2018

by Samit Kar
The defeat of the Manik Sarkar Government in Tripura is a big lesson to the Left in general, and the CPI-M in particular. It is revealing to note, the extent of poverty in Tripura is as low as 11.2 per cent. The record of implementation of various poverty eradicating social welfare schemes is indeed noteworthy.
But the rate of unemployment is as high as over 18 per cent. The constituency represented by Manik Sarkar, a man of impeccable honestly and integrity, happens to be a (…)

Dear Friends and Comrades,
Greetings.
This letter is being written when the communist movement in India is passing through very difficult and depressing times; but this is precisely the reason why the Communists need to show more courage, understanding and resilience than ever before. The world is also passing through more difficult and complex problems than ever before and the wider challenge for the Communists is to become an important part of the solutions.
There are powerful forces (…)

by Ram Puniyani
Corruption is a big menace in different countries, including ours. We witnessed the spectacle of the movement against corruption demanding Jan Lokpal, at the dharna at Jantar Mantar in 2011. The battle-cry of that surge was primarily against the Congress, and as a marginal balancing act occasionally the BJP was also named. Anna Hazare, who was projected to be the central leader, was presented as the second Gandhi. He was flanked by the current Chief Minister of Delhi, (…)

BOOK REVIEW
by Deepak Kumar
Comparative Constitutionalism in South Asia edited by Khilnani S., Raghavan V. and Thiruvengadam A.K.; Oxford University Press, New Delhi; 2016; (2nd edition); pages: 401; Price: Rs 595.00.
South Asia is a region which emerged out of a colonial past and which holds multitude of diversities, legal traditions, constitutional heterogeneities and political structures. It has had a diverse history of constitutionalism with varied meanings and interpretations. In (…)

POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
The BJP has embarked on a media blitzkrieg that it has swept the North-East in the recent Assembly elections and is closer to its goal of a Congress-mukt Bharat. Do the election results confirm its claim? In Tripura, it trounced the CPI-M and ended its quarter-century-old rule. But to a large extent the CPI-M will have to thank itself for its humiliating defeat. It had failed to realise the extent of its isolation from the people. It knew that RSS workers had fanned out (…)

Lenin said, practice is the criterion of truth. Tripura has forcefully underlined the need for a drastic reorientation of the tactics, even strategy, of the Left and the Communists in particular. Tripura has again emphasised what was already clear. It has proved that the democratic forces must reject a narrow-minded and sectarian approach, reorient and adopt a broad attitude.
The Tripura poll outcome shows what should be done and what not, as was in West Bengal earlier. The result there (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
We are reproducing the following piece by N.C. that appeared in this weekly in January 1997 on an interview to a national daily given by Jyoti Basu, the CPM patriuarch and former West Bengal CM, regarding the party Central Committee’s decision in May 1996 debarring him from becoming the Prime Minister of India heading the United Front Government at the Centre, as desired by the country’s entire political spectrum. The interview was published in the daily on January 1, (…)

Ten years ago, in 2008, I was invited to speak at a colloquium in Rome regarding the war in Afghanistan; this was organised by the think-tank affiliated with the Party of European Socialists, the platform that brings together national level social-democratic political parties in the member-countries of the European Union. The hosts were Italy’s Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), the successor to the former Italian Communist Party.
I carried back two precious memories from that trip to (…)

For some time past a misguided effort is being made to castigate India for asking the General Assembly of the UN to include Hindi as one of the languages at the UN. They seem to suggest that English should be recognised as the language of India because Hindi is not understood in the whole of India, but they conveniently forget that Hindi is the language of an overwhelming number of people. Of course, it is not in any way an attempt to reduce the respect given to the other Indian languages (…)

There is pressure from the government officials in Delhi that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal should apologise for the alleged assault on Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash inside the CM’s residence by Aam Admi Party Members of the Legislative Assembly. Two MLAs, Prakash Jarwal and Amanatullah Khan, have been arrested whereas there has been no action against the employees who beat up Minister Imran Husain and Delhi Dialogue Commission chairperson Ashish Khetan inside the Delhi Secretariat earlier. (…)