2013

by Nidhi Sharma
Corruption in a section of the government personnel is a lopsided exchange of finances between a section of the government personnel and the citizen in favour of a section of the government personnel; corruption is measured financially alone where one group, namely, the citizen pays more to a section of the government personnel than receiving payment from the latter. Corruption exists in a section of the government personnel when financial and economic benefit from a (…)

by T.R. Choudhury
The recent disclosures from American whistleblower Edward Snowden that the US’ National Security Agency shadowed telephone calls and e-mail correspondence of foreign nationals offer the clearest evidence till date of the fact that the United States, which prides itself as the principal advocate of democracy and human rights worldwide, is in effect the main offender of its professed values and international law as a whole. But what is really odd is that the White House (…)

EDITORIAL
Howsoever much Gujarat CM Narendra Modi is able to inspire rank-and-file BJP cadres, steeped in the Hindutva mindset, the fact is that the person who was recently appointed the chief of the BJP’s campaign for the 2014 general elections is fast turning out to be a liability for the principal Opposition party at the Centre. This has been borne out by the outcome of his recent statements.
First came his assertion that he was a ‘Hindu nationalist’. The emphasis on the word (…)

Nations which do not remember their immediate past are in danger of repeating the same tragedy. This thought came to me on June 26, 2013 (the Emergency day of 1975) when on random questioning of young persons in the 35 age-group (who are said to make up about half the population of the country), it was found that an overwhelming number of them knew nothing of any particular significance of the day—and what is more tragic, a fairly large number of people above the age of 35 fared no better. (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
When politicians as a community are in a state of siege in the eyes of the public, it is extremely short-sighted on the part of any government to make any move that may appear to the public as a means to cover up or to close the channels of the politician’s exposure.
While in the public mind, corruption among politicians has become a live issue since the Bofors bribery scandal, it was during Narasimha Rao’s Prime Ministership that the enormity of corruption in (…)

We sincerely apologise for a highly serious mistake which has occurred in the July 6, 2013 issue of Mainstream. The article, “Don’t belittle the Army, Mr Rambo-Nambo” (which also figures in the select list of articles displayed on the cover), was not written by Major-General (Retd.) Sudhir Vombatkere but Ms Priyanka Chaturvedi and appeared in the Tehelka blog on June 27. Major-General Vombatkere had sent it to us with the details of the Tehelka website. Unfortunately due an oversight we (…)

I
Encore!
Mr Praveen Swamy has ‘discovered’ the ‘usual suspects’ once again.
Narrating “[t]he same old, depressing story of incompetence and apathy” behind the Bodh-gaya bombings, he has shared with the readers how “[I]ndia’s police and intelligence services knew there were plots to attack the temple”
and how “... jihadists quite publicly announced they intended to attack Buddhist targets. ... From January, government sources have told Firstpost, the Intelligence Bureau had issued (…)

MUSINGS
Development! Are we a developed lot? What development are we talking about, when there’s destruction spreading around. Not just along the hills and mountains, but in our very psyches. Suicides going up the graph, as emotional turbulences hit many more. And together with that, blatant killings taking place under those array of political shams. And those official announcements are made along a crude strain: Only two killed. Only 800 left stranded. About 20 washed away. Maybe just (…)

One must admire and appreciate Edward Joseph Snowden, the 30-year-old former American technical contractor and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), for his courage and willingness to risk his life for a public cause. It is not normal for a young man to exhibit that courage in the presence of a mighty state, a state that can even do away with his life.
In sharing classified material on a variety of top-secret NSA (…)

The devastating fury unleashed in the form of heavy rains, cloudburst, landslides and flash floods in Uttarakhand have taken a heavy toll on human lives and property. Thousands have been devastated and many structures have been swept away. Though the official figure of people who died in the tragedy has been put around 3000, the actual number may be much higher. The unprecedented tragedy has forced us to re-examine how the fragile ecology of the Himalayas has been exploited in the name of (…)