2012

SUPREME COURT PANEL CALLS FOR BAN ON FIELD TRIALS
It is being widely and increasingly realised that the commercial spread of GM crops or even other GM crops (such as Bt cotton) can be extremely hazardous. What is less widely recognised is that even limited field trials of GM crops can be very risky because of the inherent threat of genetic pollution associated with the use of GM technology in agriculture.
Fortunately a panel of technical experts, appointed by the Supreme Court, has given (…)

The grace, dignity, candour and transparency with which she spoke while delivering the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture in the Capital yesterday (November 14), that is, on the occasion of our first PM’s 123rd birth anniversary, indeed marked her out as “one of the most remarkable figures of our time” as Congress chairperson Sonia Gandhi aptly described Burma’s iconic pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Kuu Kyi, extending her a “most heartfelt welcome”.
For those of us, who have followed (…)

At the end of America’s costliest and nastiest electoral battles, widely predicted by analysts to be ‘hung’ like the George Bush-Al Gore encounter in 2000, President Barack Obama made history as the second Democrat President to win a second term in office since the Second World War. By the time his Republican rival Mitt Romney conceded defeat, Barack Obama had beaten a vicious negative campaign funded by the super-rich One Per Cent, who possibly turned the tide in his favour with their (…)

“What’s in a name?” asks Juliet in Shakes-peare’s Romeo and Juliet. “That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet,” she says. (Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
But Juliet could not have imagined how the term/name “reform” has not only become a catch all for the kind of pick and pay interventions by the state in the last two decades, but is misleading the doers and the receivers—policy-makers and citizens..
What is reform? Reform as different from revolution? Reform is (…)

IMPRESSIONS
From Nitin Gadkari to Mamata Banerjee, all politicians describe controversies surrounding them as media creations. Which is like looking at a pimple on your face and calling it a mirror creation. There are other things which are indeed media creations. The idea of the “Rahul Stamp”, for example. First, media mandarins said the Cabinet reshuffle was going to bear the Rahul Stamp. Then they said the Rahul Stamp was missing. Then they found that the Rahul Stamp had in fact worked (…)

What has been known as the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, most powerful in India, seems to be dropping the name of Nehru, slowly but gra-dually. Nehru is still there but in a perfunctory manner. It is really Mrs Indira Gandhi who occupies the space. I have noticed the difference. The photos from different Ministries to news-papers on Mrs Gandhi’s death anniversary were larger in number and bigger in size than what appears on Nehru’s death anniversary.
Therefore, it does not surprise me when the (…)

The following is the short piece by N.C. on Feroze Gandhi during the Emergency in 1976.
Parliament has just repealed the Parlia-mentary Proceedings (Protection of Publication) Act which came into force twenty years ago in 1956. Late Feroze Gandhi, who initiated and piloted the Bill in Parliament, made a powerful case which might have been useful for the present government to bear in mind. Sri Bhupesh Gupta, in his signed article in New Age of February 1, 1976, has recalled Feroze Gandhi’s (…)

On November 14 this year was observed Jawaharlal Nehru’s 123rd birth anniversary. This year also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Chinise aggression of 1962 that tragically cut short the life of our first PM. On this occasion we are reproducing the following speeches of Nehru in the wake of the Chinese attack. We are also reproducing and publishing relevant articles and a speech (made in the Lok Sabha).
From Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speeches
Comrades, friends and fellow countrymen,
I (…)

For five years, we have been the victims of Chinese aggression across our frontiers in the north. That aggression was, to begin with, rather furtive. Occasionally there were some incidents and conflicts. These conflicts might well be termed frontier incidents. Today, we are facing a regular and massive invasion of our territory by very large forces….
This strange twist of history has brought us face to face with something that we have not experienced in this way for over a hundred years or (…)

by M. Chalapathi Rau
If only Jawaharlal Nehru had insisted on Tibet’s independence in 1950; if he had only propounded no Panchsheel with the Chinese; if only he had aligned India with the West—these are the irritant ‘ifs’ bandied about in coffee houses by people who read little history and have not written any. Far more imponderable ‘ifs’ have been sufficiently canvassed—if Don John of Austria had lost at Lepanto; if Napoleon had own at Waterloo; if Kerensky had shown an ounce of courage; (…)