2013

by Arun Srivastava
On May 25, 2013, a detachment of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army of the CPI (Maoist) carried out the most gruesome attack in Sukma of Chhattisgarh in which at least 27 Congress leaders, activists and policemen, including Mahendra Karma, the Salwa Judum leader of the State, were gunned down. The Maoists have legitimised the killing as, according to them, Karma represented the oppressive face of the State administration. The handout released by the Maoists after the (…)

The birth centenary of the exemplary parliamentarian and extraordinary Left leader, Tridib Chowdhuri of the RSP, was observed last December, that is, six months ago, without any major celebration in West Bengal, leave aside the country as a whole. We remember that outstanding Revolutionary Socialist with the following article by a distinguished leader of his party and erstwhile Member of the Lok Sabha.
Reasons
The Sheikh Hasina Government of Bangladesh has decided to confer posthumous (…)

From Afghanistan comes the astonishing news that some high government officials are paid monthly salaries in the range of US $ 30,000-50,000 by the national government and foreign organisations.
At the same time there is a majority of lower-ranking government employees who earn as low as 3000 Afghanis a month. The enormity of the discrepancy in government salaries is realised when we remember that 100 afghanis are equivalent to US $ 1.86. The average national monthly income is equal to US (…)

by Amitabh Chakraborti
The Minister of State for HRD, Shashi Tharoor, has come up with an article on the introduction of the FYUP in Delhi University. No, if you have to go by what our Minister says in the write-up published in The Hindu on June 1, 2013, he did not speak as the Minister, he wasn’t even interested to, it would seem, speak as the Minister. He, as a proud graduate of Delhi University, has “found” himself “caught up in the controversy”. And what was he actually caught up with? (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Believe it or not, some analysts in Karnataka publicly attributed the Congress victory in the State to Rahul Gandhi’s campaign speeches. Narendra Modi was all bombast, they said, while Rahul asked people about their problems and promised to redress them, thereby winning their votes.
This is the tragedy of the Congress, and by extension, the country. If the party had fared poorly in the election, the blame would have been put squarely on the local leaders. In victory, all (…)

REVIEW ARTICLE
by Achin Vanaik
The Indian Ideology by Perry Anderson; Three Essays Collective, New Delhi; 2012; Hardback; pp. 191; Rs 550.
The response by a great many Indian progressives to Anderson’s book of three essays on the Indian Ideology has been negative on a variety of counts. It is said to be an inadequate historical study of the National Movement leaving so much out of what went to shape this Movement inside and outside the Congress party; it is not even any kind of a (…)

On May 14, 2013 was marked the 70th anni-versary of the martyrdom of one of the greatest freedom fighters of India, Allah Baksh. He lived and sacrificed his life for a free and all-inclusive India. Allah Baksh was the Premier (those days the Chief Minister was known by this designation) of Sind during the eventful days of the ‘Quit India’ Movement of 1942 as the head of the ‘Ittehad Party’ (Unity Party) which represented all sections of Sind and did not allow the Muslim League to have any (…)

MUSINGS
Killings are a barbaric form of revenge and unleash of anger, and should never be allowed to take place. No, never. Not under any of those garbs or excuses or camouflages or cover-ups. Whether inside jails and in those officially constructed cages, or out there in the open, in and around forests and jungles.
Heated discussions on in the corridors of power and the blame-game takes off on this latest tragic incident, where several Congress-men and their aides and bystanders were (…)

June 4, 2013 marked the twentyfourth anniversary of the massacre of countless students and youth at Beijing’s famous Tiananmen Square. There have been the usual protests and candle-light vigils in Hong Kong with the participation of numerous people but, as has been underscored in The Globe and Mail, while the annual demonstration in the self-administered enclave under Chinese sovereignty “is the most vivid display of the continuing passions over the 1989 crackdown on student protests in (…)

Two developments of the last few days have stirred the country at large.
First came the new revelations of spot-fixing in the Indian Premier League; these are assuming ever-serious dimension with every passing day and yet, as The Indian Express has aptly noted, “no official, either from the BCCI or IPL, has quit”. In fact the person holding the reins of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) continues to hold on to the chair of the BCCI head even though propriety demanded that he (…)