2011

The political situation in Afghanistan is continually worsening. The Afghan Army and coalition forces have been rebuffed in their efforts to bring the country’s southern and eastern provinces under their control. On the contrary, the Taliban have lately once again established their presence in all the areas from where they had been uprooted due to the operations of the coalition forces since 2001.
A majority of the Pushtun population sympathise with and back the Taliban fighting foreign (…)

As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of historic Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation signed on August 9, 1971, we cannot miss to re-emphasise the important role the Treaty played in safeguarding India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, shaping the geopolitics of the Indian subcontinent and strengthening regional security and world peace.
The Treaty was second perhaps only to India’s attainment of independence in terms of its significance for Indians and in terms (…)

Deification is a tempting business in India. The media, the intellectuals and the people at large have shares in this business. The Anna Hazare protests showed how easy it is to become the “general will” if not the “divine will” of the state in the age of 24/7 media channels. Interestingly, both Team Anna and its critics are equal participants in this process.
It is evident that Anna Hazare is the man of his times. His movement was premised on a masterly sense of the mood of the nation. (…)

by SHOBHA AGGARWAL
“The question is, who drafts the law and who makes the law? I submit that the time-honoured practice is that the Executive drafts a Bill and places it before Parliament and that Parliament debates and adopts the Bill with amendments if necessary. In the process of adoption of the Bill, there will be opportunities for Shri Anna Hazare and others to present their views to the Standing Committee to which this Bill has been referred by the Hon’ble Speaker. The Standing (…)

The ultimate question remains: Can corruption be abolished by law? We are a society in which dowry and child marriage and untouchability and khap panchayat atrocities continue despite laws banning them. They continue because they are deeply ingrained in the national culture and the political will required to wipe them out is simply not there.
Ditto with corruption. Kautilya said: “It is impossible for a government servant not to eat up at least a bit of the King’s revenue.” He famously (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
There are many aspects of the celebration of the golden jubilee of independence—the magnificent pageantry that one witnessed in Delhi—which would be long remembered by millions all over the country thanks largely to the television. However, it was President Narayanan’s gentle but firm warning against corruption which has emerged as a definite landmark in the struggle for a better India.
There is nothing new for the First Citizen to address a warning to his (…)

When I sit to write this, I am hearing on the television something which has been there continuously for the last four-five days. It is about Anna Hazare and the movement he has launched to free India of corruption in which our country is nearly drowned. People, women and men, children, youth and the elderly have come out in large numbers in many parts of the country to support Anna Hazare and his team whom they have come to believe. That belief comes mainly from a few of the qualities they (…)

Anna Hazare’s protest raises many other important issues than just the issue of a Jan Lokpal. There can be very serious differences on how best to tackle corruption, a powerful law being just one part of it. But what must be seriously discussed, debated and analysed thoroughly are the many questions regarding democracy in India that this protest and the attack on it has thrown up.
One of the major premises of the government’s or rather the ruling elite’s attack on Anna Hazare’s campaign (…)

Anna Hazare is not every Indian’s flavour of the month. Many question his tactics and strategy of battling the government version of the Lokpal Bill. All ordinary Indians do not endorse the way in which he and his colleagues are carrying on the movement for a corruption-free India. On its side the government’s and Congress party’s leadership has tried hard to impress upon the people that the Jan Lokpal Bill, the version of the Bill put forward by Anna Hazare and his colleagues, is one legal (…)

“The interest in life does not lie in what people do, not even in their relations to each other, but largely in the power to communicate with a third party, antagonistic, enigmatic, yet perhaps, persuadable, which one may call life in general.” Those words of Virginia Woolf would best describe Anna Hazare at this juncture. In the complex politics of contradictions, he has found a larger than life place and he is heard with very little to communicate. He is not his own making. He is the (…)