2012

Recently, India and the European Union (EU) concluded another round of negotiations on the proposed free trade agreement (FTA) at Brussels. Commerce Minister Anand Sharma and EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht reviewed the progress of the negotiations, which started in June 2007 and are expected to be concluded before the year-end.
The 27-nation EU is India’s largest trading partner. The bilateral trade between India and the EU has increased from $ 83.46 billion in 2010 to $ 108 billion (…)

Between the 1830s and 1850s, the human race, chiefly in Britannia, evolved into animal spirits.
Darwinism and Industrial Capitalism came together to catapult humankind from lazy ethical medievalisms to the heights of prowess and productivity. All that based on the clear recognition that the only demonstrable impetus behind the dynamics of the material world was the will-to-power of those whom evolution had made fitter to survive than others, both among animals and homo sapiens. (…)

This article reached us quite sometime ago but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons.
A State, known for having the highest proportion of the poor in the country and a large number of districts under Maoist influence and where many movements are going on against mega-mining projects, has just completed the panchayat elections relatively peacefully. The Biju Janata Dal (BJD), under the leadership of Naveen Patnaik, has been ruling Odisha for the last twelve years: it has once (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
It is interesting to find that a fairly high-level of delegates from the government-sponsored Think Tanks in China had interactions with their Indian counterparts recently in New Delhi under the aegis of a seminar devoted to Panchsheel and Global Diplomacy. The event marked the fortieth anniversary of the coining of the Panchsheel, that is, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (June 28, 1954). As a matter of fact, no specific declaration on the five principles (…)

COMMUNICATION
You deserve to be congratulated for publishing the memorandum submitted by a women’s group to the President of India regarding viola-tion of the rights of Soni Sori (Mainstream, May 18-24) and conferment of President’s gallantry award on SP Ankit Garg. This is not an isolated case but one in the long series of humiliation of Adivasis, Dalits and Muslims. The memorandum rightly points out that “if ignored and left unpunished, it sets dangerous precedents for the subversion of (…)

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Sarsangh-chalak, Shri Mohan Bhagwat-ji,
Namaskar.
I was not surprised to read your comments in newspapers that it was not necessary to be a secular person to occupy the office of the Prime Minister in Democratic-Secular India. As per the press reports, you wondered why a Hindutvavadi could not become the PM of India. I am sure you understand better than me that being a Hindutvavadi is not the same as professing Hindu religion. Our national leaders—like Mahatma (…)

Communications
The author has gone through the grind of journalism from production and reporting to leader writing. This two-part article is an endeavour to see the world through the prism of the average person like himself.
When the father-figures of the government and allied institutions fall short of providing for the common man, he has to fend for himself. Large organisational structures are characteristi-cally top-heavy and centralised and once the ways of the world assert (…)

The Foreign Secretary-level India-Pakistan talks have ended in the Capital without any perceptible progress on the terror front. At the joint press conference Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai succinctly underlined the Indian position by asserting that Pakistan “bringing to justice” the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack would be the “biggest confidence-building measure” for the two neighbouring states; but his Pakistani counterpart, Jalil Abbas Jilani, remained in the denial mode (…)

by NARENDRA SHARMA
The work-report of the UPA-II Government for the year 2011-12, recently released by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has been “part of the continuing process of”, what he called, “building a modern, secular and plural India”.
Not much notice has been taken by observers of this new concept of building “plural” India outlined, without expanding it, by the Prime Minister. This, however, does need special attention since he implied that he has been carrying on this process (…)

by KUSHAN MITRA
The Higgs Boson, described as the The God Particle in a 1993 book by Nobel Prize-winning scientist Leon Lederman, has had its existence proved. Well, it has had its existence proved to an accuracy of 99,9999 per cent at CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research. With it, one of mankind’s most expensive endeavours has been completed as researchers across the world have spent billions of dollars searching for this elusive subatomic particle that completes the ‘Standard (…)