2020

by Jayanta Debnath
Abstract:
The Covid-19, an infectious disease is perishing the whole world for a few months. The global communities for the first time in human history are forced to be under house arrest not for the threat of any military operation or war, but to escape infection. It has forced the states all across the world to launch national lockdowns or restrictions to save people’s lives. The Covid-19 originates in China in December 2019. It has now spread all over the world (…)

by Indranil De and Sanjib Pohit
India is in the process of opening up after imposing one of the longest and tightest lockdown in the world. The general consensus is that the restrictions on movement would be relaxed in a staggered manner. The fear is that once lockdown is removed, the number of confirmed cases of Coronavirus infection is likely to shoot up once economic activities kick starts unless we maintain reasonable social distance and avoid touching external objects. However, it is (…)

by Amit Schandillia
How the wildfires in Australia, the floods in Oman and the locusts in Vidarbha are linked
If the coronavirus pandemic was not crippling enough, India is now reeling with the worst locust plague in decades. The crop-damaging migratory pests have swarmed Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh, and breached the eastern part of Maharashtra, the Vidarbha region, which is also at the heart of rural distress in the state. But to understand where these parasitical (…)

by Ram Puniyani This 28th May 2020, Savarkar was in the news yet again. While the opposition parties in Karnatka opposed the naming of Yelahanka flyover in the name of Savarkar, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi while paying tribute to him said that Savarkar inspired many to join freedom struggle. The opposition to Just close to a year before, the Maharashtra BJP, while seeking votes had in its manifesto the point that Bharat Ratna be awarded to Savakar. Those opposing such moves see (…)

The on-going financial year has seen very big changes in the revenue and expenditure of the union government, and that too at a very early stage of the financial year. Very soon after the Union Budget was announced, from March onwards there were very big and unforeseen changes in revenue and expenditure due to COVID-19 related factors including a prolonged lockdown. The impact of all this is going to continue for a much longer time beyond the lockdown period.

by Archishman Raju
The first generation of Indian diplomats after independence had many prominent personalities who represented India at the world stage and distinguished themselves. The names of S. Radhakrishnan and Asaf Ali stand out as does that of Vijay Laxmi Pandit who was known to be a fantastic orator. Krishna Menon would become the particular target of western ire and would give what continues to be the longest speech at the UN on the issue of Kashmir in 1957.
Of these many (…)

by Ashok Kumar Panda, Aniruddha Purushotham
The Supreme Court of India has been established under Article 124(1) of the Constitution. Whilst in law there is only one Supreme Court of India, it is a common expression at the Bar that there are in fact seventeen Supreme Courts — for the reason that the Hon’ble Judges normally sit in the seventeen courtrooms of the Supreme Court in divisions of two or three Judges each.
The qualitative effects of collegiality in the decision-making process, (…)

Book Review
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future. Viking, Penguin Books Ltd, London, 2018. pp. 312. Notes. Index. Pb. $6.94. ISBN 9780241336496
by Irshad Rashid and Manzoor Ahmad Padder. In his latest novel The Golden House Salman Rushdie offers an intriguing parable of modern American democracy. At the center of the novel is the story of Nero who shares uncanny resemblance with the (…)

Reviewed by Chiara Ruffa (Uppsala University)
Lise Morjé Howard. Power in Peacekeeping. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 274 pp. $29.99 (paper), ISBN 978-1-108-45718-7
Lise Howard’s The Power of Peacekeeping is about how peacekeeping works and how peacekeepers achieve their ends. Building on Robert Dahl’s conceptualization of power, Howard argues that peacekeepers can be effective in three ways, via persuasion, inducement, and coercion.[1] Persuasion works mainly verbally, (…)