaties that govern their status under international law. Provided they have a Nepalese “refugee identity certificate” (RC), Tibetans who arrived before 1989 can remain in Nepal with certain limited rights. Most live in an uneasy state of subsistence, principally in a small number of isolated settlements in the Kathmandu (…)

An informal round table was held at the Department of Political Science at Delhi-University to discuss ways of promoting the IR discipline in India. This discussion was a follow-up action of the workshop held on International Studies in India. at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore., March 25-26, 2009.1 This report needs to be published in order to share some of the concerns expressed at the roundtable and stir a debate on this very vital issue in (…)

The study of the communities has always been in the throes of anthropology. The Darwinian influence compelled the discipline to place native communities in the scale of human evolution. Prehistoric archaeology or palaeoanthropology, genetics and blood-group studies or biometrics and cultural and social anthropology became the handmaid of colonial or state administrators to focus on the micro-studies so as to provide micro-solutions. The micro-studies came to be considered as holistic studies (…)

The Indian Constitution, which came into force on January 26, 1950, had been designed by its makers to integrate the 562 princely states that had signed the Instrument of Accession into India after the strenuous and skilful efforts of the then Home Minister, Sardar Patel. Some of the larger among them, like Hyderabad and Mysore, were made Part-B States and their rulers, the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Maharaja of Mysore, were designated as Rajpramukhs. Some small but contiguous princely (…)

On March 24, 2010, the Japanese Diet passed a record 92.3 trillion yen ($1 trillion) Budget, seeking to underpin a fragile recovery in the world’s second largest economy. The record Budget reflected Prime Minister Hatoyama’s promise to cut wasteful spending on public works and boost funding for social welfare. As a result, spending on public works projects will drop by a record 18.3 per cent to 5.8 trillion yen, which is the lowest in 32 years.
Though Hatoyama’s aim is to kick-start (…)