2022

BOOK REVIEW
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Midnight’s Borders: A People’s History of Modern India
by Suchitra Vijayan
Context (an imprint of Westland Publication)
2021. Pages 320. Rs 699.
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The Dawn, on Sep 14, 2022, carried a piece on the demise of Queen Elizabeth II, and the last line went this way: “The queen is dead; I hope the system of corruption and looting, of occupation and genocide that she represented perishes too”. Along with these cardinal debaucheries, one would add wanton (…)

* West Bengal: Skirmishes at Mominpur | Upal Chakraborty
* Challenges Before the Left — Internationally & India | Kobad Ghandy
* Discontent Between the Governor & Left Govt. in Kerala | J Chathukulam
* AAP’s Mohalla Clinics | Priyanka Yadav
* Can the Bharat Jodo Yatra spur democratic governance? | Vikash Narain Rai

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Oct 15, 2022
In the past weeks there were a series of disturbing developments that were reported in the news. We recapitulate some of these here in public interest; First is an instance of a public flogging of Muslim youths by policemen in rural Gujarat in front of a cheering crowd. Police are supposed to protect law and must observe rules they are trained for. Action must be taken over this blatant act of wrong-doing by the police as this can be read as (…)

by Upal Chakraborty *
Mominpur is a locality in Kolkata familiar to me personally because of various reasons.
The most vivid memories date back to a period in the late eighties when I recollect my father taking up a consultancy assignment with a pharmaceutical company in that locality after his retirement. The owner of the company was an eccentric person with a penchant for late-night discussions. His meets meetings normally commenced around 7 pm, and continued till 10 or 11. After (…)

Paper presented at a Seminar at Vijayawada organised by CPI On Sept 30 2022
By ‘left’ I would first draw a distinction between communists and social democrats as seen through history. Though the term basically encompasses both trends, which, of course, need to come together in the fight against fascist forces; here I will focus only on the former.
Social democrats are more for reforming the existing system to try and make it more equitable within the bourgeois structure. Communists are (…)

by Jos Chathukulam *
Abstract
The face-off between Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan and the Left Democratic Front government in Kerala is the latest one to shook the adversarial and competitive political landscape in Kerala. While it is being portrayed as a political slugfest, the reality is something else. It is not merely an issue between the Governor and the Chief Minister. The widening democratic deficit, the weakening of civil society, the stoic silence of public intellectuals and (…)

On the day the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court set aside the conviction of 90 per cent physically disabled former Delhi University English professor, Prof. G.N. Saibaba, for lack of requisite necessary sanctions, back in Nagpur, under a BJP-ruled state government and a BJP ruled Central government, the same day another BJP ruled state Haryana, let out on a forty-day parole Gurmit Baba Ram Rahim Singh, the head of Dera Sachcha Sauda, convicted of multiple rapes and murders and thereby (…)

by Priyanka Yadav *
FOR YEARS OUT-OF-POCKET expenditure on health care has been the highest among the total health expenditure in India. The National Health Accounts Estimates 2018-19 observed that the total health expenditure was 3.2 per cent in the year 2018-19, whereas out-of-pocket expenditure in the same year was 48.2 per cent for an average Indian. It is a given that the individual aims to avail of the best health services he can afford. After all, today, health is a commodity. (…)

by Vikash Narain Rai *
The over enthusiasts would be searching for glimpses of Mahatma Gandhi’s historic nation building marches in the on-going Bharat Jodo padayatra to showcase Rahul Gandhi’s campaign against communal hatred. However, what can not be denied is that like Gandhi ji, Rahul too is seeking a vision of inclusive India at immense personal risk. The remaining Yatra agenda of combating the unemployment and price rise would at present be comparable to the status of a PIL (public (…)

It is a matter of shame for us as a society that Bilkis Bano’s rapists have been released by a District level committee of Gujarat Government. Some people in the Hindutva family are also justifying the act by claiming that a few of the rapists are Sanskari Brahmans. If rapists and murderers will be called Sanskari, then we as a society have to rethink about the moral values and ethical standards necessary to be upheld for us to be called a civilised society. Besides Biliks Bano feeling (…)