2020

According to a statement (December 4, 2020) of the Science and Technology minister Harsh Vardhan a new campus with in the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala would be named “Shri Guruji Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar National Centre for Complex Disease in Cancer and Viral Infection”. Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar was the second Supremo of the RSS (1940-1973) and the most prominent ideologue of the RSS whom our PM credits for grooming the latter into a political leader. (…)

by Brigita Schmögnerová *
22 October 2020
The costly and long road to a modern state
The revolutionary political changes in the Eastern Bloc at the beginning of the 1990s brought about a threefold transformation in the Republic of Slovakia: 1. From a totalitarian regime to a liberal democratic regime; 2. From a state within a federation to a nation-state; and 3. From a centrally-planned economy to a market economy. The Slovak Republic was not prepared for any of these changes. Yet in (…)

by Martha Rosenberg *
You can tell it is holiday season in the U.S. when Heifer International’s saccharine catalogue arrives in the mailbox. Heifer International (HI) is a Little Rock, Arkansas-based charity that "ends hunger and poverty" through sending live animals to poor people overseas. For a small amount of money, donors can send live goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, cattle, rabbits and even water buffaloes. The charity is known for its Unicef style photos of cute kids hugging their (…)

Huge road, energy and mining projects driving into heart of world’s remaining forests

Review by Anarchist Communist Group (ACG)
November 23, 2020
Darch, Colin. Nestor Makhno and rural anarchism in Ukraine, 1917-1921. Pluto Press.238 pages. £17.99
I approached this book with some enthusiasm. A new book on the Makhnovist movement using sources previously unreferenced in the English language world. I was sorely disappointed. I should have read Darch’s doctoral thesis on Makhno, where his bias against Makhno and anarchism is immediately apparent. An example of that (…)

* Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, December 5, 2020
* Judiciary and Social Justice - Human Rights and Frights | Justice Madan Lokur
* The People’s Historian | Christopher Hill
* The Wasteland of Public Sector Enterprises | Govind Bhattacharjee

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Dec 5
As we write these lines there is a continuing standoff between a movement of protesting peasants from Punjab and Haryana (with growing support from Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and other States) on one side and the Central Government on the other. Over the past ten days tens of thousands of peasants are parked on a highway leading to Delhi, they are demanding a rollback of three Farm bills that were rushed through Parliament (…)

Posted below is the Full Text of Seventh Sunil Memorial Lecture delivered by Justice (Retd) Madan Lokur on November 29, 2020
Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is indeed a privilege to deliver the Sunil Memorial Lecture for this year to an august audience consisting, among others, of academics, intellectuals and professionals from different disciplines and interests. I thank the Sunil Memorial Trust for this privilege.
Sunil did his post-graduation from Jawaharlal Nehru University (…)

by Christopher Hill *
Raphael Samuel recently drew attention to the number of British Communist Party intellectuals in the 1930s whose first interest had been English literature—Edgell Rickword, Alick West, Douglas Garman, Jack Lindsay—and A.L. Morton. Morton worked with T.S. Eliot on the Criterion in the 1920s, and spoke—many years later—of the ‘liberating experience’ of reading The Waste Land then. Leslie never lost his fascination with English literature, and it stood him in good stead (…)

by Dr Govind Bhattacharjee *
Abstract:
From only five to 444 Central and 1136 State PSUs, the public sector in India has grown phenomenally since independence. Paralysed by excessive government interference and politicization, Central PSUs have been systematically bled by successive governments and their excess cash squeezed out to finance government’s burgeoning fiscal deficits and populist agenda. But post 1991, with the State’s role being redefined as a facilitator rather than a (…)