2012

I write these lines after a fortnight has passed since that shocking incident took place in a suburb of the city of Calcutta. Three women and their driver returning from duty assigned by the government’s Health Department were detained by a gang of ruffians, their belongings looted, their van set on fire and they were beaten and the women criminally assaulted, in which one of them died alongwith the driver and two others are still hospitalised.
This ghastly crime was committed in a (…)

Whatever may be the substance of the much-advertised point of difference between Peking and Washington over the question of détente, it may be safely assumed that Gerald Ford’s talks with Mao Tse-tung and his cohorts explored the further potentialities of Sino-American collusion, particularly in the countries of the Third World. Angola shows the enormity of this entente while the happenings in Bangladesh underscores this danger in our immediate neighbourhood.
The Sino-American (…)

In the midst of the excitement over the dramatic developments taking place before our very eyes in the Soviet Union, we tend to miss their historic significance. In the presence of History, one is apt to miss its majesty.
Perhaps no other single event since the Second World War can match the current revolution in the Soviet Union in its far-reaching dimensions. Never before the crack-up of such a powerful state has taken place with so little of violence. Barring the Indian and Chinese (…)

Parliament has just repealed the Parliamentary Proceedings (Protection of Publication) Act which came into force twenty years ago in 1956.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 speech, from which a significant portion is reproduced here below:
“For the success of (…)

Twelve years ago Jawaharlal Nehru died is harness on May 27. Inevitably, much has changed in these twelve years among his people and in the humanity at large. He was not the man who would have preferred the status quo to change; and if the landscape and the skyline of his country have changed—at places beyond recognition—Nehru, had he been alive, would have tried to understand them, accelerate the process of change.
What we who belong to the generations after him have to ponder over is (…)

Nineteen Eightyeight will go down in history as the year in which a widely current myth was exploded—the myth that the entire Opposition from the extreme Left to the extreme Right should be united in a single combination if the Congress is to be defeated. It is being increasingly recognised that there cannot be a single Opposition in which the Right and the Left segments are united.
As late as a year ago, the Left was under attack (from the Centrist political leaders and from the most (…)

by Shubhra Chaturvedi
The North Korean rocket launch on December 12, 2012 in the Pyongyang province, that came after much speculated delay, achieved the goal that it probably aimed at: an immediate deterrent. The launch is a clear indication of North Korea’s intentions of developing the long range capability to deliver nuclear weapons as far as the United States mainland. Though the “peaceful rocket launch” does not classify as the long-range ballistic missile test, it does come across as (…)

Our early years had been scadling pain, Our times hung heavy all the while, What calamities, what disasters to pass through! On the wide wilderness of hugetime I see your hand beckoning under your banyon shade With the boon of your thousand roots— And our dead boyhood and youth come to life. Not to the enchantress, it was of man’s own making, Of men of the earth, in man’s homage to man! In pin-pointed eyes and ever-alert work, That ever-quick heart, Lenin’s mind and life Gave wings to (…)

by Anandi Sharan
Much has been written about the need to adapt to climate change, to help the poor and the vulnerable. Much more has been written about how to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions to encourage capitalists to invest in renewable energy,1 rather than in fossil fuels and nuclear energy, in order to maintain living standards for the middle class without harming the environment. But these are partial responses to a problem which is actually systemic in nature and thus needs a (…)

by N.V.K. Murthy
A TV commentator speaking about the 2012 US Presidential Election said it was an election where hope was pitted against memory. A couple of months prior to the election, many predicted that Obama had an uphill task and with an unemployment rate higher than nine per cent, it was almost impossible for him to get elected for his second term. Much was made by the Republican Party members about the unpopu-larity of the health care reforms which they had christened as (…)