2014

Ruble’s unexpected and sharp plunge on December 16, triggered by the Russian Central Bank’s sudden decision to raise its key interest rate from 10.7 per cent to 17 per cent, at a single go, brought back the memories of black Tuesdays, back Thursdays of the unstable Yeltsin years when the local currency was once devalued in 1998 by 400 per cent in a matter of two days. This time the ruble registered a historic decline, dropping as much as 20 per cent to reach a dangerous low of about 100 (…)

by Nirupam Hazra
‘What is chutzpa ?’A person kills his parents and then asks for sympathy in the court, because he is an orphan now. It was one of the defining scenes in Vishal Bharadwaj’s latest movie Haider, based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet and set in Kashmir of the mid-1990s. Haider has earned lots of critical acclamation and popular attention not only because it is based on one of the most difficult tragedies of Shakespeare’s oeuvre, but for the backdrop Bharadwaj chose to set his story. (…)

WOMEN’S WORLD
by Bijayalaxmi Nanda
Introduction
The 2011 Census has revealed an adverse child sex ratio (0-6 age-group). At 919 it is the lowest since 1961. It is a decline of eight points since 2001. Other trends which are disturbing include the fact that this decline has spread from the urban, prosperous, northern States to the rural, backward, eastern and southern belts. The decline is marked by this pervasive spread thereby indicating a rise in sex selective abortions aided by (…)

by Abdul Gaffar Choudhury
In the 1960s, when I was working for a Dhaka daily, a world tourist came to our office and wanted to talk to us. He was the famous Nigerian traveller and Left political activist, Olabassi Azala. He was touring the world campaigning with anti-imperialist slogans and meeting all the famous leaders of the then Third World such as Pandit Nehru, Nkrumah, Soekarno and others. I was assigned to meet him on behalf of my daily and I welcomed him to my desk reluctantly. He (…)

In the background of the adage that there are more questions that a fool can ask than a wise man can answer, this fool asks some questions of nuclear scientists and engineers.
Disposal of Nuclear Wastes
The goal of oceanographers during the Inter-national Geophysical Year 1957-58, was to study “the use of the ocean depths for the dumping of radioactive wastes”. Here we have one set of scientists (oceanographers) studying how to use the natural environment to dump wastes, which another (…)

by Muhammad Tajuddin
Corruption is the biggest malady of public life all over the world. It is more pervasive in the post-colonial developing societies and states. Corruption affects the weak and underprivileged sections of the developing countries more harshly in their daily life. It decreases economic growth and inclusive development, increases the incidence of poverty among masses and economic gap between classes. It is one of the most important causes of depoliticisation, political (…)

by Arun Srivastava
By the time the inertia-stricken secular forces come out of their dejection-shell, the Hindutva brigade led by the RSS would have accomplished the mission of “Hinduisation” of the country and altered its culture, social and economic ethics. Having set 2025 as the deadline for converting India into a Hindu Raj, it is in a tearing hurry to use the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as the harbinger of Hindutva’s social and work cultural ethos. Strategically the Sangh Parivar does (…)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness... it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us”.
—Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities
Not one but many observers of West Bengal politics had expressed themselves in the same vein after Mamata Banerjee came to power in the State trouncing the (…)

by Nisha Bharti
In India, 93 per cent of the labour force is informal and a massive majority of this force lives in miserable conditions. Even in the urban areas, in manufacturing and services, more than 75 per cent of the labour force is informal. Typically, labour cost amounts to 10 to 25 per cent of the total cost in manufacturing. The labour laws impose certain restrictions as well as obligations on the employer in terms of hire and fire, retrenchment, and closure of an establishment, (…)

by Navneet Sharma, Harikrishnan B. and Pradeep Nair
‘Babas’ or saints have always fascinated the understanding and lores of common life and common (wo)man. The Indian context makes it more colourful and piqued. India and being Indian has always been perceived through the lens shrouding mystery, religion and electoral politics. Babas and politics in India have a great relationship which is symbiotic to the two and together are a pest for democracy.
India has informally accepted the (…)