2011

by N.V.K. MURTHY
Anna Hazare’s movement and hunger strike to have the Lokpal Bill tabled before Parliament created a stir in the whole country. Thousands upon thousands of people, men and women, young and old, joined the movement all over the country. Memories of the freedom movement under Gandhiji’s leadership were evoked. Anna Hazare was hailed as another Gandhi come to life. It will be instructive to view Anna Hazare’s movement in the historical perspective.
It is not as if the (…)

by SUDHANSHU TRIPATHI
If virtue and vice both are integral parts of human nature and both exist together, the society consisting of such human beings will certainly reflect the essentials of such nature. Evidently goodness is as natural to society as there is wickedness. That is why corruption in its various forms, being the by-product of wicked-ness, has been in existence since times immemorial. Of course, it was less or very less in earlier times because there was less or very less (…)

I have sent you (by e-mail to nandan.nilekani @nic.in) an article on the system considerations and security risks of the UID Aadhaar project, requesting your comments, but have not been fortunate enough to receive a response so far. I will keep hoping that you will do me the courtesy of at least an acknowledgement, if not a response. I am attaching the article again for your convenience.
Further to my earlier communication, I note with alarm that Google has admitted to handing over user (…)

by ANKITA SHREE
High numbers of abortion cases, poor pre-and post-natal care facilities, and inadequate knowledge about contraceptives are malaises prevalent in South Asia, but the issue of abortion has become especially contentious in the Maldives. This is ever since the Adhaalath Party, a coalition partner of President Mohammad Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party, mooted for execution of women who have aborted their foetuses—a sin as per the prevailing Sharia law.
Unlike Western (…)

An in-depth post-mortem of the disastrous performance of the CPI-M and Left Front under its leadership in West Bengal is to be left to historians and sociologists. Political ideologues cannot reveal the whole truth. But Kheya Bag in a nearly-12,000 word essay, ‘Red Bengal’s Rise and Fall’, in the latest issue of in the pro-Trotskyite New Left Review, edited by Tariq Ali, inferred that “unreconstructed Stalinism, rein-forced by native customs of veneration and paternalism; adherence to rigid (…)

Can the Government of India’s dirty tricks department never get it right? It had committed serial blunders while handling the Anna Hazare phenomenon. The government had been embar-rassed all along the way. Finally after Parliament accepted Hazare’s main demands, there was a feeling that wisdom would prevail.
But the plotters are at it again. As crudely as ever, they have initiated proceedings against the leading members of the Hazare team on one charge or another. Bhushan, Kejriwal and (…)

The massive earthquake that shook Sikkim and adjoining areas, including Nepal, Bhutan and other parts of north India (notably north Bengal), in the evening of Sunday (September 18) has taken a heavy toll. While the number of those killed in the quake (which measured 6.8 on the Richter scale with its epicentre near the Sikkimese town of Mangan, close to the Nepal-Sikkim border and 68 km northwest of Gangtok, the province’s capital; 20 minutes later two aftershocks—measuring 6.1 and 5.3 on the (…)

There are more in matters of Indo-Bangladesh relationship than what really meets the eye. Although certain quarters having their own axes to grind are now trying to portray Mamata Banerjee, the West Bengal Chief Minister, as a spoilsport, yet the truth lies in the fact that Mamata has done a great service to the nation by refusing to become party to a pact which would have landed agriculturists in North Bengal in great difficulty. Her refusal to accompany the Prime Minister to Bangladesh has (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
The following Political Notebook by N.C. was written precisely forty years ago on September 27, 1971 and published in the October 2, 1971 issue of Mainstream. This is being reproduced as we steadily approach the fortieth anniversary of the liberation of Bangladesh at the fag end of this year.
Six months of the Bangladesh struggle has been an unprecedented experience as well as back-breaking strain for both the government and the people of this country. Although (…)

[The following article was written sometime back but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons. Its contents, however, remain valid in the current situation through which Libya is passing. It is thus being published for the benefit of our readers.]
International politics is undergoing a very dangerous phase of transition whereby it is faced with those revisionist forces which are moving beyond the theoretical paradigm of ‘structural realism’. Some of the privileged and (…)