2012

For thousands of years human beings, who reflected on the purpose of human life and reasons of distress, came to the conclusion that our life needs to change in very significant ways. At various levels they spoke against exploitation, injustice, violence, wars, over-indulgence in sensual pleasures by a few, the roots of this in socio-economic inequalities, the lack of concern for other forms of life and destructive attitudes towards nature.
I tried to capture the essence of all these (…)

The energy crisis appears to be deepening. The global price of oil is increasing. United States’ President Obama has blamed this on higher consumption by India and China. Growing global energy shortage has encouraged coal-exporting countries like Indonesia and Australia to up the export price of coal. We have limited domestic sources of energy. Our coal reserves are expected to last about 150-200 years but speedier consump-tion of this would lead to a deeper crisis after the domestic sources (…)

For some years now I have been going to protest demonstrations and meetings and seminars to take photographs which can then be used on the Internet and in other ways. In this work I try not to be sectarian: I go where I find myself agreeing with the issues being raised and pay no attention to personal and narrow political disagreements. My reasoning is that I must contribute time and labour to causes with which I am in sympathy, and that this is the most logical way to do that at a time when (…)

The tragedy of the communist movement in India has been that it wholly depended on the Soviet Union for guidance and considered any directive from it as the last wisdom which could not but be accepted as a religious tenet. The Soviet Union was only pursuing policies in its own interest and had nothing to do with promoting revolution in other countries but the Communists were made to believe otherwise.
When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union it asked the Indian Communists to support (…)

by MEDHA CHATURVEDI
Intense violence in Left Wing Extremism affected States has left hordes of local people homeless. The problem of internally displaced people within the Red Corridor is most acute in the areas falling on the Chhattisgarh-Andhra Pradesh border. Why is this exodus happening? What is the situation of these IDPs in Andhra Pradesh? Are they facing any problems or pressure from the Andhra Pradesh Government to return? What is the Government of Chhattisgarh doing about this? (…)

by SANTOSH KUMAR MOHA PATRA
After more than six decades of independence, India is still groping in the dark in search of a realistic definition of what constitutes poverty and how many Indians are actually poor? Successive governments have tweaked the definition of poverty and fiddled with numbers to suit the political dispensation. The poverty data released by the Planning Commission recently, based on the 66th round of the National Sample Survey (2009-10) figures on household consumer (…)

Under the auspices of the Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist), a massive People’s March to Parliament was held on March 14 in New Delhi with the participation of nearly one lakh people from all over the country.
Raising slogans demanding an end to all anti-people policies of the government and solutions for the tormenting conditions of people’s life due to back-breaking price-rise, limitless corruption etc. those who poured into New Delhi to participate in this protest rally (…)

Problems and crises don’t seem to leave the ruling United Progressive Alliance Government at the Centre. The Army Chief, General V.K. Singh, has been regularly coming out with startling revelations and taking steps causing huge embarrassment for the government in general and Defence Minister A.K. Antony in particular. First came the alleged offer of a Rs 14-crore bribe for the purchase of trucks made a year-and-a-half ago and the Army attributed the offer to General Singh’s former colleague, (…)

COMMUNICATION
As soon as Mainstream’s March 17, 2012 issue reached Kolkata, I received two phone calls from my two esteemed friends enquiring about the source of my information about the Rutherford-Szilard episode. (‘UN Must Outlaw Nuclear Power Plants’ by Sailendra Nath Ghosh, Mainstream, March 17, 2012)
My source is the book by Edward Teller, the maker of Hydrogen Bomb. In this book, Energy from Heaven and Earth, in chapter 8, under the heading “The Beginnings of Atomic Energy”, he (…)

DOCUMENT
The following is the text of the Delhi Declaration issued by the Fourth BRICS Summit attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Presidents Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, Hu Jintao of China and Jacob Zuma of South Africa in the Indian Capital on March 29, 2012: 1. We, the leaders of the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Russian Federation, the Republic of India, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of South Africa, met in New Delhi, India, on (…)