2014

by Sanjay Mishra
The following article was sent quit sometime back but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons. It is now being published for the benefit of our readers on the occasion of the AAP’s second anniversary
(it was set up on November 27, 2012) as its contents remain valid to this day.
Introduction
After the drubbings in the 16th Lok Sabha elections, one thought that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) would be wiser: that stock-taking and introspection of the causes of (…)

COMMUNICATION
Though I am a life member of Mainstream, I miss some issues due to the postal department’s negligence and carelessness or receive back issues many weeks later. So I missed the September 27 issue and just saw it on the website. I was both happy and shocked to see the review of my book, Understanding Bhagat Singh, by Barun Das Gupta (“Useful, if Controversial, Book on Bhagat Singh, his Life and Times”, pp. 29-30). I respect Barun Das Gupta a lot. Happy as I was waiting for its (…)

Past a strenuous three score and ten
The truth had better be told:
Ring out the new, ring in the old.
Let the so-glittering now be
Set aside for the unlettered then,
Let once again nothing be bought,
And nothing whatsoever be sold.
Let what is of greatest worth,
All that which have we must—
Seamless being, seamless health—
Ooze from a homely handful of dust.
As you read these backward thoughts,
Call them not defeated ones;
When forging on is a crass pursuit,
There (…)

EDITORIAL
Several incidents of the last few days have become the focus of national attention.
The first was the Chhattisgarh tragedy. Laproscopic tubectomy carried out for sterilisation of 83 women at a camp in Pendari village of Takhatpur block in the State’s Bilaspur district on November 8 led to the death of 11 women while 69 others were severely affected, some of them critically, In a separate incident at another sterilisation camp in Guarella in the same district on November 10 one (…)

by Rohini Pandurangi
With the resolution of the impasse over the Bali deal, jubilation is the word to describe the mood of the Indian Government. It had been three months since the Bali trade deal reached an impasse over India’s refusal to sign the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA). The negotiations had reached a stalemate due to differences among the members regarding a permanent solution to the issue of public stockholding for the purpose of food security. India had asserted that it (…)

After months of stalemate, India and the US have agreed to resolve their differences over food stockholdings which would open the way for future implementation of the Trade Facili-tation Agreement (TFA) of the WTO—the biggest trade deal in its entire history.
On November 13, 2014, Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, issued a statement announcing a bilateral agreement with the US. “We are extremely happy that India and the US have successfully resolved (…)

by M.K. Bhadrakumar
The Islamic State [IS] missed its timing by a whisker in making the announcement that it beheaded an American aid worker. The announcement should have been made a day earlier just when the G-20 summit was getting underway and Russian “aggression” in Ukraine was about to be brought to the centre-stage as per the pre-planning by Western countries led by the United States.
The IS could easily have put President Barack Obama on the horns of a dilemma and his Australian (…)

‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness.’ These towering ideas of Mahatma Gandhi have been there since a long time. The recent act of ‘Clean India’ in the form of ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan’ by Prime Minister Modi has captured the imagination of masses towards this dictum.
It is often pointed out that even in the past such initiatives were taken. However, this time the idea of a polity which is uncontaminated has been ushered in at the governance plank. The era of globalisation, the peculiarities (…)

Two boys have been killed in Kashmir. The incident itself is bizarre. A white-coloured car is mistaken for a similar one which used to scurry the terrorists back and forth. As many as 115 bullets are fired on the car at one go. The only surviving passenger, a boy, tells how the incessant fury did not stop even after the car hit a tree to come to a halt.
The Army has accepted the mistake. The agility with which it has done so indicates that the gun crazy among them was spotted immediately. (…)

Parliament and Government
The government can function in the interest of people only when there is peace and order in society, persons in power use people-oriented politics, and the rule of law is observed by all sections of society. Maintenance of security, public order, and supplies and services essential to the public, usually together termed “law and order”, is the primary task of the civil adminis-tration. [“Civil administration” is the combi-nation of the powers, roles and functions (…)