July 21, 2007

TRIBUTE
[(Vilma Espin Guillois, the symbol of women in revolutionary Cuba, passed away in Havana on June 18, 2007. President of the Federation of Cuban Women, Vilma, 77, was comrade-in-arms of Cuban President Fidel Castro Ruz. She was the legendary guerrilla fighter of the Frank Pais Second Eastern Front, commanded by Raul Castro Ruz, whom she subsequently married in 1959. The following tribute to Vilma from Fidel was written on June 20, 2007 (…)

Gandhi’s treatment of Bhagat Singh and his comrades is one of the most intriguing episodes of India’s freedom struggle. Bhagat Singh was a fearless and intensely patriotic young man who wanted to see his country free and a just social order established. He had also participated in Gandhi’s freedom movement but was dissatisfied by its slow pace and the waywardness of its leader. But he and his comrades did not believe in the cult of the bomb and the bombs they dropped in the Assembly were not (…)

The Indian broadcast media, Akashvani and Doordarshan, owned and controlled by the Government of India, refer to themselves as the public service broadcasting media. But, are they, in reality, public service media? Let us take a closer look.
When India became free in August 1947, television was not on the scene. We had only sound broadcasting. A radio club came up in Calcutta under private auspices as an experiment in 1923. Similar stations came up in Madras, Bombay and elsewhere. It was (…)

Respected Shri Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, Namaskar.
The Republic of India is all geared up for the 13th presidential poll and your esteemed self is in the fray as an ‘Independent’ candidate. You will agree with me that whoever occupies this august constitutional post on the forthcoming July 19th, has to reassure the country that he or she would prove to be a real guardian to the Democratic-Secular India.
I am sorry to write that your association with the Hindutva brigade raises serious (…)

120 MILLION SUFFER FROM NEGLECT AND OPPRESSION
It is generally not realised that as many as 120 million people in India belong to the denotified and nomadic tribes (DNTs). They are among the worst victims of neglect and oppression. Denotified tribes include various tribes which were unjustly notified as ‘criminal tribes’ under the Criminal Tribes Act 1871 (or its amendments) during the years of British rule and following independence these were ‘denotified’. Various nomadic and (…)

Epigraph(s) History is a moral necessity for a nation which is the world’s dominant power. It is the best antidote to delusions of omnipotence and omniscience. Arthur Schlesinger
The longer you look back, the further you can look forward. Winston Churchill
Recently, Sam Janus has been calling India. But this time around only one of its two faces has been (…)

The inclusion of the role of the “State” in the conventional framework of Economics brings us to the domains of what is termed as the New Political Economy (Anand, 1996), the positive side of which very clearly defines the role of the State in terms of rent seeking activities and directly unproductive profit-seeking activities (Bagchi, 1993; Bhagwati, 1982; Buchanan, 1980; Moohammad et el, 1984) These activities, in fact, survive on their own and work against the smooth and economically (…)

[(BOOK REVIEW)]
Indigenous Education at Crossroads: James Bay Cree and the Tribal People of Orissa by Lauren Alcorn; published by Sikshasandhan, Bhubaneswar, Orissa; 2006; pp. 132; Rs 120; ISBN: 81-87982-32-2.
The book Indigenous Education at Crossroads presents a brief comparative analysis of two case studies of the James Bay Cree in northern Canada and the tribal peoples of Orissa, India. It seems to me that the author has done intensive fieldwork in both areas by taking participatory (…)

The recent Chinese decision to construct an all- weather road for the tourists to Mount Everest with the purpose of the coming Olympic Games have raised many eyebrows at the international level. It has sent ripples throughout the Indian establishment even though the PMO in India has maintained a stoic silence on the issue.
Chinese Culture Minister Sun Jiazheng has defended his government’s audacious project to build a metalled road to the Mount Everest base camp before next year’s Olympic (…)

Very big transformations have taken place in our print media. (I have not used the word “radical” deliberately.) The number of daily newspapers has increased very much—the English ones as well as the Hindi ones, and maybe others too. Many of them have by now many editions—a separate edition for every big city. Qualitywise, it has led to a change for the worse. Except for the most important national and State level news, the rest of the entire space is occupied by news of local and even of (…)