2017

One of the achievements about which India can rightly be proud of is the vast network of three-tier local self-government institutions that has been created in over half-a-million villages of the country. This system of ‘panchayati raj’ gets an important mention wherever rural decentralisation is discussed at the world level. About 2.8 million rural representatives are elected at regular intervals in this vast network of institutions of rural decentralisation and over 1.2 million among them (…)

Prime Minister Modi has for the last six months kept up a continuous refrain for simultaneously holding Lok Sabha and State Assembly polls and the supposed advantages that would flow from it. As was to be expected, a number of newspapers and newspersons are picking up this matter. It is unfortunate that the Election Commission of India and Niti Ayog should have gone along with this suggestion without even the minimum constitutional requ-irement of a public debate and seminars—and more (…)

by Prem Singh
The Constitution of India was adopted on January 26, 1950 and we entered the world stage as a sovereign republic. Ever since January 26 is celebrated as the Republic Day, a celebration of our sovereignty. Vibrant tableaus of various States and departments are part of the parade. But predominantly it is a celebration of the display of military prowess. On careful observation you will find that after the adoption of the new economic policies in 1991—that is, after the ruling (…)

Civil-military relations are today at an all-time low and although the decades-long continuity of the bureaucratic hand is obvious in the current NDA-2 dispensation, there is also evidence of the political leadership humiliating the military. Let us begin with the CBI’s arrest of Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi, India’s former Air Chief, in connection with the Agusta Westland helicopter purchase deal. It raises some questions not only about the functioning of the political leadership and the (…)

He stands there
holding his iconic hammer
silhouetted stark against history’s horizon
watching the sickle move and meet
the full harvest of time.
He stands there
waiting for the flags of revolutionary change
flutter aloft fearlessly
and redeem their promises.
Waiting for the surging moments
led by visionaries to knock out
the rotten pillars of exploitation.
He stands there
Watching the old-fashioned labour-mills
disappear in the jaws of emergent market sharks (…)

by V. Mathew Kurian
Money to the economy is like blood to our human body. Circular flow of money is exactly similar to the circulation of blood in our biological system. When we lack adequate blood, we become anaemic and vulnerable. In the economy also, sufficient money supply is required to ensure its healthy functioning. When some illness happens to our kidney, the circulating blood gets toxic and dialysis is resorted to in order to purify it. But before resorting to this therapy, (…)

I tried to write, but the word shuddered,
Looked over its shoulder in every direction,
Then broke into letters.
I tried to speak,
But the sentence hung in mid-air,
As I tried to give it utterance
It broke into a stammer.
I walked out to witness
What with a hammer
Had brought my people
Onto the streets;
There were no protests, no clamour,
I saw my people silently standing
In long lines,
Their faces taut,
Their lips drawn,
Their dignity smashed,
On bended (…)

“There is however no hope of avoiding the catastrophe” (of increased racial bitterness) “unless the spirit of exploitation that at present dominates the nations of the West is transmuted into that of real helpful service, or unless the Asiatic and African races understand that they cannot be exploited without their co-operation, to a large extent voluntary, and thus understanding, withdraw such co-operation.” [Gandhi in Young India, March 18, 1926, CW, Vol 30, p. 136]
Q: “For some years (…)

In his famous existentialist essay, “The Tragic Sense of Life”, the Spanish philosopher, novelist, poet and academic, Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936), describes people’s concern with their legacy as a “tremendous struggle to singularise ourselves, to survive in some way in the memory of others and of posterity. It is this struggle...that gives tone, colour, and character to our society.” The desire to bequeath a lasting legacy is a trait of most politicians. But a theoretical construct of what (…)

After the Prime Minister’s speech to the nation on December 31, 2016, Aurobindo Ghose of the Peoples’ Rights Organisation (Manav Adhikar Manch) observed:
“Today he was different. Sounding concilitiary and compensatory. Atoning for the unsaid sins of Demonetisation. Seemed to be very much on the back foot. The barbs against the Opposition were less sharp and not so conspicuous.This was both a pre-election freebies speech as well as a Budget speech, partially pre-empting Arun Jaitley two (…)