2019

From N.C.’s Writings
When we were young, our school-books said: “The sun never sets on the British Empire”—that meant whichever way you turned the globe, a piece of British Empire could be seen on the map. This week, in an extravaganza resembling a Hollywood premiere, the exit of the British Empire from the last piece of territory outside Britain was shown on the sovereignty of Hong Kong having been resumed to the People’s Republic of China as the Prince of Wales with his faithful (…)

While yesterday’s Emergency saw the state take away an individual’s liberty, today, it is the non-state actors, fed on hate, who are taking away the life and liberty of a citizen of free India.
Just a little before the midnight of June 25, 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of Emergency, claiming there was a threat to internal security. This meant suspending the constitutional right to freedom of speech, censoring the press, limiting the power of the judiciary to review (…)

Primla Loomba, popularly known as Pimmi, left us on June 24, 2019. She was outstanding as an educationist and a strong pillar of the women’s movement of our country. Though she may not have identified herself as a feminist, but her political thinking and activities clearly show that she was a socialist feminist in the true sense of the term. She was radical in her outlook and far ahead of her times. She had the immense power to communicate with people of all age-groups from diverse (…)

India is now a hot hot place In more ways than you know; The sun bears down from above, And Hindutva bubbles from below.
There is little inbetween— Just despair or elation; Some the heat incinerates, Others like a hot hot nation.
The power and the glory now embrace In fifty centigrade; The sun and the politician coalesce To enact a blistering raid
On the laidback lovers of liberty Inimical to heat and passion; These temperate malingerers are in truth Enemies of a hot hot nation.
What (…)

EDITORIAL
In the midst of the intense gloom that has engulfed secular democrats of all hues of late following the return to power for the next five years of the present-day BJP run by the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo, the parliamentary proceedings in the Budget session were enlivened by a few memorable speeches from the Opposition benches. One of them was that of Mohua Moitra, a newly-elected Trinamul Congress MP from the Krishnanagar Lok Sabha constituency of West Bengal. While (…)

The former Chief Economic Advisor, Dr Arvind Subramanian, has set the cat among the pigeons by coming out with a paper (referred to as AS below) showing that the Indian GDP growth has been over-estimated in the period 2011-12 to 2016-17 by 2.5 per cent. So, the average growth rate during this period, instead of being seven per cent, would be 4.5 per cent. More accurately between 3.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent.
Some have confused this with the latest GDP growth data showing the Indian (…)

by Rajaram Panda
As if the North Korean issue where United States President Donald Trump burned much of midnight oil with words such as “fire and fury”, “totally destroy” flew with impunity only to be matched by “dotard”, “evil man” by the North Korean leader Kim Jung-un but ending with two summits in June 2018 in Singapore and in February 2019 in Hanoi, both with no result, leaving the de-nuclearisation issue in the limbo, the American President in a dramatic turnaround withdrew from the (…)

The US President Donald Trump’s reported decision abruptly to call off military strike against Iran which he’d previously ordered, highlights the growing complexity of the US-Iranian entanglement.
Indeed, it takes political courage to rationalise amidst such a dangerous situation that discretion is the better part of valour. Trump has been smart enough. But, having said that, there’s going to be downstream consequences. The Trump Administration appears paralysed. And Tehran has seized the (…)

All of us in India, including the BJP, have been stunned by the unprecedented and unanticipated landslide victory of Modi who like a juggernaut swept across the electoral landscape smashing everything standing in its way. The Opposition has been traumatised and there are feeble signs of the defeated parties endeavouring to recover. The civil society has shown more resilience.
Obviously, no single factor can explain what has happened. So far our media have not shown much investigative (…)

A family of five lives
in a small, dingy room
near the end of a blind alley.
The sunlight plays truant
from a slice of sky;
the air reeks of cow-dung,
filth from the gutter.
When night falls,
the old couple huddle
in one corner;
the daughter in another,
with vague dreams in her eyes,
burns the lamp;
the son and his wife retire
behind a hanging curtain
with all their desires in their arms.
A mansion near the sea
nestles up in the air
away from the polluting (…)