2013

Many great men, sickened by the way the contemporary society behaves, have been exas-perated to give vent to their harshest feelings. Author Samuel Johnson remarked: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a Scoundrel.”
I had thought that Johnson was unfair to overwhelming number of ordinary citizens who were, in the true sense, patriots. I was willing to concede that if he had used the word “Politics” instead, I might have gone along with him, especially when I read what V. Lenin said: “There (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
So, the fat is at last in the fire.
The concern over the blatant speculation in the share-market which has shaken the country had to come over our Finance Minister only in driblets and that too after tremendous pressure in Parliament.
Our Finance Minister did know that the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex began to shoot up instantly with his Budget, to the great applause of the brokers and their colluding bankers. That was the time when the Chairman of the National (…)

IMPRESSIONS
This piece was written before the Karnataka Assembly elections.
The larger picture casts doubt on the very viability of democracy in our country. As the world knows it, democracy is a government of the ordinary people, by fairly elected people, for the good of all people. To some extent, we had that kind of democracy in the first few years of independence. What we have today is a govern-ment of manipulators, by manipulators, for manipulators.
With every election the (…)

Recently the Finance Minister was on a tour to Europe to lure the foreign investors to invest in India. Some years back, India was among the preferred destinations for the foreign investors. However, that is no more the case. If one attempts to verify it through figures, foreign direct investment (FDI) has been at an all-time low during the last two years. India’s current account deficit (CAD) is at an all-time high as a proportion of the GDP, and this is being met mainly through portfolio (…)

The foreplay of the Russian-American high-level exchanges can be very revealing. This time too the two sides indulged in some robust shadow-play in the run-up to the overnight “working visit” of the United States Secretary of State, John Kerry, to Moscow on May 7.
Kerry’s talks produced a significant result with Washington and Moscow agreeing on a “road map” for the resolution of the Syrian crisis. Part of the reason why the perception of a “breakthrough” formed almost instan-taneously is (…)

This article was written before Beijing ended its stand-off with New Delhi on the Sino-Indian border and External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid visited Beijing.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has said that the world was laughing at us because we have made a mockery of our democratic system where the Opposition stalls functioning of Parliament instead of debating contentious issues. The statement sounds illogical as there are other issues that would cheer up other countries to laugh at (…)

India’s First War of Independence (described by the British colonial masters as ‘Mutiny’) began on May 10, 1857 at the Meerut Cantonment. The rebel sepoys of the East India Company marched to Delhi, the seat of the Mughal King, accompanied by thousands of villagers who had joined the rebellion on the way to Delhi. On May 11, this mass of rebels, of which more than 75 per cent were Hindus and Sikhs, had an audience with the 82-year-old King Zafar and prevailed upon him to lead the liberation (…)

by K.S. Chalam
Indian historiography is undergoing several challenges today. One of the issues that the contemporary historian encounters is about the selection of social categories to narrate changes that have taken place in the recent past. It is only by studying the contemporary history and relating it with the past that we can save/sustain the discipline of history in India. This has been the penchant of one of our most distinguished historians, Prof Sekhar Bandyopadhyay. He is now (…)

by B.K. Kaushik
Keeping in view the pluralist nature of the Indian polity, the makers of the Indian Constitution decided to adopt the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy instead of the American pattern of the presidential system. They were of the considered opinion that the former was more suitable for India than the latter as it could provide a share in the power structure to the various social, cultural, linguistic and regional groups at the national and State levels. Besides, (…)

by M. Manisha
In the run-up to the Assembly elections in Karnataka, there was an interesting initiative by eminent citizens of Bangalore called the Bangalore Political Action Committee or BPAC.
The BPAC team has some of the most eminent personalities from the world of business, sports and entertainment, including Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, T.A. Mohandas Pai, Prakash Bidappa, Ashwini Nachappa, Charu Sharma to name only a few. It also has the support of other distinguished persons such as (…)