2012

Aung San Suu Kyi’s visit turned out to be profoundly meaningful. With an old world charm, she simply held up the mirror to show us what we were and what we have become as a nation. The image staring back at us looks ghastly, and makes (some of) us feel low.
No one knows what were the real thoughts racing through Suu Kyi’s mind which she chose to keep to herself. She is excessively polite— unlike Nelson Mandela. To be sure, this was not the India she knew in her youth. No doubt, she could (…)

by PETER RONALD DESOUZA
The Nehru Memorial Lecture, given by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on November 14, 2012 in New Delhi, was a master class performance. It was measured. It was poetic. It was political. It was philosophical. It did not employ the rhetorical flourishes so favoured by orators nor did it pander to the conceits of the audience and manipulate their emotions just to get their applause. In fact the tone of her delivery was almost constant, with just a little blip for irony, a brief (…)

The death of Savita Halappanvar, an Indian dentist in Ireland, due to refusal of abortion by the doctors in Dublin has outraged every human being who loves life. Irish laws prohibit abortion though a 1992 court ruling suggested that it could be permitted if there is ‘real and substantive’ risk to the life of mother. However, this court ruling fell on deaf years as doctors failed to respond to her deteriorating condition which resulted in her untimely death.
Thousands of people protested in (…)

by SRIKANTH KONDAPALLI
While no specific policy vis-a-vis India had been mentioned in the just concluded 18th Communist Party Congress at Beijing, it appears that for the next five years certain broad policy prescriptions outlined in the work report could have implications for India.
In the change of guard, none of the seven Polit-Bureau Standing Committee members have visited India in recent times; nor is there any evidence that any of them have extensively dealt with Indian affairs. (…)

by NAMRATA HASIJA
The 18th Party Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) commenced on November 8, 2012 amidst speculations from every corner of the globe about the closed-door meetings. Hu Jintao’s opening remarks gave many leads as to what the main themes being discussed were. However, his statement, “We should give more to farmers and take less from them and lift restrictions over their economic activities”, on the condition of farmers and land grabs has made many speculate about (…)

In the months that he survived the exit of the Russian forces from his country, Afghanistan’s former slain President Najibullah would visit New Delhi to seek support and succour from India that was itself left ‘friendless’ when the Soviet Union collapsed.
There was little the government of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao could do to help him, being itself hit by a serious economic crisis and militarily by insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir after Pakistan diverted the Mujahideen returning from (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
At the time of writing these lines, there is excitement in the Capital about the imminence of reshuffle of the Union Cabinet. This is of course a source of hypertension for many of the Ministers as to whether they would be wrested of their present portfolios and downgraded with the charge of less important ones. There are others who have been getting restless waiting to be called to join the Council of Ministers. While there are indications that this time the Prime (…)

Just recently I took yet another trip to Ahmedabad, but this time I had a special purpose. It was to introduce my six-year-old daughter, Sachi, to two living treasures. These living symbols of our heritage had featured in my documentary film, ‘Asli Azaadi’ and I wanted my child to meet them, before they signed the vivid air with their honour and were gone.
We met Nirmalaben Desai, lovingly known as Nimuben, who, at the age of 98, has an astonishingly lively mind. Her house is full of (…)

by C.R. BAKSHI
Recently, two mass organisations, namely, the ‘National Joint Campaign Committee for Dalit Rights’ and ‘All India Adivasi Mahasabha’ held a joint conference at Nagpur and decided to launch a nationwide movement by SCs and STs, who constitute 25 per cent of the Indian popula-tion, over the demand for full implementation of the SC/ST Sub-Plans without diversion or mis-utilisation of the fund, on December 10, 2012, the day which was declared by the United Nations in 1948 as the (…)

I must confess I have never understood why Ram Jethmalani off and on aligns himself with the Bharatiya Janata Party. I can only think that he does so from a visceral animus against the Congress, more particularly the Gandhi family.
More often than not, his cheeky independence of mind and forthrightly subversive allusions to shibboleths dear to the culturally reactionary Hindu Rightwing underscore the deep dissonance of his hedonist temperament from the cloistered givens of the Parivar. (…)