2011

COMMUNICATION
Prof Prabhat Patnaik’s piece “Why the Left Matters” in The Indian Express, reproduced by Mainstream (March 26, 2011), is a mix of the serious and the comic. In the portion in which he presents an expose of the practitioners of “neo-liberalism”, he is at his passionate best. One has to readily agree with him that those who are leading India up the garden path of market economy, pro-MNC liberalisation, pro-finance capital globalisation are indeed plunging the majority of (…)

After the scenes of widespread jubilation portraying unprecedented national unity in the cricket field with India’s successful wresting of the World Cup defeating Sri Lanka on April 2, a remarkable phenomenon has rocked the country as a whole.
Eminent Gandhian social activist Anna Hazare’s dauntless and courageous fight against ubiquitous corruption has assumed the form of a veritable mass upsurge on the third day of his indefinite fast-unto-death in the Capital’s Jantar Mantar demanding (…)

by Shiv Vishwanathan
(This letter was sent sometime ago. But it is being published now as the movement for Dr Binayak Sen’s release is gathering increasing momentum with every passing day.)
Dear Dr Manmohan Singh,
I hope you don’t mind the temerity of this letter. It is written as one scholar to another, one citizen to another. I know you are a PM and people like me may not be influential. However, some things must be said and said clearly.
I was aghast to find that Doctor Binayak (…)

by A.H. Nayyar, M.V. Ramana and Zia Mian
The March earthquake and tsunami in Japan have already claimed more than 10,000 lives, and some 17,500 people are still missing.
This disaster has been compounded by the continuing threat of widespread radioactive contamination from the accidents at four nuclear reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi site and the pools that contain their still hot, intensely radioactive spent nuclear fuel. Even if the nuclear accident is contained, it carries many (…)

WikiLeaks was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, an Australian software developer and internet activist. As a computer programmer and hacker, he exposed some of the secret documents on extra-judicial killings in Kenya, toxic waste dumped in the African coastal regions and the misdeeds of some international banks.
In setting up WikiLeaks, Assange wrote about the objectives of his venture: “To radically shift regime behaviour we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, (…)

The nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan, has placed the integrity of nuclear power establish-ments and their claims of nuclear power being safe-cheap-clean under public scrutiny. The Fukushima disaster has exceeded the grim expectations of nuclear power objectors. The accidents at Windscale (UK, 1957), Three Mile Island (USA, 1979) and Chernobyl (USSR, 1986)— all happened without earthquake or tsunami and involved only one nuclear reactor. But Fukushima, on March 12, 2011, saw four reactors (…)

The special fast-track court judge, P.R. Patel, has pronounced his verdict on the mystery behind the fire incident in the Sabarmati Express at Godhra on February 27, 2002. The conspiracy theory put forward by the Gujarat Police has been upheld. A volley of protests has followed pointing to the many contradictions in the judgement, which will surely be contested before higher judicial authorities.
In this context, it is necessary to examine the verdict on the Sabarmati Express fire episode (…)

That ghost of Godhra, that ghost of the Gujarat pogrom, those killings in that politically charged communal surcharge, still hover around. In fact, getting compounded as legalities come by. Seeing shots of those 63 men acquitted in the Godhra train burning case sent down a strange feeling—after nine long years you release a bunch of men with the innocent tag to them, without an apology of keeping them duly caged and in your possession. Also, should it have been a simple release? What about (…)

India’s security budget grows up every year and even the economic crisis does not make any difference to it. The Indian Government spends most of its money for the security of its own people. Apart from this, the government also has special budget allocations for dealing with the internal security threat and several State governments also spend the money, allocated for the Tribal Sub-plan, on security. Ironically, the government(s) use the money, which is supposed to be spent for their (…)

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
—Pericles (495-429 BC)
Mikhail Gorbachev’s historical legacy is hard to sum up. He means different things to different people. Maybe it is also a hallmark of greatness.
Within Russia, what stood out was Gorbachev’s seminal contribution to laying the foundations of a civil society. Temperamentally and politically, he was averse to coercive methods of governance. Thereby he (…)