2015

The landslide victory of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Delhi Assembly elections, winning 67 out of 70 seats, signifies a unique event in the political history of India. The most significant implication of this victory is the challenge it poses to the Modi-Amit Shah brand of politics. In a sense, the AAP victory symbolizes rebirth of the “Congress System” in India (conceptualised by late Rajni Kothari), with the party as a grand umbrella coalition of multiple interests. In fact, the AAP (…)

IMPRESSIONS
The Indian voter is an astonishing creature. He looks everything that he is not. The men and women in those long, winding queues before polling booths appear docile and innocent, a submissive type who wouldn’t harm an ant. Get closer and examine their faces; they still look like a gentle, easily handled and undemanding lot, a flock of sheep, really. When they come out of the booths, their fingers stained with democracy, their faces are as expressionless as Manmohan Singh’s. (…)

It is, indeed, instructive to analyse why the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was decimated at the polls in Delhi. But the more important point to know is how the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has emerged with a bang: 67 seats in a house of 70! The BJP is down to just three from the 32 it had won in the December 2013 Assembly election.
Who’s the AAP? It is a secular, Left-of-the-Centre party which may become an alternative in the country, replacing the Congress which is languishing. Some time (…)

February 22 this year marks the fiftyseventh death anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the country’s first Minister of Education. On this occasion we are publishing the following article which was sent to us quite sometime ago.
by Mohammad Anzar Alam
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad is an icon of Indian Politics as well as Urdu literature. He is popularly called Azad. He was born in Mecca on November 11, 1888 in a wealthy Islamic family and passed away on February 22, 1958 in Delhi. He was a (…)

1. Major Issues
The socio-economic condition of the Adivasis as the most marginalised section of our society has been extensively documented. I do not propose to describe their condition again. I would rather like to straightaway raise three major issues for policy-action and further research: First, the restoration, to the extent possible, and protection of the existing land and other natural resource base of the Adivasis; second, the prospects of raising agricultural productivity which (…)

by Rasananda Panda
It is easy to say that the only thing that is constant is change. But change is never easy. Especially when with the help on an executive order you scrap a sixtyfour-year-old institution that has seen the ups and downs of the Indian economy—called the Planning Commission or Yojana Aayog. It is a different story that the same Aayog was created with a Cabinet note in 1951 to show our commitment towards centralised planning. Thus we get the NITI Aayog—a creation of the (…)

by R.G. GIDADHUBLI
The fighting between the Ukrainian armed forces and pro-Russian rebels, despite a few skirmishes, largely subsided on Sunday, February 15, giving rise to hopes that the ceasefire agreement, signed on February 11 in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, might hold.
The first such agreement was reached in September 2014 in Minsk but this was violated and conflict between the Ukrainian Army and pro-Russian rebels (…)

TRIBUTE
Veteran journalist, writer and poet Som Benegal passed away in New Delhi precisely six months ago on August 22, 2014. His close friend and colleague, S. Viswam, the well-known journalist, has sent the following tribute for publication on the occasion of Benegal’s 93rd birth anniversary.
22-2-22: A Remembrance
S. VISWAM
Not all will agree with me when I say that there are certain games of and in life that are best left to children to play. One of them is the make-believe joy (…)

REVIEW ARTICLE
by Noor Zaheer
Liking Progress, Loving Change by Rakshanda Jalil; Oxford University Press; 2014; pages 482 + 29 pages Introduction; Rs 1495.
“........the arrangements might have lacked finesse, but they more than made up in the dynamism of its organisers and the sheer magnetic appeal of the message that was being conveyed from the Rafah-e-Aam Hall. For, after Gandhiji’s call for Satyagrah, the most important mass movement unfurled from within its portals. A literary (…)

EDITORIAL
How does one interpret the incredible results of the just-concluded Delhi Assembly elections? Was it a political earthquake, a tsunami or an avalanche that brought about such an unbelievable outcome? Whichever way one looks at it, the fact is that the people have emphatically asserted to reject the Modi dispensation by forcing it to bite the dust at the hustings. This is what has made these elections both historic and memorable.
The arrogance of power, writ large over the faces (…)