2012

The Karnataka Government’s order asking the temples of the State to perform rituals so that rain comes to save the farmers and cattle of the State is a blatant violation of the Constitution. Can a State Government of a secular country invest huge amount of money on performing puja to bring rain? How will this influence the minds of our children?
The Karnataka Government’s Revenue Department has issued a circular to nearly 34,000 temples of the State to conduct several rituals to bring (…)

by SATYA NARAYANA SAHU
On the 60th anniversary of Parliament, Pranab Mukherjee assumes office as the 13th President of the Republic. The Indian term for President—who, as head of the state, occupies an exalted place in the constitutional scheme of governance—is “Rashtrapati”.
The word has an interesting genesis in the Indian political context. During the freedom movement, the President of the Indian National Congress was respectfully addressed as Rashtrapati. Mahatma Gandhi, in many of (…)

by RANBIR SINGH and KUSHAL PAL
The first President of India, Dr Rajendra Prasad, did not accept that the head of the Indian state is a mere ceremonial one. He not only opposed the enactment of the Hindu Code Bill but also demanded the examination of the powers of the President. It is pertinent to mention that despite having been elected to the office against the wishes of the then Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, Prasad acted as the constitutional head but not as a nominal head (…)

As the new Home Minister of India, the most daunting task before Sushil Kumar Shinde will be handling the Maoist menace. Although the West Bengal Government has recently registered some spectacular successes against the Maoists, the performance of the Central Government and some other State governments leaves much to be desired in this respect. The Maoists’ record in recent times underscores that they are operating with impunity while the governments at the Centre and in several States only (…)

BOOK REVIEW
The Energy Glut: The Politics of Fatness in an Overheating World by Ian Roberts with Phil Edwards; Zed Books, London and New York; 2010.
What does obesity have to do with climate change? Everything, according to Ian Roberts, Professor of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. People are fatter and the planet is getting cooked—both because of the over-use of fossil fuels and a transportation system based on it.
Obesity is very much in the news (…)

Mullaperiyar, a conflicting subject between Kerala and Tamil Nadu, is of much national importance. Because settlement of such disputes between two linguistic States, amicably and not forcibly, is essential for national integration. The dispute has a prolonged historical background. In 1886 the Maharaja of Travancore agreed to lease out 8000 acres of hill track in the Western Ghats surrounding the valley of the river Periyar to the British Government for constructing a dam and reservoir. This (…)

by GHANSHYAM KUMAR PANDEY
Bihar is one of the Indian States where agriculture, with its fertile alluvial soil and favourable agro-climatic condition, has been moving on the path of progress since independence, though on a slow pace. About 90 per cent of the total population of the State of Bihar lives in the rural areas and more than 75 per cent of its population out of 83 million inhabitants depends on agriculture and allied sectors. Thus agriculture is the backbone of State’s economy. (…)

The following article is a follow-up of the letter that Prasenjit Bose, who was the head of the CPI-M’s research wing at the central party headquarters, wrote to the CPI-M leadership when he resigned from the party. (He was subsequently expelled from the CPI-M by the party leadership.) That letter was carried in Mainstream (June 30, 2012).
by PRASENJIT BOSE
Many issues have been raised in the debate surrounding my resignation from the CPI-M on June 22 protesting against the decision to (…)

In the early hours of July 30, seven States in North India—Haryana, Punjab, J&K, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, UP, Rajasthan—alongwith the Capital Delhi and the Union Territory of Chandigarh suffered their worst power outage in a decade when the northern power grid collapsed. Essential services were revived in a few hours no doubt, but full restoration of power supply in the affected regions took far longer, that is, more than half-a-day. But that this was not a one-off incident became (…)

The core group led by Anna Hazare (called Team Anna) is looking to the 2014 general elections to support any political entity that is non-Congress, non-BJP and non-regional, that will support Team Anna’s dogmas of removing corruption, removing the corrupt from power, and enacting the Jan Lokpal Bill. Any right-minded citizen would have nothing but praise for the first two. But there is a school of thought that opines that the Jan Lokpal Bill arrogates too much unaccountable and wide-ranging (…)