2012

Rvolutionaries have a short span of fame. They are forgotten sooner than their length of struggle and sacrifice has lasted. Mahatma Gandhi, who ousted the British rule, is mostly remembered because of the Indian currency notes which carry his photo. So is the case with the founders of Pakistan and Bangladesh—Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Sheikh Mujib-ur Rahman; they are beaming through the currency notes in their respective countries.
Poor Jayaprakash Narayan enjoys no such honour (…)

IMPRESSIONS
The bad news is that there seems to be no end to the plundering of India. Sign any deal, there is kickback. Auction any resource, there is quid pro quo. Spot any stretch of land, there is hanky-panky. Worse, where there is hanky-panky, there are namby-pamby ministers grovelling to justify it. Two gems came up last week. As scandals swirled around the nation’s son-in-law, Salman Khurshid said: “Sonia is my leader and I would defend her till my last breath.” Jayanti Natarajan (…)

Fifty years have passed since the troops of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), under the directive of Chairman Mao Zedong and his colleagues in the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) leadership in Beijing, crossed our frontier in the north-east in massive numbers to “teach Jawaharlal Nehru a lesson” and delivered a heavy blow on not just India and its Union Government but peace and harmony in our region and the world at large.
The country was doubtless traumatised as the Nehru administration, (…)

DOCUMENT ON LAND REFORMS
1. National Land Reforms Policy: While land reforms is clearly a State subject under the Constitution, the MoRD acknowledges that a National Land Reforms Policy announced by the Central Government could have its own importance. The MoRD will initiate a dialogue with States immediately and put out a draft of this policy for public debate and discussion in the next four-six months and to be finalised soon thereafter. The draft Land Reforms Policy, prepared by Jan (…)

MUSINGS
Malala … what a lovely name. And with that her very spirit, her grit. Her beautiful eyes and that innocence writ large. For minutes at a stretch I’d sat staring at her well-featured face, and then took to reading and re-reading those backgrounders to that attack on her. The Taliban at their ugliest. Brutally targeting this outspoken teenager in the Swat Valley.
Now coming to the bigger picture, which sure does lurk around. Hovering not too far, from that very locale. The why and (…)

by SOHEB LOKHANDWALA
“To those who are hungry, God is bread,” is what Mahatma Gandhi said before independence (1946). Now the question is whether it is valid even after 65 years of our freedom. Unfortunately, the answer is in the affirmative despite the perceived economic growth in a few sectors/segments and introduction and opera-tionalisation of various welfare schemes.
A country’s real growth is valued by its human development index based on child mortality, child malnutrition and (…)

HUGO CHAVEZ’S VICTORY IN VENEZUELA
by SRINIVASAN RAMANI
Nullifying the dire projections from the Western media about a possible end to the Hugo Chavez’s presidency in Venezuela, the leader of the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) managed to retain his post by defeating his opponent, Henrique Capriles, representing the united Opposition’s Coalition for Democratic Unity, in the recently concluded presidential elections in that country. Chavez’s victory mar-gin of 11 per cent was (…)

Syed Mohammad Ahmad Kazmi, an Indian journalist who lived in Delhi and had worked with the Iranian news agency IRNA since 1988, was picked up by the police in the forenoon of March 6, 2012. The time of arrest was, however, recorded as 8.30 pm. Functionaries of the Special Cell of the Delhi Police, in whose custody he had been, went to his house that night and seized his computer, car and other objects and documents; and his son Shauzab claimed that he was made to sign the arrest memo at 2.30 (…)

MEDIA
What the New Yorker, an American fortnightly, has told about the Jain brothers, Samir and Vineet, presiding over The Times of India group, has been known to most. The contribution by the New Yorker is that it has nailed the doubts and confirmed that the biggest media moguls of the country believe that there is nothing sacrosanct about news columns and can be sold for a price because a newspaper for them is a commodity, like talcum powder or tooth paste.
A reader may be shocked to (…)

On the occasion of the Chinese aggression’s fiftieth auniversary this month we are continuing to publish and reproduce relevant articles on the subject.
The Chinese pinpricks on the border continued all the time. The Indian posts were also moved to different positions in the north-west of our country whils the status quo was more or less maintained in the north-east. Tension and irritation remained but there was no expectation of any major flare up. V.K. Krishna Menon met the Chinese (…)