2018

EDITORIAL
As the process of State Assembly elections is set in motion, one special feature of these polls has come out in bold relief in the first phase. One of the States where elections are taking place is Chhattisgarh. Out of the 18 constituencies that went to the polls in the first round in the State, the turnout was as high as 76.28 per cent, definitely significant since eight districts in this State are affected by extreme Left insurgency and the Maoists had given a call for poll (…)

In a collection of commentaries on contemporary issues, titled Idea of India Hard to Beat; Republic Resilient (2016), this writer had stipulated that whereas it no longer seemed “inevitable” that capitalism would collapse with finality under the weight of its own contradictions, it did seem, in the Indian context, that inevitability now attaches to the Constitution of India after seven decades of the practice of parliamentary democracy. (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has the advantage of knowing that he is always right. Reserve Bank Governor Urjit Patel has taken his own time to learn that. Which is Patel’s problem. He started out as Jaitley’s hand-picked man to replace Raghuram Rajan, who simply had to go as Arvind Panagariya had to go and Arvind Subramanian had to go. The international celebrity that he was, Rajan thought he knew banking and finance a tad better than the Finance Minister, whose foundation, (…)

On the occasion of Jawaharlal Nehru’s 129th birth anniversary on Novermber 14, we are remembering our first PM by reproducing his following words that are highly relevant in the present situation. This is followed by tributes to Nehru from eminent personalities over the years.
Value of Nehru’s Immortal Words at Present
We have recently faced a very difficult, critical and painful situation—I refer to West and East Bangal and Assam and partly to other places—and, as I said in another (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
More than twentyone years after his passing away, Jawaharlal Nehru remains a colossus in the eyes of his countrymen and of the world abroad. Age has not withered his memory nor customs staled it. If Nehru has not become outdated, it is not because of any sentimental attachment in which the nation holds him. For, he really belongs to the generation that has literally disappeared from the stage of History. By the very law of life and living, others have come on the (…)

by L.K. Sharma
More and more Indian women are coming forward to recall and record their traumatic experience of having been preyed upon by their male bosses. Because of the fresh complaints, the #MeToo movement still grabs a headline, though the TV studio discussions have stopped. The cases of man-woman interaction, consensual or non-consensual, may soon be superseded by the report of another surgical strike against the beef-sellers or a march demanding the building of a Hindu temple. (…)

Kerala has long been a symbol of hope on India’s development scene, an inspiration to other states to achieve more in crucial areas of education and health. Even though some critical shortcomings in its development model have also been revealed, more so in recent times, on the whole the people of Kerala deserve rich praise for contributing much that is invaluable for India.
Hence it is a matter of deep concern not just for Kerala but for the entire nation that floods and landslides have (…)

Edward W. Said’s The Question of Palestine was written in 1977-78 and published in 1979. He wrote a 27-page preface to the 1992 edition of the book in which he summed up the long and complex history of oppression and resistance of the Palestinians: “Two decades after Black September (1970), the main aspects of Palestinian life remain dispossession, exile, dispersion, disenfranchisement (under Israeli military occupation), and, by no means least, an extraordinarily widespread and stubborn (…)

by Kalyan Guha
Karl Marx, a name to reckon with by every person who is aware of the proceedings of political economy of a state or a group of states, was born at Trier on French-German border on the side of Germany on May 5, 1818 a two-hour journey by train from Boppard. As Martin Kampchen, the scholar-emeritus of Viswa Bharati University and a resident of Santiniketan for a long time, wrote recently in an editorial page of The Telegraph of Kolkata on June 28, 2018 remembering his (…)

by Archishman Raju
The magnificent Riverside church is in Harlem, a part of Manhattan that has been a historic part of African American culture and resistance. Entering the church, one is struck by a sense of awe and wonder. Places of worship have a spiritual character to them and it is the spirit of struggle that one feels in this church.
It is here that Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. made his speech on April 4, 1967, “Beyond Vietnam”, calling for an end to the American war on Vietnam. (…)