2013

“Political slugfest over V.K. Singh’s intel unit ops”—read the headline in one of the inside pages of The Times of India of September 21, 2013. A day earlier The Indian Express had a frontpage lead story under the heading: “Unit set up by V.K. Singh used secret funds to try and topple J&K Govt, block Bikram Singh: Army inquiry”. The report read thus:
Misusing secret service funds to destabilise the Omar Abdullah Government in Jammu and Kashmir, to pay off an NGO to try change the line (…)

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the prime ministerial candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has asked the Jamaat-Ulma Hind, representing the Muslims, to list four or five steps he should announce to win their confidence. The Jamaat has rightly pointed out that it was for Modi to think how to win the trust of Muslims. One thing Modi could do straightaway is to apologise for the 2002 riots in the State, reportedly blessed by him after the burning of some Hindu pilgrims in a (…)

Indian diplomacy can look back with satisfaction at the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg. The summit’s declaration echoed India’s concerns over the spillover effects of volatile currency withdrawals on the emerging economies. It recognised the principle of levy of taxes on the “multi-national companies” where they make profits—upholding a principle India espouses. Third, the BRICS, which met on the sidelines of G-20, decided to create a $ 100 billion fighting fund to steady the currency markets (…)

After Afghanistan and Iraq it is now Syria’s turn to be devastated by incendiary and high explosive bombs, artillery shells and rockets by the American Army and Air Force.
Afghanistan was accused of hiding Osama bin Laden; Iraq of having “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMDs); Syria is being accused of using chemical weapons in mid-August in a Damascus suburb that killed about 300. The USA was trying to get its planned strike against Syria approved by the Security Council of the UNO. But (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
The initial sense of relief at the announcement of the peace initiative in the Gulf has now given way to premonitions because of the US camp’s reluctance to respond. Whatever may be the final outcome of these peace negotiations, this makes a distinct watershed in the protracted Gulf crisis. The terrifying air blitz that was unleashed on January 17 by the US-led coalition forces—particularly by the American and the British—brought death and destruction on a scale (…)

The National Food Security Programme involves $ 21 billion per year to subsidise grain for about 810 million people. The main cause of malnutrition includes high prices, poor sanitation. Many people add that 43 per cent of children go hungry as well as many mothers.
These ideas and remedies demonstrate once more the gap between urban elites—often decision-makers—and villagers, economic and social issues. Already in 1975 the great anthropologist, M.N. Srinivas, was deploring this current. (…)

The recent riots in Muzaffarnagar bear testimony to the fact that riots are no longer an urban phenomenon. In the past, riots happened in the cities. But, now they have spread their wings in the countryside as well.1 Moreover, the Muzafffarnagar clashes prove once again that communal violence in our country is engineered mostly by politicians and political parties.2
The most significant feature of the Muzaffarnagar riots is that they took place between the Jats and Muslims with a toll (…)

While hazardous GM technology was allowed to be spread more easily in cotton on the ground that it is a non-food crop, it is clear that when cattle, sheep, goats etc. feed on Bt cotton residues, then health hazards also spread to the entire food-chain.
According to the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, Hyderabad, “Bt (bacillus thuringiensis) toxin in its natural, non-GM form, when used as an insecticidal spray, behaves differently in the environment than Bt toxin produced in GM plants. (…)

by Saket Bihari
The Media: An Introduction
The Fourth Estate is a spectacle par excellence that is hewn in the rationale of profit-seeking and rent-seeking and which remains a great deal intertwined with the rationale of the spawning of imageries. If one delves inside the thematic and objective pretext of KEDS (Events Data Research), then researchers are looking forth to the norm of creating and discovering events out of news which is where the real story of the media is. The Fourth (…)

by Satraajit Palchoudhury
The twentyfirst century is the century of technology. The emergence of the new media has changed the dimension of media discourse in its totality. This version of the media is more interactive. In fact it will be apt to shower praise on the inventors of the new media. We have already seen the impact of the new media in totalitarian states like Egypt, Tunisia and to a certain extent in Russia where for the very first time Vladimir Putin in his chequred career (…)