2011

A Hindu temple at village Ranapada in Puri district of Orissa on June 25, 2011 refused entry for worship by P.L. Punia, the Chairman, National Commission for Scheduled Castes. The Commission is the national watchdog for safeguarding the dignity and interests of the 200 million Scheduled Castes. Undoubtedly he was ill-advised to go to the temple, thereby inviting indignity upon himself. By his misadventure the Chairman has subjected himself to untoucha-bility and humiliation. Under Article (…)

Recently I was invited to photograph a protest meeting organised at Jantar Mantar in Delhi by the AISA, the student wing of the CPI-ML (Liberation). Their comrades—including Sandeep Singh, now National President of the AISA and a former President of the JNU Students’ Union —had been beaten up, on June 24, 2011, by Congress toughs who rushed out of the Ranchi hotel in which Kapil Sibal was staying, on hearing the slogans of the AISA group. Sibal is said to have held a press conference to (…)

In my student days, I had read William Hazlitt’s essay, “On the Ignorance of the Learned”. Now, we find conspicuous example of purblindness in our learned Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh. He is acclaimed by the G-8 summiteers as a great economist. Since he accepted the Western paradigm of development, his advice, possibly, suits them well. In India, his expertise has resulted in (i) the creation of a small island—better say, an island of a few wealthy families—amid an expanding sea of (…)

COMMUNICATION
The sustained resistance to government acquisition of their lands for the POSCO composite project (port + steel plant + power plant) in Jagatsinghpur district of Odisha by the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS) over the past five years has gained national, even international, attention since June 2011.
Politicians of certain political parties in Odisha have joined issue on the side of PPSS even while there is a United Action Committee (UAC) of persons who are (…)

COMMUNICATION
Former MLA of Madhya Pradesh and social activist Sunilam was recently attacked by 15 goondas in Chindwara district (MP). Before the attack he was involved in mobilisation of peaceful protest by villagers adversely affected by land acquisition for two controversial projects in this area. Aradhna Bhargava, a leader of project affected farmers, was also attacked at the same time. Both activists were seriously injured.
Strong steps should be taken to punish the attackers. (…)

As we go to press, news has come that Union Textiles Minister Dayanidhi Maran has tendered his resignation from the Union Cabinet. In fact his continuance in the Manmohan Singh Govern-ment had become untenable after the CBI sub-mitted, on July 6, its 71-page status report to the Supreme Court (under the latter’s directive) wherein it was made clear that Maran, as the Union Telecom Minister between 2004 and 2007, had misused his office to force the promoter of the mobile phone company Aircel, (…)

With the passing away of Professor K. Jayashankar on June 21, the movement for the formation of Telangana State has lost the foremost academic and intellectual actively working for this cause for over half-a-century. The void created by his demise cannot be filled except by imparting to the whole movement the values he embodied: a firm commitment to the cause of separate Statehood combined with a highly informed and reasoned approach to the many issues faced by the movement.
In many (…)

The Greek Parliament in Athens on June 29 backed a stinging new austerity plan as demanded by international creditors, something that enraged protesters who fought street battles with the police outside; the latter fired teargas to disperse the crowd but in vain. MPs voted 155 to 138 for the hotly-disputed package aimed at slashing $ 40 billion (that is, 28.4 billion euros) from the balance of government spending by 2015, a plan that would unlock emergency finance from the EU and IMF. (The (…)

by Vivek Kumar Srivastava
In developing societies political parties exercise an influential role. They aim to achieve power and after having achieved it they wish to maintain it by several mechanisms; besides less awareness of the people about the true nature of the democratic system in such societies, there exist limited options to bring the government within a people-centric corruption-free framework.
In these societies the civil society too exists but in underdeveloped form. The (…)

COMMUNICATION
In the divided Bengal of today, the one man who comes in for much use by candidates at the hustings is Rabindranath Tagore. No wonder from their political leaders Bengalis settled in West Bengal have got so used to promises which are not to be kept and statistics which are to be accepted per se. One remembers while one was travelling to Chennai by train many years ago word all on a sudden spread that in Kolkata Mamata Banerjee had been badly hit on the head. The train was (…)