2011

At a time when the strong lobby for GM crops has escalated its campaign to get more clearances and concessions from the Indian Government, it is extremely important to high-light the fact that many distingushed scientists have not only rejected GM crops in strong terms but in addition, to counter the sinister propa-ganda of the powerful GM lobby, they have even found it to necessary to form panels and groups where they can voice the collective opinion of several eminent scientists aginst the (…)

”The whole value of Marxism seems to me to be in its absence of dogmatism, mode of approach and its attitude to action... The success or failure of Russian social experiments does not directly affect the validity of the Marxian theory.” —Jawaharlal Nehru1
During 1989-91 the USSR and its satellite socialist countries of East Europe collapsed like a house of cards without any resistance either from their peoples, rather with their active support. Machinations of the capitalist world had also (…)

by HARI OM
The United States, which is not a friend of India by any yardstick, has done the needful, doubtless for its own reasons. The arrest of the US citizen and Pakistani Kashmiri agent, Ghulam Nabi Fai, the Director of the American Kashmir Committee (AKC), by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on July 20, has stunned the Anglo-American-Asian world.
Fai has been living in the United States since 1990. One of the charges levelled against him by the FBI is that he was operating (…)

by B.K. PAL
The fight against corruption is inevitably linked with the fight for human rights as each and every person aspires to live in a corruption-free society on account of being affected by it in one form or the other, said Soli. J. Sorabjee, President of the United Lawyers’ Association (ULA), while presiding over a meeting to discuss “Effective Ways and Means to Eradicate Corruption in Public Offices”, organised by the ULA, at the Indian Law Institute, New Delhi, on July 18, 2011. (…)

While Britain has been rocked by the phone-hacking scandal and both media moghul Rupert Murdoch and his son as well as PM David Cameron have been grilled on consecutive days before the House of Commons’ Media Committee, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to India and talks with External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna have brought out both the similarities of approach as well as divergences between the two countries on terrorism and nuclear commerce. Hillary did call upon the US’ (…)

Recent proposals prepared by the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) for a rainbow of anti-corruption and grievance redress measures have brought a new hope to India’s anti-corruption agenda. At a time when people were getting confused by huge charts detailing differences of viewpoints, the practical, down-to-earth suggestions made by the NCPRI have brought a strong ‘can-be-done’ sense to an agenda which was getting too divisive to be ‘doable’.
The NCPRI, which (…)

by M.G. DEVASAHAYAM
Since a lot of misunderstanding is sought to be generated by large sections of the political class attacking civil society in a bid to denigrate Anna Hazare and his associates waging a courageous anti-corruption campaign aimed at shaping an effective Lokpal Bill, we are reproducing the following article that appeared in The Statesman in the first week of this month.
A debate is on over the role of civil society and popular movements in influencing government policies (…)

In writing the history of judicial activism in India at the beginning of the 21st century, Prof S.P Sathe noted that the political establishment has used the Court to legitimise its own decisions. He noted in this context that the Gujarat Government moved a contempt petition against the Narmada Bachao Andolon (NBA) for its members’ threat to die with the villagers whose villages were going to be submerged because of the rise in the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam. Actually, the decision of (…)

by PIRZADA M. AMIN and ADFAR RASHID SHAH
After Salman Taseer’s murder by his own bodyguard in Pakistan a few months ago, yet another guard, Sardar Mohammad, has killed President Hamid Karzai’s half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, pumping three bullets into him.
Sociologically speaking, militia as an institution in South Asia, and especially in Pakistan and Afghanistan, is breaking the cocoon of professio-nalism and staunch and reliable military discipline. The prime factors responsible may (…)

The Taliban have issued a statement offering an explanation for the assassination in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar of Ahmad Wali Karzai, the younger half-brother of President Hamid Karzai.
This statement was released on Thursday (July 14)—the same day a suicide bomber disrupted the memorial service in Kandahar for Ahmad Wali, killing three people, including Maulawi Ekmatullah, the head of the local ulema shura (Provincial Religious Council).
Earlier, the burial of Ahmad Wali on (…)