2013

by Krishnakumar S.
The March to Washington For Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, fifty years back, was an unprecedented assertion of the Afro-Americans who were discriminated against in their own country, despite the tall promises made on equality through the Emancipation Proclamation during Abraham Lincoln’s Presidency, after the American Civil War.
History was made with the celebrated speech of Martin Luther King Jr.—”I Have A Dream”—that drew the attention of the world to the (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Our Supreme Court asked what citizens have been asking for a while: Why is there such a sharp rise in rape cases across the country? “We are shocked,” said a two-judge Bench. “What has gone wrong with our society? What is wrong with the system now? Is it the total failure of social values, the lack of law, or is it that law enforcement is not working well?”
For the politicians who do not bother about such questions, here is “good” news: India is not the worst case in crimes (…)

COMMUNICATION
Recently, the Supreme Court has given two rulings—one denying the right of a person to continue as an MP, MLA or MLC once he has been convicted in a criminal case, and the other denying the right of a person in police or judicial custody to stand for election and even to exercise his franchise in an election. The Supreme Court’s intention is very clear and laudable, namely, to decriminalise politics by preventing anyone who has a criminal conviction or a criminal case pending (…)

BOOK REVIEW
by Taisha Abraham
Jorasanko by Aruna Chakravarti; Harper Collins India; pages: 406; price: Rs 350.
Reading Aruna Chakravarti’s Jorasanko, as a non-Bengali, was a cultural and regional experience. Along with the seven-year-old bride of Satyendranath, Genu, we too enter the spacious Tagore household amidst ululation, conch-blowing, the “clamour of pipes and kettle drums” and intoxicated by the “delicious aroma of ghee, and spices” emerging from the cooking pits. There is an (…)

COMMUNICATION
There has been a growing feeling among citizens dedicated to justice and workers’ rights that the Maruti workers have been the victims of several injustices in recent years. Some reports on the working conditions which prevailed here and gave rise to unrest among workers have indicated that the working conditions were so tight and rigid as to create health hazards for the workers. The injustices faced by the non-regular, contract workers were the most acute. They received (…)

EDITORIAL
As the latest developments in Syria threaten to snowball into another major crisis in the Arab world with the prospects of Western (read US) intervention in the country increasing with every passing day even as Russia and China are still stoutly opposing any such move and vetoeing in the Security Council any UN sanction for such attacks, the events on the national plane too have acquired considerable prominence of late.
The rapid economic deterioration in the country, (…)

by S. Krishnan and B.P. Mathur
Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, has recently made a statement that the CAG is ill- equipped for conducting performance audit and lacks trained personnel for doing so and further that the performance audit conducted by him was not credible as it was done by accountants not trained for the same. (The Times of India, August 13, 2013) A few days earlier P. Chidambaram, the Finance Minister, blamed the former CAG for the (…)

Parliament is a temple of democracy. Members are its pujaris (priests). Their purity affects the temple’s purity. If the Members defile it, the reputation of temple goes down in the eyes of the people. They begin to doubt the belief it projects. Something similar is happening in the Indian Parliament, which has lost its lustre and does not evoke the confidence it once did. All types of ills are attributed to it. The same temple, the citadel of faith, has become a laughing stock.
Still the (…)

General Raymond T. Odierno was in an upbeat mood. He had just returned from a visit to India. He was profuse in his praise for the Indian Army. He said the US Army had to learn a lot from its Indian counterpart.
The US Army Chief of Staff visited India at the end of July. During that visit he met with defence leaders in India including his counterpart, the Indian Chief of Army Staff, General Bikram Singh. He visited the Indian Army’s Northern Command, responsible for the borders with (…)

The National Food Security Bill (NFSB) has been contentious. Economic arguments have been presented against it confusing the public. The rich farmers are worried that farm prices would fall because cheap food would find its way into the markets. Businessmen argue that the economy would further slow down with an increase in the burden on the Budget. The elite say that subsidies and inflation would rise sharply due to profligacy. Unfortunately, most of these arguments are based on a partial (…)