2011

America, as you might know, has the Rifle Association. Nobody, but nobody, Republican or Democrat, may touch it. For the reason that the USP of American democracy is that an American citizen, preferably all White, may fire away at any real or imagined threat to the safety of his person or property. The American Constitution, good Republicans think, was drafted with the singular purpose of ensuring this right, both at home and abroad.
Well, India now has her own answer to this. (…)

Several pertinent issues came to the surface in Press Council Chairman Justice Marakandey Katju’s interview with Karan Thapar and its effects, notably well-argued pieces, among them Siddharth Bhatia’s analysis in The Asian Age (“Justice Katju’s remarks not wide of the mark”, November 3, 2011). A tweet said: “Most of the articles opposing Justice Katju’s interview actually end up proving whatever he said about the media…”, for example, a headline wondered “Has Justice Katju been appointed by (…)

Public anger against corrupt governance has never been as intense as it is today. However, there is also public jubilation as never before. Political VIPs going to jail is an unprecedented spectacle and it fills citizens with unprecedented joy. This is not sadism. This is recognising the sign that there is hope for our country after all.
When A. Raja went to jail, the general feeling was that the arrogance of his party had invited the punishment. From T. R. Baalu’s days DMK Ministers in (…)

The domestic scenario continues to be grim.
The Trinamul Congress has not yet carried out its threat of pulling out of the government at the Centre on the issue of petrol price hike (as it is now on the backfoot due to a variety of factors) but its supremo, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, has made it abundantly clear that “one more hike in the prices of petrol, diesel, cooking gas and kerosene and we will not stay with this government”.
Meanwhile the economic blockade of Manipur (…)

The manner of Muammar al-Gaddafi’s removal was chilling: the faces of his young killers on video recordings mirrored total disdain for their helpless quarry, whose misery was to eventually end with a bullet to the head, according to the purported autopsy report. Time stood still for the products of a treacherous terrain who have witnessed iniquity and retribution in the past, in a tradition that took no prisoners. They could well have been kin of Gaddafi’s own victims. The thought that they (…)

The role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organi-sation (NATO) in Libya opens a new chapter in international security. Its so-called Operation Unified Protector (OUP) was shrouded in contro-versy insofar as it unilaterally insisted that its Libyan intervention enjoyed the mandate of the United Nations Security Council, while Russia and China disputed the alliance’s assumption that Resolution 1973 mandated the kinds of activities that the alliance undertook in Libya.
The way NATO is ending OUP (…)

Some, belonging to self-proclaimed progressive circles, characterised Anna Hazare’s movement against corruption and his fast demanding an effective Lok Pal Bill as “a narrow, middle class, upper-caste phenomenon”. The criticism seems wide off the mark. The critics do not seem to be conversant with the life and work of Anna Hazare which, till he burst on the national scene recently, was confined to his native State of Maharashtra. Before launching a diatribe against Anna, they should have (…)

[On November 14 this year falls Jawaharlal Nehru’s one hundred and twentysecond birth anniversary. On this occasion while remembering him, we reproduce the following addresses made by him. We are also reproducing N.C.’s editorial he wrote on the occasion of Nehru’s birth anniversary on November 10, 1985 (it was published in the Mainstream issue of November 16, 1985), three contributions from three eminent personalities made in the publication, Nehru: The Nation Remembers (Tributes from (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS

Of the many achievements of Jawaharlal Nehru as a national leader, world statesman and a sensitive individual who had the rare oppor-tunity of shaping the destinies of a whole nation and, at the same time, possessed the gift for standing back and eyeing with some detachment his own strengths and weaknesses, and also commenting upon them in an anxiously honest fashion, the institutional aspects are the most impressive.
In spite of the many popular taunts and repeated gibes, Jawaharlal (…)