2013

by Anil Chamadia
The scourge of ‘paid news’ is not only the manifestation of growing deterioration of the Indian media institution as such. The economic policies pursued as consequent to globalisation have also exposed almost all institutions of parliamentary governance. Diagnosing the malady of ‘paid news’ afflicting the media outlets, a sub-committee of the Press Council of India (PCI) has described it as an expression of prevailing organised corrupt practices in the media world. But (…)

by Biswajit Roy
Mamata Banerjee completed her about-turn over her pre-poll promise on the release of political prisoners in West Bengal at the fag end of August. Her government has now redefined the term through the passage of the West Bengal Correctional Services (Amendment) Bill 2013 in the State Assembly. It’s a Left Front-era irony that the notorious jails have been rechristened as ‘correctional homes’. The amendment of the WBCS Act of 1992 has not only denied the status of political (…)

September 28, 2013 marks the immortal revolutionary martyr Bhagat Singh’s 106th birth anniversary. On this occasion we are publishing the following article written and sent for publication around March 23 this year to observe the eightysecond anniversary of Bhagat Singh’s martyrdom. It could not be published then for unavoidable reasons.
It is March 23 now on the clock, the most significant day for the revolutionary movement of not only India, but the whole of South Asia, at least as (…)

COMMUNICATION
It has been reported in some newspapers today (September 20) that Narendra Modi has been invited to release Shahid Bhagat Singh’s diary in Delhi on September 29 (see Rashtriya Sahara, September 20). In my capacity both as convenor of the Shahid Bhagat Research Committee as well as a family member (Bhagat Singh’s nephew), I would like to state strongly that Narendra Modi should not be invited for this purpose.
In these difficult times it is very important to understand the (…)

by Gaurav J. Pathania
Student union elections in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) are festivals of ideological debates and democratic exuberance. This year’s election on September 13 gave a clear mandate to the radical Left group, the All India Students Association (AISA), with its victory over all four posts of the central panel. It defeated its main opponent, the Democratic Students Federation (DSF), with a margin of around a thousand votes. The National Students Union of India (NSUI) (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Democracy has gone so berserk in India that there are serious people who think a dose of dictatorship would be good for the country. In such a situation it may be difficult for us to grasp how things are in China where the economy has opened up but politics has remained closed. Which is like opening the windows of a house and asking folks at home not to look outside. The news is that a whole lot of people are looking outside and raising demands for a whole lot of things, and (…)

MUSINGS
This piece was sent to us sometime ago but could not be used earlier because of space constraints.
Modi getting nailed by his own men. Yes, encounter specialist D.G. Vanzara’s resignation letter from the IPS, could stand as a major obstacle in Modi’s march towards New Delhi or London or even further. So, at long last this jailed murderer cop’s conscience seems revolting, he is out with those horrifying details of getting used by politicians: Modi, Amit Shah and several more… It (…)

COMMUNICATION
As per recent reports, a member of Shahid Bhagat Singh’s family has invited Narendra Modi to release Bhagat Singh’s diary. Kindly allow me to point out that several members of Bhagat Singh’s family have opposed this. The greatest contribution to presenting and dissemi-nating Shahid Bhagat Singh’s ideas in Hindi as well as in Punjabi has been made by Prof Jagmohan Singh, a nephew of Shahid Bhagat Singh. Jagmohan Singh has firmly opposed any move to invite Modi to release (…)

Introduction
The term ‘new world order’ has been used to refer to any new period of history bearing testimony to a dramatic change in world politics and economics and sociology. Despite various interpretations of the term, it is primarily associated with the ideological notion of global governance in the sense of identity which addresses worldwide problems that are beyond the capacity of individual nation-states to solve.1 In Benedict Anderson’s notion, a nation is an imagined political (…)

EDITORIAL
Last Friday, that is, on September 13, all the four accused—who were found guilty of a criminal conspiracy to gang-rape, murder and commit unnatural sex on the 23-year-old physiotherapy student, subsequently described by the media as ‘Nirbhaya’ or ‘Damini’, in New Delhi on December 16, 2012—were sentenced to death by a fast-track court in the Capital. The court asserted that since the “gravity of the incident depicts the hair-raising beastly and unparalleled behaviour” it (the (…)