2013

Politics and administration in India have their singularities. If there was a time when people’s representatives took their feedback from their constituency to the party and the administration and worked accordingly, the practice has now become a rarity. The omissions cut both ways. The representative and his constituents have withdrawn mutually. But when you learn that Babu Rajendra Prasad (Mayor of Patna, 1936), Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (President, Ahmedabad Municipal Board, around 1917) (…)

WOMEN’S WORLD
by Sagar Preet Hooda
The murderous gangrape of a young girl in a moving bus in Delhi in December 2012 had deeply shaken the conscience of the nation. The surge of feelings of fear, anger, and frustration in society, though unprecedented, was, however, not new. It had happened in the wake of similar incidents in the past too. After such incidents, invariably instantaneous protests emerge but generally evaporate soon and the situation on the ground remains the same. But, last (…)

The serial child rape cases in Delhi as well as in other parts of India have raised a serious debate over the role of pornography in generating violence. The accused of Gandhi Nagar and Badarpur child rape cases disclosed that they had watched pornographic film before they sexually assaulted the girl. It evoked intellectuals to argue that pornography incites rape and violence against women in India.
In Western society pornography is a subject of implicit controversy. A section of feminists (…)

Kerala, a tiny strip of land in the extreme south-west of the Indian subcontinent, became a state on October 1, 1956 following the dictates of the States Reorganisation Commission. This area, renowned for the spices grown there, especially pepper, was known in countries, East and West. Its fame increased when the very next year, that is, in 1957 the people voted to power a Communist Government, the first in India. This attracted lots of people, from other States and outside the country, as (…)

COMMUNICATION
A leading member and ideologue of the CPI, Anil Rajimwale (AR for short), has honoured us by his important critique (Mainstream, vol. LI, number 27, June 22) of our position on the question of workers’ (revolutionary) consciousness, published earlier in the same weekly.
As Lenin’s idea on this question was the object of our critique, AR naturally starts with a defence of Lenin with the opening salvo: “Among the great figures of the world revolutionary movement Lenin was the (…)

by Sunil Ray
‘Bengali culture’ seems to have lost its resonance when I see a poor is killing another poor just because both of them belong to opposite political parties. Raping and killing of women across Bengal presents another antithesis of its culture that seems to have lost its equilibrium. The society has now reached the height of dehumanisation the State is celebrating. All these lead me to argue that what Bengal has been witnessing today is one of the greatest crises of humanity—the (…)

COMMUNICATION
Pension reforms can benefit tens of millions of new beneficiaries, apart from pension coverage improving for existing beneficiaries. Most of these beneficiaries are elderly people, but some others will also benefit by broadening the criteria for pensions provided on the basis of ‘single women’ status and ‘disability’.
This optimistic outlook on pensions is based to some extent on documents of the Central Government, and to some extent on some sporadic efforts of the (…)

by Bishwajit Sen
It is as if the British media has suddenly been hit by a thunderbolt. It is of course not the “spring thunder” of the Naxalbari type, which was distinctly heard in Peking (now Beijing) and faithfully reported by its radio. This is of another sort. Aravindan Balakrishnan (73), a suspended member of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist), and his wife Chanda (67) have been found guilty of enslaving three women (of different nationalities, that is, Malay-sian, (…)

Recently there has been a lot of discussion on food security, but most of this discussion has taken place in the narrow context of making available cheaper foodgrains to a larger number of people. The kind of questions which dominated this debate are-how many more people can be provided cereals priced at Rs 2 or Rs. 3 per kg and what will this cost the government in terms of increasing the food subsidy. A time has come now to go beyond these narrow concerns and seek a wider, comprehensive, (…)

Of different influences on our daily life, politics is predominant. Most often, it overrides other sectors of life—social, cultural, business, technology, agriculture. Bernard Crick, in his In Defence of Politics says: Politics affects everyday life. “The decisions made by politicians affect us all, from cradle to grave.” But do the people in India or other parts of the world understand politics correctly or embrace politicians? Not really. A credible Institute in Stockholm, the Institute (…)