2018

EDITORIAL
How do we assess the Donald Trump-Kim Jong-un summit talks at Singapore? Regardless of what the cynics have said or written—and there are many such cynics beyond those who have articulated their views within the country and beyond—the reality is different. It is reflected in what The Indian Express has editorially underlined: “Constructing Peace: In Singapore, defying odds and cynicism, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un take a welcome step together”. Elaborating on these words, it (…)

COMMENTARY
As we go to press news has just arrived from Srinagar that noted professional journalist Syed Shujaat Bukhari is no more. He was gunned down near his office (he was earlier the correspondent of The Hindu, and subsequently was editing the newspaper Rising Kashmir) in Press Colony in the J & K capital this evening and was declared dead when the body reached the hospital.
One had first met him in the autumn of 1994 when one visited Kashmir in November that year. Besides (…)

by Ram Puniyani
Dialogue is the core part of the democratic process. The question that comes up is: can there be dialogue between two opposite ideologies on the Indian horizon, the one of Indian nationalism and the other of Hindu nationalism? We witnessed a strange spectacle when Pranab Mukherjee, a lifelong Congress-man and believer in plural, inclusive Indian nationalism, accepted the invitation from the RSS to speak on the platform of the Sangh, the apex organisation promoting narrow, (…)

by R.G. Gidadhubli
Vladimir Putin was elected as the President of Russia with overwhelming majority for the fourth time for a six-year term ending in 2024. Exactly one month after he was sworn in following a landslide election, to express his solidarity with the people a question-answer session was held on June 7, 2018 when about two million questions were fielded from across the country; these were submitted and the leader asked about an array of domestic and foreign-policy issues. While (…)

Indian history is replete with tragedies which, when retold, suggest that the happenings could have been avoided. ‘Operation Bluestar’ is one of them. Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a militant, holed himself up at the Akal Takht, the highest Sikh seat, and created a state within a state. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi used the Army to silence his guns and sent tanks into the Harmandir Saheb. Whatever one may say, Bhindranwale continues to enjoy respect in the hearts of Sikhs.
I had a taste of (…)

MUSINGS
This morning as I was going through the day’s newspapers what caught attention was this shocking incident coming from Haryana’s Mewat region, where a young woman was buried neck deep, in a five feet deep pit, by a village witch doctor to ‘cure her of spirits’!
The woman died after screaming and shrieking for two hours, pleading to be rescued from that pit but nobody was allowed to help her; the witch doctor telling the onlookers that her patient was screaming because she was (…)

by Bhartendu Kumar Singh
Everyday, buses full of pilgrims and tourists get stranded near Bhitta Mor, the noisy and chaotic gateway to Janakpur on the Indo-Nepal border in Bihar. Bhitta Mor is a dingy place with muddy roads (under water during mon-soons) where buses, bullock carts and rickshaws compete for the same space with same speed. Since most of the incoming visitors do not know what bad roads are all about, their palpable frustration is often apparent. However, such things could (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
Ayodhya has become the epicentre of a cyclone that threatens to spell disaster for the political fabric of this country. For the fourth year now, it has virtually taken over the centre-stage of national politics.
What has been achieved so far is that actual confrontation is averted almost at the very last moment by a desperate move to buy time, so that a little more space may be available to tackle the dipute over the question of the proposed Ram Mandir, requiring (…)

by Raimol Pappachan and P. Stanly Joseph
The tribal populations are the aboriginal inhabitants of our country and are found in all parts of India. They have been living a simple life based on the natural environment and have adopted a cultural pattern congenial to their life and the social environment.1 The tribal commu-nities have a very simple technology which fits well with their ecological surroundings and conservative outlook. They practice different types of occupations to sustain (…)

COMMENTARY
Recent news reports have drawn attention to the most absurd proposal being seriously considered by the Rajasthan Government that a cess will be imposed on liquor sales and this cess will be used for cow-protection work. This amounts to encouraging social promotion of liquor and getting rid of the social stigma normally attached to social promotion of liquor by adding an entirely unrelated social objective to it.
It is well known that 33 lakh people die in a year due to alcohol (…)