2014

MUSINGS
BJP chief Rajnath Singh sounds like a typical bluff-master when he quips that he and his party are sorry for the ‘mistakes’ committed against the Muslims. A bluff which is so horribly crude that one should not waste a second harping on it. This time there is little use of masks and related ploys this political outfit uses for deception. In fact, as I’m keying in, I’m reminded of what the former DGP of Gujarat, R.B. Sreekumar, had told me during the course of an interview: ‘In (…)

MEDIA
by Satraajit Palchoudhury
In the lexicon of the US, West Asia is described as a troubled periphery. The US diplomats always look at their West Asian counterparts with a suspicious eye. The recent stand-off between Washington and Tehran on the ‘civilian nuclear issue’ stands testimony to the observation made above. After the fall of the pro-US Shah Pahlavi dynasty due to the famous Islamic Revolution that Iran witnessed in 1979, America’s relationship with Iran started (…)

The US President, Barack Obama, reached out to China on March 10 to discuss the Ukraine situation. Notably, his phone conversation with President Xi Jinping is Obama’s first such exchange with a world leader outside the Euro-Atlantic zone. This is only the latest indication that Washington is stepping up pressure on Moscow.
Obama can derive great satisfaction from his conversation with Xi. According to the Xinhua report, Xi stressed China’s “objective and fair stance” on Ukraine and sought (…)

TRIBUTE
I vividly remember that sweaty summer afternoon of June 2007, when I had the opportunity to speak to maverick poet and activist Namdeo Dhasal who authored the powerful lines quoted below. I wished to speak to him in connection with my study on the 1974 Worli riots in Mumbai and the Dalit Panthers. Having grown up in the grit of a city with a difficult working class history, he was not only an icon for Dalit literature and radical Dalit politics, but for the unequal city itself. (…)

EDITORIAL
The Election Commission unfolded on March 5 the process of holding the 16th Lok Sabha poll in the country. It will take place for the first time in nine phases—from April 7 to May 12; the counting of votes will be on May 16 and the results will come out on the same day.
As former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi notes in The Indian Express,
India is all set to witness the biggest-ever election. With 81 crore voters and 11 million personnel conducting the polls at (…)

Ukraine continues to be in the midst of a deep crisis provoked by the country’s ultra-nationalists in connivance with the West. Opposition parties that captured power in Kiev through a coup do not know what to do in order to resolve the unprecedented crisis. The densely populated industrial regions in the east and south of the country are in no mood to recognise the federal government that came to power in Kiev through the use of force. Regional governments in the east and south, mostly (…)

tribute
He was the quintessential backroom boy of Indian politics, and he came into his own during P.V. Narasimha Rao’s premeirship.
Bhuvanesh Chaturvedi, who died on March 2 in a Kota hospital after an illness, was Narasimha Rao’s MOS in the Prime Minister’s Office in 1993-96. It was a period of far-reaching changes, even though Rao handled them in his inimitable low-key style.
The period was marked by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a unipolar world, which posed (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
On September 15, the Prime Minister of India met a gathering of eminent academics from a number of seats of learning in the Capital—Delhi University, Jamia Millia, Jawa-harlal Nehru University and the Institute of Economic Growth. Billed as an informal get-together seeking interaction with the academic community, it turned out to be the occasion for the Prime Minister delivering a prepared speech, manicured with philosophical formulations about secularism, communalism, (…)

Another Lok Sabha, 15th in the series, has concluded its five-year tenure. Whatever business that was transacted in the House was, indeed, exasperating and raucous. Unfortunately the House representing the democratic system has fallen by the wayside practically in all Asian countries.
In another three months the Indian voters will once again queue up before the polling booths to elect their representatives. Their quality has been wanting. But I am confident that the next House will be (…)

by manisha mishra
“A girl whose spirits have not been dampened by inactivity, or innocence tainted by false shame, will always be a romp...”
Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792, p. 87
The modern social scenario is rapidly emerging as a developing sector in a multi-dimensional and dynamic process of spiral growth. The old political power blocks controlling socio-economic system are a matter of bygone days. The study of the various facets of social inclusion (…)