2017

IMPRESSIONS
Usually life gets simpler as nations progress. But not in India where a barrage of sudden changes, new rules and revised regulations are making life burdensome for ordinary people. First it was demonetisation. The dislocations that abrupt adventure triggered are still haunting people. As if that were not enough, a whole new mess has developed around Aadhaar. Then a bigger mess around GST. The wise men in government tell us that it’s all simple, that it’s all good. What we know (…)

by Sankar Ray
The spectre of Sachin Chaudhuri, thefounder of Economic Weekly, which was rechristened as Economic and Political Weekly in the mid-1960s, haunts the corridors of EPW at Lower Parel in Mumbai today. The eerie situation appeared somewhat traumatically with the unceremonious exit of its editor, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. The resignation from the editorship of India’s internationally prestigious publication was unprecedentedly dramatic as his act questioned the powers of the (…)

by Vivek Kumar Srivastava
One of the most reputed journals of contemporary India, Economic and Political Weekly’s editor Paranjoy Guha Thakurta has resigned due to conflict with the management on publishing an article on the Adani Group. The article was critical of the Adani Group but well researched. The Adani Group’s legal action on the journal for publication of the article by the editor and others and the role of the Sameeksha Trust by withdrawing the article from the website with the (…)

BOOK REVIEW
by Zaboor Ahmad
The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce; publication: Little Brown UK; 2017; pages: 234.
The debate whether the West is on retreat and the East on ascension goes on unabated. It is in this context that Edward Luce’s insightful book is a new addition to the huge corpus of literature on the issue. Edward Luce in his book, The Retreat of Western Liberalism, has issued a chilling and harrowing warning that ‘Western liberal democracy is not yet dead but (…)

by Rudra P. Pradhan and Jajati K. Pattnaik
Introduction
More than four weeks into the Qatar—GCC diplomatic crisis leading to a series of embargo on Qatar keeps the global anticipation high and speculation rising. Seven countries—Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and UAE along with Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Maldives—severed diplomatic ties with Qatar on Monday, June 5, 2017 driving the already volatile Arab world into an unprecedented crisis. Days before the Qatar crisis, President Donald Trump’s (…)

POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
As we go to press, the result of the presidential contest has been announced. Ram Nath Kovind, the BJP candidate and NDA nominee, has predictably won with 65.65 per cent votes. He thus becomes the country’s second Dalit President after K.R. Narayanan. He has defeated the Congress candidate and UPA nominee, Meira Kumar, who too has secured an impressive number of votes. Put up by 18 Opposition parties, Kumar has asserted that the ideological fight in the presidential poll (…)

When terrorists attack from the front, it means that they are not afraid of the conse-quences. The story of counterattack to kill seven pilgrims, returning from the Amarnath Yatra in Kashmir, is somewhat similar. The Lashkar-e-Toiba did not hesitate to taking on the police or the Army as if the terrorists knew that the counter-challenge would fall short of their resolve to harm the security forces accom-panying the yatra.
The Lashkar is a possibility, particularly when it has not claimed (…)

In UP the Chief Minister has launched a campaign to get children enrolled into schools and linked it to a tree plantation drive. He has also distributed dress, socks, shoes, school bags, free books to encourage children to go to school. Every school has been given a target to plant 40 saplings. The tree plantation drive will go on till July 31, 2017 upto the time that the admission campaign continues.
Like the previous governments, to demons-trate his commitment to education Yogi (…)

by Aurobindo Ghose
A fifteen-year old boy was lynched to death in a train by a mob, when he was returning home with his relatives, on the evening of Thursday, June 22, after doing his Eid shopping in Delhi. The mob threw his body at Asaoti railway station near Faridabad. The boy’s name was Junaid Khan.
There have been more than a dozen cases of lynching of Muslim men across India since Narendra Modi came to power, particularly since September 28, 2015 when a mob lynched 50-year old (…)

The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi’s address to the countrymen styled as ‘Mann ki Baat’ broadcast at 11:28 IST by the All India Radio on June 25, 2017 noted that:
“Those who have studied Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar should have seen that Lord Jagannath Ji’s temple and his traditions were very much appreciated, because it contained social justice, social harmony. Lord Jagannath is the God of the poor.”1
The history of Puri’s Jagannath temple totally precludes any room for Dr Ambedkar to (…)