2012

Mutual cooperation between Russia and India in the business sector and the participation of Russia in India’s modernisation programme will help benefit Indian business to enter the prospective Customs Union market. The market possesses high potential for industry (more than US $ 65 billion), energy (over 100 billion barrels of oil and about 450 billion cubic metres of gas) and agriculture (the volume of agricultural production being to the tune of US $ 12 billion) thus ensuring high (…)

The instrument of criminal justice—the Indian Penal Code—was drafted by Lord Macaulay when he functioned Law Minister of India from 1834 to 1838. It is a tribute to his superb draftsmanship that the Indian Penal Code is one of the least amended statutes in India. —Nani A. Palkivala
The basic concept of justice in the foreign-made Indian Penal Code, imposed revengefully by the bandit queen Victoria on the third anni-versary of the war independence 1857, is that all Indians are habitual (…)

With the BJP bowing to former Karnataka CM and Lingayat strongman B.S. Yedurappa’s demand for a change of guard in the leadership of the State Government in Bengaluru, Vokkaliga leader D.V. Sadananda Gowda has tendered his resignation from the post of head of government and a new CM—Jagdish Shettar—has replaced him. This change once again shows the strength of Yeddyurappa while also exposing deep factional fissures within the party; it further makes a mockery of the BJP’s “crusade” against (…)

Kuldip Nayar has concluded his article ‘Where is the Vision?’ (Mainstream, June 30) with this paragarph: “The people’s dilemma is that both the national parties, the Congress and BJP, riven as they are with groupism and ambitions, do not qualify to lead the nation. How I wish there were some party, even though small, that had the vision to retrieve the country and take it forward!”
No doubt many other people in the country have the same feeling, but the question is: why after all these (…)

President Patil just before her retirement has been the subject of strong criticism allegedly for accepting over 35 mercy petitions and commu-ting death sentence to life imprisonment of these accused convicted of rape and murder of children—an action which causes justifiably disbelief and alarm. She is even said to have commuted the sentence of a person who died five years ago (showing a kind of sloth in dis-posing of such delicate matters).
The President’s Office, being naturally piqued (…)

The judiciary has played havoc with Pakistan. Often it has justified military coups in the country through the dictum of necessity and on a few occasions it has supported the democratic ethos. Every time the people have paid the price. This time it has not been different. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has been disqualified and he had no option but to resign to make place for a new Prime Minister. Yet the people have to bear the brunt. With no electricity, no water and no reprieve from (…)

by TAREAK A. RATHAR and ADFAR RASHID SHAH
Pakistan has been struggling with political instability since its very birth. There have been serious and threatening problems in its political system regularly and these have had ramifications upon the very development of the state and its reputation before the international community. The sociological fallouts of the identity and legitimacy crisis of democracy in Pakistan—trust deficit among masses in successive governments, political leadership (…)

War on Adivasis
The message of the mass killing in Bijapur, Chhattisgarh, on the night of June 28, 2012 was clear. The security forces, both at the Centre and in the States, have declared a war on the Adivasis. The objective of the war is to tell the Adivasis that they do not have the first right over their fertile land and resources. The state has every right to take over these and do what it desires. The state is the boss and in charge of ‘public interests’ and the people have to be (…)

Independent India has been consistent in its approach to the million mutinies that threatened the country’s unity and integrity through the past six decades and more. That pattern is something like this: popular alienation is simply left unaddressed even if the root cause remains no great mystery and is possible to be tackled; sometimes the ruling party willfully exploits the alienation to suit the needs of electoral politics (Khalistan); the wounds inevitably fester over time; and, when the (…)

It was a night when the innocent Adivasis in village Sarkeguda were busy with the festivities for planting seeds on their land. The festivities are a community affair and a matter of great joy where people dance and celebrate the event. Hence when the villagers of Sarkeguda were planning for their festivities, little did they realise that their homes would turn into their graves with the piercing bullets of the Indian state. The Director General of the Central Reserved Police Force, K. (…)