2014

In the third decade of the 20th century, the much popular iron-smelter community of Agaria was brought by the Britons from their ancestral land (name unknown) to Senduria village, a dusky hamlet in district Garwa of Jharkhand, to work in the local limestone pit. They were enduringly shifted there but their ancestral land (now under a reserved forest area where any activity is restricted) vanished forever; from that area they once used to obtain iron from hematite stone. Now the scions of (…)

I - Introduction
“I am convinced that there is only one way to eliminate these great evils (of capitalism), namely, through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented towards social goals....”
It was a long time ago—65 years to be precise—when Albert Einstein wrote these words with much faith and hope. Unfortunately this optimism could not be maintained as by and large socialism could not be implemented in ways that could (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
August 9 this year marks the 72nd anniversary of the ‘Quit India‘ movement also known as the August Revolution. On this occasion we reproduce the piece that N.C. wrote in Mainstream on the golden jubilee of the movement in August 1992.
Agrateful nation is celebrating the golden jubilee of the ‘Quit India’ movement which, fifty years ago, marked the final glorious phase of our freedom struggle.
With Gandhiji‘s clarion call of ‘Do or Die’, it was undoubtedly the most (…)

COMMUNICATION
After the victory of the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014—in which fairness was the main casualty—and the formation of Modi’s government, the BJP had loudly proclaimed that now the country would have achhe din or good days and there will emerge a new era in which there will be no room for dearness or mehangai, skyrocketing prices will disappear, the Indian economy will become strong and the policies of the UPA Government, which were anti-people, would be buried.
But (…)

REVIEW ARTICLE
Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty by Daniel Schulman; Grand Central Publishing, New York; 2014; pages: 424.
“He who has no shame owns the whole world.” —Cypriot proverb
In his recent notable book, Capital in the Twentyfirst Century, Thomas Piketty has documented how America is becoming a rentier society like France in the late nineteenth century. Inequality of wealth in 2010 in America showed that the top one (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Whether the Congress failed secularism or secularism failed the Congress, the issue is yet to be resolved. But like the blame-game that erupted in the Congress just after its rout in the Lok Sabha elections, attempts are being made to trace the genesis of the electoral drubbing in the wrong and amateur handling of the highly sensitive subject of secularism. It is being argued that the Congress might not have suffered this amount of drubbing if the leadership had handled (…)

by Arun Kumar, Saumen Chattopadhyay, A. Sunil Dharan and Pawan Kumar
On assuming office, the NDA Government has set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) as per the directive of the Supreme Court to tackle the menace of illegalities and to look into the possibility of bringing back funds stashed abroad. With the issue of corruption dominating the political discourse lately, a three-day seminar on the “Black Economy in India, its Global Dimensions and Impact on Policies” was organised at (…)

by Saumya Deojain
The following is an account of the programme held at Indore on Sandarbh’s annual day where Venezuelan
Ambassador Ms Milena spoke about the Bolivarian Revolution at length.
It was June 28, 2014 and the venue was the Indore Press Club. The evening started with tea, exhibition and music. The last picture of Chavez along with other Latin American revolutionary legends and their quotes surrounded a bookstall outside the hall where people slowly trickled in. Sandarbh had (…)

POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
While UP continues to be rocked by communal riots, the latest one being at Saharanpur after Moradabad, not to speak of Muzaffarnagar (where incessant communal bloodletting culminated in the inevitable rise of the RSS-led BJP under the steward-ship of Narendra Modi), and Hindutvavadis feverishly seek to saffronise education, something new has happened lately.
India under the Modi dispensation has taken a firm stand at the General Council meeting of the World Trade (…)

It is interesting to watch that after a week of full-blown Russia-bashing following the Malaysian Boeing crash in Donbas sky that took 298 innocent lives, there is an intriguing lull in the international media in its campaign to malign Kremlin for the tragedy. There were irresponsible and unfounded accusations by the US, Ukraine and international media that made Russia directly responsible and then targeted the pro-Russian rebels in the east of Ukraine for the Malaysian Boeing crash that (…)