2022

Politics has become a part of everyday life of the people in 21st century India. A person is often judged solely by his/her political identity, irrespective of the will of the person. The ghost of this narrow identity politics has a long history.
Phanishwar Nath Renu’s story, ‘Party Ka Bhoot’, published before India’s independence (1945), brilliantly portrayed the suffocating world of this identity politics. To put it in the words of the English translator of the story, Rakhshanda Jalil: (…)

by P. Sreekumaran
April 5, 2022
Thiruvananthapuram: All eyes are riveted on Kannur in Kerala, where the 23rd Party Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is set to begin on April 6.
Strengthening the party at the national level to make it politically more relevant. That will be accorded top priority at the Congress. For that to happen, the party must regain the mass base and lost space in national political landscape. And all energies will be bent to attaining that prime (…)

by S R Darapuri *
The recent Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly election has once again exposed the continuing decline of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). In this, the BSP has got only one seat and it has been badly wiped out while Mayawati claimed to form the government with an absolute majority. In this election, the vote percentage of BSP has come down from 22.3% in 2017 to 12.7% only. Its 19 seats in 2017 have been reduced to only one and that too the candidate has won on his own (…)

The Savarkar rehabilitation project is taking newer forms. The latest attempt [‘How Savarkar fought for a casteless society’, The Indian Express, 28-02-2022] by the Savarkarites is to claim that “He had imagined a nation free of malevolent social evils such as caste cruelty, Untouchability, and injustice towards women. He advocated a casteless society based on notions of social justice coupled with social cohesion. He wanted to uproot the diversity of the caste system and build a nation (…)

This comment is not about the history and politics related to the Chandigarh- dispute between the states of Punjab and Haryana that began in 1966. There was a statement by the Central Government through its Home Minister regarding the proposed changes in the administrative system of the Union Territory of Chandigarh. The journalists/analysts have stated that the Resolution once again passed in the Legislative Assembly to include Chandigarh in Punjab state was a ’counter-move’ of the Aam (…)

by Nayakara Veeresha *
Abstract
The Bharatiya Janata Party (hereafter BJP) has returned to power in the recently concluded assembly elections in four out of five states. The political analysts and the post poll surveys have indicated that the BJP’s electoral mandate was given for the development, governance and welfare. No doubt, the policies of social welfare and target based programmes of the BJP have played a key role in grabbing the voter’s attention; however the point of concern (…)

I have just completed 50 years as an independent writer. This is no news for a world busy with big things, but democracy needs truly independent, unbiased journalists and in this context my experiences of five decades have some relevance.
At the more obvious level, I could contribute about ten thousand articles/reports, and four hundred books and booklets in Hindi and English, apart from 70 short stories, two novellas and about a 100 poems and songs. I could maintain continuity in this (…)

Reviewed by Paul Ramirez (Northwestern University) __0__
The Science of Useful Nature in Central America
by Sophie Brockmann
Cambridge University Press 2020. xii + 267 pp. $99.99 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-108-42123-2 __0__
In 1772, the creole polymath José Antonio Alzate traveled outside of Mexico City to investigate the effects of a typhus outbreak. As he later reported in an issue of his literary journal, his reconnaissance included an interview with a “ladino” resident, who suggested (…)

* Economic weapons of mass destruction | Raghuram Rajan
* Rabindranath Tagore, Rural Crisis and recovering Community | Karli Srinivasulu
* Jinnah Lives Again, What An Irony? | TJS George
* ECI would do well to count 100% VVPAT slips | Pandey, Singh, and Singh

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, April 2, 2022
According to the World Health Organization there is a new wave of cases of Covid-19 of the now dominant BA.2 subvariant of the virus, spiking in South Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Germany, the Netherlands, France and Canada, China, Ireland, New Zeeland. This is happening at a time when in many regions of the world including in India the mandatory public health & containment measures and social restrictions (such as wearing of masks, (…)