2024

[fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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ZINKY BOYS: The Record of a Lost Soviet Generation
by Svetlana Alexievich
translated by Julia Whitby and Robin Whitby.
Chatto, 192 pp., January 1992 0 7011 3838 6
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Among the many thoughts which this sad, sometimes unreadably sad book suggests is this: did the Afghan war mark the beginning of the most dramatic military event of our time, the dissolution of the Soviet Armed Forces? Did the crumbling of belief and will (…)

* CAA: A Tool of Hinduisation of Our Polity | Arup Kumar Sen
* CAA-2019 should be repealed | S G Vombatkere
* Should the government be involved in religious affairs? | Bajpai, Bandarupalli, Pandey
* CNDP Statement to Mark the Passing Away of Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas
* Give It Away | David Graeber

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, March 16, 2024
Four years after having passed the Citizenship Amendment Act the Home Ministry has now officially notified the CAA operational rules 2024 (on March 11, 2024). This contentious law has divided public opinion since it violates a fundamental constitutional principle of equality for all by overtly bringing in religion as a criteria to determine or deny citizenship to certain people. Protests have begun over the timing of this measure that was (…)

March 15, 2024
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA, hereinafter), amended the Citizenship Act 1955 (CA1955, hereinafter). However, an Act can only be implemented after the associated Rules are notified. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) notified the Citizenship Amendment Rules 2024 (CAR2024, hereinafter) on 11.3.2024, 51-months later.
Not unjustifiably, notifying CAR2024 when general elections are about to be announced, is being viewed as politically motivated. However, leaving (…)

Just days before the announcement of Lok Sabha elections, the Union Home Ministry notified the Citizenship Amendment Rules, 2024 ( on March 11, 2024) to enable implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), passed by the Parliament in 2019. It should be noted in this connection that passing of the CAA triggered nationwide protests in 2019-20 during which more than 100 people reportedly died in police firings and related violence. The Amendment was challenged before the Supreme Court (…)

It is evident to the entire world, including the ruling Bharartiya Janata Party(BJP) and its super leader Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that Rahul Gandhi’s mass contact exercise across the breadth of India from North East to the West, including Gujarat, has caused a stir among a large section of population and infused a new spirit in the demoralised cadres of the Congress party.
Whether this will translate into votes and seats for Rahul’s Congress party is still in the realm of (…)

In the majority decision (4-3) in Abhiram Singh v. C.D. Commachen (Dead) By Legal Representatives, the Supreme Court stated that the ethos and secular character of our political system must be taken into consideration during the electoral process. In line with the secular nature of the Indian State, Section 123(3) of the Representation of the People Act has prevented the interference of religions and religious beliefs with the secular activity of elections by prohibiting anyone from seeking (…)

March 11, 2024
Lot of writing is taking place in the media in addition to television debates about the Congress Party and the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The mainstream television channels, including some anchors, are asserting, (though they are expected to be professionally neutral) in expressing their opinion, much less guide the debate that 2024 is a done deal and that it is only a question of whether the BJP will reach the magic figure of 370 seats and the NDA, which is expanding in (…)

Abstract Generous spending on social security/pensions and freebies like free travel and house-maintenance allowance for women, free electricity and LPG connections are becoming common announcement by all political parties. The support to marginalised sections of the society may be appreciated by all and they may also agree that it should happen from the budget surplus of Governments. In this context, major fiscal parameters of four revenue deficit and one revenue surplus states have (…)

While the Marxists are engaged in a fierce battle against their class enemy Mamata Banerjee, TMC chief, even at the risk of facilitating the rightist BJP to win the Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, the RSS has taken over the command of the electoral battle in Hindi heartland, specifically in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, to ensure the defeat of the secular forces and particularly of the INDIA bloc.
This polemics of the left has created a lot of confusion in the political circles, as the TMC (…)