2021

by Prem Singh
Twenty third March is the birth anniversary of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia. In the events organized to mark this occasion demands are often made to the government for posthumous conferment of India’s highest civilian honour i.e. Bharat Ratna on Dr. Lohia. I anticipate that this year would be no different. In a brief commentary I authored in May 2018 a reference was made in it about this trend when Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar placed this demand before President Ram Nath Kovind (…)

by Jawed Naqvi*
TRUTH be told, now that the left has lost its moorings across much of South Asia, it’s mainly the right wing that calls the shots in a big way. Who is lending hope to the fight against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India? Believe it or not, it’s the hard-line Hindu right Shiv Sena. Who is the head of the opposition alliance in Pakistan against Prime Minister Imran Khan? Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the man who opposed the women’s protection bill among his other regressive (…)

We have two Indias. One is dirt poor. The other is filthy rich. The world loves this second India. The luxury market in this India is estimated at Rs 37,500 crore. The culture around it is such that watches costing between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1.5 lakh quickly went out of fashion as the sale of Rs 3-lakh-and-more watches zoomed. Porsche sold 312 cars in the country in 2011. Dreams like Rolls Royce and Maybach were pushed into the background when something that could not even be dreamed of, (…)

It is quite instructive that on 23st March 2021 Naveen Patnaik Government in Odisha commenced a year long celebration of the centenary of Mahatma Gandhi’s visit to the State on 23rd March 1921. One of the objectives of that historic visit was to enlist people’s support for achieving Swaraj in one year by intensifying non-cooperation movement and collecting funds from Odisha for Lokmanya Tilak Swaraj Fund for which the total amount of one crore of rupees was to be raised from across (…)

by Soumya Dutta *
“World’s leading climate scientists issued an ear-splitting wake-up call to the world, that climate change is running faster than we are — and we are running out of time. We see the consequences all around us — more extreme weather, rising sea levels, diminishing Arctic sea ice. The scientists paint the most vivid picture we have ever had between a temperature rise of 1.5 degrees versus 2 degrees. A half of degree of warming makes a world of difference. more heat waves (…)

by Bharat Dogra
March 25 is the 90th death anniversary of a great freedom fighter, editor, worker and peasant leader, also deeply committed social reformer who sacrificed his life at the age of 40 while trying to stop communal violence and rescue persons from both communities trapped in it.
The reference here is of course to Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, the famous editor of Pratap who has a unique place in the annals of the freedom movement.
On his death Jawaharlal Nehru said, “ He (…)

by Arun Srivastava
The Modi government’s intolerance of foreign institutions’ criticism of its failure to listen to the global concern of the sharp rise in the violation of the human rights and its persistent unwillingness to take action against the violators leading to the erosion of the democratic values in the country, has motivated lawmakers of western countries to push a bill in their respective parliaments decrying the claim of the Modi government of India being a democratic country. (…)

by Pratip Chattopadhyay*
Abstract
Out of five state assemblies that are going to polls in mid 2021, Kerala and West Bengal will be the sites for recovering, recrafting and contemporarising left politics in national scene in India. Important trend this time is left parties are daring to contest the elections alone. While in Kerala they have been running a coalition successfully named Left Democratic Front(LDF), in West Bengal they have crafted a Sangyukta Morcha (some sort of an United (…)

The Editors Guild of India
March 6th, 2021
The Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri. Narendra Modi, Government of India
South Block, Raisina Hill New Delhi-110011
Respected Prime Minister,
Greetings from the Editors Guild of India.
We are deeply concerned about the notification of Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021. The Rules, issued under the Information Technology Act, 2000, have the potential of fundamentally altering how (…)

by Hamza Alavi
THE cyclonic fury with which the Pakistan struck against the people of East exactly two years to the day on which the regime of President Khan had fallen and General Yahya Khan assumed power under Martial Law, marked a new stage in the deepening crisis of Pakistan. It is a crisis of national identity. It is also a crisis of the challenges which are being posed by the rising democratic forces in (…)