2016

POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
New Delhi is finding Kashmir more ungovernable by the day. A mindless, thoughtless, directionless government is talking about Kashmir in several voices. One day, Finance Minister and No. 2 in the government, Arun Jaitley, says Kashmir needs development which was denied for the past sixty years by the Congress and National Conference governments. The very next day the Prime Minister contradicts him and says development alone cannot solve the Kashmir problem. One day (…)

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is sadly mistaken if he thinks that he gave a ‘tit-for-tat’ for Pakistan’s interference in Kashmir affairs by raising human rights violations in Balochistan in his Independence Day address to the nation on August 15. Kashmir is an international issue, whereas Balochistan is local. India’s friends like Iran will have reason to worry if the genie of Balochi sub-nationalism is let loose. It seems Modi mounted the Balochi tiger without realising that he may (…)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has raised the issue of Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistani occupied Kashmir in his Independence Day speech on August 15, 2016 in response to Pakistan dedicating its Independence Day, celebrated a day earlier, to ‘Freedom of Kashmir’. This is the first time India has officially expressed support for the cause of Balochistan. People in these areas are unhappy with the Pakistani Government. While there is a full-fledged movement in Balochistan going on to (…)

by Binoy Viswam
The forces of the Sangh Parivar are well trained in the art of ‘bahu bhashan’ (duplicity in utterances). On the same subject they would speak often in different ways, sometimes expressing diametrically opposite views. Those who listen to them would be confused, but for the parivar, it is part of a calculated strategy. Prime Minister Narenda Modi is a proven architect and practitioner of the art of bahu bhashan. These days the BJP patriarch is busy with the task of preparing (…)

Remembrance of Things Past
August 15 reinvokes reflections of India’s freedom struggle and its aftermath which are customarily carried by newspapers and journals. Apart from the mention of independence and pictures of Gandhiji with a spinning wheel or his traditional walking stick what the freedom struggle meant to the generation that was actually on the battle-ground is often bypassed.
I married into a freedom fighter’s family. My father-in-law, Phool Chand Jain, was one of those (…)

by Kadayam Subramanian
The young woman Irom Sharmila (30) went on an indefinite hunger strike on November 2, 2000 in protest against the killing of innocents by the paramilitary Assam Rifles (AR) under the protection of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), 1958. After nearly 16 years, Sharmila announced recently that she would be ending her historic hunger strike on August 9, 2016 in order to pursue her objectives through other peaceful means. In recent judgments, the Supreme (…)

“Human beings are not pure vegetarians like sheep, nor are they pure meatarians like tigers. They need to eat both.”
—A farmer of my village, Papaiahpet, Warangal district, Telangana
When I said in some of my speeches and writings that the kind of vegetarianism that the Sangh Parivar, the Bharatiya Janata Party headed State governments, its central leadership, apart from the Hindu priestcraft, are trying to project as national is wrong and it is in fact anti-national, a lot of dust was (…)

by Mustafa Khan
September 2016 will complete a full decade of the bomb blasts of 2006 in Malegaon. It was this that made Hindutva terrorism a new coinage of ignominy with which the Hindutva Right never felt comfortable. Their smarting under this brand burnt into the flesh more and more as evidence mounted in other related cases of early and middle circa 2000s.
With due respect to our investigation agencies, like the IB, CBI and others, there are other sources of ascertaining facts that (…)

COMMUNICATION
Veteran journalist, author and commentator Kuldip Nayar was lucid and specific in his column captioned, “A Page from ‘Quit India’ Movement”. [Mainstream, Vol. LIV, No. 33, August 6, 2016] His anger against the colonial rulers for the atrocities committed against the Indians is fully justifiable and understandable. But may I request him to place alongside the atrocities Indians have committed against the underprivileged country-men because of caste prejudice?
This is utterly (…)

The GST is expected to be implemented from April 1, 2017. While it has been hailed as the single biggest tax reform since independence, many worries have been expressed about it in the media. The FMs of Kerala and West Bengal (otherwise political rivals) have expressed concern about certain provisions. But most importantly, after this author pointed out that the implementation of the GST would raise the rate of inflation (Kumar, 2015), it is now widely accepted by other analysts also. This (…)