2014

This article was written before the final outcome of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
by Ajay Gudavarthy
In 2004 when UPA-I came into existence, the Left parties played a pivotal role in deciding the content of the Common Minimum Programme and pushing social welfare policies at the height of economic reforms. In fact, it was because of this continuous check of the Left Front with their outside support to the government that the Congress promulgated the much acclaimed MGNREGA that literally (…)

MUSINGS
First things first. I can’t believe that we, human beings of this world, continue to sit like mute spectators as Israel continues pounding and bombing Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians. Not to overlook those thousands who are left homeless and penniless, wounded and orphaned.
What about the United Nations and the connected international peace outfits! Weak and rather redundant they seem. No apparent outrage and no halting of the ongoing blatant killings of hapless (…)

COMMUNICATION
I am extremely disturbed that one Y. Sudershan Rao, who is reported to have extolled the caste system, has been appointed the chief of the ICHR recently. He feels that caste worked well. Indeed it worked well as the caste system with the help of religion could force a quarter of India’s population to a sub-human existence for centuries and even till date. He may be a beneficiary of the system, but he should know that caste is based on inequality and discrimi-nation; breeds (…)

COMMUNICATION
with the BJP in power, it seems that the bureaucracy is becoming more corporate-friendly. It has advised the new Environment, Forests and Climate Change Minister, Prakash Javadekar, to lift the ban on mining in forests and moratorium on new factories in heavily polluted industrial areas. Do the bureaucrats want to accelerate the pace of environmental destruction? How heavier do they want to pollute the already heavily polluted industrial areas? The Minister needs to be (…)

communication
Kobad Ghandy, a highly learned scholar and a member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), is at present imprisoned in Tihar jail. From his desolate jail-cell he has contributed several widely appreciated articles which have been published in the Mainstream.
Kobad Ghandy was educated at the famous Doon School, Dehradun and St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Some of his former classmates at Doon School have got together to initiate a campaign for the release of Ghandy. (…)

POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
During his poll campaign Narendra Modi wanted the people to vote for a Congress-mukt Bharat and make him the Prime Minister. In return he promised to bring them manna from heaven. On becoming the Prime Minister, he warned the people to be ready for ‘tough decisions’ which will end the ‘populism’ of the UPA regime. But the Union Budget presented by his Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, in Parliament yesterday came as an anti-climax. There was no manna falling from heaven. (…)

The Government in India seems to be on the cusp of a watershed in many different dimensions. This seems to be so not simply on account of a new government assuming office but on account of the attempts, fairly loud ones at that, to project a big change and a good degree of shared assumption of something different from what we have become used to in the course of many changes of government we have witnessed so far. Whether the same holds good for the process of governance in its many aspects, (…)

Normally, the Economic Survey is presented during February, a few days before the General Budget, but this time it has been brought in the second week of July. Not only this, but there has been a regime change at the Centre that has led to different perceptions of the problems and tasks facing the country. A cursory glance at the Economic Survey2013-14 convinces one that the Modi Government’s perception and the line adopted by it does not differ from what Dr Manmohan Singh’s neo-liberal (…)

WOMEN‘S WORLD
Nirbhaya in December 2012 and Badaun in May 2014 are nothing less than landmarks for women in India,—landmarks in their conscious-ness of what men do, and can do, to them. But the statement made by the TMC MP, Tapas Paul (also a popular actor), caught on camera and released last week, go even beyond the violence, sometimes fatal, that individual women face throughout their lives. He is seen addressing a meeting, reportedly of his party members, and is heard saying that he (…)

Brazil will host the leaders of Russia, India, China, and South Africa for the 2014 BRICS Summit on July 15-17, 2014. This BRICS Summit is expected to launch the $ 100 billion Contin-gency Reserve Arrangement (CRA) and further details on the soon-to-be-established BRICS Development Bank will be unveiled.
In June 2012, Brazil had proposed the establishment of a BRICS contingent reserve pool and bilateral swap arrangement which could ease short-term liquidity pressures and strengthen (…)