2020

by Manoj Kumar Mishra *
India has been confronting complex security challenges from unfavourable and complicated security scenario in Afghanistan which are characterised by the apparent failure of American-led war as well as peace and reconciliation efforts. The American stress on an exit policy fixing a specific time-line did not bring expected results in terms of peace dividends rather the Afghan Taliban became more resilient over the years and demanded complete withdrawal of (…)

by Sankar Ray
(India Press Agency, November 7, 2020) Afghanistan’s Taliban militants have resumed their terrorising posture embarked, thereby frustrating the proponents of a sustainable milieu for peace. At the moment, they have exacerbated violence and intimidation to capture Kandahar, the capital for the hard-line movement nearly a quarter-century ago. Hundreds of insurgents, civilians, and soldiers are believed to have been killed while thousands of villagers have been displaced as a (…)

November 22, 2020
The recent Issue Brief by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission entitled The Shanghai Cooperation Organization: A Testbed for Chinese Power Projection takes a close look at the Chinese security footprint in Central Asia and its political dimensions. A perception has grown over the most recent years amongst great game watchers generally, especially the US analysts, that China is gobbling up Central Asia. On the contrary, this report takes a contrarian view. (…)

by R.G.Gidadhubli *
Armenia and Azerbaijan are neighboring states in the Caucasian region of the former Soviet Union. Nagorno-Karabakh is a small autonomous republic situated in the geographical territory of Azerbaijan but the majority of the population in Nagorno-Karabakh is Armenians while Azeris are minority. Moreover, there is religious diversity since people of Azerbaijan are Muslims while Armenians belong to Christianity. During the Soviet Communist era these differences had no (…)

by Monaem Sarker
We the Banglees fought the Liberation War in 1971 against Pakistan brutal army to achieve emancipation from deprivation and uplift our economic advancement to make the society egalitarian in a democratic and non-communal political entity where multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-lingual people would live in peace and harmony. Contemporary practice acknowledges that although governments do not bear the whole burden of bilateral relations, governments lay down policies (…)

by Vidya Bhushan Rawat
France is facing an unprecedented crisis at the moment after three citizens were killed in Nice inside a church. The killings have been brutal to say the least. This time, the killer happened to be a Tunisian migrant who had arrived a few months back. Prior to this, the horrific murder of a French teacher Samuel Paty for ‘insulting’ Prophet Mohammad has again ignited the debate of ‘free speech’ in France as well as other parts of the western world. Reports suggest (…)

by Asanda-Jonas Benya
Women miners have two identities: underground, where traditional markers of femininity must be suppressed, and at home, where they are expected to be ‘good’ wives and mothers.
4 Nov 2020
This is a lightly edited excerpt from “Migrant Women in South Africa’s Platinum Belt: Negotiating Different Conceptions of Femininities” by Asanda-Jonas Benya in Migrant Labour After Apartheid: The Inside Story (HSRC Press, 2020) edited by Leslie J Bank, Dorrit Posel and Francis (…)

• Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, November 21
• Ajit Roy: A forgotten Communist Activist and Intellectual| Sobhanlal Datta Gupta
• C.P. Bhambhri (1933-2020) and the Life of a Public Intellectual

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, November 21 2020
According to the World Health Organization, confirmed cases of COVID-19 now exceed 55 million (the exact figure being 55,928,327), with 1,344,003 deaths as on November 19, 2020. India has now surpassed 9 million cases of COVID-19. According to India’s top medical research body ICMR, a cumulative total of 12,85,08,389 samples have been tested up to November 18, 2020, that is, over 120 million people have been tested since February 2020, (…)

by Sobhanlal Datta Gupta *
Ajit Roy passed away on 3 June, 2011. A month later, on 11 July 2011 Kolkata witnessed a remarkable memorial meeting, packed to capacity, which was attended by a number of prominent Left leaders and intellectuals of the day. On 14 November 2020 Roy stepped into the centenary year of his birth. No initiative has as yet been taken by the mainstream Left to observe this event. The Bengal Left, tragically, seems to be completely oblivious of the indelible presence of (…)