2011

[The author of India’s China War (1970), Neville Maxwell is a well-known specialist of the history of Sino-Indian border conflict. He was for eight years the Times correspondent in India. We are publishing, as a point of view, this article he specially sent to Mainstream. His earlier article—“The Pre-history of the Sino-Indian Border Dispute: A Note”—appeared in this journal’s February 12, 2011 issue. In a note to the editor Maxwell has written: “Please understand it (the following article) (…)

BOOK REVIEW
WITH INTELLECTUAL PAUCITY, LACK OF CONVICTION, RANK OPPORTUNISM
BARUN DAS GUPTA
Understanding CPI-M: Will the Indian Left Survive? by Diptendra Raychaudhuri; Vitasta Publishing Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi; Rs 595.
The book, written before the debacle of the Left Front in West Bengal and the defeat of the LDF in Kerala, both led by the CPI-M, is one that helps understand the changing character of the Left in India and the direction it is taking. The book begins with the (…)

Opportunity has been called “thou strong seducer”. From A. Raja to B. S. Yeddyurappa, from the Bengal Communists to the UPA-II high commanders, they have all allowed opportunity to seduce them. Which is a pity because opportunity is also a provider of inspiration for great and noble work.
Following the recent Assembly elections, three States saw historically significant regime changes. How are the novice Chief Minister in Bengal and the veterans in Tamil Nadu and Kerala using their (…)

“The government’s attitude in the nine meetings (of the Lokpal Bill drafting committee) indicated that they are not willing to root out corruption,” said Anna Hazare spearheading the civil society crusade for an effective Lokpal with the aim of eradicating corruption, at a press conference in the Capital on June 22. He also made it abundantly clear that the civil society’s proposed Lokpal, as upheld in its draft of the Bill, was not in the least an attempt to foist a parallel government as (…)

by SHOBHA AGGARWAL
June 15 marked the sixth anniversary of the President’s assent to the Right to Information Act, 2005. The following article is an attempt to evaluate the efficacy of this Act. Having filed over 500 RTI applications in the last six years, the Public Interest Litigation Watch Group (of which the author is the Joint Secretary) is sharing with our readers the fate of one such RTI application.
Outraged at the loot of the exchequer under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban (…)

The electoral verdict in the 16th Turkish general elections, held on June 12, 2011, indicates a major shift in the evolutionary and transitional Turkish representative democracy replacing the focus and priority from the ‘privileged’ to the ‘public’ and from the ‘state’ to the ‘society’. The verdict has bolstered the feelings of foreign investors and market-friendly actors. Throughout his campaign, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, mobilised voters over (…)

The people and especially the children of Dhinkia, Gadkujang, Govindpur and Nuagaon villages in Jagatsinghpur district in Odisha have shown the nation how people matter over the governments’ plans for development of business corporations at their cost. The children “illegally” lay down on the hot earth under in the blazing summer heat and refused to move to allow entry to government officials to take over forest land and their villages for the POSCO mega-project. This was in the face of (…)

Of late there is a lot of talk on the issue of black money which is stashed in the foreign banks abroad and how to bring it back. Ever since veteran BJP leader L.K. Advani raised this subject in the 2009 Lok Sabha election the issue of black money together with price rise has become like the never-ending quick-sand for UPA-II. In my understanding, the biggest achievements of UPA-II for 2010-11 are price rise and the series of corruption scams; now the black money issue seems to be giving (…)

The recent Assembly election results saw a spectacular debacle of two ruling political parties —the DMK in Tamil Nadu and the Leftist alliance led by the Communist Party-Marxist in West Bengal which had been in continuous power over the last thirtyfour years, an unprecedented phenomenon in democracy anywhere.
The cause of the debacles was the same—misuse of power given in trust by the electorate in the hope that the power will be used in public interest. Both the parties betrayed the (…)

DOCUMENT
TO FIGHT THE NEO-COLONIAL ONSLAUGHT ON INDIAN ECONOMY, POLITY AND CULTURE, AND TO ESTABLISH A SOCIALIST ORDER
The following is the press release distributed at a press conference in the Capital on June 10, 2011 announcing the formation of the Socialist Party (India).
Democratic Socialism came up in the debate all over the world due to two events. After the disintegration of Soviet Russia the Communist Parties in many European countries transformed themselves into democratic (…)