2013

REVIEW ARTICLE
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran; New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 2006. Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan by Rajiv Chandrasekaran; New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 2012.
The author is a journalist who writes for the Washington Post. These two recent books reveal many interesting details about America’s two latest imperial ventures. America is an empire, as the late Chalmers Johnson documented so well in his (…)

The following article was written sometime back but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons.
Direct Cash Transfer (DCT) of subsidy to domestic LPG consumers starts on February 15, 2013, when LPG agencies will supply LPG refills on upfront cash payment of the full (unsubsidised) cost of the refill. The subsidy amount will be credited to the consumer’s bank account based on the consumer’s UID-Aadhaar number provided to the LPG agency and the bank. DCT is enabled by implementing (…)

The eminent political psychologist, Ashis Nandy, made some insightful observations on Gujarat and Narendra Modi in 2008, and those seem prophetic in the wake of Modi’s recent victory in the Assembly elections in 2012. It may be mentioned in this connection that a petition of criminal offence was filed against Nandy for his critical observations carried in The Times of India. Nandy argued that even if Narendra Modi had lost the last elections (2007), it would not have made much difference to (…)

The following is the report of a survey conducted by the Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi on the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and Panchayats.
Introduction
Just like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) is another rights-based and flagship programme, which was introduced from 2005 to 2012 in 18 States to improve the health delivery system in rural areas. It was introduced by the Ministry of Health (…)

MUSINGS
Qamar Azad Hashmi passed away recently. She was Shabnam, Safdar, Sohail, Sabiha and Shehla’s mother and ‘ammaji’ to the rest of us … I had interviewed her on earlier occasions. She spoke fearlessly and one could discuss just about anything with her—right from politics prevailing in the continents across the world to that barbarism unleashed by the American-Allied forces, to the horrifying violent eruptions taking place, to those personal upheavals. And, yes, even the educational (…)

COMMUNICATION
The month of February has brought a new wave of repression against the villagers threatened by the grant steel project of the POSCO multinational company.
This project has been widely debated and steadfastly resisted with great courage by villagers. They have been arrested, beaten up and threatened repeatedly, but many of them have continued their opposition against extremely heavy odds for several years. Even among those who accepted compensation, many villagers say that (…)

Several disturbing developments over the last few days have cast further shadow on the credibility of the ruling coalition at the Centre.
First came the allegation that the CBI’s special prosecutor in the 2G scam had advised the accused Unitech’s MD how to weaken the CBI’s case against the company; this was based on a conversation between the two taped on CD. The CBI had to remove the special prosecutor from the trial and preliminary inquiry was registered to probe the matter. (…)

Afzal Guru was hanged on February 9, 2013, two days before the death anniversary of Maqbool Bhatt which is celebrated as Martrys’ Day in Kashmir. Both the Kashmiri men are now buried in unmarked graves in Tihar Jail, the biggest jail in South and South-East Asia.
I remember reading about Maqbool Bhatt’s hanging in the newspapers in 1984; I was then already a human rights lawyer but I had not understood the political significance of the hanging and like most patriotic Indians had not given (…)

MUSINGS
Hanging my head in shame. No, not my form, for that’s what the state can do. Hang and bury in absolute secrecy, without informing the family and without being sensitive to any of the basic human rights and also towards that bigger picture that looms large.
No, I did not know Afzal Guru and had never met him. Nor can I claim to be a legal expert. Then, why did his hanging hit? The basic reasons could perhaps be these:
I have read lawyer, well-respected activist and human (…)

We are giving this statement on why we have decided to withdraw as the Guru family’s counsels. We would have preferred to have withdrawn quietly but due to subsequent events it is not possible to represent them any further.
Both of us have been engaged with the Kashmir question since the 1990s and were part of fact finding teams which exposed the human rights violations committed on the people of Kashmir in the wake of the insurgency.
Our stand was at the time and continues to be that (…)