2014

Ever since the day Devendra Fadnavis, at present holding the office of the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, failed to establish his majority in the State Assembly according to law, he has been running the government illegally and unconstitutionally. Admittedly, his party, the BJP, is in minority in the Assembly with only 123 members (including the Speaker) in a House of 288 members.
The Governor called him as the head of his party to form the government, because he claimed that his party can (…)

Russian President Vladimir Putin would pay an official visit to India from December 10 to 12, 2014 to participate in the fifteenth Indo-Russian annual summit. Russia is the first country and was the only state till a few years back with which we have developed this annual summit mechanism to find out ways and means for strengthening ties and exchange opinions on a host of international and regional issues of mutual concern. Though the understanding for holding annual summits was reached with (…)

By any yardstick, the participation of US President Barrack Obama at the Republic Day parade in January is the recognition of India’s growing stature. His phone call to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was, no doubt, an effort to make amends of sorts. But it does not hide the fact that Washington has chosen New Delhi as its partner to advance the policies and programmes it has in view in this part of the world.
Washington is for free enterprise and leads the capitalist world. Its (…)

IMPRESSIONS
The good news is that the first round of polling in Jammu and Kashmir saw the highest turnout in the State’s electoral history. The overall percentage was 71 but in some constituencies it went up to 77 and 80. Leh in Ladakh saw a drop, but even this was extraordinary. The temperature there had dropped to 10 degrees below zero, yet the number of voters dropped only from 68.9 percent to 65.2 per cent. This election is the people’s most decisive reply to the secessionists, the (…)

Recently several reports in leading news-papers have drawn attention to the possibility of significant but arbitrary cuts in budgetary allocations for social sectors. On November 27, The Hindu reported: “To meet the fiscal deficit target for this year, the Central Government is brutally slashing social sector allocations... The Finance Ministry is currently in the process of revising the Budget estimates for allocations for 2014-15 across heads of expenditures and Ministries. In the revised (…)

MUSINGS
Lately this particular news report has hit: 53 per cent of the prison population in India is that of Muslims, Dalits and tribals. Shocking! For two reasons—for one, these three communities are the most disadvantaged and stand deprived on every possible front. And then, these high numbers of the imprisoned Muslims and Dalits and tribals do not stand proportionate with their population— the population of the Muslims and Dalits and tribals is 39 per cent in the country, whilst those (…)

Ah, those cocksure voices on prime time, strident and self-righteous in their condemnation of whatever be politically out of season—most of all, even the least suggestion that what is with nauseating insistence peddled as the “national interest” may at bottom comprise merely the greedy vision hugged by a minuscule Indian neo-upper class. And the cussed temerity of those who refuse to conform and say an instant “yes” to what is blared from the big-brotherly megaphone in sickening, filmy (…)

Burdwan Episode
The of grenade explosion in the first floor of a rented house at Khagragarh in West Bengal’s Burdwan town on October 2, 2014, in between the Durga Puja and Iduzzuha festivals, is alarming for many obvious reasons. The two persons killed in the blast, identified as Shakil Ahmed alias Shakil Gazi and Swapan alias Sovan Mandal, are believed to have links with the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen of Bangladesh. Their widows—Gulshana Bibi alias Rajia, Shakil’s wife, and Alima Bibi alias (…)

by Shahnawaz Mantoo
Terrorism is not new and it has been used since the beginning of recorded history. Terrorism is the most hated and feared term with its different manifestations. It is very difficult to define it precisely but there are some definitions which have been put forward by different recognised voices as well as by related and accepted organisations. Terrorism has been described variously as a tactic and strategy, a crime and a justified reaction to oppression. Obviously a lot (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
The PM has returned after attending the 18th SAARC Summit in Kathmandu. Against this backdrop it is worthwhile to recall the past. In this context we reproduce two pieces by N.C.—both ‘Editor’s Notebook’ published in this journal in 1985: one before the First SAARC Summit in Dhaka in December of the year and the other after that Summit.
Road to Dhaka
The journey to the Geneva Summit (November 19-21, 1985) was arduous, and the trek itself was hazardous. But both (…)