2016

by Ramaiah Bheenaveni
By committing suicide at the Hyderabad Central University, Rohith Vemula, a research scholar, has shocked the entire country and set up a political stir. An ideological person like Rohith had the potentiality to debate and confront many people, Moreover, his case, pending before the High Court, was scheduled for hearing within two days before his tragic death. What drove him to such depression is a million dollar question. Secondly, his suicide note reveals his (…)

by Binoy Viswam
Rohith Vemula’s dream was to become a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan! But the oppressive social realities around him did not allow that talented young research scholar of the Hyderabad Central University to realise his fond ambition. He was forced to end his life with a heart-touching parting note in one of his friends’ room in the new research scholars hostel. Following intervention from higher-ups in the government he and four other fellow students were (…)

Initially the CPM Plenum in Kolkata had raised some expectations and a section of the media had even described it as the one which would provide the much needed guidance to the Left politics of the country. In the end, however, the Plenum turned out to be a damp squib and an exercise in nothingness. Instead of providing the beacon-light, the Plenum has shown all the potentialities of pulling the Left to a muddy swirl. But this was expected as the Indian Left is yet to get over its (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Addressing the valedictory session of the CPI-M’s Kolkata Plenum, party General Secretary Sitaram Yechury reiterated that the Left could offer India a “policy alternative, a better political culture which fights corruption, moral degradation and degeneration which is rampant in Indian politics today”. He, however, refrained from enumerating what India and its people actually desperately need from the Indian Marxists and Left forces.
He reiterated the three-decade-old (…)

by Jos Chathukulam
The much acclaimed Kerala model of health care system (Elamon, Franke and Ekbal, 2004) had faced serious challenges in the mid-1980s and early 1990s due to the dilution of the politics of collective action and deficit in delivery of public goods in general and health care in particular by the State Government. Further the stagnation in the economy of Kerala, witnessed during the period, contributed to the decline of the quality of service delivery in the health sector. (…)

Large-scale violence broke out at Kaliachak, a small town in Malda district of West Bengal, about twenty kms south-west of Malda town, on January 3. Several thousand Muslims (Malda is a Muslim-majority district) had gathered to protest against an objectionable remark against Prophet Muhammad allegedly made by one Kamlesh Tiwari, the working president of the Hindu Mahasabha in Uttar Pradesh. (Reportedly, Tiwari said Muhammad was the first homosexual in the world. The communally provocative (…)

by Ram Puniyani
The violence in Malda poses the basic question: was it a case of communal violence or was it just a criminal act, anti-social violence as some are claiming?
On January 3, a large Muslim crowd mobilised to protest against the statement against Prophet Mohammad by Kamlesh Tripathi, a Hindu Mahasabha worker, later disowned by the party. His statement was in turn a reaction to the derogatory statement against the RSS by the Uttar Pradesh Minister, Azam Khan.
The size of the (…)

A couple of years ago, the annual State of the Future report of the Millennium Project in Washington had sounded an early warning on the Lone Wolf phenomenon that has gone largely unheeded across the world. Now that the animal is getting closer to the door, it may be time to be warned on how to deal with it. In the annals of international terror, the Lone Wolf pheno-menon is about the terrorist who acts indivi-dually without evincing affiliations to any terrorist group or network. And yet, (…)

In his final State of the Union address, Barak Obama mentioned that the ISIS does not pose a threat to the US. This comes at a time when we have witnessed two back-to-back attacks, one in Istanbul and another one in Jakarta. Over the past six months we have seen a string of ISIS-led attacks in Paris and Beirut—all proving the serious threat the group poses. Looking at what has transpired over the last six months, Obama’s statement cannot be farther from the truth.
A closer study of the (…)

The Pathankot IAF base is near the border with Pakistan. A Pakistani terrorist squad entered the Air Force base in the wee hours of 2016 New Year’s Day by crossing the security wall, and hid in sarkanda grass before launching an attack on personnel within the base early on January 2.
The debate in the media appears focused on several issues including the fact that there were intelligence inputs which were not acted upon, the casualties caused by the terrorists, the reason why the emergency (…)