2021

The Union Cabinet was reshuffled on Wednesday. Four new Ministers of State were inducted from West Bengal and two sitting MoS were sacked. But this time also, West Bengal did not a get a cabinet rank minister in Modi’s team, though the State had sent a dozen and a half members to Lok Sabha in 2019. The new ministers from West Bengal have obviously been chosen with an eye on 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The inclusion of John Barla from North Bengal has raised many eyebrows even in the State BJP (…)

by Sanjay Jha *
July 5, 2021
Is ideology going to be the final arbiter of India’s destiny in 2024? Is a country of nearly 140 crore people today hypnotised by one individual largely because they know what he stands for? That it has nothing to do with moral grandstanding, rhetorical promises, oratorical flourish, campaigning style etc?
Who cares for a V-shaped economy and transparent governance? All they want is a leader who walks the talk. They may not agree with him, they may even (…)

by P. S. Jayaramu *
2nd July, 2021
There has emerged and is still emerging, plenty of writings about the need for stitching together an Opposition Front to take on the BJP behemoth in the Parliamentary elections of 2024. The need part is emphasised not only by opposition politicians who are seeing an opportunity to take on the Modi led BJP in the wake of its failure to unseat Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal recently and its not so impressive performance in the Tamilnadu election and even (…)

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Stan Swamy died a prisoner in a Mumbai hospital, was cremated after a funeral Mass, and his ashes taken to his beloved people of Jharkhand to dispersed amidst the forests and the fields. Fr Stan Swamy, the Jesuit, has now become part of the Adivasi folklore of resistance. He is also a martyr to their cause of protecting their heritage, the ‘Jal, Jangal, Zameen’ [Water, Forest, Land] from the lusting eyes of the men in political power and their crony (…)

The oppressive laws like the Sedition Clause of the IPC which is a colonial vestige and the UAPA which is the creation of ’democratic’ India make our democracy truly autocratic. It is now an open secret that the Maharashtra police under the then BJP-Shiv Sena government failed to curb the anti-social elements from disrupting the Bhima Koregaon commemoration event and causing violence in which one person was killed. Then alleging that the Elgar Parishad conclave incited the violence, the (…)

by Basu Acharya*
July 7, 2021
The only time I met Father Stan Swamy was nearly four and half years back. On a lazy summer afternoon, I arrived in Ranchi, the state capital of Jharkhand, to attend a two-day seminar commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the October Revolution. The organisers had asked Comrade Subodh Mitra and me to speak on the subject of communist unity. Delegates from almost all mainstream and communist revolutionary groups were present and, despite patiently (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Who is guilty — Father Stan Swamy or those who kept him behind bars? These are not the only two questions that need a reply from the authorities. Swamy died in the NIA custody, but he has left behind a number of questions that haunt the common people. The primary question is why he was arrested, what was the nature of the crime for which he was made to languish in the prison. People rightly describe his death as the institutional death.
The most relevant and (…)

by Murzban Jal*
I refuse to engage in any philosophical discussion. V.I. Lenin, ‘To Maxim Gorky’, 1908.
The Mouse Trap and the Iron Cage of Capitalism
One of the most important questions in Marxism is the question on the theoretical nature of Marx’s discipline and what place “ideology” would have in it. By and large, the political left (which is largely the Stalinist and Maoist left and their illegitimate children) which had grown more from the politics of the Second International and (…)

’ When I give food to poor they call me a saint, when I ask them why they are poor, they call me a communist’ —Helder Camara
The university system in India as we experienced it suffers from multiple ailments. It was so before the pandemic and even the economic recession. The crisis is partly systemic and largely the result of crisis of leadership. The public universities have turned into intellectual deserts and university teachers are no special crop who can stand up and be (…)

MUSINGS - 7 July 2021
Humra Quraishi
As I was about to file my this week’s column, came in the news of the passing away of the legendary film star, Dilip Kumar...nostalgia tightening its hold, taking me back to the summer of 1999, when I had met him and his wife Saira Banu.
I was well aware that the couple, Saira Banu and Dilip Kumar, were in New Delhi. And I was keen to interview them .Tried all possible sources but the closest I could get was to the (…)