2016

IMPRESSIONS
Yaksha asked: “What is ignorance?” Yudhi-shthira replied: “Not knowing one’s duty.” That was a perfect answer in the days of Sanatana Dharma when good was good, bad was bad and all were agreed on what was duty. Sanatana Dharma is no longer practised in our country. So what is good is bad for some, what some see as duty is seen by others as abuse of duty. As a result, things that should never happen in a civilised nation—and has never happened in India before—are happening now. (…)

TRIBUTE
by Ranbir Singh
The passing away of Prof Randhir Singh of the University of Delhi on January 31, 2016 has resulted in an irreparable lost to the discipline of Political Science. He was, indeed, a teacher with a difference in many ways.
Firstly, he was one of those rare teachers who gave priority to the interests of their students instead of getting higher posts through research manipulating their promotions. So much so that he concentrated on teaching instead of doing Ph.D or (…)

EDITORIAL
Where are we heading? The events of the last few days in and around New Delhi’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University have compelled one to bring this question to the focus of national attention.
As if the hurling of the sedition charge against the JNU Students’ Union President Kanhaiya Kumar before throwing him in police custody and then Tihar Jail was not enough, the shocking spectacle on February 15 of lawyers associated with the ruling party at the Centre pouncing on (…)

Kanhaiya Kumar, the JNU Students’ Union President, addressed a gathering on the campus of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi on February 11 evening. The following day he was arrested on the charge of sedition for taking part in a march on February 9 in the JNU where anti-India slogans were raised.
The following is the near-complete Hindi speech Kumar delivered on February 11, translated by J.P. Yadav of The Telegraph, Kolkata from a recording uploaded on YouTube. The recording does (…)

• Actions in JNU an attempt at diverting the students anger over Rohith Vemula’s suicide and continued discrimination
• Withdraw Police from JNU Campus, let there be an impartial enquiry in the incidents of February 9th by University
• Release Kanhaiya Kumar immediately and withdraw all charges
Delhi Police and its high-handedness has once again come to the scrutiny and makes us question if it is acting as a political tool rather than being the enforcer of the law and order situation (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
Upsurge of the Underprivileged
Whoever rules Uttar Pradesh gets the passport to Delhi. This has long been the rule during the days of the Congress hegemony. Actually, Uttar Pradesh can claim to have reared as many as seven Prime Ministers: Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Charan Singh, Rajiv Gandhi, V.P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar. The only exceptions so far have been Morarji Desai and now Narasimha Rao.
What is more significant is that the (…)

I am not a film buff. But I do watch movies by actors like Aamir Khan because he acts naturally. Such actors make me feel as if I am not seeing a film but reliving my life. I must admit that I did not like Aamir Khan’s remark at the Tarkunde Annual Lecture that his wife had asked him whether they should migrate to some other country. Subsequently, he apologised and closed an ugly controversy in the country.
But the Narendra Modi Government has once again revived the controversy by not (…)

by Bincy Mathew
With Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to cut down on his travel abroad in 2016, it is interesting to look back at the past year that had been dominated by headlines of not just the PM’s ‘selfies’ and his focused attention on cameras no matter where they were positioned, but also his ‘bonhomie’ with world leaders and several of his business tie-ups with the likes of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who proposed the idea of Free Basics with the ‘stated’ intention of (…)

IMPRESSIONS
At the political level New Delhi handled the Pathankot terrorist strike wisely. Instead of rushing into kneejerk reactions as before, the Prime Minister’s chosen path of dialogue with Pakistan was reasserted. Pakistan was asked to
take firm action against those linked to the attack. Nawaz Sharif’s phone call to Narendra Modi promising investigation and action pointed to a cooperative mood at the political level in Pakistan. What that would mean in practice is far from clear, (…)

by Satrajit Dutta
A meagre amount of Rs 4147 crores has been received by the Finance Ministry under the new the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) And Imposition of Tax Act, 2015 (UnFINA), during its 90-day ‘compliance window’ (till September 30, 2015) when a resident assessee holding such unreported incomes or assets abroad could declare them and pay the 30 per cent tax and an additional 30 per cent penalty for the assessment year 2016—17 (tax year 2015—16). Now as the (…)