November 17, 2007

It is characteristic of the Johnson Administration that it should impudently interfere again and again in the ordering of India’s internal economy. The primary blame for this situation rests with those in the Union Government who have repeatedly given in to American pressure, the most glaring example of such abject surrender of our sovereignty being the shameful decision last year to devalue the rupee to please Washington. For some time now the Americans have used food as a lever to prevent (…)

November 14 marks yet another birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister. This commemorative occasion is celebrated through the length and breadth of the country as Children’s Day. But all the Bal Melas, flowers, balloons and festoons scarcely serve as a fig-leaf for the plight of Indian children which is perhaps the worst in the world.
India has the highest infant mortality rate in the world. Despite all the slogans about protecting the girl child, female (…)

BOOK REVIEW
Use of Metaphors by Jawaharlal Nehru by Prof Rakesh Gupta; Shubhi Publications, Gurgaon; 2007; Price: Rs 495.
Prof Rakesh Gupta’s breadth of reading, his cosmopolitan outlook, his prolific writings, the sensitivity of his comprehensions and the broad range of his interest testify to his remarkable personality—academician, writer, artist, painter, critical analyst of music and movies, knowledge of literature, theorist, combined with his humility and absence of egotistical (…)

Indira Gandhi would have completed 90 years on November 19 had she been alive. While remembering her we are reproducing the following pieces.
She rode into Death unharmed
Chand Joshi
He did not die Riddled with bullets At the door of the hacienda That day in April When the soldiers At the bugle’s last note Twice emptied their rifles Those who saw him say He withstood the bullets, Men and time, And on a white horse At full gallop Rode into death unharmed. (From the Exaltation of Light (…)