2017

by R.G. Gidadhubli
Russia and Belarus have jointly conducted military exercises known as Zapad (West) 2017 running through from September 14 to 20, 2017, which was witnessed by the Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 18. Russia holds the military exercises every four years, rotating them with drills in three other parts of the country. The location of the Zapad 2017 exercise assumes geo-political significance since it is in the western region of Belarus which borders NATO (…)

by Anshuman Gupta
The most pressing question today facing the Indian economy is how to boost the animal spirit to increase private investment in the economy. The expectation plays an important role in the decision-making of entrepreneurs. There are different ways of forming expectation depending upon the average education level in the economy. In a country like India, generally adaptive expectation works, whereby the economic agents adjust their expectation about economic variables as per (…)

by Mahendra Ved
Is Prime Minister Narendra Modi contemplating a surprise general election, say, early next year, ahead of the May 2019 schedule?
Does he want to take advantage of the present situation wherein, going by political indicators, no party or personality is in a position to challenge him politically or electorally?
Does he want to act before a bad economic situation could get worse in the next few months?
Speculation is rife since his government responded with alacrity to (…)

Recently there was a news item in a national daily about a piece of wasteland outside a village being earmarked by the concerned State Government as a separate crematorium for the untouchables, because they are not being allowed by the higher-caste people living in the village to use the common crematorium. There is an irony hidden in the arrangements made by the law-enforcing authority. The following poem has been composed against that background.
by Ajit Kumar Das
When I came into this (…)

EDITORIAL
Once again the BJP leaders are exposing their majoritarian proclivities.
First, the Yogi Adityanath Government in UP omitted the world-renowned 17th century monu-ment, the Taj Mahal, from an official booklet on tourist destinations.
Thereafter on October 16 BJP MLA Sangeet Som, speaking at an event in Meerut, questioned the Taj Mahal’s place in India’s heritage and observed that history would be rewritten to erase the Mughal emperors from it.
He further asserted that the (…)

by Purusottam Bhattacharya
The Fourteenth India-European Union (EU) Summit was held in New Delhi on October 6, 2017 as part of the annual summit between the two sides that is organised alternately in India and Europe. These summits are being held since the India-EU strategic partnership was estab-lished in 2004. As a matter of protocol the EU side is led by the Presidents of the European Council and the European Commission and the Indian side is led by the Prime Minister and his team of (…)

The RSS/BJP rulers of India have finally woken up against violence! You are grossly mistaken if you believe that they are seeking forgiveness for the large-scale killing/raping/maiming/robbing people of the minorities, specially Muslims and Christians, in 1992-93 (nation-wide carnage of Muslims before and after demolition of the Babri mosque at Ayodhya), 1998 (widespread violence against Christians in Gujarat), 2002 (carnage of Muslims in Gujarat) and Kandhamal, Odisha violence of 2007-08 (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Defending his action to break the mahagath-bandan and forge a new alliance with the BJP, the Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, claimed on the floor of the Bihar Assembly that he was the tallest secular leader in contemporary India and dared other leaders to prove their secular credentials. He even asked the leaders not to use secularism to hide their corruption and corrupt practices. To prove his point that he was the only secular leader in India, he recalled: (…)

by Shachi Chawla
The Royal Commission, created in 1928 to examine the conditions of farmers, reported: “The Indian peasant is born in debt, lives in debt and bequeaths the indebtedness to its successors.” The statement, made 89 years ago, still stands true, reflecting the miserable plight of the farmers of India.
Punjab is predominantly an agrarian State. It was in the forefront of the adoption of the Green Revolution model in the 1960s, resulting in a tremendous increase in the use of (…)

by Kuldip Nayar
It was a disappointing memorial gathering a few days ago. I thought that the meeting, held to attract wide attention towards the murder of Kannada journalist Gauri Lankesh at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, would draw many journalists, particularly the senior ones, to the venue. But it turned out to be a gathering of no more than 30-35 people, very few among them being journalists.
It has become a habit with senior journalists to stay indoors and not mix with the ordinary scribes. (…)