2012

Building on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS)
by V.S. Ramamurthy and Saurabh Kumar
The MGNREGS is a radical measure, based on the concept of entitlement of the most vulnerable sections of the nation’s citizenry, to (limited) fall-back employment legislated by the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005. By placing some minimal purchasing power in the hands of the rural populace, it offers them a basic safety net of sorts and a modicum of (…)

Many landless (or almost landless) persons who got land under various land-distribution programmes in India could not actually occupy and cultivate their land due to the resistance of powerful big landowners, including those who had encroached village common land. However, even among the land allottees who could actually occupy land, there were many who could not cultivate the land due to lack of irrigation and various land-improvement measures such as land-levelling and bunding. In many (…)

In just about a year’s time, we shall be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the country’s independence when power was transferred from the unwilling hands of the British rulers to the leaders of our freedom struggle. And it is exactly fifty years now that in the last general election under colonial rule, in 1946, the leader of the Indian National Congress toured the length and breadth of this vast land promising the public that once the power was transferred, he and his party would hang (…)

Kobad Ghandy from Tihar Jail is writing on the concept of freedom vis-s-vis present-day society as also in relation to a future just order, bringing out some causes for the failure of the erstwhile socialist states. It will comprise a series of six articles. The first article (covering Part I—The Context) appeared in Mainstream’s Independence Day Special (August 18, 2012), the second one (covering Part II—Search for Freedom through History) in this journal’s September 15, 2012 issue, the (…)

I have heard it said that it is a sad commentary on our national character that after 15 years of our independent and free existence we should still be discussing the question of national integration. I am inclined to agree with this statement. But mere expression of sorrow at a development is not enough. We have to face the facts of life, however unpleasant they may be or may seem. We cannot escape them, if we are to survive as a virile and vibrant nation.
What do we mean by the term (…)

Indian polity is an admixture of variegated ethos and divergent cultures. Many are the common ideals and objectives which we share. Amidst this apparent sea of diversity there is a common bond which unifies us, that is, our heritage of being Indian.
At the centre of this great heritage is the concept of freedom of the spirit and oneness of mankind. It is this great principle that made Gandhiji identify himself with the high and the low and dedicate his life to removing untouchability and (…)

Barring us, Socialists, all Opposition politics in the country today have degenerated into succession politics.
Opposition parties seem to have decided that the task of changing the attitudes of the people is far too difficult for them; or will at any rate take a lot more time than they think they can spare. The Prime Minister, according to them, is old and the Congress Party will soon have to find a successor to him. Who this successor will be is an open question—at least, so it appears. (…)

Mainstream has put to me the question: How is it that a Socialist country can commit aggression?
The question is quite natural and legitimate. It arises from the fact of history itself. Way back in 1959 when we were confronted with the beginnings of the India-China border clashes, the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of India at its Calcutta meeting held the opinion that a Socialist country, like China, cannot commit aggression, and a free democratic India does not want (…)

There is the danger of paying fulsome tributes to Nehru and then drifiting with the current so far as Congressmen are concerned. And as for the Left, of being coldly formally correct and then sit aside on the sandy shore and curse the rest. Breast-beating and self-righteousness are India’s age-old national political failings. There is a fairly wide consensus that the future of our country lies in making the Nehru legacy our living national legacy, more actively and consistently than it was (…)

Generations spanning over centuries have been told that the French Revolution devoured its own children. In a sense, this could be said also of the Russian Revolution in which many of its heroes had themselves to face the firing squad.
There is however the other side, the heroic aspect of every revolution as it throws up leaders, and these in turn try to carry forward the revolution itself. Aruna Asaf Ali was one of these beautiful children reared by the Indian people’s revolution for (…)