2013

One of my fondest memories of early days of free-lance journalism relates to my few but precious meetings with Nikhil Chakravartty, editor of Mainstream. Earlier as a student in Delhi University my teachers introduced me to Mainstream where some of our most recommended readings by top-ranking scholars were first published. So when I turned to free-lance writing as a profession soon after leaving college, possibilities of getting published in Mainstream appeared like a great hounour to me. So (…)

The Supreme Court has directed the Union and State governments to constitute a Civil Services Board (CSB) to manage transfers, postings, promotions, etc., of civil servants, to insulate the bureaucracy from interference by politicians. This welcome direction is based upon a PIL, which seeks to minimise, if not eliminate, one aspect of political corruption in governance that impinges upon effective delivery of services to the people. In view of the judiciary having to step in to issue a (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
The last few months have witnessed the deterioration of Indo-Pak relations to the point of almost eye-ball-to-eyeball confrontation. Tempers have been stoked high and the fiercest propaganda bombardment has been going on between two neighbours born out of the same motherland.
The measure of this high-pitched tension was provided on the one side by the Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s frenzied diatribe against India over the Kashmir issue, and by the (…)

Fundamentalism is rearing its ugly head once again. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has openly said that it would take part in politics. On the other hand, even the liberal Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind has talked about the Muslim vote. The impending parliamentary elections may be compelling the political parties. Yet the polarisation they are trying to effect is telling upon the co-existence of Hindus and Muslims, something which they have come to accept.
Take the RSS first. Apparently, it is (…)

On October 12, Raghuram Rajan, the new Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, announced that the RBI will soon issue new rules allowing a more liberal entry of foreign banks in India. “That is going to be a big opening because one could even contemplate taking over Indian banks, small Indian banks and so on,”1 he stated in Washington at an event organised by the Institute of International Finance, a global banking lobby group.
The announcement of the reversal of a long-standing regulatory (…)

If media reports are right, then the UPA Government is likely to table the Communal Violence Bill in the winter session of Parliament. There has been wide opposition to the Bill. The media has alleged that the Bill is for appeasement of minorities and a vote-catching device for the UPA in the elections of 2014. Even the Centrist forces have accused the UPA for planning to introduce the Bill just prior to the coming elections while the Congress party had promised to enact it in their (…)

One reality that is clear to all is that the secular forces in India do not act: we only react. The other side lights fires and we rush to douse the flames. We leave the embers glowing, which makes it easy for the next fire to be lit. Having done what we can to repair the damage caused by the fire, we retreat to our seminar rooms and our writing desks: and there we stay until the next fire forces us off our backsides. We let loose torrents of words but accomplish little or nothing.
To put (…)

Sadly, it needed a bloody round of communal riots in Uttar Pradesh for the Left to see the ugly face of the Samajwadi Party [SP] Government in the State. The plain truth is that the SP has been playing communal politics in UP because it is bankrupt of ideas to project during the 2014 poll and has an “anti-incumbency” factor to overcome.
In a recent statement the Polit-Bureau of the Communist Party of India-Marxist blamed the “role of the BJP and RSS in fomenting tensions”, but that is (…)

The economy that serves the interests of Indian and foreign corporate houses can hope to exist permanently only if politics too adheres to the same goal. It is with this in view that the new economic policies implemented in the early 1990s have been focused to reinvent the mainstream political character as corporate savvy. No ideology or principle, other than corporate capitalism, seems to be working in the current scenario. Surely, the ideology of corporate capitalism has taken communalism, (…)

Nikhil Chakravartty’s birth centenary (November 3, 1913-November 3, 2013) was befittingly observed in New Delhi. November 3 this year being Diwali, on November 2 the Editors Guild of India and Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Foundation in collaboration with the India International Centre held a panel discussion on “Nikhil Chakravartty’s Journalism and Media Scene Today”.
Speaking at the meeting, veteran journalist B.G. Verghese called for regulation of the press. In his view, “Media does (…)