2014

by Arun Srivastava
The Eastern Bloc was the former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact. In 1922, the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Byelorussian SSR and the Transcaucasian SFSR, approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin, who viewed the Soviet Union as a “socialist island”, had observed that the Soviet Union must see that “the present (…)

India may not be coming apart at the seams but the polity is. Union Ministers are quarrelling among themselves. Feuds of bureaucrats are coming out in the open. Even intelligence agencies, the Intelligence Bureau and the Central Bureau of Investigation, are at loggerheads.
Understanding between the bureaucracy and the rulers has been reduced to trivialities. So much so that Finance Minister P. Chidambaram tells a top official to improve his English and the official, in turn, complains to (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Andhra Pradesh was born after Potti Sriramulu sacrificed his life in 1952. A fulfilment achieved at such high cost is now abandoned to be replaced by two different entities. Linguism’s fatal attraction to Andhra thus continues, pulling it from one emotional precipice to another, pitting its people against themselves and holding up progress at multiple levels. This is a game of politicians, by politicians, for politicians. The people are just pawns; they stand to gain nothing (…)

This article was written much before Telangana became a separate State of the Indian Union. It is being published now as its contents continue to be relevant today.
Major Andhra politicians are in a dilemma on the splitting of the State. Chandrababu Naidu of Telugu Desam had supported splitting of the State previously. Now he has developed cold feet on the issue. YSR Congress had mainly kept mum on the issue. Now it has come out in the open against the move. The turnaround seems to be (…)

‘Cat drinks milk with closed eyes and thinks the world is not watching it.’ (Marathi Proverb)
I
Rare have been the occasions in recent times when the RSS, with all its anushangik (affiliated) organisations on their toes, is engaged in dousing the fire in which it has caught itself unawares. The reason being the ‘interview’ of one of its own pracharaks (wholetimers)-turned-terrorists, named Swami Aseemanand, that was published in a leading magazine of our times. (http://www. (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
In the midst of the pressure and pulls of contemporary politics, certain significant developments seem to have escaped notice. Some of these are too conspicuous, and yet one hardly finds any serious endeavour to understand them.
The two most disciplined political parties today have leaders who are known to be extraordinarily independent of the mindset of their parties. Nobody can question Atal Behari Vajpayee’s standing as the foremost leader of the BJP or his (…)

In an era of globalisation, it is simply not possible for any country to consciously stay out and keep looking in through a keyhole and plunge into selective engagement with the inmates inside the room.
For a variety of reasons one needn’t get into right here, Singapore has come to be a ‘moderator’ of India’s foreign policy discourses in recent decades. India’s haphazard ‘adjustment’ with the post-Cold War era brought it close to the Singaporean world-view, especially its ‘Look East’ (…)

REVIEW ARTICLE
The Social and Economic Conditions of the Lower Agricultural Castes in the Early 20th Century (A Survey of the Kotch State, Rajputana) by Ram Pratap Gondel; New India Publications, New Delhi; August 2010; pages 176; Rs 380.
The book that we intend to discuss is a dissertation written for the Master’s degree of the Lucknow University in Sociology and Economics in the early 1930s by Shri Ram Pratap Gondal—who is a centenarian. The task undertaken was to examine the (…)

The Himalayan cultural topography, which sparks out loudly its colours in the society, politics and day-to-day life in Kathmandu valley and around, has returned to the task of drafting a republican Constitution for the second time.
It was hardly a surprise when the term for the first Constituent Assembly ended in 2012 after four years of intermittent exercises, yet was not able to settle the ticklish issues and produce a Constitution. The first Constituent Assembly had a majority of (…)

I am thankful to Paresh Chattopadhyaya (PC) to have responded to my article and to express his reactions frankly. (Mainstream, December 28, 2013) I read his ‘Communication’ very carefully, and went back to the issues of Mainstream where other articles, including mine, have appeared and read them again.
I think it has been a fruitful debate all through. I must say, though, that I was a bit surprised by the sharpness in PC’s reaction; of course, everybody has the full right to express one’s (…)