2016

EDITORIAL
Much is being written these days about the functioning of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Capital and the way the Congress is being run across the nation.
But that is no reason why the ruling party at the Centre should be left off the hook as is being done by sizeable sections of the media. The BJP, which won a surprise absolute majority in the Lok Sabha in 2014, has been acting in an authoritarian way for the last two years while trying to divide the country and its people on (…)

If I were to award marks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his two-year governance, I would give him four out of 10. I wouldn’t fail him because he did not officially pursue the Hindutva programme and yet allowed the RSS and Bajrang Dal, both extremist organisations, to have the run of the field.
I know that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was allowed to use Akashvani to purvey his parochial and extremist views. In the same manner other government-owned institutions, such as the Nehru Library, (…)

by Garima Mani Tripathi
Until a few years ago, Baba Ramdev and his Patanjali Yogpeeth were primarily into propa-gating and popularising yoga as a household practice. In the process, he gave a new lease of life to yoga, an ancient Indian method of physical discipline having meditative and spiritual elements. The Yogpeeth was hardly into any business and was limited to producing herbal and organic products for household require-ments. However, in the last few years, Patanjali’s business (…)

IMPRESSIONS
The fall of the Congress is the principal reason for the rise of the BJP. This was clear in 2014 when the reticent, text-reading Sonia Gandhi was no match to the eloquent, conqui-stadorial Narendra Modi. It was reinforced in last month’s five State elections when the Congress was decimated across the board. India’s founding political party has reached a stage where it knows it has fallen, knows what it must do to get on its feet again, but has no guts to do it. The extent of (…)

by Sudhanshu Tripathi
The unfortunate event at Jawahar Bagh in Mathura killing a very fine, gentle and promising city SP Mukul Dwivedi sounds a very dark chapter in independent India’s decaying politics where offenders and criminals rule the roost. Though a very young and perhaps deeply religious sub-inspector was also killed in the mayhem besides more than two dozens of the so-called satyagrahis united under the banner of the Swadhin Bharat Andolan in the name of Netaji Subhash Chandra (…)

by Amitava Mukherjee
More than the party-wise tally and the installation of the BJP-led government in Dispur, the actual implications of the recently concluded Assam election results lie in the stark pointers to shifting social dynamics and the possibility of a mutual distrust in Indo-Bangladesh relations as Sarbananda Sonowal, the new Chief Minister of Assam, has vowed to completely seal the Indo-Bangladesh border within two years. No doubt Sonowal has a right to do so and reason may be (…)

DOCUMENT
The following is the Report of a Fact-finding Team on Chhattisgarh for which the Chhattisgarh Government is trying to harass the team members.
A delegation comprising Sanjay Parate, Secretary, State CPI-M; Vineet Tiwari, Joshi-Adhikari Institute, New Delhi; Archana Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru University and CC member, AIDWA; and Nandini Sundar, Delhi University visited the Bastar Division of Chhattisgarh from May 12 to 16, 2016. We visited the following districts: Bijapur, Sukma, (…)

The following is the text of the two letters sent by CPI General Secretary S. Sudhakar Reddy to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh on the police treatment meted out to a fact-finding team to Chhattisgarh.
I am writing to express my deep anxiety at the false charges that the Chhattisgarh Police is drumming up against a visiting delegation comprising CPI and CPM members, and professors from Delhi University and JNU.
A delegation, comprising Vineet Tiwari, (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
A new Planning Commission has been announced with practically a combination of new and old members. Prof Madhu Dandavate is the new Deputy Chairman, as the Prime Minister continues to be the Chairman. When Narasimha Rao, by virtue of being the Prime Minister, was the Chairman of the Planning Commission, the post of the Deputy Chairman went to Pranab Mukherjee. That was more of a political appointment to find a respectable berth for a senior Congress leader although (…)

by JAYANTA KUMAR DAB
Introduction
However expensive and expansive a building may be, it gets old and dilapidated with the passage of time, with the plaster peeling off and the roof on the verge of carving in, endangering the lives beneath it. The same was the case with the Planning Commission or Yojana Aayog, the prestigious institution that stood tall amid all policy-making institutions for a long period of 65 years. Indeed, the Planning Commission was the brainchild of Pandit (…)