2015

The Iran nuclear agreement, which was reached in Lausanne, Switzerland, on April 2, 2015, is an incredible diplomatic victory for the United States. It contains terms that are far better than anyone would have expected. Short of dismantling altogether Iran’s nuclear establishments—and albeit leaving Iran as a threshold state—the US negotiators, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, have succeeded in getting Iran to agree to a complex, almost water-proof, set of limitations that aim at (…)

It is a travesty of justice. The court has let off all the 16 policemen, belonging to the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) of Uttar Pradesh due to lack of evidence. It was dark and it was difficult to determine who from among the policemen fired at whom, says the court. Apparently, no real hard work was done to conduct the inquiry and fix responsibility. Yet how were the 16 accused separated from the rest in the first instance? Some criteria should have been adopted to reach the verdict. (…)

The ‘Look East Policy’ changed into the ‘Act East Policy’ under the present political dispensation led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This dispensation has called for a robust and result-oriented diplomacy to attain India’s national interest in its Eastern neighbourhood. The piecemeal approach is supposedly replaced by a proactive one to steer the course with a renewed spirit to secure tangible results in geostrategic as well as geo-economic terms. Contextualised in India’s North-East, the (…)

by Kamakshi Balasubramanian
India is a huge country, and represents many ethnic groups. In spite of it, for the most part, someone like me is nearly always recognised as a Tamil Brahmin pretty quickly and pretty accurately.
So what?
The idea of a Tamil and Brahmin is an oxymoron according to a friend of mine, a rationalist and a Leftist historian, for whom the Tamils in the pure form are anything but Brahmin. Tamils are Dravidians, a people indigenous to the ancient land that is now (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
When politicians as a community are in a state of siege in the eyes of the public, it is extremely short-sighted on the part of any government to make any move that may appear to the public as a means to cover up or to close the channels of the politician’s exposure.
While in the public mind, corruption among politicians has become a live issue since the Bofors bribery scandal, it was during Narasimha Rao’s Prime Ministership that the enormity of corruption in public (…)

Devadasi, though described as a female slave of the gods, used with reference to women dedicated to the temple, was actually a temple prostitute. Many parts of India boasted of these women who were an integral part of Hindu shrines. And she pandered to the carnal desires of the priests, besides the rich and wealthy visitors, who undertook the journey to those places under the religious pretext. These women were a source of attraction which enhanced the reputation of many temples. The (…)

It may be too early to say that the days of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (IS) appear to be numbered. It has lost quite a lot of territory and revenue and has been completely driven out of the Kurdish region and much of Iraq. From 35,000 square kilometres of territory it used to hold at its peak, it has lost about 13,000 square kilometres in Iraq and some estimate that it is now left with just about a quarter of what it controlled. Over 1000 of its fighters and 17 top commanders were (…)

In order to reduce and remove the many-sided disadvantages and problems faced by Dalits and adivasis, sub-plans for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have been introduced to ensure adequate and justice-based availability of funds for these communities.
Summarising the basic idea and rationale for this, the Planning Commission says: “the persistence of socio-economic backwardness of the SCs and STs in spite of the development efforts had warranted a special and focused strategy, (…)

by Kaleeswaram Raj
The Supreme Court Bar Association had proposed a resolution demanding “fair treatment of lawyers” by judges. The notice issued recently by the Association, which consists of members from almost all the States in the country, says that the lawyers must receive respect “irres-pective of their standing and seniority”. It also protests against the “hurried and selected manner” in which some Supreme Court Benches hear the cases. (The Hindu, March 3, 2015) The subsequent (…)

Cheating in Examinations
The recent news reports of wholesale cheating in matriculation examinations in Bihar, with pictures of accomplices dangerously climbing the walls of buildings in which examinations were being held, to hand over cheating-aids to candidates, are horrifying. The physical risk taken by the accomplices shows that the cash paid to them—by parents who are okay with cheating, and making arrangements to “help” their wards—is adequate.
The learning capacity and academic (…)