2017

by Madhusudan Bandi
Introduction
India has a repertoire of ‘environmental laws’, all of which are important. One among them is ‘The Forest (Conservation) Act (FCA) of 1980’. The original legislation was enacted in the colonial era in 1927 with an objective of controlling the transit of forest produce and levying duty on it besides rules to penalise the violators. It covered the four categories of forest, namely, reserved forests, protected forests, village forests and private forests. (…)

The year 2017 marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Karl Marx’s celebrated text, Capital, Volume I. In his preface to the first German edition of the text (1867), Marx stated: “England is used as the chief illustration in the development of my theoretical ideas”. He expected that his readers would read the text with an open mind. To put it in his own words: “I presuppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for himself”.
Capital (…)

To mark the 156th birth anniversary of poet Rabindranath Tagore, the author has submited this article, as his tribute, underlining the poet’s role as a an enlightened zamindar in East Bengal, now Bangladesh. His role there was marked by uncommon generosity in promoting education in villages though his contemporary feudal class was extremely exploitative and orthodox.
Poet Rabindranath Tagore was also a landlord of considerable estates his grandfather Dwarka-nath Tagore had acquired in East (…)

A State-level Convention against Communa-lism, organised by the Sampradayikata Virodi Manch, was held at the University Institute, Kolkata, on May 3, 2017. The Convention adopted a resolution that resolved to fight the commu-nalism of both the majority and the minority communities, build up public opinion against extra-judicial killings by the State passed off as ‘encounter deaths’ and the attempt of the ruling dispensation to transform India from a secular and democratic republic to a Hindu (…)

Where are the inebriated rats
who nine lac litres of liquor drank
Outsmarting the Inquisitor’s guarded cellar
in rollicking Epicurean prank?
Has anyone seen these pagan legions?
Are they in stupor sound
in shaded bunkers of Patliputra,
unsighted by the official hound?
Or are they dancing in the air,
invisible to the human eye?
will they fall in one fell swoop
and the tormentor’s throne occupy?
Who are these that shake a leg
dressed in khaki apparel?
Are these men (…)

EDITORIAL
While those in power at the Centre are supremely nonchalant, the situation in J&K has been progressively turning from bad to worse. It was quite natural therefore that Pakistan would take advantage of such conditions in the Valley.
That is why besides allowing terrorists, trained on its soil, to infiltrate into India, it carried out a barbaric act on May 1: two Indian soldiers, one of the Indian Army and the other of the Border Security Force (BSF), were killed and beheaded (…)

Socialist leader, parliamentarian and ideologue Madhu Limaye’s 95th birth anniversary was aptly observed in New Delhi on May 1 through a public meeting attended by leaders of three streams of the Opposition—Socialist, Communist and Congress—with the resolve to forge unity of the progressive forces, so essential at the present juncture when the Hindutvavadis are seeking to subvert the Constitution and turn the country into a Hindu Rashtra.
While Congress leader Digvijay Singh urged the (…)

War is ugly. It becomes uglier when it is between two inveterate neighbours. They go to any extent to harm and humiliate each other. Pakistan has mutilated and killed two Indian soldiers when they are said to have crossed the Line of Control (LoC). Understandably, India has retaliated and destroyed Pakistan’s posts on the border.
Defence Minister Arun Jaitley has condemned the reprehensible and inhuman act saying that “such acts don’t take place even during war. It is an extreme form of (…)

So crushing is the oppression, look where you will, that every hand is bloodied That robs the honest till.Sylllables of hope seem limp against the squeeze of perfidy; those that still sing of love are like corals in the sea.May be the waters will yet arise to sink the Pharos of our day; May be legions of little men will unleash from this May.A fury that no force may stop, fuelled by wrath of the just; May be the sweat of the honest brow will satiate a righteous thirst.
Badri Raina

The launching of the Champaran Satyagraha by Mahatma Gandhi hundred years back in 1917 marked a revolutionary landmark as much in the history of India as in the history of humanity for reconstruction of society and polity based on non-violence. Anchored on the strength of the ordinary and exploited people, it liberated them from exploitation without employment of violence and prosecution of the exploiters and offered refreshing lessons for humanity for peaceful social change and fine-tuning (…)