2012

I
The recent announcement of a 4.5 per cent sub-quota for backward sections within minorities in the overall Central OBC quota by the UPA Government on December 22, 2011 in the wake of elections in five States, including the crucial State of Uttar Pradesh, has drawn in a number of reactions, some valid and others not.
Even though the media has often presented the sub-quota as one for the minorities, or in extreme cases a quota for Muslims by default, thereby providing wind to the wings (…)

It is quite often said in India that a person loses his enthusiasm and vigour and the capacity to struggle against odds and acts of injustice as he becomes older. This, however, never applied to the Portuguese literary giant, Jose Saramago. Born in a poor landless family on November 16, 1922, he actively participated in struggles against dictatorship and oppression in his own country and lent his voice to resistance against injustice wherever he saw it. He never, for once, wavered till his (…)

by VLADIMIR PUTIN
(On March 4 the presidential election is to take place in Russia. PM Vladimir Putin is again in the fray as he wants to become the President once more. The alleged rigging by the authorities in the recent Russian parliamentary elections has sparked off massive public protests in the capital. Moscow and elsewhere in the country and Putin has become the target of attack because of a large section of the people’s opposition to his running for the top post testifying to the (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
A touch of shameless audacity marks the character of politicians when they are sustained by hardly any sense of responsibility towards the people whom they are supposed to represent. Democracy has certainly its moments of glory but there is no dearth of its dishonour at the hands of bankrupt politicians who sometimes hold it to ransom.
This could be seen in the most blatant form in the responses and reactions to the Indira Government’s order on February 17 to (…)

WEST BENGAL NOTEBOOK
Even the worst critics of Mamata Banerjee will admit that the West Bengal Chief Minister has street wisdom. This became evident recently over the release of Taslima Nasreen’s latest book in the just concluded Kolkata Book Fair. An orga-nisation of the minority community threatened demonstrations inside the Book Fair venue if any function was allowed in the auditorium for the book release. The news reached Mamata right on time. She did not exhibit any sign of panic or (…)

While the UP election scene has hotted up with AICC General Secretary Rahul Gandhi publicly tearing a piece of paper purported to be a list of promises made by the BSP and SP before the State’s electorate, and SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav candidly declaring his party’s readiness for an alliance with the Congress to “keep the communal forces out” of power only to categorically deny it shortly and clarify that all he meant was the Congress-SP understanding at the Centre and not in the State, (…)

February 21 is the International Mother Tongue Day as declared by the United Nations in recognition of the martyrs of the language movement who fell to the Pakistani police’s bullets on that day in 1952 in Dhaka while demanding that their mother tongue, Bangla, be made the official language of East Pakistan. Remembering those martyrs on the sixtieth anniversary of that movement and the fiftieth anniversary of Bangladesh’s liberation, we are carrying the following poem by a distinguished (…)

URGENT APPEAL TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION, DEFEND HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS, FREE SONI SORI AND LINGARAM KODOPI
Respected President, Prime Minister and Ministers,
Every year on January 26, we celebrate the Constitution of India.1 Every January 30, we remember the martyrdom of Mahatma Gandhi, who led India to freedom. However, for the vast majority of the people of India, even the most basic of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution —the right to life and personal liberty and due legal (…)

I first met the Hazara leader, Mohammad Mohaqiq, in 1997 while serving in Tashkent. He sent word through an intermediary seeking a meeting. Mohaqiq journeyed across the Amu Darya and came over to the ambassador’s residence in Tashkent and we spent an evening over a meal talking for several hours and getting to know each other.
Mohaqiq made great impression on me as a Mujahideen commander in comparison with other jihadi leaders I had met—Ahmed Shah Massoud, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Sibghatullah (…)

KEY LESSON FROM ENCOURAGING PERFORMANCE OF SMALLER STATES
1. Introduction
Achieving economic growth with social justice has always been the foremost objective of economic planning in India since independence. Although the achievements in this respect have been substantial, the growth achieved was much slower than planned and reduction of poverty was also slow. It was after the launching of economic reforms in the early 1990s that the growth rate of the economy accelerated, but the (…)