2018

by Gautam Sen
After a recent border flare-up and cross-border firings, during a joint Pakistani Rangers-Border Security Force (BSF) patrol on the international border in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir State, the body of a beheaded BSF Head Constable, Narendra Singh, was located in the Ramgarh sector and retrieved to India. This phenomenon of beheading each other’s soldiers across the international border (IB) in the sectors in the lower Jammu region and northwards across the Line of (…)

Bangladesh categorically objects to the decision made at the fourth special session of the Conference of the States Parties (CSP) to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). I want to congratulate the Bangladesh delegates for their remarks on the results of voting on the British draft at the fourth special session of the Conference of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (June 26-28, 2018 at The Hague).
We consider unacceptable any initiatives aimed at politicising the (…)

By accident or out of sheer ennui, I indulged in a rare act last evening (September 20)—channel surfing. And I ended up in the improbable situation of watching our Delhi-based ‘news channels’ and instantly getting hooked to the acrimonious ‘discussion’ going on regarding the forthcoming talks between the Indian and Pakistani FMs in New York next week.
The surprising part was the savage attack by the anchor, a known propagandist of the Modi Government, on the decision to accept Imran Khan’s (…)

As a teacher, I keep engaging with the young minds; and I do believe that higher education is not merely for acquiring the cognitive and technical skills for fetching lucrative jobs; it ought to generate self-reflexivity, critical thinking and intense participatory urge to create a better world. No wonder, politics—politics as an awareness of the discourse of power, or politics as a mode of collective practice for intervening in the way social/cultural/economic resources are distributed in (…)

Shankar Guha Niyogi was assassinated on September 28, 1991 when he was just 48, but even at this young age he had become a legendary figure. While he was adored as brother and son by the iron ore miners and other workers of Chhattisgarh to whom he devoted his entire life, at a wider level he became perhaps the most talked about example of someone who could link trade union struggles to wider issues like struggles of surrounding peasantry, social reform, workers’ own health programme, (…)

EDITORIAL
Long years ago in 1991, the then Prime Minister, Chandra Shekhar, was asked at a press conference in New Delhi if he sensed the danger of a Hindu Rashtra in pluralist and secular democratic India. Chandra Shekhar brushed aside the threat with characteristic flourish, saying that if the regular assemblage of sadhus and sants at kumbh melas did not turn India into a Hindu Rashtra, such a prospect was remote in the near future. Even if the then PM’s assurance in this regard left the (…)

The ongoing Dassault Rafale deal point and counterpoint between political parties is a given, each trying to prove that the other is corrupt, when there is no need whatsoever for proof, at least in the public eye. Typically a case of the

There is a strategic political coup that Rahul Gandhi can execute, and thereby transform the entire landscape of the 2019 elections. Routine politicking won’t do in the present climate because Narendra Modi’s oratorical ability to attract mass attention is unrivalled and his party has the advantage of being in power. It will be foolish to see 2019 as a Modi-versus- Rahul test. The Congress should understand this unusual situation and take unusual steps to meet the challenge.
Rahul can (…)

by Chandrasekhar Bhattacharjee
Kerala,

When Mr Mallya left town, He claims to have told the Minister he was leaving. Mallya is a gentleman from toe to crown, And the Minister does not seem to be grieving.
While the meek are full of moral rage, And the media of butter upon the bread, The high and mighty play upon a stage Where all is always securely well-fed.
When democracy happens at the vote The canny feed us newspeak and crumbs. We rave and rant in shrill, righteous note, Then settle back among the familiar dumps.
Thus (…)