2014

IMPRESSIONS
Gracious words in print and speech marked Jawaharlal Nehru’s 50th death anniversary recently. Narendra Modi himself, a day after taking oath as Prime Minister, twittered his respects on the departed leader’s punya tithi. It’s good to be mindful of history, respect the past and generally be civilised. But reality floats above sentiment. And the reality is that historical interest in Jawaharlal Nehru has all but vanished while that in Mohandas Gandhi and Bhimrao Ambedkar is (…)

review article
by Bishwajit Sen
Bhanga Pather Ranga Dhulaye (In the Crimson Dust of the Broken Road) [Memoirs] by Sukharanjan Sengupta; Punashcha, Kolkata; price: Rs 250.
I
The autobiography is a strange genre. A man tells less about himself than he tells about others. It is as if he is a mirror in which the contemporary times appear in a light in which it has hardly been visible till then. We should keep in mind this essential characteristic of autobiography while assessing one. (…)

The small island of Mauritius, literally a dot in the Indian Ocean, with a checqured history of people migrating becomes an interesting spectacle of Indian as well as European social history, particularly of the 18th century, embe-dded in the deep-seated malaise in society and economy in the age of the Empire.
Actually, the Indian labour diaspora was a two-way traffic: one internal, where the Assam tea gardens were recruiting hapless poor peasantry from the parched land and rocky heights (…)

EDITORIAL
Having won absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, PM Narendra Modi, while speaking on the President’s address to the joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament, struck a non-partisan note in both Houses, promising in the Rajya Sabha to engage the States in “cooperative federalism” and assuring to take the Opposition alongwith him in this venture, whereas in the Lower House he went out of his way to embrace all groups and communities; he also said that “focused activity” for the (…)

When a supposition or a system of ideas is being put in place, there is no choice but to debate the exceptionable or the inscrutable through available channels. The nuanced differentiation of an evolved milieu comes to light in the public sphere. The hardboiled rule out the catalysts of change moving to a different opinion, but to the extent that any modification is a process, the possibilities for better or worse exist at the same time. For instance, if the case is for clearing away the (…)

by Rohini Pandurangi
The recent decision of the United States (US) to continue to keep India in the ‘priority watch list’ thereby refraining from designating it as a ‘priority foreign country’ saves India from having to do another firefighting, at least for the time being. The sudden and unexpected decision of the EU to ban imports of Alphonso mangoes and four other vegetables from India has given the Commerce Ministry enough work to do. Though the actions of the US are unilateral and (…)

For the first time a non-Congress political party, the BJP, was able to get an absolute majority on its own in Parliament. The BJP had in the past—first for 13 days, then for 13 months, and later for a full term—formed governments but those were in alliance with a multiplicity of regional parties (some 24). The present victory is unprecedented. It has given the opportunity to the BJP to form a government without depen-dence on its allies some of whom proved unreliable.
Reflecting on the (…)

This is not the first time that the Congress has been decimated, getting only 44 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. The party met more or less a similar fate in the 1977 election held after the Emergency. Mrs Indira Gandhi, the architect of the Emergency, and her extra-constitutional son, Sanjay Gandhi, too lost in the polls. Yet the Congress retained the three southern States—Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. Even the overall tally was around 150. It was, indeed, a defeat but not a rout (…)

This piece was sent before the election to Syria’s presidency.
President Bashar Assad of Syria will soon be seeking a new term of office. He appears to have overcome the threat to his regime from military intervention from the United States, Britain and France. The threat to it posed by foreign-supported Sunni jihadists, who have been waging an armed struggle to oust him since 2011, is diminishing. It caused much devastation, killed thousands and rendered millions as refugees, now living (…)

MUSINGS
Rapes and gang-rapes! Sexual maniacs on the prowl! Perversion hitting all possible quarters—right from the rural to the urban belts, from the top brass to the lowest rung!
What’s shocking is this accompanying factor—in the Badaun gang-rape-cum-murder of the two minors girls, cops are more than involved. The very ‘protector’ turns your rapist! And to top it all, there is politics even in this horrible mess. Every possible political outfit is there to demolish Akhilesh Yadav’s (…)