2013

by Yaqoob Khan Bangash
On February 16, Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy pointed out in an article, in this newspaper, that some students he was speaking to did not know about Shahbag Square. Coincidentally, when I asked my students the same question a few days ago, I got the same blank looks. The ques-tion, of course, is, first, why is our media not covering the events in Dhaka, but more impor-tantly, why, even after knowing about the event, we still do not care and don’t want to care.
Our (…)

Budget time is very significant for an economy. It gives an opportunity to take stock of how the economy fared during the previous year and setting targets for the coming year. These targets are fixed on the basis of expectations or assump-tions of certain variables. The proficiency of the government is reflected on how accurately it makes the expectations of these variables. More often than not, the government is tempted to give a very rosy picture about the coming fiscal year by presenting (…)

The recent visit of the new French President, Francois Hollande, to India can be seen as an important stepping-stone in developing an enduring and close partnership. It may not have resulted in inking the much-talked-about Rafale jet deal (the sale of 126 Rafale combat aircraft to the Indian Air Force), which is being negotiated since January 2012, but the fact that this was President Hollande’s first visit to a large Asian democracy and he chose India over Brazil, Russia and South Africa (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
The Bofors kickback scandal is fast assuming the dimension of a serious crisis for the Rajiv Government. For this, the Prime Minister has to a large measure hold himself and the bunch of cronies and hangers-on—whom he has been keeping under his tattered wings—responsible.
The latest to bring discredit for him is the dishonourable conduct of the Joint Parlia-mentary Committee (JPC) which was set up to investigate into the identity of those who got the bribe money of (…)

I was at the Parliament House when it was attacked in December 2001. Members like me were furious over the incident and the first suspicion was on Pakistan. It turned out to be true because the three who escaped were from Pakistan. Afzal Guru was from Kashmir and hence the same mix-up of Kashmir with Pakistan.
How to sort out the Kashmir problem or, more so, why it has been held hanging thus far are questions which need to be answered by the rulers, both at Srinagar and New Delhi. State (…)

by Walter Fernandes
Finally a senior Union Minister has made official what many knew already. The government cannot even make the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) more human because the Army does not want it diluted, leave alone repealed. In his K. Subrahmanyam Memorial Lecture on February 6, 2013 at the Institute of Defence Studies, P. Chidambaram said: “We can’t move forward because there is no consensus. The present and former Army Chiefs have taken a strong position that the Act (…)

This is carnival time for the detractors of Defence Minister A. K. Antony. Of course, none of them in their senses would dare to implicate Antony in the VVIP helicopter scandal. He remains the ‘Saint’. The saving grace in the present scandal is that Antony is relentlessly cracking the whip.
Obviously, getting Antony out of the way has been an obsession for the pimps and dalals who feed on defence deals. Their lament and criticism has been that Antony is too slow in decision-making on arms (…)

There have been violent conflicts on land acquisition across the country especially when the land of the poor has been taken away without proper compensation by the state for public and private ventures. In all stories of acquisition it is the land mafia that has come to play a crucial role in pauperising the ordinary villagers and farmers and evicting them from their land with meagre compensation. In the major cities of India there are “estate agents” with gangs who threaten and intimidate (…)

According to the tentative results of Census 2011, Assam with an area 78,438 square kilometres has a multi-ethnic population of 31.2 million, distributed in 27 districts. It is said to have 72 identifiable communities including a large number of ethnic tribes who have their own religion and language, though many of them have been culturally Hinduised. The Bodos are the biggest tribe, claiming to be the original inhabitants; they are scattered all over the State but concentrated in the (…)

From all the elaborations that have now come forth, it would seem that this is what the sadly beleaguered Ashish Nandy had meant to say at the Jaipur Festival: that for thousands of years corruption has been the preserve of the upper castes, but the fact now that India’s Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes, and increasingly Scheduled Tribes as well are vigorous participants in this handed-down practice testifies to the energy of the ongoing social revolution in contemporary India. (…)