2018

by Fayezah Iqbal
It feels disrupted, It feels stagnated. To make their point masses have stranded, The life that was while away taken for granted. As activism pledges to achieve the demanded, And exert against evil and unwanted, Intrepid Nirbhaya, Gauri and disillusioned Vemula wait yet brave-hearted. While as emboldened are fringe and conflict-bent and as much undaunted; As unrelenting Karni Sena, Jats, Marathas wreck lives unwarranted.
Slogans are raised all aloud, Voicing often (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Never have byelection results made waves of the kind that last week’s did. Only two out of fourteen seats were won by the BJP, the party that is generally projected as the unstoppable force sweeping across the country. Opponents were quick to proclaim its stoppability.
It would be a mistake to hurry to the conclusion that the BJP is losing ground and will be overtaken in next year’s general election. The party has strengths that other parties do not have, and will not have in (…)

There comes a time when Caesarism begins to breed discontent and thoughts of another possible world begin to take hold. Indeed, when what might have been a reassuring visage becomes a daily irritant.
The decline began with the Gujarat polls where the sons-of-soil duo managed barely to cross the half-way mark, vanquished by a new willingness in the Congress to find allies and equations not considered before. Indeed, had the Congress and NCP struck an understanding, Mr Modi’s home State may (…)

by Suranjita Ray
The local governance through the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in rural India came into force on April 24, 1993 with the adoption of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment which was introduced in 1992. The Municipal Corporations in urban India came into force on June 1, 1993 with the adoption of the 74th Constitutional Amendment. The following article analyses how the PRIs have functioned in these 25 years.
Democracy in India, perhaps, would not have been the same today (…)

by S.N. Sahu
The Karnataka Assembly election results of 2018 have been seen from many perspectives of power politics and their critical importance have been underlined for shaping the possible electoral arithmetic of the general elections of 2019. It is extremely significant that the Karnataka elections and the post-poll alliance forged by the Congress and JD(S) should be seen from the perspectives of constitutional morality and employment of the constitutional method which Dr B.R. (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
Twentynine years ago, N.C. had left for China when the Tiananmen bloodbath took place on June 4, 1989. Apart from his despatches which appeared in The Times of India on the tragedy that befell that great country at that time, he also wrote this detailed piece which was published in Mainstream (June 17, 1989). This was an enlarged version of an article in The Times of India (June 12, 1989).
The contours of the emerging set-up in China are still very blurred as the (…)

No miracle will ever clean
The memory, bestial and obscene,
Of those who, having fouled their trust,
Grew warped with dread and powerlust—
And ordered fire on the square,
On unarmed people everywhere,
Brave people seeking to be free
Of rottenness, of tyranny. Vikram Seth
[This poem was written twentynine years ago and published in The Times of India on June 6, 1989. It is being reproduced—courtesy The Times of India—in memory of the Tiananmen martyrs.]

(With Acknowledgement to Thomas Wyatt)
They flee from me who sometime did me seek, Finding fault where none was before; Every proclaimed success now seems to them A canny cover-up for failure.
Once a man of substance to droves Across a so aspiring spectrum, My thunderings now annoy Like the groans of a hollow drum.
Too late now for me to emulate Examples of sincere, subdued men Who speak little but deliver Without gruesome discrimination.
I may of course still cause a blast That (…)

by Purusottam Bhattacharya
Ever since he came to power sixteen months ago, President Donald Trump has been an enigma—both to his admirers and detractors. In the opinion of many analysts his performance—both on the domestic and foreign policy fronts—has been chaotic, if not anarchic. Things have been made more difficult to discern due to the torrent of tweets that flow from him with contradictory twists and turns day in and day out. Figuring out a consistent agenda out of this maze of what (…)

by Gautam Sen
The Irish people have convincingly voted in a historic referendum on May 25 this year, by a 67 per cent to 33 per cent majority, in favour of restoring the right of women to abortion. Only one Irish county, Donegal, close to the border with Northern Ireland, voted ‘No’. Abortion has been illegal in the country under Sections 58 and 59 of the ‘Offences against Persons Act of 1861’. In Ireland, the right to abortion has been an emotive issue over the past five decades. However, (…)