2012

A news item in The Times of India on August 23 had the heading: ‘Court says commercial activity seems to top Centre’s priorities’. The item was on tourism in tiger reserves.
It was published six days after the same paper had carried another headline for its lead news item, a fascinating one for a banal piece of news. It read: ‘CAG estimates: Our likely loss Rs 38,00,00,00,00,000’. Somewhere coal blocks, somewhere land, somewhere something else had been gifted to industries for a song. This (…)

The dangers present at Kudankulam, Idinthakarai and surrounding areas are several, but they can be separated into two categories, namely, dangers as seen by government and as seen by people. This is not to imply that government is not legitimate, because it has been elected by the people. But from what follows it is apparent that the government is not for the people.
Dangers as seen by Government
The government appears to perceive that the Kudankulam nuclear power plant (KKNPP) is in (…)

When Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar suggests that they are willing to view Kashmir from “another angle” to tackle the thorniest problem and Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna changes the subject, it means that Islamabad has overcome pressures from within. Of course, Foreign Minister Khar’s remark is primarily meant to reopen the problem which remains frozen. Yet the mere suggestion of “another angle” indicates a new confidence that the tottering Asif Ali Zardari Government has (…)

by Asghar Ali Engineer
It seems quite a stale topic as we know how the police behaves during communal distur-bances or even before and after that. Recently the Prime Minister too, during his inaugural address to a one-day conference of Directors General and Inspectors General of Police along with intelligence officers in New Delhi, expressed serious concern about increasing incidents of communal violence in the country. When the Prime Minister of the country expresses concern and draws (…)

[On the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s one hundred and fortythird birth anniversary on October 2, 2012, we are carrying the following article and reproducing N.C.’s piece that appeared in Mainstream (October 1, 1994) and an article by Mohit Sen that was published in this journal’s Gandhi birth centenary issue]
(October 4, 1969).
Machines have always been an essential instrument of human life. It is almost impossible for men to imagine life without an active presence of machines. Whatever (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
On October 2 this year India is celebrating the hundred and twentyfifth birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. The Government of India has set up a special committee studded with VIPs of different denominations and is chalking out an extensive programme of functions which will spread over a whole year. The Congress party is holding a meeting of its highest organ, the Working Committee, the very same week at Belgaum, at the border of Karnataka and Maharashtra—this again (…)

The author, a distinguished Marxist ideologue, was a CPI leader about whom Jawaharlal Nehru had written that he was a Communist with a nationalist vision. He passed away in May 2003. This article, which is being reproduced from Mainstream’s Gandhi birth centenary issue that appeared on October 4, 1969, was actually a paper he presented at a seminar on “Gandhi and the West” orgainsed by the University of Mysore in 1969.
The question of ideological indebtedness is always tricky. Much more so (…)

IMPRESSIONS
It’s not just Parliament that is paralysed. India is paralysed. At one level, bills are stuck, files don’t move. At another, eyes are shut, minds are closed. All that happens is: Politicians get their allowances and their perks without let or hindrance. Galbraith saw a functioning anarchy in the 1960s. Today, even as an anarchy, we are unable to function.
The irony is that what party leaders say of their opponents is absolutely true. Except that it applies as much to them as (…)

The international scenario continues to be dominated by the serious situation in Syria where the West (read the US) has been planning an intervention for long with help from strange bedfellows (from the Al-Qaeda to Israel) even though that has not yet materialised. The twin blasts that struck the heavily guarded head-quarters of the Syrian Army in the heart of the country’s capital, Damascus, on September 26 have given a new dimension to the efforts to dislodge Bashar Al-Assad—these are (…)

Georgia today is a picture of political and economic instability. The risks of investing in the country’s economy are thus extremely high.
Foreign analysts in particular have noted that the perspective of stable development of the Georgian economy in the forseable future is bleak. That is because the country is completely depen-dent on continuous foreign inflows. Hence Georgia has a vast external debt and most of this debt has to be repaid by 2013. It is most unlikely that Tbilisi would (…)