2012

by PRATIP CHATTOPADHYAY
The following is an article written specially on the occasion of Communist stalwart S.A. Dange’s 113th birth anniversary on October 10, 2012.
I
Ideologies are not simply political philosophies. They are, essentially, normative arguments to motivate people to concrete action. Generally speaking, proponents and adherents of any ideology do believe that their system of thought or the worldview is the most perfect one and capable of solving all problems in the (…)

TRIBUTE
On September 26, 2012 at the ripe age of 97, veteran theatre critic Ramesh Chander, popu-larly known as ‘Charlie’, died in the Capital after a prolonged illness. With his death, India lost one of its oldest critics while Delhi definitely lost its grand old man of theatre criticism, a man who had over 70 years of writing to his credit. To understand Charlie one has to understand his times—and, of course, the wide canvas of his hectic life. He grew up during the British Raj. As a (…)

The nation was reeling under the impact of two mega scams—the Commonwealth Games scam and 2G spectrum scam—when it was struck by yet another scam now known as the ‘Coalgate’ scam relating to the allocation of coal mines. It burst open when a prominent newspaper carried a headline about a ten lakh crore scam in the allocation of coal mines—several times bigger than the notorious 2G spectrum scam. This was when the relevant CAG report was yet to reach the government. A draft report was about (…)

The massive countrywide bandh of September 20 against the UPA Government’s decisions to hike diesel prices, cut subsidy in cooking gas as well as introduce 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail and 49 per cent FDI in aviation obviously has had no impact on the Manmohan Singh dispensation at the Centre. Or else it would not have gone ahead to carry out a second bagful of big-ticket reforms today.
The latest decisions of the Union Cabinet (which would however have to await Parliament’s (…)

Eric Hobsbawm, 95, one of the greatest historians of the twentieth century, has passed into history. He breathed his last in London on Monday, October 1, 2012. When his historian colleague Victor Kiernan passed away in 2009 (also at the age of 95), Hobsbawm had written in The Guardian that he was "a man of unselfconscious charm and staggeringly wide range or learning”, adding:
He was also one of the last survivors of the generation of British Marxist historians of the 1930s and 1940s… He (…)

by Eric Hobsbawm
Let me begin by thanking The Book Review Literary Trust for inviting me to enjoy the privilege, tonight, of giving this second lecture in memory of Nikhil Chakravartty. I have a small personal qualification for giving it, for he belonged to that group of my student friends from the 1930s, that remarkable crop of young Indians who became Communists in Britain and were eventually to play a significant part in the political and intellectual life of their country. Among those (…)

The following article, by a Congress leader, is being reproduced from Mainstream (May 26, 2012).
Sam Walton, who created the largest and most powerful retail marketing organisation, died in 1992 as the richest man in America. Now his successors are just behind Bill Gates.
Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh in their report, ‘The Top 200: The Rise of Global Corporate Power’, issued by the Institute of Policy Studies, Washington D.C., September 25, 1996, wrote: “The annual sales of the (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
Turmoil in heaven—the heaven which is presided over by the supreme superpower of the day, possessing History’s largest number of deadly nuclear bombs and missiles, the Cruise to the Patriot, who at the same time lords it over the world’s largest money-lending bank. Yes, in such a country advertised the world over as the ultimate repository of power and affluence—in the mighty United States of America—there has erupted a spate of violence brought about by fierce racial (…)

The Pentagon document on Strategic Guid-ance, entitled “Sustaining Global Leadership: Priorities for Twenty First Century”, released in January 2012, has inaugurated a new cold war. If the theatre of the ‘old’ Cold War was Europe, the new theatre is the Asia-Pacific. The docu-ment affirms that the US will of necessity rebal-ance towards the Asia-Pacific region. ‘Rebalance’ seems to have replaced the earlier term ‘pivot’. The document maps the region as “the arc extending from the Western (…)

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 five to six articles. The first article (covering Part I – The Context) appeared in Mainstream’s Independence Day Special (August 18, 2012) and the second one (covering Part II – Search for Freedom through History) in this journal’s September 15, 2012 (…)