2015

[Revised and Updated on 20 June 2015]
EDITORIAL
By the time these lines come out in print Sitaram Yechury would be completing three weeks in office as the General Secretary of the largest communist formation in the country, the CPI-M. In these three weeks the new CPI-M General Secretary has left his own imprint on the national scene. His emergence as the tallest leader of the CPI-M is a refreshing change from his predecessor, Prakash Karat. The latter, despite his qualifications as a (…)

The Communist Party of India-Marxist has a new helmsman. Sitaram Yechury, a less forbidding man than his predecessor, carries with him the sunny goodwill of many inside and outside the Party. Many among the general middle classes, who view politics rather exclusively in terms of “leadership”, even those who are more familiar with the structures of Left politics than most, sense some sort of a paradigm shift in the offing with regard to both the substance and the style of the Party’s (…)

The Trinamul Congress has pulled off a massive victory in West Bengal’s municipal elections by winning 71 of 92 civic bodies (up from 38 won in 2010). Its Kolkata win was even more crushing: 114 of 144 wards (95 in 2010). The entire Opposition accuses the TMC of rigging the elections—a charge that carries some credibility given the scale of the TMC’s victory, huge winning margins of some candidates (for example, 15,000-30,000 votes), and the party’s known reliance on muscle-power.
The TMC (…)

In times when political parties are led by supremos for seemingly endless durations, what a welcome contrast the Communist Party of India-Marxist has provided us!
Prakash Karat’s being succeeded by Sitaram Yechury as the General Secretary of the party should tell all our parties something about the grace in relinquishing control and the solemnity of assuming responsible office within a democratic system. All formalities were gone through at the party Congress with due decorum and form as (…)

Indian democracy is known to spring surprises at most unexpected moments since its inception. From institutionalisation of the multi-party system and parliamentary elections within a largely poor, illiterate and agrarian social setting in the 1960s to the abandoning of an authoritarian regime in mid-1970s, there are a number of striking achievements to the credit of the Indian electorate.
The twentyfirst century India is credited with one more astonishing milestone in the form of emergence (…)

Municipal elections were held in West Bengal on April 18 and 25. As expected and as predicted by pre-poll surveys, the ruling Trinamul Congress swept the polls, capturing seventy of the ninetytwo civic bodies. Six were captured by the Left, five by the Congress while in twelve no party got a clear majority. The BJP drew a blank, failing to capture a single body. Its vote percentage declined sharply by eight per cent compared to its performance in the Lok Sabha elections last year.
What is (…)

by A.V.V.S.K. Rao
“Striving to better, Oft we mar what’s well.” —William Shakespeare
For a country like India opting for a mid-way path as against the neo-liberal path in the context of globalisation, Budget-making is not an easy task. It requires choosing a new set of objectives, priorities, strategies and resource mobilisation measures.
On March 1, 2015, when the Budget for 2015-16 was presented in Parliament, laymen got the impression that the Modi Government has come up with a (…)

COMMUNICATION
Two critical comments on the recently-concluded Indo-French deal on Rafale MMRCA have been carried by the Mainstream (April 18, 2015). One critic has said that the Rafale was designed in 1986 and given the fact that the induction of these aircraft in the IAF will take another ten years’ time, India will be acquiring 40-year old technology at a high price. There is nothing new and surprising about it. The West (the European countries and the United States) has never sold (…)

In the recent past, there have been several developments reflecting the title of this article. The first is the government‘s very close-to-formal decision-taking on a modern single piston engine aircraft for the induction training of the IAF’s rookee pilots. The HAL’s offer of the HTT-40 aircraft to meet approximately 70 of the IAF’s approved approximately 180 such basic trainers with the bulk of some 130 PC-7 Mark II being bought outright from the Swiss company Pilatus. Going in for the (…)

by Nirupam Hazra
Every year, 21st February is observed as the International Mother Tongue Day since 2000. The historic significance of the day is intricately associated with the liberation movement of Bangladesh. In 1952, the peaceful demonstration of university students demanding, among other things, recognition of Bengali as one of the national languages in erstwhile East Pakistan was violently crushed. Literally it was, in many ways, the beginning of a struggle for free-speech, (…)