2015

book review
Aarti Khosla
Ethics for Governance—Reinventing Public Services by B.P. Mathur; Routledge India (Taylor and Francis India), New Delhi; August 2014; pages 408; Rs 495.
The need for good governance in the country is often reiterated. It is also one of the promises made by every party while seeking votes as they know that people are fed up with the present state of governance. Efforts are made by every government in power to bring about certain changes to improve upon the (…)

COMMUNICATION
The controversy over the national anthem, raked up by the Rajasthan Governor, once again highlights the bigotry and narrow-mindedness of a section of this country’s opinion-makers who, even after a lapse of 114 years, are not reconciled to the fact that Rabindranath Tagore did not compose Janaganamana as an eulogy for King George V. This is also evident from a perusal of the debate on the subject on the internet. By raking up the controversy they are again calling into (…)

Pradyot Lal, a highly talented journalist who joined the profession in the 1980s, passed away at night on July 12, 2015. A product of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Pradyot started his journalistic career in Patriot where he worked for several years before joining Blitz. Thereafter he worked in The Asian Age where he wrote some brilliant pieces at the time when M.J. Akbar was editing the publication. He then worked in Sahara Times and Tehelka. He was associated briefly with (…)

EDITORIAL
The Times of India has twice in the past few days editorially brought into focus the seriousness of the Vyapam scam that has rocked not just the Madhya Pradesh Government headed by Shivraj Singh Chouhan but the Narendra Modi Government at the Centre and the entire BJP leadership at the national level as well. On July 7 the headline of the daily‘s editorial read: “Chouhan’s Shame: Vyapam is becoming BJP’s equivalent of 2G scam, Centre must intervene for a serious investigation”. (…)

by Kavaljit Singh
The Greek citizens have delivered a resounding ‘No’ to bailout conditions demanded by creditors in a referendum held on Sunday, July 5. The referendum was announced by Greece’s Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, on June 27 after bailout talks with the creditors failed. The referendum asked voters to decide “whether to accept the outline of the agreement submitted by the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund at the Eurogroup of (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
June 29, 2015 marked the 122nd birth anniversary of Prof Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. On this occasion we reproduce the following piece by N.C. that appeared at the time of Mahalanobis’ birth centenary in 1993. This is particularly important now that the Narandra Modi dispensation has decided to completely devalue and destroy the Planning Commission which was painstakingly built during the days of the Nehru-Mahaalanobis model of development that charted out the path (…)

The war between India and Pakistan in 1965 is 50 years old. Even today, hostilities are attributed to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the then Foreign Minister of Pakistan. This is correct. General Mohammad Ayub Khan, who was heading Pakistan at that time, admitted in an interview that he did not want to disturb the peace, however uneasy.
When I checked with Bhutto, he did not deny his role. In his defence he said he felt that if there was a time when Pakistan could defeat India, it was then. He (…)

Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj announced recently that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would visit Israel. Shri Modi will be the first Indian Prime Minister to do so. Indo-Israeli relations have witnessed a sharp upswing since the present government came to power and there has been an unprecedented level of bilateral visits by senior Ministers from India to Israel and vice-versa.
The Israel-Palestine conflict is an unresolved issue of international politics dating from the end of the First (…)

IMPRESSIONS
What a surfeit of Emergency narratives we’ve had this past week! Not surprising, given the way those two years, 1975-77, changed the very character of Indian democracy. A generation has grown up with no personal acquaintance of that traumatic period. For them the Emergency is likely to be no more than a word. Like Independence. Yet these are words that made—and remade—our country. Tens of thousands sacrificed their lives for independence which, today, we take for granted. Tens (…)

by Imtiaz Ahmad Ansari
Last year it was “achche din aane wale hain” (good days are about to come). It was in reference to two predictions. First, that a Modi-led government will be formed at the Centre and, second, the Modi-led government will be a panacea for all the ills India was suffering from. The first part of the prediction came true with a clear BJP-led majority government at the Centre. However, the second part of the prediction is still in limbo. Sloganeering is one thing and its (…)