2015

May 9, 2015 marks the seventieth anniversary of Victory over Fascism in the Second World War. On this occasion we carry poems by Russian poets who, like all other citizans of their country, actively participated in the struggle to rid the world of the fascist menace and bore the real brunt of that War.
These times of ours are rather hard upon the pen.
Vladimir Mayakovsky
You’ll hear the ring of metal in my voice.
Direct and heavy into life I came.
Not all will die, nor all be (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
This week all the world over is being celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the victory over fascism. For, this was the week, thirty years ago, when the Hitler war-machine was smashed and the Soviet soldiers hoisted the Red Flag over the war-ravaged Reichstag building in Berlin.
This was a great turning point in the history of humanity. For, it saw the end of an order in which an exploitative power could conquer countries and enslave nations. Hitler was the last of (…)

May 9 this year marks not only the seventieth anniversary of Victory over Fascism but also the one hundred and fiftyfourth birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. As our homage of Gurudev on this occasion we are reproducing this letter written by him to Amiya Chakravarty from Gauripur Bhavan, Kalimpong on June 20, 1940. —Editor
by Rabindranath Tagore
A few centuries back European civilisation had suddenly started to hatch a large brood of vaishyar1children. Eager for profit these (…)

So many senior politicians have been saying time and again that as far as possible efforts will be made to avoide acquiring fertile and irrigated farmland. Even the Prime Minister has said that fertile and irrigated farmland should be acquired only as a last resort. Several political leaders have also said that land acquisition will be done honestly and with transparency, ensuring justice to farmers and providing enough opportunity to them to assert their demands.
However, all these have (…)

MUSINGS
With Salman Khan convicted under culpable homicide in the 2002 hit-and-run case, the coming days will lie fitted with news reports and endless discussions focusing on him and what lies ahead... for him, for his clan, for his films and fans. The build-up had begun last week itself, with news channels churning out hurriedly gathered details to him, his hold in Bollywood... Just about slight disruption last evening, with the spotlight changing gear, on the AAP’s Kumar Vishwas, and (…)

It is unfortunate that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is harassing and hounding the NGOs. Probably, the party’s leaders do not realise that many of its members were once themselves NGOs. When the Jana Sangh merged into the Janata Party after successfully resisting the authoritarian rule of Mrs Indira Gandhi, they were part of the struggle to uphold human rights, which the then ruling Congress Party had trampled upon mercilessly. How can those very people be anti-NGO now?
Accounts of (…)

by Raj Kumar Sharma
The Context
Afghanistan is in a state of security and economic transition, as the US-NATO forces have begun their withdrawal from the country in 2014. The President of Afghanistan, Dr Ashraf Ghani, paid his first visit to India on April 27-29, 2015, seven months after being elected as the President of the war-torn country and having already visited China, the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. New governments assumed office in both India and Afghanistan in 2014 and (…)

The Afghan President, Mohammad Ashraf Ghani’s mindfulness of India in his country’s scheme of things could well have been distilled in the interview he gave a leading Indian daily. Creating the right of way by road for goods from Kabul past the Wagah checkpost to India and beyond and vice versa to Central Asia is probably a former technocrat’s most vivid statement of intent. If and when he has his way, Afghan goods trucks will be rumbling down to Kolkata and Chittagong. The stabilisation of (…)

IMPRESSIONS
It is now clear that China is seeking to change the way the world is run. Its two big schemes—the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road, or Belt and Road in short—are so daring and perceptive that the world is struck yet again by the long-term view of China’s strategists. Add to this the concept of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and its runaway success—and we can see China overtaking America in influence even without
getting anywhere near its (…)

EDITORIAL
While fears of epidemic mount in Kathmandu with many bodies yet to be removed, Nepal’s PM Sushil Koirala has said the death toll in last Saturday’s 7.9-intensity earthquake that rocked the Himalayan state with unprecedented ferocity—it was the worst such natural calamity the country experienced in 81 years—could touch 10,000 since information from the affected remote villages is yet to come. South Asia has not been witness to such a terrible human tragedy in recent times and all (…)