2013

From N.C.’s Writings
The searing experience of genocidal attack on a whole minority group in neighbouring Sri Lanka has naturally sent shock waves throughout India. It would be wrong and invidious to regard it as a matter of emotional upsetting for the people of Tamil Nadu alone, as some circles bereft of a sense of national integration seem to suggest. In fact, the pre-planned gangsterism in Sri Lanka has spared no pains in turning it into an anti-Indian fury: nothing else can explain the (…)

WOMEN’S WORLD
“We must understand that [they] have committed a crime, but the source of this crime lies in society. It is true that [they] themselves carried out this crime; but a great part of the culpability was transmitted to them by society.” —Mao Zedong1
For all their silences and misgivings, the unprecedented mass protests in Delhi and elsewhere against the ghastly gang-rape of a 23-year old girl in a Delhi bus on December 16, 2012, has helped awaken social consciousness and (…)

MEDIA
by Arani Basu
Bengal, the epicentre of many political upheavals affecting the nation’s democratic trajectory, has always had a very strong media1 capturing the voice of dissent and public opinion on issues affecting the citizens of Bengal in particular and India in general. However, the relationship between the media and politics in Bengal per se, has undergone huge transformation over the years; in which the role of the media ranges from being a platform for people’s causes to one (…)

[Prabhat Patnaik’s contention in this article (published in People’s Democracy) has been sought to be contested in the following piece. We are carrying both for the benefit of our readers; we are reproducing Patnaik’s article with due acknowledgement.]
A basic proposition of Leninism is that theoretical understanding that leads to the formation of class consciousness comes to the proletariat from “outside”; the proletariat does not spontaneously achieve revolutionary class consciousness. (…)

by Paresh Chattopadhyay
The prolific pen of the famous communist-economist, Prabhat Patnaik (hereafter PP), has recently produced in his party organ People’s Democracy (January 13 2013) a defence of Lenin from which there is much to learn, as is generally the case with his writings. For us of particular interest in his paper is his reading of Marx and Engels as a weapon in his defence of Lenin (which he uses interchangeably with the ideologically surcharged term ‘Leninism’) against Lenin’s (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Will the confrontation developing in the waters off China engulf us all? There is an explosive situation between China and Japan, an adversarial situation between China and Vietnam, an unfriendly situation between China and the Philippines and a prickly situation between China and Indonesia. The unhappy situation between China and India of course remains live.
From the Chinese point of view, the Philippines and Indonesia are ignorable because they pose no military challenge. (…)

The South China Sea is a topic of discussion at many international fora. In recent times, it is an area of intense disputes and rival claims which have contributed in making it a flashpoint of South-East Asia.
The Sea covers over 1,400,000 sq.m and is dotted with hundreds (about 250) minute islands cays, atolls, sand bars etc. It also includes the Spratley and Paracel Islands together with the Macclesfield Bank and Scarborough Shoal. It is abundant in oil and gas together with fisheries. (…)

by Vivek Kumar Srivastava
The philosophy of New Socialism of Hugo Chavez was primarily fashioned by his own childhood days where he had experienced the poverty-stricken dark side of life, and his mother Rosa who taught him how to integrate with the poor and to relate to the historical roots of Venezuela.
His formative years were highly complex but he learnt to cope with the complexities of life which helped him in later years to deal firmly with the onslaught of the neoliberal challenges (…)

EDITORIAL
The two-day meeting of the BJP National Council in New Delhi had been called to endorse and ratify the appointment of Rajnath Singh as the party’s President. However, the meeting turned into something quite different: Gujarat CM Narendra Modi became the cynosure of all eyes with party leaders from President Rajnath Singh downwards singing paeans of praise for the organisation’s ‘Vikas Purush’ (Development Man) for having unveiled a development agenda in his State that was quite (…)

Western diplomatic circles are becoming increasingly pessimistic about what they term as the “Syrian revolution”. They are now contemplating changes in their policy of handling the Syrian crisis. Syria has turned out to be a headache for the US and its European allies of late with the project ‘Topple Bashir al-Assad’ having failed to succeed despite all efforts to ensure its success. The Syrian opposition (that is, those who are desperately seeking to destabilise the Syrian Government) has (…)