2016

Today we are facing a frenzied furore on issues such as nationalism and patriotism artificially manufactured by the ruling dispensation which has created a vicious ambience whipping up divisiveness within our society. This recent trend to incite people with jingoistic ultra-nationalist feelings with a definite aim to target certain sections, mainly minorities, has bewildered the saner sections of our country. And precisely for this reason, we go back for solace to Rabindranath Tagore whose (…)

Our real problem is population, I told this to an American Nobel Prize winner. He contradicted me and said: “Your problem is going to be water.” We were discussing the ordeals that India would face in the years to come. Our views did not tally even after a long discussion.
What has happened at Latur, in a better-off State like Maharashtra, has renewed the American’s warning. Section 144 had to be clamped down to ensure that pots and pans were in an orderly queue to receive water from a (…)

by Ishrat Jahan
Introduction
The planet earth is endowed with a number of marvellous natural forces and natural resources as well. Each of these forces has a specific role. Of these forces water, wind, fire, ether, sunshine, moonlight, earth etc. are functioning eternally ever since the Universe was born. The watery world covers nearly three quarters of the earth’s surface. The under- water world is still a mystery and an abode of at least 20,000 species of fishes, amphibians, reptiles, (…)

BOOK REVIEW
by Aejaz Ahmad
Offend, Shock, or Disturb: Free Speech under the Indian Constitution by Gautam Bhatia; Oxford University Press; 2016; pages: 347 (Hardcover); Price: 750.
Gautam Bhatia’s magnum opus Offend, Shock or Disturb is the most comprehensive examination of the free speech discourse in the Indian Constitution from the doctrinal, comparative and philosophical vantage points. Notwithstanding his legal background, the author has masterfully avoided legal bias around an (…)

by Debarati Sarkar
Development is incomplete without expansion of the physical infrastructure of any country. India has re-emerged as one of the fastest growing economies in the world. In India, the infrastructure sector currently accounts for 26.7 percentage of the country’s industrial output and thus remains a useful tool to balance the economy. According to Assocham-Ernst and Young, infrastructure, including roads, bridge, power, highways, airports and railways, have emerged as an asset (…)

May 5 this year marks Karl Marx’s 198th birth anniversary. On that occasion we are carrying the following article.
Karl Marx made great discoveries regarding fictitious capital and the money form of capital. They are of seminal importance to understand the contemporary contradictions between finance and productive/industrial capital. The references to fictitious capital can be found in Chapter 29 of Volume III of his great work Capital and in his Theories of Surplus Value, Part III. Marx (…)

The Western governments and NATO members are now regretting the war they had launched on oil-rich Libya, where the situation is becoming uncontrollable, because its warring governments are not willing to come together and Islamic State elements controlling its coastline are able to infiltrate from there into African countries, including Niger and Chad, to enlarge the conflict.
Libya’s fourth government took office in Tripoli on March 30. Called the Government of National Accord, it was (…)

by Bhat Rasif Manzoor and Mohammad Yousuf Dar
Legal justice looks utopian, rather invisible, in societies with big chunks of poor and illiterate population unless the government and its flawless delivery system steps in with probable remedies. Rich people generally seek privilege through courts when they are involved in suits with the poor as the latter can hardly afford the court fee and wakil fee required for pleading their cases. The result is in the form of injustice and exploitation (…)

The Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) Executive, in its meeting held on April 27, 2016, discussed the matter of Dr G.N. Saibaba, Associate Professor, RLA College. The DUTA Executive condemns the attacks on Dr G.N. Saibaba and other teachers of the college and the failure of the administration in preventing such incidents.
The DUTA finds it unfortunate and unacceptable that, instead of taking responsibility for maintaining law and order in the College, the administration has (…)

May 9, 2016 marks the seventy-first anniversary of Victory over Fascism; and on May 8 falls the one hundred and fifty-fifth birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. As our homage to 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 (…)