2012

Central Asia has for quite sometime now become the arena for a new Great Game involving Russia, the US and China. Such players like India close to the region as well as neighbouring Pakistan and Iran frequently fail to keep pace with the fast changing manoeuvres of the main protagonists that leave considerable impact on the regional capitals.
Let’s take the case of the Ayni air base in Tajikistan. New Delhi has invested a lot of money and expertise in modernising this military facility (…)

by JAN MYRDAL
The following are excerpts from the speech delivered by the reputed Swedish Communist writer, well known for his support to peoples’ movements the world over, at a public meeting, held under the aegis of the Forum Against War on People, at New Delhi on February 6, 2012.
Dear friends,
I want to say something on the international solidarity movement with the people of India.
We are here because there is an ongoing war against the people of India by the Indian state (…)

by ATUL KUMAR THAKUR
Had Uttar Pradesh been a country, it would have been more populous than as many as 170 countries and if by choice it was a democracy, it would have been the fourth largest democratic nation. However, it’s equally true that with its horrific fundamental indices, this imaginative nation would have been the most terrible democracy of the world against all the whims and fancies of political analysts. The past two decades of downgraded politics have turned India’s most (…)

In a sovereign state, the economy is regulated largely by the monetary and fiscal policies. Their roles increase in significance even more in a market economy, where there is no scope for direct controls. There is always a need for the judicious coordination of both the policies for achieving the desired optimal results. However, in reality this is not always the case. More often than not the political economy decides which tool should be used more in proportion and it is invariably the (…)

by RAVI SINHA
The following is the keynote address on “Global Hegemonium and Challenges to Democratic Rights” delivered by the author, a physicist by training and Left-wing activist by choice, at the Eighth Joint Convention of the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) at Allahabad (December 29-31, 2011).
I must begin by expressing my gratitude to the organisers of this Convention and to this Forum for the opportunity and the honour you have given me by letting me (…)

The plot was believed to be as follows: Washington wanted to keep long-term US military presence in Iraq but the popular opinion in Iraq militated against it, which ultimately left the Barack Obama Administration no choice but to comply with the Status of Forces Agreement [SOFA] and to withdraw all the troops by the stipulated deadline of December 2011.
The US of course has given the spin that the withdrawal has been of its own accord. And the Republicans have been berating Obama for not (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
When politicians as a community are in a state of siege in the eyes of the public, it is extremely short-sighted on the part of any government to make any move that may appear to the public as a means to cover up or to close the channels of the politician’s exposure.
While in the public mind, corruption among politicians has become a live issue since the Bofors bribery scandal, it was during Narasimha Rao’s Prime Ministership that the enormity of corruption in (…)

TRIBUTE
On the last day of last month verteran diplomat A.K. Damodaran, 90, died in the Capital’s Escorts Hospital. A freedom fighter who was inprisoned for more than 12 months during the ‘Quit India’ struggle in 1942, he taught English at Delhi University before joining the Indian Foreign Service in 1953. He was indeed, as The Indian Express has aptly observed, “one of the brightest and sharpest minds that the foreign policy establishment had seen” and, as his colleague and batch-mate in (…)

TRIBUTE
Eminent writer Kartar Singh Duggal, 95, passed away in New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (where he was admitted on January 20) in the evening of January 26, 2012, after a brief illness due to old age. He wrote in Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi and English and his works included short stories, novels, poems and plays. A Padma Bhushan awardee (1988), he won the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship (2007) and was a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha (1997-2003). Born on March 1, 1917 (…)

Recently on several occasions the West Bengal Governor has permitted himself to make some critcal comments about the State Government publicly. When some college principals were heckled by students belonging to different unions affiliated to different political parties, the Governor demanded strong action by the State Government against the guilty students and said he would have taken ‘other measures’ if he were the head of the administration.
The next day he again urged strong action (…)