2023

BOOK REVIEW
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Beijing Rules: China’s Quest for Global Influence by Bethany Allen
John Murray Press ISBN-13: 9781529367799 Pages: xxix + 305; Price: Rs 799
__0__ By now there is a growing amount of scholarship that the West, particularly the United States, has realized its folly of having allowed China to grow into an economic behemoth under the naive belief that the Communist state would embrace democratic values if it fell in love with capitalism. The reverse has happened, with (…)

BOOK REVIEW
Reviewed by Francis R. Bradley (Pratt Institute)
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Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam: Quyền Van Minh and Jazz in Hanoi by Stan BH. Minh Tan-Tangbau
University Press of Mississippi 2021. 320 pp. (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4968-3633-5; (paper), ISBN 978-1-4968-3634-2
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Stan BH Tan-Tangbau collaborated with saxophonist Quyền Vӑn Minh to write the first major history of jazz in Vietnam. Minh is the central figure in the book’s narrative and he writes (…)

* An Anatomy of Research | Arup Maharatna
* Nuh Violence and its Aftermath | Arup Kumar Sen
* The bogey of BJP’s new constituency: Pasmanda & Muslim women | Faraz Ahmad
* The Environmental Holocaust In India | Kobad Ghandy
* Art and Socialism | William Morris

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Aug 26 & Sept 2, 2023
The successful landing on the moon of the space probe Chandrayaan 3 is a great moment for India and we must celebrate this collective achievement of our scientists and engineers whose work made this possible. It was odd that the live TV feed of the final moments of Chandrayan 3’s landing as broadcast on TV or YouTube had the TV screen split into two on one half the face of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and on the other half the (…)

The term, research, has of late come in tremendous vogue globally. Even a ninth standard school-goer nowadays refers pretty confidently to research as a distinct activity or pursuit. Indeed, it would hardly be possible to find a single literate person who has never used this term in day-to-day conversations and even casual gossips. A staunch admirer of the present times would surely view this as a clear testimony in support of the populist branding of the current age as ‘knowledge society’. (…)

On 23rd August 2023 India became the first country in the world after the Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO) ensured the soft landing of Chandrayan-3, on the south pole of the moon. No other country ever did so. Earlier the USA, Russia, and China had achieved the distinction of carrying out soft landing only on the north pole of the moon. So the soft landing of Chandrayan-3 makes India the fourth country to get the enviable distinction of reaching the moon very successfully for a (…)

On 31st July, 2023, Nuh, the Muslim-majority district of Haryana, witnessed communal violence. A recent field report published by the Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) on ‘Nuh Violence’ tried to unearth the roots of such violence. The Report observed: “In the days leading up to the tumultuous events in the town of Nuh, signs of unrest began to emerge. Videos featuring Hindutva sanghis like Monu Manesar and Bittu Bajrangi making hate speeches circulated on social media, (…)

28th August 2023
Press Release
The Platform of Central Trade Unions and Independent Sectoral Federations/Associations salutes the team of Engineers, Scientists, Communications Experts and so on, who made Chandrayaan-3 possible. Their undaunted work has opened up myriad possibilities for India to forge ahead in many fields.
As the story of Chandrayaan-3 unfolds, heart-rending stories of those who worked selflessly for the project emerge: Thousands of Engineers and Workers of Heavy (…)

The media in the last month have been full of the havoc caused due to excessive rain, flooding, landslides, etc In fact as Modi was delivering his address from the ramparts of the Red Fort a cloud burst washed away the Shiv Rawadi temple in Shimla — in an upmarket area — taking the lives of at least 12 people including children On that day Shimla witnessed landslides at two places — the other at Fagli, in which too at least 5 lives were lost.
Meanwhile the Indian Express (Aug 16) reported (…)

In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping presented the world with his ambitious brainchild, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Hailed as a modern-day ’silk road,’ this monumental infrastructure project aims to connect nations through a vast network of high-speed railways, power plants, ports, roads, bridges, airports, and tourism developments. While the media has extensively covered the BRI’s geopolitical impact and China’s rising dominance, the equally pressing concern of its environmental (…)