2012

COMMENTARY
The Communist Party of India, the oldest Communist Party in the country whose birth took place in Kanpur in December 1925, has held its Twentyfirst Congress in Patna. The CPI-M, which surfaced much later in October 1964 and whose founders decided to advertise their Marxist credentials in the name of the party in order to differentiate it from the parent organisation, is currently holding its Twentieth Congress in Kerala’s Kozhikode.
Just before the Twentyfirst Congress, the (…)

Leaked Letter
The media is full of Army Chief General V.K. Singh writing to the PM that India’s Army is unprepared for war in terms of weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is undoubtedly extremely serious. That the communication was leaked is even more serious. It is vital to find out who leaked that communication. It is unrealistic to interpret this leak as “retaliation” by a man frustrated at having lost his year-of-birth case in the Supreme Court. Let us not imagine that the General (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
An ominous stage has been reached in Indian politics—a danger signal for our democracy. By the amazing folly of the government, the former Chief of the Army Staff has been dragged to the centre-stage of a nationwide controversy over a magnum size bribery in which the Prime Minister and people in his immediate proximity inescapably figure.
General Sundarji’s bombshell disclosure in an interview to India Today about the Prime Minister’s refusal to turn the screw on the (…)

Not all High Commands are the same. The originator of the system in India, Indira Gandhi, enforced it with shock and awe. Congressmen, however exalted, were trained to see their High Command the way vassals see their master. Only one Chief Minister, the late Rajasekhara Reddy, could do things without trembling before the High Command. Even he kept up pretences, never publicly defying the almighties.
The BJP is a party with a difference. Nobody trembles before the High Command. Many (…)

Pakistan has changed in some ways since my last visit one year ago. Terrorism is absent from most parts of the country. Punjab has not experienced even a single incident in the last 15 months or so. Above all, terrorism is no more a topic in any discussion. I did not see any armed security person on the streets of Lahore. Still people do feel uneasy and even insecure, but appear to have reconciled to the circumstances and conditions.
In the same way, the Taliban do not figure in the daily (…)

by ALI AHMED
What to make of Pakistan is up to its 180 million citizens. However, what they make of Pakistan is consequential to its neighbours. Therefore, if India wants Pakistan to go along a certain direction, then it must go down the route ‘with’ Pakistan.
India wants the dividend of a democratic peace, which means getting Pakistan to take the right choices away from extremism and military dominance. India has not succeeded so far. This owes to the internal political complexion of (…)

The Age of Brazening Out
It was a sunny morning in Delhi, just a couple of hours through an interesting day of counting of votes polled in five States, including UP. As the first trends of the election started pouring in, a Congress leader with a not-so-trustworthy track-record appeared on a national channel to break the secret: the High Command would soon take a final call on whom to ally with, SP or BSP.
That the Congress was secretly toying with such ideas was not unknown to the (…)

We are very proud of our Democracy. We are equally proud that “We the People” have given unto ourselves a Constitution that ensures the noble aspects of democracy. We have even incorporated Socialism and Secularism into the Constitution. We have a Parliament to which women and men above the age of 18 vote for the candidate of their choice. We boast of the “Pillars of our Democracy”, the Legislature, Executive, Judiciary, and Press which we consider as Independent. Even when large sections of (…)

Are you finally over with all those picnics, tea parties and seminar sessions on the so-called International Women’s Day? Are you through with those supposed who’s who—those VVIP spouses, indulging in those frilly tamasha events on that day and on those so many other days of the year?
Now sit back and ponder. And with that feel somewhat ashamed of the insensitivity hovering around, blinding us from seeing and sensing women with grit. Aren’t we being plain silly in bypassing the actual (…)

BOOK REVIEW
23 Things they Don’t Tell You about Cpitalism by Ha-Joon Chang; Penguin Publisher, London; January 2011; pages: 304; Hardcover Price: $ 25.
Through his two thought provoking books, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002) and Bad Samaritans—Rich Nations, Poor Policies and Threat to the Developing World, Han Joon Chang, the Korean economic historian teaching at Cam-bridge University over the last twenty years, has emerged as an inveterate (…)