2019

Some progress appears to have been made in talks on Afghanistan being held in a posh Qatari hotel sometime ago to solve the 40-year old complex conflict in Afghanistan, where the Taliban at the moment controls much of the countryside. The talks, adjourned briefly, will resume.
The Taliban have assured that their men would not attack schools, hospitals and bazars. The Afghan Government has said it would try to stop killing civilians. The Taliban had recently attacked government buildings in (…)

by L.K. Sharma
Three important democracies have thrown up leaders who conform to a tried-and-tested template that is a telling comment on the state of the democratic word and on our times. This template excites the common people but shocks the civil society and intellectuals struggling with stress inflicted by the state power. The three leaders would have a profound effect on politics and society in their respective countries.
Donald Trump, Narendra Modi and Boris Johnson come from (…)

EDITORIAL
With the BJP getting support from the parties that are fence-sitters in the Rajya Sabha to take the ruling conglomerate’s strength in the Upper House to a majority, the NDA, now in power for the second time in the country, is railroading legislations in Parliament. It started with the RTI Amendment Bill today as it was passed in both the Houses even after the Congress staged a walkout in the Rajya Sabha when its demand to send the legislation to a Select Committee was rejected by (…)

The Indian National Congress has been in the doldrums no doubt.
The many autopsies that have been airing since the results of the general elections came have tended to interpret the difficulties of the Party variously in mock, commiserative, patro-nising, terminal terms. There are of course those commentators as well who have wisely observed that the revival of the Party remains crucial to retrieving the descent of the republic into an undemocratic, Bonapartist nightmare. Where some (…)

by Ram Puniyani
Nationalism has been a matter of debate yet again. For last few years we saw individuals being labelled as anti-national for criticising the ruling government, we witnessed the attack on the JNU on the ground that it is a breeding ground of anti-nationals. At the same time those belonging to ‘Hindu nationalism’ have been presenting themselves as nationalists. The shrewdness involved in this is that they have been hiding the prefix Hindu to the word, nation. It is this (…)

The RTC (Amendment) Bill which the ruling party got passed in the Lok Sabha by its sheer brute majority is of a piece with the Modi Government’s systematic and sustained efforts at subverting the autonomy of every constitutional and statutory body and making it subservient to the Union Government. The statement of objectives of the Bill clearly states that the government wants to reduce the stature of the Central Information Commissioner.
At present the CIC’s status is equivalent to the (…)

by Joseph Abraham
With the political environment in Karnataka and Goa getting murkier after the shameful political defections, the prophecy of Lord Acton, the famous English historian, politician and writer, that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely“ seems to become a dangerous reality in the country.
The recent inter-party defections in these two States is causing grave concern to the political future of the state as it has become a menacing trend among (…)

The loss of Istanbul to an Opposition candidate in Turkey’s recent local elections was hyped up by many American commentators, especially pro-Israeli analysts, as marking the end of President Recep Erdogan’s 17-year long dominance in the country’s politics ever since his stunning victory in the 2002 general election.
The main agenda behind the doomsday predictions and the ‘psywar’ was to rattle Erdogan, soften him up and force him to jettison his staunchly anti-Zionist policy and his open (…)

by Hargopal Singh
Assorted minds, big and small, continue to rack their brains to interpret the results of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. There is virtually a spate of opinions which widely diverge. Undoubtedly the BJP, led by the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo, had a cake-walk in these elections. Its landslide victory in large parts of the country is unprecedented in ways more than one. So far no non-Congress government was ever repeated; it has taken a quantum jump this time. Jubilation in (…)

Respected Vice-Chancellor Dr Siddhartha-vinayaka P. Kane Saheb,
I am writing this open letter to you on a critical issue concerning the contents of the syllabus at your university. As per a communiqué of the university which must have had your concurrence, the history of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and its role in ‘nation-building’ have been included in the syllabus for the second year BA (History) course. Surprisingly, it has been accommodated by removing a crucial topic, ‘Rise (…)